I saw (by ic)* #1

When the coordinators of Comparatists in Conversation were bullied into agreeing that I could be given space on the website to share what I saw with whoever cared to listen, I could’ve predicted that it would begin with the verb “See” and the use of tenses (except C can be a verb orally only, not in writing – and thereby hangs a tale… ).

But I did not foresee that I cannot begin to speak of what I Saw without naming what we did not See – what we have invisibilised: 

Anjel Chakma’s ruh - his soul.

Many years ago, we thought a person we knew had been taken by the Bon Jhakri while he wandered the hills on holiday from the university. When we visited the Bon Jhakri park in Kalimpong we heard that  he had come back, too. Like Anjel Chakma, he too belonged to the hills  when they were benevolent and even when they were malevolent.

Unlike people, even hill people, who were forced by bigotry to renounce him.

This is a new world certainly – one without Anjel Chakma, whose death comes so many years after the murder of Akhlaq and the lynching of Junaid in a train. At that time we had proclaimed that this could not happen in our name. We can and did withdraw our name – but are we deluding ourselves that it will make a difference to the vulnerable, those at risk, those without our privileges, whatever they be?

Gig-workers, very very many around Anjel’s age,  went on strike on 31^st December 2025 in India. Protesting against 10 minute delivery offers on food and grocery delivery apps.

When I am rushed for time to get to 9am class, these same men – around the age of all those who have come to the 9am class in the last decade – deliver the milk for my coffee. I want the delivery in 10 minutes, I “can pay” for it – why should I not have it ? And the hell with the person who drives to his death in order for me to have something I paid for .

The different reality of the person next to me, falls outside the frame, outside the archaeology and the archetypes of the world that we know and see through.  I can see from the other’s “position” only if I shove them over or mount their bodies : to put it succinctly,  occupation, erasure and/or rape.

In Tagore’s Chaturanga, a woman named Nanibala commits suicide in order to escape the charity of the reformer hero Sachis who decides to marry her in order to save her from social ostracism meted out to a woman who has been impregnated by a lascivious upper class  man. This seducer also happens to be Sachis’ brother – and as a character he serves to distinctly separate the decadent aristocracy of feudal Bengal from the progressive liberal Renaissance Romantics created by radical  Eurasian teachers in the colonial educational institution. Sachis’ ideals, laudable as they are, are an imposition upon Nanibala – but society has given her neither the space nor the voice to renounce his charity and live her life without the shadow of his heroism, “saved” by his magnanimity. She remains unheard until in the narrative, she commits suicide in order to make her absence speak for her deep if inexplicable unwillingness to see the exploitation of romantic love.

Such is tragedy from the liberal humanist perspective, where the metaphor in all its terror overrides the real.

As the sun rises to bring in the new year (with a nod to poor Tennyson trying to legitimise empire and privilege by drawing upon the glorious construction of past brutalities), we can learn to accept that what we see is what we make, and it is what we get.

A new year comes ‘naturally’ – a new world must be made, fashioned out of our imagination. That is the task of some forms of enquiry and understanding known as Humanities. Also known as existence. And as poesis.

I waited to find an apt quote to finish this piece. Then I became curious -  what would  readers, if any,  put in place of my un-looked for quote?

I am waiting to see.

*apologies to KC