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.