The transfer of power in 1947 created enduring myths of glory in entities to which the British transferred their power. The simultaneous partition of the sub-continental British territories also created other more pernicious myths around questions of loyalty, nationality, and identity – refashioning ideas of ‘self’, ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’. These schemes hatched from the deepest bowels of the deep state do have considerable power. With the right combination of propaganda and guns, carrots and sticks, awards and torture, celebrations and prison-terms, pursued doggedly over decades, these projects have started bearing poisonous fruits. The nation-states of the subcontinent have ‘matured’. This means that they have been able to shape a significant number of human beings into anxious, ‘enemy’-hating, delusional, narcissistic consumers of ‘national’ and ‘national security’ myths. They are called citizens. Selfhoods have been forcibly beaten into post-partition ‘national’ shapes to serve the interests of the mandarins sitting in Delhi, Dhaka, and Islamabad. This is a crime of epic proportions. People pay for it by being killed, maimed, and silenced for not toeing the line in silence. As a collective, we pay for it by accepting the death of dreams and possibilities of plural and interwoven loyalties and loves as absurd.

Unitary nation-states demand that loyalty, longing and love should end at the Radcliffe border with clinical precision. In 1971, an epic struggle made some of these clean-cut things fuzzy. This was the movement leading up to the liberation of the landmass that now calls itself the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. It is true that the Indian Union and many of its peoples were supportive of East Bengal’s struggle for independence. While Delhi had its own calculations and cost-benefit analysis, the people had various reasons ranging from Pakistan-hate to solidarity with a people facing genocide. But there was something in the enthusiasm of the Bangladesh solidarity initiatives in West Bengal that didn’t quite fit into the India-Bangladesh narrative. West Bengal was ‘closer’ to East Bengal in a way that Mizoram wasn’t. This kind of closeness runs against the grain of nation-state narratives emanating from Delhi but it in reality, often the least embarrassing reaction to such closeness is to publicly ignore. Think about how Delhi reacts to resolutions about Eelam Tamils in the Tamil Nadu assembly. It does not react publicly. What its agencies do privately we don’t know.

This ‘special’ closeness that poured out in West Bengal during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation struggle is something Delhi knew to be a tricky thing. It does not exist any more as West Bengal has also learned to look east through a Delhi lens – hence all it sees now are cattle-smugglers, Islamic terrorists and Muslims plotting a demographic takeover. But this special closeness was spontaneous and that was problematic. Delhi knew of this ‘affair’ – something that wasn’t quite infidelity or ‘disloyalty’ but a complicated kind of lopsided polyamory that only unfortunate victims of partition zones can relate to. It is a love that dare not tell its name in front of a nation-state that demands total fidelity and loyalty not only in public but also in realms of fantasy. Gobindo Haldar was one such lover. He died on 17th January.

Gobindo Haldar was born in Bongaon, Jessore district, Bengal. Jessore was one of the districts that were partitioned to the thana level. Bongaon ‘fell’ in the Indian Union. Gobindo worked in the Income Tax department but was a lyricist for Akashbani. Akashbani was crucial in 1971 for many in East Bengal depended on it to learn things beyond war-time propaganda from Pakistani occupation administration. Later, when the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra (Free Bengal Radio) was set up by the Bangladesh government-in-exile, Gobindo was asked by Kamal Ahmed to write songs for Free Bengal Radio. And he wrote what became words that stirred a people in dire need for hope and inspiration in the face of occupation and genocide, a people valiantly resisting a militarily superior force. The most famous songs he wrote include Mora Ekti Phulke Bachabo Bole Juddho Kori (We fight to save one flower), Ek Sagor Rokter Binimoye Banglar Swadhinata Anlo Jara (Those who gave a sea of blood to bring freedom to Bengal), Purbo Digonte Surjo Uthechhe Rokto Lal (A red sun has risen in the eastern horizon) and Padma Meghna Jamuna Tomar Amar Thikana (The land of Padma, Meghna, Jamuna rivers is where you and I belong). The name of the last song comes from a famous political slogan that was posited against the Pakistan-loyalist Islamist slogan Tomar Amar Thikana Praner Bhumi Madina (Beloved land of Madina is where you and I belong). He died unsung in today’s West Bengal where a ‘foreign’ government sent funds for this poor man’s treatment. During 1971, he wasn’t acknowledged by Free Bengal Radio who removed this ‘foreigner’s’ name from the title list – only ‘own’ patriots were allowed. He wrote the right songs for the ‘wrong’ nation-state – otherwise he would have bhushans, bibhushans and what not. I have a picture of him holding a Bangladesh flag to his chest. Very anti-national, eh?

He was a universe who lived amongst us, in West Bengal, in the Indian Union. And we did not care, because we are prisoners of divisive ‘national’ narratives that make such smaller as humans. How many such people are there? Let us look around. There may be a billion epics unfolding under our noses, in wars and insurgencies, in nations and proto-nations, legal and otherwise, dreamt up and very real, in search of numerous fantastic paradises. Let us expand and see the many fights for justice all around us for what they are for Cornel West says that justice is what love looks like in public. Let us salute such lovers and have the humanity to criticize ideologies that deem saluting love as ‘illegal’. Let us learn to listen to the illicit whispers of Gobindo Haldar. One of the many clues to this subcontinent’s salvation may lie there. After all, this fecund land also teaches to love as did Shah Abdul Karim - ‘Bondhe maya lagaise, piriti shikhaise, dewana banaise, ki jadu koriya bondhe maya lagaise‘ (My friend has entranced me, has taught me love, has made me diwana, had entranced me by some magic). (IPA Service)