Two songs of the Naxalbari struggle

These are further translations for UGIII 2012. The Bangla texts have been circulated. But for the benefit of those who need English translations,i have provided rough and ready ones. A few references are explained after the text.

I.

Terai cries oh, cries out my heart

The mother of Red Terai cries

For her seven slain daughters.

Thousand peasants have shed blood

Seeking a bit of land

And so Terai has mixed its blood

With the blood of the Indigo fields.

Peasant blood has turned to flood

The bamboo fortress is red

Some Titu Mir’s blood has reddened

Terai’s forehead

A babe in arms cries in sleep

Seeking in vain the mother

Terai’s daughter calls out in grief

Oh do not sleep my brother

Oh do not sleep my brother

Terai cries oh, there’s a burning in my heart

The fields of Naxalbari burn

For the seven slain daughters.

During the Naxalbari peasant struggle, women were killed. This song remembers the martyred women.

The Indigo Revolt was a massive peasant struggle in South and Central Bengal in the 19th century, demanding an end to forced indigo cultivation.

Titu Mir was a peasant leader of Barasat region. His followers had created a bamboo fortress. They were eventually defeated by English soldiers.

The song thus seeks to link up the Naxalbari peasant struggle with anti-imperialist peasant struggles of the 19th century. This was in line with the CPI(ML) political analysis, which saw India as semi-feudal semi-colonial, and the peasant armed struggle as the main form of revolutionary struggle. For a thorough analysis of the CPI (ML)'s politics from my standpoint see my essay The Path of Naxalbari, published in www.radicalsocialist.in

II.

A peasant wife of Phansidewa cried aloud to me

Tell me o dear brother

Sown with blood and planted in sweat

This wealth that is our life and death

Why does it not stay in our farms?

Oh brothers, how to answer these words

A day will come when we avenge this!

Pulling the saree over the torn blouse

Subhadra said hearken

Am i truly your parul sister?

If indeed you are my brotherbring from the sky

That red sun so we can wear it on the hair parting

Oh brothers, how to answer these words

A day will come when we avenge this!

Interestingly, women can be martyrs or those who inspire men to their revolutionary deeds. But women are seldom seen as revolutionaries on their own rights, and the meaning of a woman as a revolutionary is seldom explored in the poems or songs, not even a peasant revolutionary woman.

Words like lightning

Words like lightning

Sukanto Bhattacharya

[This poem was composed by Sukanto and recited by Gautam Chattopadhyay on 24 July 1946. Sukanto’s nephew was then two years old and had no inkling that he (the nephew) would one day become CM of an as yet unborn province named West Bengal. The angla version was eventually printed after Sukanto’s death from the memory of Chattopadhyay, but with marginal editing by Subhas Mukhopadhyay, who felt that the flow was not smooth in a couple of places, possibly because Chattopadhyay’s memory had played him false. The poem, about the release of political prisoners belonging to revolutionary terrorist currents, seems appropriate today, and makes one wonder about the real aims of the “cut doewn sukanto” campaign.]

After what ages what passage of years

Words like lightning come forth from peoples’ lips

Clouds rush back and forth in the sky

Thunder speaks into one’s ears on all sides.

Suddenly, peace has fled the realm of sleep

Day and night alike become unsettled

Work, only work.

The angry claws of the people lion

Has become sharp, has become acute

Its roar proclaims – revenge, revenge.

Thousands of martyrs and heroes

Intimate in dreams, deep n our memory

We have not forgotten their selflessness.

Indistinct promises tremble on our lip

In our ears only sound incessant the jingle of chains

The question is not whether we can or not

The oath today is not to smash the oppressors’ prison doors

For so long have we only heard the jingle of chains

They were heores

They raised storms oin the sky

Their stories, replete with killing foreigners

Bullets, guns and the flame of bombs

Even now thrill us.

In repose, in the gaps of duty,

They eternally call us

When shall we bring them back?

Whenm will our powerful arms

And the irresistible pressure of millions

Break the fetters?

When will the cacophony of our lives

The flood tide of million headed masses

Wash away the prisons?

Wen will they cross the ocean of sorrow?

They are creditors

We have recognised them now

They gave us life’s blood

And in return with both hands

Took the chains of jail

And in secret put us in debt

They are creditors

We have recognised them now

O debtor unmindful

With blood must you redeem the debts.

Listen, the people of the world

Harken, o brothers of our land.

Let blood be exchanged

We want them today.

Red Star

Red Star

Bishnu De

On your birth, the red star rose

Unfaded earth raised high her arms

Uchchaisraba* neighed

Orion struck up a classical tune

Rudra’s laughter, the fire of Uma’s love

Tremble in the dancing postures of your arms

She-demons spread illusions everywhere

They know you not, oh Kumar

Let them wreck riots, let blood redden soil

Let necks be hewn in villages and markets

Let a hundred bastions rise in hill and town

Comets at the end are severed by the red stroke of te star.

Spies hover incessantly n sky and air

Shall Pegasus stop flying in fear?

Hundred soldiers roam over fields and roads

Shall your heart’s steed halt hence?

The blood of heroes and the tears of mothers

Drain the seas of time for eons

Who will halt the victory arch by trick or force

In blind bogs, in mud banks?

We heard of a swollen river in a distant land

The king’s men blocked it with a mud bank.

The waters flooed the bank. History eternal

Runs like the Thames, Who can halt it?

Let bullets fly and hundred lashes fall

In Bengal’s villages, hills and Kolkata

Yet, Kumar, runs your steed

Fleeter of foot than the electric tram.

In your two eyes bur the Red Star

Fiery fists in raised arms

Demons of all lands clueless

Running helter skelter.

In vain is spread trail of red blood

In village, port andmarket the Red Star of birth

Shines along your footsteps

Lights up in all lands with brave wing stolen

Your horse’s shoe has not, shall not come off

That expedition is beaten in the steel of life.

Hence, unvanquishable victory songs play in your arms

In the land of fearful friends.

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* The horse of Indra, King of the Gods