The New Nation - Internet Edition

Undesirable contradictions

ACCORDING to media reports, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) chairman has said that any compromise of the newly formed Truth and Accountability Commission (TAC) with big corruption would not be acceptable to them. His reported comment came within a day after the TAC started functioning. However, the ACC chairman has expressed the hope that both the commissions would be able to work with understanding. The Truth and Accountability Commission has been formed for a period of five months with the aim of curbing corruption and reducing the massive load of corruption cases through quick disposal of the same.

Graft suspects may avoid imprisonment through voluntary confession of corruption and surrender of ill-gotten wealth. Those persons will be barred for a period of less than five years from holding any public office. The law clearly defines the jurisdiction of the TAC. It is obliged to discharge its duties according to the law and, as such, there is no scope of compromise. Then why does the question of compromise arise? If this is the stand of the ACC then what purpose TAC would serve.

This is an expression of incoherence of different government agencies. Such contradiction will not serve the good intention of the government to allow corrupt people back to normal life. These types of contradictions were also noticed in a few other cases. The government gave an opportunity of whitening undeclared money through payment of tax and penalties. But the whole thing took a frustrating turn when chairman of the National Board of Revenues reportedly hesitated to give legal recognition to such wealth. Some months back, the ACC was also reported to have asked NBR to disclose the names of such taxpayers. Contradictory stands of the agencies of the government are completely undesirable.

Meeting the power crunch

THE government announced a nine-year-long roadmap some time ago for attaining a proper match between power production and its demand. Then adequate power production consistent with demand may be possible by the year 2015. But this is a far away date when the desperately required thing is the fastest addition of power from any source to the national grid. Sufficiency in power generation is needed to maintain the current levels of production in the various sectors and to give power connections to new enterprises.

Several solutions were suggested in the face of the power crunch such as buying power from neighbouring countries. But the same hit snags when it was known that they may not have surplus power to sell or considerable time would be required to get such power from across the border. Renting of movable power plants was considered. Analysing the possible ways of getting power for the grid, it was found out that the best prospect involved tapping the power generation potentials of the captive power producers (CPPs) - the industries in different sectors having their own power generation capacities created to face worsening power supply situation.

The CPPs have a combined generation capacity of some 1300 mw and much of it remains unutilised. They are therefore, in a position to spare a good amount of power after meeting their own needs to feed the national grid. No new investments in machines, equipment or land would be needed for this purpose. If government only provides them with the reasonable incentives to sell this power to it then it should be possible to get as much as 500 mw from the CPPs within a month or two. Why the power ministry is not doing everything possible to tap this source is an enigma.

Rain makes Tagore’s poems richer

M.Mizanur Rahman

Rabindranath read the universe and its nature profusely. His is a vast literary works that speak of it. He put his every single word of thought in rhymes of reason whether it is in prose or in poetry. His sublimity bears accuracy with precision. This insight bears vast experience of universal phantasm. When it rains he heard songs of its various measures there. We read him in poetry and sang it to our heart's content. How the composition of the light of love and beauty enlightens us is immeasurable. His meters of metaphors are absolutely effusive, where the depiction of nature with diction is narrative that edifies our mental horizon far and wide. For example, his 'Sonar Tory' is a long Bengali poetry signifies the unknown. Let us hear him in his own words: "What special moment of life draws into the thought of which special poesy would expose before the poet can hardly be expounded if questioned by someone rather the poet would feel perturbed to put its explicit reply. How would he know that? While the metamorphosis towards the growth of life takes place the innermost cycle of its mystery cannot easily be discerned. The branches of the tree do not spread on straight towards one side only, they spread leaning or curving sidewise, the scientific reasons of it might be somewhere in earth, light, air and sky t As a matter of fact, 'Sonar Tory' loading its varieties of merchandise from which exporting wharf reached to which importing anchorage is the question that I did not ask myself rather it's not the part and parcel of my duty to answer." (The Prelude, to sonar Tori) Tr. By M. M.R

Hence you can neither render 'Sonar Tory' as 'Golden Boat' nor an 'Ordinary Boat'. You are to extricate the theme with value and ideals what Rabindranath meant of it in his thought. His acumen is right above.

Here I beg to turn to Shafi U. Ahmed, a Marine Engineer by profession in London, who put this allegory as "Phantom Boat" while rendering Tagore's 'Sonar Tory' meticulously as follows-

The Phantom Boat

(Thought to be an allegory:

the soul

taking away

the Karma leaving the body behind)

The grey-black clouds rolled in the sky / the monsoon had come. / Rain fell thick and lightning flashed / with thunder-beating drums. / Harvested was my paddy, / Bundled up neat and tidy, / the streams swelled strong and mighty / looking awesome. / As I cropped my paddy field / the monsoon had come.

In a tiny patch of paddy / I was all-alone. / The river flooded around me / and rose up in foam. / Through the streaming rain and mud hue, / indistinctly I glimpsed a view / of the far bank which held a few / tree-enclustered homes. / on my side of the bulging river / I was all alone.

Suddenly through it all I heard / a deep, throaty song. / And saw a small sailing boat / tacking along. / On the gyrating torrent, / against the treacherous current, / a lonely boatman sang and went / his helm held strong. / I seemed to know the boatman well/ with his catchy song.

"Ahoy the boat, ahoy boatman, / where do you go? / Can you not steer for a moment / to touch this shore? / Go later wherever you please, / come only once to collect these / my carefully reaped rice- paddies: /I'll see you no more. / Please stop once to take this burden / from this lonely shore."

"Pile as much as you can / take on your little boat. / Have I any more? No. I have not. You now hold my load, / for all this while by the river, / I was engrossed with whatever / it has all now been delivered / to you to transport. / I beg you also to take me now / on your boat."

There was no room, / there was no room. / The boat was really small. / Every space was filled with paddy, / there was no room at all. / Thunder rumbled clear and aloud, / The darkened sky sundered the clouds, / Heaven poured through open spout; an incessant fall. / The phantom boat left me behind / transporting my all.

(extracted from 'A fistful of Tagore : Fourteen poems and songs of Rabindranath Tagore' by Shafi U Ahmed)

Above all, the rain is the source of all creations. Ours is an unfathomable desire. Our romance and desire play together. The more we get, the more we want. But the small phantom boat carries that much it enables according to its capacity but nothing more or nothing less and once it has to leave us all taking away all our ends. The Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) meant it and we have yet to learn it.

Human sufferings are caused absolutely by the human all over the globe. We fail to tap the natural resources properly for we often court disaster creating troubles for ourselves and others encountering nature. However example is better than precept. Our history speaks that once Rabindranath Tagore opposed the partition of Bengal between 1905 and 1911. But he was fortunate enough that he could not have to see in his own eyes that this Bengal was partitioned in 1947 causing untold sufferings to the people of the area. The venom of communalism made some people inhuman. The product of poisonous mind never creates good neighbourly relationship among human beings. Since the Eastern part of Bengal now Bangladesh got unfavourable treatment from the western part of Bengal, now West Bengal, India. At that partition, the Ganges, the life line of Bangladesh being the lower riparian country, has also been partitioned between the upper riparian West Bengal that controls waters by their Farrakka barrage in such a way that during the dry season Bangladesh being deprived of natural waters of the Ganges becomes arid, ecologically affected and suffers a lot economically while during the monsoon season they (W.B) release waters that devastates most of Bangladesh creating flood havoc. But in spite of all sufferings and animosity of our next-door neighbour, naturally we love our great Bengali poet, we learn his universal appeal of love and we have the best wishes for our distinguishable neighbour who will come to know our love for them with generous reciprocity.

Let's sing of Tagore, "Do not ask me which song had I sung for whom.

I shall stay ever on the dusty way for that person who pays due respect to my song."

Tagore was a Zamindar (land lord) and he had to supervise his estates at Selaidaha of Kushtia, Sahajadpur of Pabna, and Patisar of Naogah (Rajshahi region) occasionally to collect rents from his subjects and to improve their overall conditions.

Especially, he took care of their welfare in course of his visit to rural areas viz, their health, education, improved cultivation and to bring about a scientific development of agriculture. During such occasional visits he had to cross the mighty river Padma by boat and he wrote a lot of short stories, poems and essays on the panoramic topography and its beautiful landscapes.

Let's enjoy one of the sweetest poems 'Padma':

"O my Padma, / we meet each other a hundred times. / One day in your lonesome sandy beach / between the month of October and November /at the twilight of the setting sun on the west / I put my heart and soul abreast you. / On the fall of dusk that day / your face was shyly downward but calm and speechless like the bride. / An evening star smiles at you with loving humor. / Since that day onward we meet each other a hundred times t '' (Chaitali)-Tr. By M.M.R

Rabindranath knew it well how far he was indebted to Bangladesh since he started his family life getting married to Mrinaliny (alias Bhabotarini) from Daxin Dihi of Jessore (now Khulna), his ancestral home in the present day Bangladesh. So we realise it in all respect that Rabindranath would remain ever in our heart and soul and in all our weal and woe. Traditionally we cannot part with him from our national cultural heritage. Whatever mirage that reflects on our eyes in the vast desert where golden Bangla or golden boat are placed in our know in the form of allegory or allusion like the golden deer we are appeased to make good of our hunger in the dearest price of the essentials in our market today.

I wonder what we meet in the world of universal poetry that mocks at the poor wretched hungry people from the ivory tower of the rich palace.

Life and works of Alesandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, RSFSR (now Russia) to a young widow, Taisiya Solzhenitsyna (née Shcherbak), whose father had risen, it seems, from humble beginnings, much of a self-made man, and acquired a large estate in the Kuban region by the northern foothills of the Caucasus. During World War I, Taisiya went to Moscow to study. While there she met Isaakiy Solzhenitsyn, a young army officer, also from the Caucasus region (the family background of his parents is vividly brought alive in the opening chapters of August 1914, and later on in the Red Wheel novel cycle). In 1918, Taisia became pregnant with Aleksandr. Soon after this was confirmed, Isaakiy was killed in a hunting accident. Aleksandr, who had three brothers and a sister,[4] was raised by his mother and aunt in lowly circumstances; his earliest years coincided with the Russian Civil War and by 1930 the family property had been turned into a collective farm. Solzhenitsyn stated his mother was fighting for survival and they had to keep his father's background in the old Imperial Army a secret. His educated mother (who never remarried) encouraged his literary and scientific leanings, also raising him in the Russian Orthodox faith;[5] she died shortly before 1940.[6] On 7 April 1940, he married chemistry student Natalya Alekseevna Reshetovskaya,[7] whom he divorced in 1952 (a year before his release from the Gulag), remarried in 1957 and divorced again in 1972, the following year marrying Natalya Dmitrievna Svetlova, a mathematician who had a son from a brief prior marriage.[8] He and Svetlova (b. 1939) had three sons: Yermolai (1970), Ignat (1972) and Stepan (1973).[9]

Solzhenitsyn studied mathematics at Rostov State University, while at the same time taking correspondence courses from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (at this time heavily ideological in scope; as he himself makes clear, he did not question the state ideology or the superiority of the Soviet Union before he had spent some time in the camps).

During World War II, he served as the commander of an artillery unit in the Red Army, was involved in major action at the front, and was twice decorated. In February 1945, while serving in East Prussia, he was arrested for writing a derogatory comment in a letter to a friend, N. D. Utkevich, about the conduct of the war by Josef Stalin, whom he called "the whiskered one",[10] "Khozyain" ("the master") and "Balabos", (Odessa Yiddish for "the master").[11] He was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda under Article 58 of the Soviet criminal code, paragraph 10, and of "founding a hostile organisation" under paragraph 11.[12] Solzhenitsyn was taken to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was beaten and interrogated. On 7 July 1945, he was sentenced in his absence by a three-man tribunal of the Soviet security police (NKGB) to an eight-year term in a labour camp, to be followed by permanent internal exile. This was the normal sentence for most crimes under Article 58 at the time.[13]

The first part of Solzhenitsyn's sentence was served in several different work camps; the "middle phase," as he later referred to it, was spent in a sharashka, special scientific research facilities run by Ministry of State Security, where he met Lev Kopelev, paragon of Lev Rubin in his book The First Circle, published in the West in 1968. In 1950, he was sent to a "Special Camp" for political prisoners. During his imprisonment at the camp in the town of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan, he worked as a miner, bricklayer, and foundryman. His experiences at Ekibastuz formed the basis for the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. While there he had a tumor removed, although his cancer was not then diagnosed.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brought the Soviet system of prison labour to the attention of the West. It caused as much a sensation in the Soviet Union as it did the West-not only by its striking realism and candour, but also because it was the first major piece of Soviet literature since the twenties on a politically charged theme, written by a non-party member, even by a man who had been to Siberia for "libelous speech" about the leaders, and still it had not been censored. In this sense, the publication of Solzhenitsyn's story was an almost unheard of instance of free, unrestrained discussion of politics through literature. Most Soviet readers realized this, but after Khrushchev had been ousted from power in 1964, the time for such raw exposing works came quietly, but perceptibly, to a close. Solzhenitsyn did not give in but tried, with the help of Tvardovsky, to get his novel, The Cancer Ward, legally published in the Soviet Union. This had to get the approval of the Union of Writers, and though some there appreciated it, the work ultimately was denied publication unless it were to be revised and cleaned of suspect statements and anti-Soviet insinuations (this episode is recounted and documented in The Oak and the Calf).

The publishing of his work quickly stopped; as a writer, he became a non-person, and, by 1965, the KGB had seized some of his papers, including the manuscript of The First Circle. Meanwhile Solzhenitsyn continued to secretly and feverishly work upon the most subversive of all his writings, the monumental Gulag Archipelago. The seizing of his novel manuscript first made him desperate and frightened, but gradually he realized it had set him free from the pretences and trappings of being an "officially acclaimed" writer, something which had come close to second nature, but which was getting increasingly irrelevant (the circumstances of how he actually survived in this period, without any income from his books, are obscure; he had quit his teaching post when he broke through as a writer).

In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He could not receive the prize personally in Stockholm at that time, since he was afraid he would not be let back into the Soviet Union. Instead, it was suggested he should receive the prize in a special ceremony at the Swedish embassy in Moscow. The Swedish government refused to accept this solution, since such a ceremony and the ensuing media coverage might upset the Soviet Union and damage Sweden's relations to the superpower. Instead, Solzhenitsyn received his prize at the 1974 ceremony after he had been deported from the Soviet Union.

The Gulag Archipelago was a three-volume work on the Soviet prison camp system. It was based upon Solzhenitsyn's own experience as well as the testimony of 227 former prisoners and Solzhenitsyn's own research into the history of the penal system. It discussed the system's origins from the very founding of the Communist regime, with Lenin himself having responsibility, detailing interrogation procedures, prisoner transports, prison camp culture, prisoner uprisings and revolts, and the practice of internal exile. The appearance of the book in the West put the word gulag into the Western political vocabulary and guaranteed swift retribution from the Soviet authorities.

In the West: During this period, he was sheltered by the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who suffered considerably for his support of Solzhenitsyn and was eventually forced into exile himself. On February 13, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was deported from the Soviet Union to Frankfurt, West Germany and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. The KGB had found the manuscript for the first part of The Gulag Archipelago and, less than a week later, Yevgeny Yevtushenko suffered reprisals for his support of Solzhenitsyn.

In Germany, Solzhenitsyn lived in Heinrich Böll's house. He then moved to Switzerland before Stanford University invited him to stay in the United States to "facilitate your work, and to accommodate you and your family." He stayed on the 11th floor of the Hoover Tower, part of the Hoover Institution, before moving to Cavendish, Vermont in 1976. He was given an honorary Literary Degree from Harvard University in 1978 and on Thursday, June 8, 1978 he gave his Commencement Address condemning modern western culture.

Over the next 17 years, Solzhenitsyn worked on his cyclical history of the Russian Revolution of 1917, The Red Wheel. By 1992, four "knots" (parts) had been completed and he had also written several shorter works. Despite an enthusiastic welcome on his first arrival in America, followed by respect for his privacy, he had never been comfortable outside his homeland.[citation needed]

Despite spending two decades in the United States, Solzhenitsyn did not become fluent in spoken English. He had, however, been reading English-language literature since his teens, encouraged by his mother[citation needed]. More important, he resented the idea of becoming a media star and of tempering his ideas or ways of talking in order to suit television. Solzhenitsyn's warnings about the dangers of Communist aggression and the weakening of the moral fiber of the West were generally well received in Western conservative circles, alongside the tougher foreign policy pursued by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. At the same time, liberals and secularists became increasingly critical of what they perceived as his reactionary preference for Russian patriotism and the Russian Orthodox religion. Solzhenitsyn also harshly criticised what he saw as the ugliness and spiritual vapidity of the dominant pop culture of the modern West, including television and rock music: "tthe human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits t by TV stupor and by intolerable music."

Return to Russia: After returning to Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn published eight two-part short stories, a series of contemplative "miniatures" or prose poems, a literary memoir on his years in the West (The Grain Between the Millstones) and a two-volume work on the history of Russian-Jewish relations (Two Hundred Years Together 2001, 2002). In it, Solzhenitsyn emphatically repudiates the idea the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 were the work of a "Jewish conspiracy" (see chapters 9, 14, and 15 of that work). Yet he documents the predominance of Jews in the early Bolshevik leaderships, excepting Lenin. At the same time, he calls on both Russians and Jews to come to terms with the members of their peoples who acted in complicity with the Communist regime.

Another famous Russian dissident writer, Vladimir Voinovich, wrote a polemical study "A Portrait Against the Background of a Myth" 2002.), in which he tried to prove Solzhenitsyn's egoism, anti-Semitism, and lack of writing skills. Voinovich had already mocked Solzhenitsyn in his novel Moscow 2042 through the self-centered egomaniac character, Sim Simich Karnavalov, an extreme and brutal dictatorial writer who tries to destroy the Soviet Union and, eventually, to become the king of Russia. Using a more circuitous line of argument, Joseph Brodsky, in his essay Catastrophes in the Air (in Less than One), argued that Solzhenitsyn, while a hero in showing up the brutalities of Soviet Communism, failed to discern that the historical crimes he unearthed might be the outcome of authoritarian traits that were really part of the heritage of Old Russia and of "the severe spirit of Orthodoxy" (venerated by Solzhenitsyn) and much less due to the more recent (Marxist) political ideology. This somewhat contorted interpretation of his outlook has been seen by many as a defense of Marxism by contrasting it with what they saw as the greater prior evils of the old regime, a view shared by some historians as well - although clearly the revolutionary zeal went far beyond any excesses from the past in terms of the sheer volume and intensity of violence.

In his recent political writings, such as Rebuilding Russia (1990) and Russia in Collapse (1998), Solzhenitsyn criticized the oligarchic excesses of the new Russian 'democracy,' while opposing any nostalgia for Soviet communism. He defended moderate and self-critical patriotism (as opposed to extreme nationalism), argued for the indispensability of local self-government to a free Russia, and expressed concerns for the fate of the 25 million ethnic Russians in the "near abroad" of the former Soviet Union. He also sought to "protect" the national character of the Russian Orthodox church and fought against the admission of Catholic priests and Protestant pastors to Russia from other countries. For a brief period, he had his own TV show, where he freely expressed his views. The show was cancelled because of low ratings, but Solzhenitsyn continued to maintain a relatively high profile in the media.

All of Solzhenitsyn's sons became U.S. citizens. One, Ignat, has achieved acclaim as a pianist and conductor in the United States.

Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure near Moscow on August 3, 2008 at 23:45 local time, at the age of 89.

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