A feast of information ! Take it in the right spirit with salt and pepper added. I hope you get the humour of it and do not mind me cracking a fast one, for these days humour is on a low profile in the polity. Do understand that I scarce can restrain myself from engaging in innocent fun and frolic when it comes to wielding words, well meant and intended to delight and not to disturb in any sense whatsoever.
A like observation the great Hiren Mukerjee had once made about Parliament losing its sense of good humour and grand usage of words when it came to its deliberations as was the wont in those early days post independence when the Communist leader had parried with words with the then Prime Minister without either taking an affront at such verbal fencing. Nehru was given to much emotion while articulating his Prime Ministerial addresses or 'when crossed in conference', to pilfer from Shakespeare's depiction of the Cicero character in his historical masterpiece 'Julius Caesar'. That day in the Lok Sabha, after Nehru had given vent to one such emotional excess of his, Hiren Mukerjee, leader of the Opposition in India's first Parliament, stood up and said, "Mr. Prime Minister, you are a minor poet who has missed his vocation." Mukerjee later explained in his four hour Doordarshan documentary on Nehru that he had called Nehru a minor poet because had he been a major one, he would certainly have taken to his poetic profession and not the political one. Nehru, flustered by the remark in the House, called over Mukerjee to his residence and talked the issue over. But relations sweetened and did not sour at all.
On another occasion Hiren Mukerjee said what follows : 'I pilfered a Trotsky statement and said to Nehru in Parliament, ''Mr. Prime Minister, for the sake of a tinsel portfolio you have lost your place in history.'' And Nehru instantly retorted, "I care not so much for a place in history as I do care for a place in the hearts of my people."
The venerable Communist leader, who later penned a magnificent study on Nehru, 'The Gentle Colossus', reminisced that those were the halcyon days of Parliamentary deliberation when there were a sufficient number of erudite orators among their ranks who could have held their own in any parliament of the world and they had such good humour to add flavour to their otherwise heated deliberations on national issues of seminal significance. But, alas, the venerable professor regretted that those bygone days of delightful repartee had of late sadly declined into foul-mouthed diatribe hurled by a people's representative against another of his tribe. Humour, subtle and sarcastic, which was the spice of deliberations in the House then has vanished from the polity altogether and such remarks as he had made against the Prime Minister of the day would today draw ill-tempered and ill-mannered remark by way of retribution in response.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Hiren Mukerjee, CPI leader, Leader of the Opposition in the first Parliament of independent India [1952-1957], Padma Vibhushan author of brilliant books and booklets in both Bengali and English, some of which have become a part and parcel of the literature of the land. They are : 1) Portrait of Parliament 2) The Gentle Colossus [on Nehru] 3 ) Gandhi -- A Study 4) The Bow of Burning Gold [on Netaji] 5) Toree Hotey Teer 6) Himself, a True Poem [on Tagore] 7) Vivekananda and Indian Freedom, and a host of others.
A brilliant orator who held Parliament enthralled with his delectable diction and rich reserve of historical anecdotes, Hiren Mukerjee remains one of our ultimate accomplishments in individual brilliance, an exemplar in the observance of intellectual norms in debate in which he excelled and in affability towards the adversary which befriended him to all and alienated from none.
Hiren Mukerjee, like Netaji, was a brilliant student as well, securing first position in the Matriculation, Intermediate and Graduation Examinations of the University. He later qualified for the Bar from England before returning to India to join student politics which consumed his life and energy stirring up the Communist movement in the country.
When Nelson Mandela visited Calcutta, Hiren Mukerjee was entrusted to write down the felicitation speech on behalf of the then Government of West Bengal.
Born on 23 November, 1907 and witness to momentous and cataclysmic events of the 20th century, the great man died on 30th July, 2004 at the age of 96. When he was being carried off to hospital for possible surgical operation consequent on a fall in the bathroom while changing, Hiren Mukerjee cracked his final joke to eminent filmmaker Mrinal Sen,''It is better to die this way now than remain a cabbage for years on end, as Engels had said.'' And the professor passed away, his wish fulfilled. Sen had nothing to say but to admire the fortitude and the humour of the nonagenarian even in his hour of acute physical distress.
So, I say, gone are those golden days and gone the humour with it. Must we not do something about it as we try to relive the past and bring back its best elements to the present?
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