SAMAR SEN : 1916 –1987 a tribute by Prof.
Aloke Kumar
Bengali Marxism is a peculiar brand of Marxism. An ‘ism’ synonymous
with poetry, romanticism, poverty, intellect, humane, sacrifices. An
intensely possessive but deeply insular culture which has generated its
own icon
s, texts, language, lifestyle and comrades. It is akin to Claude Levi
Straus’s anthropological ‘tribe’. A tribe, inhabiting a milieu quite different
from the ordinary world.
Samar Sen belonged to this tribe. A Poet and a Marxist. He was one of
the more remarkable figures in the history of Bengal Marxism.
Samar Sen was born into a typically middle-class, 'Bhadralok' family, a
background he wryly caricatured in his memoirs Babu Brittanta (A
Babu's Tale). Sen was born on October 1916. He hailed from an
illustrious family, many of whose scions have enriched the intellectual
world of Bengal. His grandfather, Dinesh Chandra Sen, was a well-
known writer and a doyen of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad. His father,
Arun Sen, an academician of repute, had allegedly remarked, "I am a
mediocre son of a genius father and a mediocre father of a genius son!"
Samar Sen, along with Subhash Mukhopadhyay, belonged to the second
generation of modern Bengali poets, to whom the torch was passed
from such stalwarts as Jibananda Das, Bishnu Dey, Sudhindranath Dutta
and others.
Samar Sen, like his other illustrious contemporaries, grew up under the
gigantic impact of Rabindranath Tagore. Yet Samar Sen was perhaps the
first to 'break' with the lyrical romanticism of Tagore and introduced
"modern" (disenchantment, decadence, avant garde urban heterotopia)
in Bengali verse. Influence of French and English modernism was
originally translated into Bengali verse. A certain convergence of
modernism and Marxism was evident in his poetic thought and style.
However, he gave up poetry fairly early and devoted the better part of
his later life to Marxism and Journalism.
Samar Sen was a first class first in English from the University of
Calcutta. In 1937 his first book of poems ‘Koekti Kobita’ was published
out of the sale proceeds of the gold medal he received from the
University.In those days Gold Medal was actually casted in gold. The
book was dedicated to Muzaffar Ahmed, one of the founders of
Communist Party of India. Growing up between the wars, like many of
his peers he became a fellow traveller of the CPI, the party then making
strong progress among students of the University of Calcutta. Samar's
radicalism was expressed most directly in his poetry. As a young college
student, barely out of his teens, he wrote five slim volumes that are
collectively held to constitute a paradigm shift in the trajectory of
Bengali poetry. I have read the work only in translation, but in the
opinion of knowledgeable critics it was Samar Sen who first introduced
wit into Bengali verse, while bringing at the same time an economy of
expression, akin to prose, into a tradition of effusive lyricism.
Astonishingly, when he had turned twenty-five Samar Sen decided he
would not write any more poetry. He never did. Sacrifice is deeply
respected in both the Marxist and Indian traditions, and the poet's act of
renunciation assured him a unique stature in the folklore of Indian
Marxism.
I first met Samar Sen in the summer of 1982, when I volunteered an
errand to carry some copies of SUNDAY magazine which he wanted.
This led me to the office of the radical weekly, Frontier.The journal was
run from one long room in the heart of the city from 61 Mott Lane near
Dharmatolla,very near to the Ananda Bazar office . The first time I
visited the Frontier office, I was irresistibly reminded of a description in
Leon Trotsky' autobiography of the journal Iskra, run in exile by a
handful of Russian revolutionaries. Frontier was housed in the back of a
building set apart from a small lane, hidden by a huge cinema hall Jyoti.
I felt like part of an underground operation. This feeling was made more
intense when, on entering the office, I was introduced to a lean, intense
man with thick glasses and white hair a little overgrown reaching the
shirt collar. In his character, Samar Sen exemplified the simplicity of
living so characteristic of the best kind of Indian Marxist. He lived in a
tiny flat in Southern Calcutta and travelled to his office by tram in a
journey of over an hour, each way, that he made daily till he was
seventy and ailing. I remember him as a gentle little man a cigarette
forever unlit upon his lips. In conversation he was incapable of anger or
bitterness.
The Frontier weekly was started with Samar Sen as its editor in 1968.
Prior to this Sen had worked in a Delhi college, in All India Radio, in The
Statesman and The Hindustan Standard of Calcutta, and in foreign
language publications in Moscow, landed as the editor of Now weekly in
1964.After he was sacked as the editor of Now weekly due to its overtly
leftist leanings. In the editor’s own words : “After discussing with many
we were hopeful that we would be able to collect Rs.60,000/- with ease.
However, not more than Rs.9,000/- was forthcoming”. Frontier was
enthused by the Naxalbari rumblings when on 1st.of May 1969 the party
was formally announced in front of Sahid Minar .But in the 1969 State
Assembly elections it supported the United Front of which the CPI(M)
was the principal constituent. However, Frontier was soon to play its role
in the Naxalite movement. Initially the Naxalites maintained an air of
disdain towards Samar Sen and therefore Frontier for its criticism of
what it perceived as the excesses of the movement like class
annihilation and hyperbole. When Charu Mazumdar professed that very
soon the Red Army would march along the banks of the river Bhagirothi,
Frontier’s classic repartee was its editorial ‘If faith could move
mountains’. Today it might appear just a linguistic twist but in those
charged times one may have had to pay with one’s life for such acts of
‘indiscretion’. It was convenience that brought Naxalites and Frontier
closer. There came a time when State repression and the collective
violence of the political forces (CPI, CPI(M), Congress) made it difficult
to continue publishing Deshobroti and Liberation. Most of the leadership
and cadres were in police custody and cracks were developing in the
movement. Frontier stepped in at this juncture as a means of
communication between the scattered and underground/jailed
leadership and the cadre. It played this role from 1970 to 1977.
As a respected forum above these divides, Frontier opened its pages to
exchanges between different Maoist sects. The debates were fierce and
highly personalized, though conducted in the cause of bringing about
'Party Unity'--which, curiously, was the name of the most obstinate sect
of all. More valuably, the weekly carried reports of local agrarian
struggles and of human rights violations by the state, which no
bourgeoisie paper was likely to print. The editor's hand was most
apparent, perhaps, in the journal's end pages, where new films, art and
literature were written about without any necessary genuflection to the
principles of social realism.
Without any prodding from its subject, a legendary aura had grown up
around the journal's editor. It was rumoured that Samar Sen was not
Maoist, but some kind of anarcho-Marxist. I actually never heard him
talk politics. But one could infer his editorial policy from a line of
Trotsky's he liked to quote: that there was no Pravda (truth) in Izvestia
(news), no Izvestia in Pravda.
As an imaginative writer drawn almost against his will into radical
politics, Samar Sen was a reminder that Marxist intellectual practice too
could occasionally have an exquisite lightness of touch. His early
renunciation of poetry notwithstanding, he retained an abiding love of
literature, especially Russian literature.
Samar Sen died on 23 August 1987. Ashok Rudra, eminent economist
wrote that ‘Dare I say that piercing his steely exterior, I could discover
clearly only one facet of his character and that is his sky high level of
self respect’.
I doubt if Bengali Marxists are cast in his mold anymore.
