Freedom's Ransom

John W. Hood, Prafulla Roy

Description

In rural India, two worlds co-exist in extreme contrast to one another. There is the world of the big landowners, extraordinarily wealthy and hungry for power, and there is the world of the underclass - mostly untouchable landless labourers, toiling for a mere pittance and living in virtual thraldom. Prafulla Roy's contemporary masterpiece, translated here as Freedom's Ransom, encompasses these two worlds as he develops the intertwining story of a rich landholder's quest for political power and the touching tale of a young dalit couple and their dream of freedom from years of bonded labour. With remarkable candour and sensitivity, Prafulla Roy depicts the world of the rural underclass in what is a richly detailed social document, a critique of contemporary India and - as in all his works - a powerful story.

Sujets

• Literary
• Idioma bengalí
• Buddhadeb Dasgupta
• Literature
• Contemporary history
• Sahitya Akademi Award
• Dalit
• Translations
• Buddhadev Dasgupta
• Contemporary
• Mrinal Sen
• Classics
• Saga
• Translation
• Fiction
• Intouchable (dalit)
• Bengali
• Satyajit Ray

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351940951
• Langue: English

Extrait

Prafulla Roy was born in 1934 in a village in Dhaka district, now in Bangladesh. He started writing at the age of nineteen. The Partition of India in 1947 provided one of the major themes in his writing, the other being rural poverty, and most of his writings in this area emanate out of Roy’s experience of life in the economically backward state of Bihar. His work has influenced filmmakers, particularly such major artists as Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Tapan Sinha, Biplab Ray Chaudhary and Sandeep Ray. Many of the films based on Roy’s stories have been made in languages other than Bengali, and several of his writings have now been translated into other Indian languages.
Dr John W. Hood is an Australian writer who has spent most of his life studying Indian culture, now divides his time between Melbourne and Kolkata. His translations from the Bengali include Niharranjan Ray’s classic, History of the Bengali People, poems of Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Love and Other Forms of Death), and novels and short stories by Prafulla Roy, including the volumes of stories Set at Odds: Stories of the Partition and Beyond and In the Shadow of the Sun, as well as Buddhadeb Guha’s Fanfare for a Tiger and The Bounty of the Goddess. He has also written extensively on serious Indian cinema. His work includes books on Mrinal Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Satyajit Ray, as well as The Essential Mystery: Major Filmmakers of Indian Art Cinema.

ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2015
This edition published in 2008 by IndiaInk An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright © Prafulla Roy Copyright © This English Translation, John W. Hood, 2008
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Cover Design: Supriya Saran eISBN: 978-93-5194-095-1
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Translator’s Introduction
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P RAFULLA R OY WROTE HIS FIRST SHORT STORY IN 1954 AND IN THE HALF century or so since has become one of the most prolific and foremost writers of fiction in Bengal, his work being not only popular but also critically acclaimed. His writing has been very much a response to his own experience of contemporary history and, unsurprisingly, the Second World War, the Bengal Famine and communal tension and conflict have had a profound effect on him. However, it is true to say that the best of his writing emanates from his direct experience of the Partition in 1947, and from his touring on foot over so much of the country, especially throughout the 1950s and ‘60s. His writing about the lives of the masses, especially the underclass, has a note of authority and a sense of immediacy about it that bear the obvious stamp of direct experience.
India is a vast and diverse country and is, of course, so many different things to different people. The India of tourists, the India of businessmen, the India of NGOs, the India of historians and archaeologists, the India of religious wisdom – to suggest a few – are not one and the same, even though they may overlap to varying degrees. However, underneath all these partial Indias lies the vast substratum of village India in which, as Gandhi said, the heart of India beats. Here too, of course, there is great diversity, but there are also many common basic features, the most obvious being poverty and deprivation, illiteracy, and the exploitation of the weak by the strong. It is this India and its constant struggle to survive that is at the core of Prafulla Roy’s interest. Although much of his writing about rural India, including Freedom’s Ransom, is set in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, it readily commands a more universal empathy.
Here lies one of the reasons for the importance of a translation of Prafulla Roy’s work. It is all too easy to have perceptions of India based on reports of the fabulous wealth of its industrialists, its disputations with its nuclear neighbour Pakistan, the glittering world of Bollywood, or the fortunes or otherwise of the Indian cricket team. With a vision clouded by such perceptions it is also very easy to neglect the truth of Gandhi’s dictum concerning the heart of India and so commit to intellectual abandonment some eighty per cent of the second most populous country in the world. The writings of Prafulla Roy about the rural underclass are a cogent reminder of the reality of this vast section of humanity.
A translation of Prafulla Roy, however, is important also for a wider appreciation of Roy’s own humanity, a quality that is inextricably coupled with his excellence as a writer. Roy is primarily a realist, recognising reality for what it is and seeing no point in noble dreaming or romanticised wishful thinking. This is not to say, however, that he accepts the status quo or, worse, submits to fatalism or defeat. Rather, he presents the human condition as he sees it in actuality, portraying it naked and unadorned, simply for what it is; he does not react on behalf of the reader or try to prompt what the reader’s reactions ought to be. His one bias is the natural one of adopting a viewpoint from which to write, and usually Roy chooses to see life through the eyes of the humble people – who are generally oppressed and exploited – rather than through the eyes of the strong and established – who are generally upper-caste, wealthy and powerful and the usual perpetrators of oppression and exploitation.
His humanity, therefore, emanates out of a profound sense of compassion for people who have been traditionally mistreated. It is obvious that distinctions of caste mean nothing to him in determining simple human qualities such as honesty, decency, courage, and extending a hand to the needy. However, it is not only the poor and downtrodden that Roy endows with these virtues, nor does he endeavour to lionise his subjects or make heroes out of the unworthy. Moreover, he is quite candid in exposing the petty cruelties and perfidies that the deprived so often perpetrate against one another. In Freedom’s Ransom we have the case of the malice of Dharma’s mother towards the old widow Shaukhi, in which it is clear that lack of charity is not so much the product of meanness as of the terrible constraints of extreme poverty.
Finally, in asserting the importance of a translation of Prafulla Roy’s work, his value as a creator of social documentary cannot be underestimated. His novels and short stories present a graphic depiction of the complexities of life in rural India and are rich in details of day-to-day living, social customs, festivals, work and leisure, and the economic plight of the poor and the various challenges that make life a struggle for them; there are even some valuable perceptions of the workings of the Indian electoral system. Roy also reveals an incisive perception of the relationships between people of various levels of society as well as an insightful understanding of the psychology governing relationships within the same social stratum. As well as their obvious literary value, his writings present a rich and vibrant account of rural India and its people.
The most notable feature of Indian rural society is its social diversity, which is very largely a product of the caste system, a social structure which has traditionally divided society into countless discrete kinship groups defined largely by occupation. More significantly castes are arranged in a hierarchy imbued with a moral dimension: the highest castes, such as the brahmans and kayasthas, are reckoned to be ‘better’ people, more valuable to society and more deserving of respect and privilege, while the lowest castes are relatively less worthy, their value to society lies only in the physical labour that they perform for their livelihood, and they warrant no respect or privilege at all. Lower than the lowest are the untouchables, for whom contempt, callous mistreatment and unmitigated exploitation are the customary lot.
It is ironic, then, that whenever there is an election in constitutionally democratic India, this vast mass of underclass people should temporarily cease to be contemptible as they become potential votes for aspirants to power; the normally oppressed and despised are now valued, courted, feted, even loved – at least for the duration of the election campaign. It is indeed a great paradox of modern India that a social system determined by caste can survive in a democratic state. It is at election time, however, that the secret ballot allows for the suspension of entrenched inequality for the sake of the passing charade of the voice of universal adult suffrage. Those untouchables not yet old enough to have become cynical must find this a source of amazement, as do the dosads in Freedom’s Ransom, when the wealthy and the powerful need their votes. But what does democracy promise for them? The spokespersons of democracy are the electoral candidates and they promise nothing less than the rule of heaven on earth, the abolition of every source of unhappiness and the pocketing of the stars from the sky.
Freedom’s Ransom is set among a dosad