[We are posting this rejoinder by Sukla Sen to a recent piece by CPM economist Jayati Ghosh. The original article by Jayati Ghosh is appended at the end of Sukla Sen’s response. Both these appear in a recent publication, Nandigram: What We Stand For by Mazdoor Mukti (Workers’ Liberation), Kolkata. We thank Mazdoor Mukti and Arvind Ghosh for making this available to us.]
In the following article mailed to a number of recipients, Jayati Ghosh has tried to defend the indefensible, the gruesome violence unleashed by the hired mercenaries on the villagers of Nandigram on behalf of and under the patronage of the CPIM, as a political party, and, more significantly, the West Bengal government led by it by means of a counterattack on the critiques of the diabolical act. Not for nothing it is said that “offence is the best defence!” And Jayati Ghosh is nothing if not a faithful soldier of the Party, ready to spring to its defence, with a bit of intellectual halo around her. And if ends justify the means, then sacrificing of truth in carrying out the mission is only a small price to be paid.
We’d attempt here to subject the article, appended below with paragraphs numbered, to a systematic analysis.
In the paragraph [1], Ms. Ghosh pretty sanctimoniously proclaims that the “current events in Nandigram in West Bengal give rise to many emotions, but one of them is surely a sense of shock at the cynicism and irresponsibility of some apparently progressive activists and artistes”.
Continue reading On Nandigram: A Rejoinder to the Calumny of Jayati Ghosh – Sukla Sen

Sharab, shabab aur kabab. Of these three shauqs of Lucknow’s nawabs (as in the “nawabi by nature”) it is shabab – youth – that Lakhnavis cherish the most, for they know by instinct that it is fleeting. The sense of loss lies at the heart of Lucknow, and the subtitle of Veena Talwar Oldenburg’s anthology Shaam-e-Awadh – “Memories of a dying city” – captures the decadence that has defined the city for much of its existence. 
