Honour

We were delighted and honoured to welcome in our midst yesterday Ms Mireille Fanon Mendes France, daughter of the celebrated writer and revolutionary activist Frantz Fanon. Mireille is an eminent human rights activist in Paris, France. Talimi Haq School's teacher-in-charge, Amina Khatoon, narrated to Mireille our work with children, young people and women. After that Mireille went for a short tour of Priya Manna Basti and spent some time visiting the homes of some of the people, meeting the families.

It was a most moving experience. On the way back to her hotel, Mireille asked, "If all the poor people of the world stand up, the world will be turned upside down. Do you think I will see that in my life time?" I replied, "Yes, we WILL see it in our life time, for we are now living in a time of transformations!"

That also reminded me of the women's song from Rajasthan:

Ek do ke chetba se kuch nahi hoyo
Do chaar ke chetba se kuch jhankar hoyo
Gaon ki saari behena cheti
To dharti palti khayo
Behena chet sakey to chet
Zamana aayo chetan ro

In translation:

If one or two become aware, nothing happens
If two or four become aware, there's some clinking.
If all the sisters in the village became aware,
The world's turned upside down!
Sisters, become aware if you can
The age of awakening has arrived!

Story

An international conference on "Migration, Diaspora and the City: Mobility and Dwelling in Calcutta" was held in Calcutta on 12-13 December 2008. The conference was jointly organised by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, the Diaspora Cities research team and The City Centre, Queen Mary, University of London, and supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

V Ramaswamy, Honorary Chairman of Howrah Pilot Project, presented a paper at the conference, titled "Priya Manna Basti, Howrah: The story of a community".

Here's the abstract of the paper.


Priya Manna Basti, Howrah, a century old jute workers’ slum, is currently home to about 20,000 people, mainly from labouring, Urdu-speaking, Muslim households. The people living here belong to Bihar and eastern U.P.

Labouring rural people, historically disenfranchised and unlettered, arrived in search of livelihood and settled in Howrah. They lived for decades in a degraded environment. Notwithstanding the disruption of communal riots and partition, during the 1950’s this community witnessed a profound new beginning in self-help efforts towards formal education. They generated community leaders who saw education as a key means to social advancement. They set up local schools which generated large numbers of educated men, several of whom went on to acquire respectable and remunerative jobs. Self-help efforts flourished notwithstanding the discrimination against Muslims in north India in post-independence India.

This story was reversed, first by the de-industrialisation in West Bengal beginning in the mid-60s, and then by the criminalised political culture consolidated over the last two decades. Community initiative has been uprooted, the community reduced to dependence on the crumbs that the party may throw their way, and criminalised in the process. This transformation is what the CPI(M) has presided over in its three decades of power.