ऐसी राजनीति पर थूःथूःथूः
कि सबसे बड़ा मसला यह कि कौन कंडोम नकली है और कौन असली
उस रसगुल्ला क्रांति के बाद वामपक्ष को भी जनता के मुद्दों की पहचान नहीं है
पलाश विश्वास
बसंतीपुर में हमारे घर में दो चीजों पर सबसे धमाल हुआ करता था।पहला तो रसगुल्ला और दूसरी मिर्चें।चूंकि नदियों से हम बेदखल हो गये थे देश के विभाजन के साथ,इसलिए हिलसा मछलियां तीं नहीं और हिलसा थी नहीं तो मछलियों के लिए कोई हंगामा कभी बरपा नहीं।
मैं खासतौर पर रसगुल्ले का दीवाना रहा।इतना दीवाना कि पूरा बचपन और कैशोर्य रसगुल्ले के हवाले था।
मेरे चाचा के मुंह से रसगुल्ला निकालकर खाया है मैंने।
साझा परिवार था।भाई बहनें बहुत।मैं अपना हिस्सा खत्म करके दूसरों के रसगुल्ले हड़पने के लिए घात लगाकर बैठता था।
खालिस जैशोर फरीदपुर की आखिरी विरासत मिर्ची थी।बिन मिर्ची खाना जूठन जैसा लगता था हमें।हमारे घर में खालिस प्रतियोगिता होती थी हर रोज कि सबसे झाल मिर्च कौन कितने गिन गिनकर खा सकता है।
हमारे ताउजी तो दावत में भी जेबों में मिर्चे भर भरकर ले जाते थे कि काने में मिर्च कम हुआ तो जेब से निकाल लें जो अक्सर होता था।
बंगाल में एक क्रांति रसगुल्ला क्रांति भी हुई थी 1965 में ऐसी क्रांति जो दुनियाबर में शायद कहीं नहीं हुई।यूं कहें कि बंगाल में आधे अधूरे लागू हुए भूमि सुदार की वजह भी वही रसगुल्ला क्रांति हे ,तो शायद गलत न होगा।
यूं तो तब भी तेभागा जारी था और भीतर ही भीतर कृषि विद्रोह की आग सुलग रही थी और समां खाद्य आंदोलन का था,असल गलती गांधीवादी तब के मुख्यमंत्री प्रफुल्ल चंद्रे सेन ने यह कर दी कि बंगाल में खाद्य संकट से निबटने के लिए उनने आव देखा न ताव,फौरन छेने की मिठाइयों पर रोक लगा दी,जिसमें सबसे खास रसगुल्ला हुआ करै है।फिर तो बंगाल में ऐसा भूचाल आया कि हाशिये पर खड़े वाम पंथी सत्ता में ऐेसे आये कि करीब 35 साल तक उनका शासन रहा बंगाल में।
भारतभर में इतने अधिक अलोकप्रिय मुख्यमंत्री कोई दूसरा हो।उनके साथ उतने ही अलोकप्रिय रहे हैं अतुल्य घोष।इसमें भी खास बात यह है कि इन दोनों से ईमानदार राजनेता बंगाल में शायद कोई तीसरा हों।
दोनों पक्के गांधीवादी रहे हैं।सादगी से जीने वाले।न उनके खिलाफ भ्रष्टाचार का कोई आरोप था और न अपने अपने को रेवड़ियां बांटने का कोई सवाल था और न वे तानाशाह थे।
फिरभी हालात उनके खिलाफ थे और बंगाल तब दाने दाने को मोहताज था।
इससे भी बड़ी बात यह कि बंगाल के कामरेडों ने सही मुद्दों और सही मसलो को उठाने और जनता के साथ खड़े होने,जनता के बीच लगातार लगातार सक्रिय रहकर जनता को सत्ता के खिलाफ लामबंद करने में कोई कोताही न की।
नेता भी कैसे थे कामरेड ज्योति बसु,कामरेड मुजफ्फर अहमद,कामरेड सोमनाथ चटर्जी,कामरेड हरिकृष्ण कोनार,कामरेड प्रमोद दासगुप्त,कामरेड विनय चौधरी,कामरेड शैलेन दासगुप्त,कामरेड जतीन चक्रवर्ती,कामरेड गीता,कामरेड अशोक घोष वगैरह वगैरह।जाहिर है कि नेतृत्व का कोई संकट भी नहीं था।
वरना आज के मुकाबले तब वामपंथ के लिए कांग्रेस को बेदखल करके सत्ता में आना बहुत मुश्किल था।
बंगाली सबसे ज्यादा मछलियों,मिष्टि दही,रसगुल्ला समेत तमाम रसदार छेने की मिठाई के दीवाने रहे हैं हमेशा से।बंगाल में किसी भी शहरी इलाके के किसी भी मोहल्ले में और किसी भी गांव में मिठाई की दुकान में चले जाये जो इफरात हैं हर कहीं और कमसकम मिठाई की दुकान से घाटा हो जाने का अंदेशा कभी हो ही नहीं सकता।
अब जबकि मधुमेह की महामारी है जो साठ के दशक में रही नहीं है।
फिरभी शाम को कभी फुरसत मिलती है तो अपने मोहल्ले के किसी भी मिठाई की दुकान में बड़े बड़े गमलों में रसगुल्ले,गुलाब जामुन,चमचम छेने की जलेबियां और छेने की दूसरी मिठाइयां बनते देखकर हमेशा हैरत में होता हूं कि इतनी मिठाइयां,इतनी दुकानें और मधुमेह के इतने मरीज और दस रुपये से कम नहीं कोई अच्छी मिठाई,तो खाता कौन होगा।
शाम चार बजे से रात के दस बजे तक मिठाइयां बनती है।बासी मिठाइयां अनबिकी बहुत बेदर्दी के साथ रात को दुकान बंद होते न होते कचरे में फेंक दी जाती है।सवाल किया कोई इस सिलसिले में,बेवकूफ माने जायेंगे।
रसगुल्ला और मिछाइयों कि ऐसी महिमा अपरंपार जिसपर लगे प्रतिबंध की वजह से प्रफुल्ल चंद्र सेन और अतुल्य घोष जैसे लोग भी बेहद अलोकप्रिय हो गये।
जबकि हकीकत यह है कि खासतौर पर प्रफुल्ल चंद्र सेन को इस बात की ज्यादा फिक्र थी कि छेने की मिठाइयों की वजह से दूध की किल्लत हो रही थी और वे मिठाइयों पर पाबंदी लगाकर दूध बच्चों और उनकी माताओं के लिए बचाने की जुगत में थे।
अब उनकी क्या कहें जो जनता के खान पान पर पाबंदी लगाकर धर्म की राजनीति के जरिये धर्मोन्माद फैला रहे हैं।
उससे बी बड़ा मसला है कि मौजूदा राजनीति की जड़ें जनता के बीच कहीं नहीं हैं और जनता के मुद्दों से राजनीति का कोई सरोकार नहीं है।
संसद का मानसून सत्र जारी है और हर मिनट ढाई लाख का खर्च है।
जनता के किसी मुद्दे की गूंज लेकिन कहीं नहीं है।
राजनीति अब सत्ता समीकरण के सिवाय कुछ भी नहीं है।
नगाड़े खामोश हैं और नौटंकियां चालू है कुल किस्सा यही है।
वामपक्ष को भी उस रसगुल्ला क्रांति के बाद मुद्दों की कोई पहचान नहीं है।
हाल में धर्मस्थलों पर कंडोम की किल्लत सुर्खी बनकर अखबारों और टीवी पर छा गयी थी और अब सबसे बड़ा मसला यह है कि हम कैसे कंडोम का इस्तेमाल करें और कैसे कंडोम का इस्तेमाल न करें।
Jul 25 2015 : The Economic Times (Kolkata)
THE BITTEREST BAN
Vikram Doctor & Writankar Mukherjee
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50 years ago, a particularly startling food ban was imposed in Bengal, and had lasting consequences. Milk sweets were banned under the West Bengal Channa Sweets Control Order imposed by Congress chief minister Prafulla Chandra Sen
Food bans seem to be a theme for 2015. Some are sweeping like Maharashtra's beef ban or the nationwide ban on Maggi, some specific like Madhya Pradesh's ban on eggs in mid Madhya Pradesh's ban on eggs in midday meal schemes and some local like the housing society in Mumbai alleged to be boycotting a family over cooking meat. Everywhere it seems people are stopping others from eating something.It rarely comes out well. Banning something so basic makes people resentful, defiantly pushing them to eat what they might have avoided voluntarily . Bans tend to lack practical logic -they are imposed precisely because what they require isn't what people would do normally . But since their perpetrators never admit to the prejudices underlying most bans, they invent twisted justifications that can be as damaging as the ban.
50 years ago, a particularly startling ban was imposed, and had lasting consequences. Bans are rarely imposed on popular foods, especially those seen as emblematic of a community. And few foods are more emblematic of Bengal than sweets based on channa (split milk solids) like sandesh and rossogullas. Yet on August 23, 1965 such milk sweets were banned in Calcutta under the West Bengal Channa Sweets Control Order imposed by Congress chief minister Prafulla Chandra Sen. Sen justified his action by pointing to the dire situation of dairying in the state. In a speech in Bengali on All India Radio (AIR), he noted: “Whereas the daily per capita of supply of milk in the Punjab is 17 ounces and in Bihar 4 ounces, in West Bengal it is even less than 3 ounces per capita.“ Despite Bengal's historical reputation as a land of milk and honey , it has always lagged in milk production in recent times. Across the border in Bangladesh shortages are still so bad that chaiwallahs use milk substitutes made of imported palm oil and milk powder.
Imported milk powder was important in West Bengal then too, but as Sen noted, India's deteriorating financial situation -the rupee would be devalued in 1966 -made imports increasingly costly. Sen wanted, rightly , the scarce milk to go first to children and mothers, but solutions like taxing channa or offering subsidised milk to the most needy could have been tried. Instead, he went straight for a ban on channa in Calcutta and neighbouring areas, with the possibility of extending it state wide.
Sen was an upright, committed man who the current CM Mamata Banerjee, in her memoirs, claims as her mentor, though she is too politically savvy to try a ban on Bengali sweets. Sen had been a freedom fighter and then minister of food in the first government of independent Bengal right until he took over as CM.And as Joya Chatterji points out in her book Spoils of Partition: Bengal & India 1947-1967, he had the vivid experience of the disastrous Bengal famine, when the previous Muslim League government had tried and failed to impose controls on food movements.Yet, faced with two years of failed monsoons and rising prices, Sen panicked and imposed a wide range of controls from curbs on grain trade to restrictions on wedding feasts. “These measures had not worked in in 1943; in the crisis on 1966, they were as ineffectual as they had been during the famine,“ writes Chatterji. Powerful traders hoarded or smuggled food to Bihar or East Pakistan while the burden was felt by “traders in foodstuffs, ration shop licensees, rice millers and transporters on whose support the Congress regime in West Bengal had increasingly come to depend.“ Sen's policies destroyed his party's base.
Sen had not counted the effects, both psychological and practical, of the sweets ban. He was an austere Gandhian who possibly saw sweets as inessential luxuries. But for ordinary people, small things like sweets helped ease the problems of daily life and their absence symbolised the failure of the state. Mani Shankar Mukherjee, the popular Bengali novelist who writes as Sankar, says that the ban went against the mood and culture of Bengali people: “The measures may have had merit but the costs of implementation were huge -thousands of people lost out, several sweet businesses had to be shut down and people still consumed milk sweets in the black market whose price was exorbitantly high.“
For those in the industry , it was a dark time. “The backbone of Bengal's sweet industry was broken then,“ says Dhiman Das, executive director at the legendary firm KC Das, which claims its founder Nobin Chandra Das invented rossogulla in 1868. Dhiman Das is the fifth generation of the family and he recalls, “We had to sell ornaments of our family and took loans from bank to survive.“ As with oth er famous shops, like Balaram Mullick & Radharaman Mullick, Bhim Chandra Nag and Sen Mahasay , KC Das had to close outlets across the city , leaving only their main branch at Esplanade, which survived by selling other snacks.
Sen encouraged this. “We should bear in mind that all these sweetmeat shops prepare salted variety of edibles, such as nimki, singhara, radhaballavi, luchi dalpuri, kachuri, jhuribhaja, alurdom, curry , dal, etc,“ he said in that AIR speech. And he promised extra supplies of sugar and flour to make non-milk sweets. This, he felt, countered the charge that 39,000 employees across 8,000 shops were facing retrenchment.
But as Sudip Mullick, proprietor of Balaram Mullick & Radharaman Mullick, a fourth generation member of the founder family , points out, for shops to suddenly shift from their core focus was not easy .“Our entire family , including my grandmother and father, had to literally jump into the action to come up with new sweets based on besan, maida, kaju and other materials since our artisans only knew how to make rossogulla and sandesh, which are all milk products,“ he says.
Some sweet shops took more di rect action and challenged the channa control order in the Calcutta High Court, which duly struck it down on November 16, 1965. Enraged, Sen passed the even more sweeping West Bengal Milk Products Control Order just two days later. This was also immediately challenged in court, and it was on November 25, while the verdict was being deliberated that Sen delivered his speech on AIR where, in addition to explaining why the measure was needed and what relief could be given, he also let his emotions get the better of him.In the current situation, he said, making food with milk in West Bengal was tantamount to a crime, and those resisting the order were acting against public interest.
Today, when politicians froth at each other on night time TV and make extreme statements as a matter of course, this might not seem shocking. But at that time, and perhaps also reflecting the general irritation that Sen's bans had caused, his statements became a matter for a court case. Justice BN Banerjee of the Calcutta High Court delivered a lengthy opinion in March 1966 on whether Sen had committed contempt of court by delivering such statements while the second order was being decided by the court.
And in a narrow decision -after many pages looking in disfavour at the government's conduct -Justice Banerjee decided that there was contempt, but he allowed “the contemnor did not `anticipate' his speech might be contumacious or might tend to become one,“ and let the government off with a warning. This upset Sen so much that he appealed to the Supreme Court, where he had no luck either. In 1968, in a verdict still cited in contempt of court cases, Justices J Shah, V Ramaswamy and A Grover ruled that “the speech was ex facie calculated to in terfere with the administration of justice“ and denied the appeal.
By then Sen was no longer chief minis ter. In the year following the sweets ban, the situation in West Bengal had deteriorated hugely , with the Communists capitalising on the discontent caused by the bans to foment riots and strikes. Seeing the reaction at the grassroots, several Congressmen lead by Ajoy Mukherjee left to form the Bangla Congress which managed to come to power in the 1967 elections, with support from the Communists and Muslims. But it was an unstable pact, with the Communists openly manoeuvring to gain power which lead to several periods of President's Rule. The Congress would try to regain ground under SS Ray, but the drift away could not to be stopped, and finally in 1977, the Left Front took power and stayed in office for 34 years.Sen's sweet order was not the only cause for the Congress collapse in West Bengal, but it remained a bitter memory of the problems of their rule.
The ban had one positive consequence.Bengali sweet makers realised they had to look beyond the state for milk supply and markets without the fear of bans. In the early 1970s, KC Das set up its first store outside Calcutta in the centre of Bangalore, at the juncture of Church Street and St.Mark's Road. “The government eventually changed power in West Bengal, but the fear had persisted in the industry what if it comes back, so we had to move out to newer markets,“ said Das.
Thousands of customers were introduced to the joys of mishti dhoi at the Bangalore outlet, and they, at least, might find something to commemorate on the 50th anniversary of Sen's misguided food ban.
Gloom at Maggi Dhabas
Until the eighties, the concept of fast food in India was limited to roadside chaat or, at best, vadas and sandwiches.Even at home, quick snacks were pakoras and samosas north of the Vindhyas and dosa or vadas in the south.But all of them took some amount of preparatory effort.Then Maggi happened in1982.Its trump card was ease of cooking -2 minutes, the chirpy jingle said. Beaming children slurping up Maggi noodles in the brand's crackling ad helped in no small measure.But the noodles barely tickled older palates. People weaned on rice, dal and roti never really took to instant noodles.Maggi remained an occasional indulgence, mainly of schoolgoing children of urban parents even in the early nineties.
Economic liberalisation and the consequent movement of young men and women to urban centres in search of higher education and jobs created an explosion in demand for foods that could be made quickly and cheaply. One of the biggest beneficiaries of that demand was Maggi. It almost took three generations for the noodle brand to become a household name. And once it became a staple for many, it stayed that way, dominating the market; the bright yellow packets stacked in even tiny tea shops in distant Ladakh. When the noodle was taken off the shelves last month, Maggi had a market share of over 70% and a brand value of `2,000 crore.
Dinesh Narayan
50 years ago, a particularly startling ban was imposed, and had lasting consequences. Bans are rarely imposed on popular foods, especially those seen as emblematic of a community. And few foods are more emblematic of Bengal than sweets based on channa (split milk solids) like sandesh and rossogullas. Yet on August 23, 1965 such milk sweets were banned in Calcutta under the West Bengal Channa Sweets Control Order imposed by Congress chief minister Prafulla Chandra Sen. Sen justified his action by pointing to the dire situation of dairying in the state. In a speech in Bengali on All India Radio (AIR), he noted: “Whereas the daily per capita of supply of milk in the Punjab is 17 ounces and in Bihar 4 ounces, in West Bengal it is even less than 3 ounces per capita.“ Despite Bengal's historical reputation as a land of milk and honey , it has always lagged in milk production in recent times. Across the border in Bangladesh shortages are still so bad that chaiwallahs use milk substitutes made of imported palm oil and milk powder.
Imported milk powder was important in West Bengal then too, but as Sen noted, India's deteriorating financial situation -the rupee would be devalued in 1966 -made imports increasingly costly. Sen wanted, rightly , the scarce milk to go first to children and mothers, but solutions like taxing channa or offering subsidised milk to the most needy could have been tried. Instead, he went straight for a ban on channa in Calcutta and neighbouring areas, with the possibility of extending it state wide.
Sen was an upright, committed man who the current CM Mamata Banerjee, in her memoirs, claims as her mentor, though she is too politically savvy to try a ban on Bengali sweets. Sen had been a freedom fighter and then minister of food in the first government of independent Bengal right until he took over as CM.And as Joya Chatterji points out in her book Spoils of Partition: Bengal & India 1947-1967, he had the vivid experience of the disastrous Bengal famine, when the previous Muslim League government had tried and failed to impose controls on food movements.Yet, faced with two years of failed monsoons and rising prices, Sen panicked and imposed a wide range of controls from curbs on grain trade to restrictions on wedding feasts. “These measures had not worked in in 1943; in the crisis on 1966, they were as ineffectual as they had been during the famine,“ writes Chatterji. Powerful traders hoarded or smuggled food to Bihar or East Pakistan while the burden was felt by “traders in foodstuffs, ration shop licensees, rice millers and transporters on whose support the Congress regime in West Bengal had increasingly come to depend.“ Sen's policies destroyed his party's base.
Sen had not counted the effects, both psychological and practical, of the sweets ban. He was an austere Gandhian who possibly saw sweets as inessential luxuries. But for ordinary people, small things like sweets helped ease the problems of daily life and their absence symbolised the failure of the state. Mani Shankar Mukherjee, the popular Bengali novelist who writes as Sankar, says that the ban went against the mood and culture of Bengali people: “The measures may have had merit but the costs of implementation were huge -thousands of people lost out, several sweet businesses had to be shut down and people still consumed milk sweets in the black market whose price was exorbitantly high.“
For those in the industry , it was a dark time. “The backbone of Bengal's sweet industry was broken then,“ says Dhiman Das, executive director at the legendary firm KC Das, which claims its founder Nobin Chandra Das invented rossogulla in 1868. Dhiman Das is the fifth generation of the family and he recalls, “We had to sell ornaments of our family and took loans from bank to survive.“ As with oth er famous shops, like Balaram Mullick & Radharaman Mullick, Bhim Chandra Nag and Sen Mahasay , KC Das had to close outlets across the city , leaving only their main branch at Esplanade, which survived by selling other snacks.
Sen encouraged this. “We should bear in mind that all these sweetmeat shops prepare salted variety of edibles, such as nimki, singhara, radhaballavi, luchi dalpuri, kachuri, jhuribhaja, alurdom, curry , dal, etc,“ he said in that AIR speech. And he promised extra supplies of sugar and flour to make non-milk sweets. This, he felt, countered the charge that 39,000 employees across 8,000 shops were facing retrenchment.
But as Sudip Mullick, proprietor of Balaram Mullick & Radharaman Mullick, a fourth generation member of the founder family , points out, for shops to suddenly shift from their core focus was not easy .“Our entire family , including my grandmother and father, had to literally jump into the action to come up with new sweets based on besan, maida, kaju and other materials since our artisans only knew how to make rossogulla and sandesh, which are all milk products,“ he says.
Some sweet shops took more di rect action and challenged the channa control order in the Calcutta High Court, which duly struck it down on November 16, 1965. Enraged, Sen passed the even more sweeping West Bengal Milk Products Control Order just two days later. This was also immediately challenged in court, and it was on November 25, while the verdict was being deliberated that Sen delivered his speech on AIR where, in addition to explaining why the measure was needed and what relief could be given, he also let his emotions get the better of him.In the current situation, he said, making food with milk in West Bengal was tantamount to a crime, and those resisting the order were acting against public interest.
Today, when politicians froth at each other on night time TV and make extreme statements as a matter of course, this might not seem shocking. But at that time, and perhaps also reflecting the general irritation that Sen's bans had caused, his statements became a matter for a court case. Justice BN Banerjee of the Calcutta High Court delivered a lengthy opinion in March 1966 on whether Sen had committed contempt of court by delivering such statements while the second order was being decided by the court.
And in a narrow decision -after many pages looking in disfavour at the government's conduct -Justice Banerjee decided that there was contempt, but he allowed “the contemnor did not `anticipate' his speech might be contumacious or might tend to become one,“ and let the government off with a warning. This upset Sen so much that he appealed to the Supreme Court, where he had no luck either. In 1968, in a verdict still cited in contempt of court cases, Justices J Shah, V Ramaswamy and A Grover ruled that “the speech was ex facie calculated to in terfere with the administration of justice“ and denied the appeal.
By then Sen was no longer chief minis ter. In the year following the sweets ban, the situation in West Bengal had deteriorated hugely , with the Communists capitalising on the discontent caused by the bans to foment riots and strikes. Seeing the reaction at the grassroots, several Congressmen lead by Ajoy Mukherjee left to form the Bangla Congress which managed to come to power in the 1967 elections, with support from the Communists and Muslims. But it was an unstable pact, with the Communists openly manoeuvring to gain power which lead to several periods of President's Rule. The Congress would try to regain ground under SS Ray, but the drift away could not to be stopped, and finally in 1977, the Left Front took power and stayed in office for 34 years.Sen's sweet order was not the only cause for the Congress collapse in West Bengal, but it remained a bitter memory of the problems of their rule.
The ban had one positive consequence.Bengali sweet makers realised they had to look beyond the state for milk supply and markets without the fear of bans. In the early 1970s, KC Das set up its first store outside Calcutta in the centre of Bangalore, at the juncture of Church Street and St.Mark's Road. “The government eventually changed power in West Bengal, but the fear had persisted in the industry what if it comes back, so we had to move out to newer markets,“ said Das.
Thousands of customers were introduced to the joys of mishti dhoi at the Bangalore outlet, and they, at least, might find something to commemorate on the 50th anniversary of Sen's misguided food ban.
Gloom at Maggi Dhabas
Until the eighties, the concept of fast food in India was limited to roadside chaat or, at best, vadas and sandwiches.Even at home, quick snacks were pakoras and samosas north of the Vindhyas and dosa or vadas in the south.But all of them took some amount of preparatory effort.Then Maggi happened in1982.Its trump card was ease of cooking -2 minutes, the chirpy jingle said. Beaming children slurping up Maggi noodles in the brand's crackling ad helped in no small measure.But the noodles barely tickled older palates. People weaned on rice, dal and roti never really took to instant noodles.Maggi remained an occasional indulgence, mainly of schoolgoing children of urban parents even in the early nineties.
Economic liberalisation and the consequent movement of young men and women to urban centres in search of higher education and jobs created an explosion in demand for foods that could be made quickly and cheaply. One of the biggest beneficiaries of that demand was Maggi. It almost took three generations for the noodle brand to become a household name. And once it became a staple for many, it stayed that way, dominating the market; the bright yellow packets stacked in even tiny tea shops in distant Ladakh. When the noodle was taken off the shelves last month, Maggi had a market share of over 70% and a brand value of `2,000 crore.
Dinesh Narayan
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