The good old Hoshiarpur college days...

Harish Khare

Last week, Chandigarh played host to President Pranab Mukherjee and to the former Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. Both were in town to participate in the two-day international conference on “Cooperative Development, Peace and Security in South and Central Asia”, organised by the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development. Whereas President Mukherjee inaugurated the conference, Dr Manmohan Singh gave the valedictory address.

At the end of the conference, there was a dinner. I was invited to join Dr Singh and others at the high table. Seated next to Dr Singh was Prof RP Bambah, former Vice-Chancellor of Panjab University. And, somehow the talk veered to the good old days at the Government College in Hoshiarpur. After the Partition, when Panjab University was to be relocated from Lahore, Hoshiarpur fortuitously became the centre for humanities and social sciences. It was here that young, bright students like Manmohan Singh, BN Goswamy and RK Patria were nurtured and got encouragement. 

The dinner table conversation centred around one Prof SB Rangrekar, who was a teacher of economics. Apparently, Professor Rangrekar would enthusiastically dissuade his brighter students from joining the civil services, telling them that they were not meant to add to the large army of  “babus” and that they were obliged to serve society as teachers, scholars and creative minds. 

Professor Bambah recalled an illustrative incident. When GS Chadha (who became a well-known economist and later was Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University) approached Professor Rangrekar for a testimonial to go with his application for the civil services, the quintessential educator tore up the paper and admonished Chadha that he was not destined to swell up the “babu” ranks.

The erudite Professor Rangrekar created an amiable and friendly ambience for young teachers and senior students and they would have a tete-a-tete once a week. Such interactions produced an intellectual synergy, each young mind prodding and provoking the other to explore the next level of creativity. It was this academic atmosphere which incubated the “right attitude”, so central to a place of learning. 

Those were the days when India was young and neither the teacher nor the student was contaminated by cynicism and commerce. Those were also the days when second-rate politicians were not able to impose their third-rate ideas and preferences on colleges and universities. 

LIKE New York, Los Angeles is home to some of the finest museums in the world. During my stay last week in that metropolis on the West Coast, I visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It boasts of a very fine collection of American art, besides exhibits from South and South-East Asia.

I was fascinated by a small exhibition of posters titled Aktion! Art And Revolution in Germany, 1918-19. These were traumatic times and Germany was in turmoil after its defeat in World War I. The country was in a virtual civil war. The display reminded one of “an oft-forgotten episode in Germany’s tumultuous history”. The civil war was “a violent power struggle to determine the shape of the new republic”. The triumph of Marxism-Bolshevism during the Russian Revolution had given courage and heart to workers all over Europe. Germany’s workers too were willing to use violence to grab power. There were two uprisings, but both were crushed. Two very well-known communist leaders — Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht — were assassinated with the connivance of the state police. 

The posters represent a belief that the artist can help society find its political ideas. One poster depicts art historian and critic Adolf Behne speaking at the Association of Friends of the Poster. Behne believed “that artists could transform society” and he touted the poster as “an ideal medium for conveying political visions to a broad public”.

As a student of political communication, I found the posters absorbing and was left pondering whether these are an earlier manifestation of the process that is today called “social media”. Just as new technology is being used to influence mass opinion and taste, the then (latest) technology was made use of in moulding popular thinking. 

The brief introduction to the exhibition revealed that political organisations those days commissioned large-scale posters advocating their positions. And when some “revolutions” and uprisings failed, the artists were called upon to make pieces for “memorialising its martyrs and the socialist ideals that had perished with them”. The preface summed up the exhibition as being “a compelling testimony of art’s unparalleled capacity to telegraph the energy and urgency of its time”. 

The visit to the exhibition was worth every cent of the $15 admission ticket. 

DEATH is an expensive business. Cremation or burial is often an elaborate ritual and it costs a fortune to the kin of the dead. But the American society seems to have introduced elements of planning in the inevitability of death and its messy aftermath.

We, in the Hindu society, have a moral abhorrence for talking about death, leave alone making any preparations for it. Often, the result is chaos, unplanned and haphazard ad hoc decisions — cultural traits which have become civilisational weaknesses — when the “end” comes. 

On the other hand, Americans have, unsentimentally and sensibly, recognised the necessity of setting aside for the post-death expenses. The California law allows family members to “make final arrangements” for one another. Well-organised cemeteries offer “structured payment plans” and people are encouraged to indicate their preference as to what kind and how elaborate the last rites they want for themselves. And, then, buy a suitable “plan”. The idea is based on the simple recognition that “funeral, burial and cremation costs will only increase over time. That’s a certainty. If you pre-pay, you lock in today’s prices”. 

It makes good economic sense. Spare your children what can be a crushing financial burden. It is argued that “at the saddest moment in their lives, your family and friends will appreciate being allowed to grieve without having to worry about footing the bill”.

Cemeteries in small towns of America offer a cultural history of the place. In big cities, land is the most scarce and most valuable resource. Finding a place to put a person to final rest is not always an easy proposition. 

I had the unhappy occasion to visit one of the oldest cemeteries in Los Angeles. Located in the foot of the famous Hollywood Hills, appropriately enough, it is named “Hollywood Forever Cemetery”. The burial ground is a sprawling campus, an amazingly peaceful setting right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of a vibrant urban city. 

Established in 1899, it takes pride in being “the final resting place” for very many Hollywood celebrities, including Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille, John Huston, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr and Jr. I was told that on Sundays, a lot of tourists take “the cemetery of the stars tour”, for $15 per person.

The graveyard has, in a matter-of-fact manner, reoriented itself to accommodate LA’s multi-cultural and multi-religious population. The cemetery is equipped to perform all kinds of rituals and ceremonies — for the Japanese, the Koreans, the Jews, the Russian orthodox, or any other religious orientation. The business of death is conducted with great competence and sensitivity. Amen. 

FORMER Chief Minister of Punjab Amarinder Singh has produced an impressive coffee-table book on the 1965 conflict, The Monsoon War — Young Officers Reminisce 1965 India-Pakistan War. Lieutenant General Tajindar Shergill is his co-author. The book caps the current torrent of articles and books about the war 50 years ago. 

In 1965, Capt Amarinder Singh was ADC to “the man of the moment”, Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh, the GOC-in-C of the Western Command, which saw the bulk of action against Pakistan. The Captain was in a position to have first-hand information of and insight into Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh’s famous “defiance” of Army Chief Gen JN Chaudhuri’s order to make a tactical retreat. 

Not surprisingly, the book is dedicated to Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh, “a soldier among generals”, and also to the memory of 2,862 men and officers killed in that war. 

While a detailed review of the book will have to wait, the publication adds to Capt Amarinder Singh’s reputation as a first-rate military historian and establishes him as a cut above the ordinary politicians. 

Coffee, white or black?

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