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D.P. Mukerji
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Redefining humanism: Selected essays of D.P. Mukerji Edited By Srobona Munshi, Tulika and the University of Calcutta, Rs 200
Srobona Munshi has served well the cause of scholarship and of our intellectual traditions by producing this slim volume of translations from D.P. Mukerji’s famous contribution in his own language, Bengali, named Baktabya. This is a joint effort by several young college lecturers, each choosing one chapter of that notable volume. A long chapter by the editor introduces the wide range of interests that Dhurjati Prasad pursued in the course of his life. Dhurjati Prasad, DP to his students and admirers, had introduced a tradition of high intellectualism in North Indian universities, which produced over the years a fine crop of radical thinkers. As is evident from this work, he was himself a committed intellectual for whom dedication to intellectual pursuits was meaningless unless that was directly benefecial to mankind. Written shortly after India attained Independence, the theoretical cogitations in this volume are addressed to the duties of the radical Left.
Unfortunately, the radical Left had some bizarre ideas about Indian Independence, from which DP himself was not entirely free. One recalls the ultra-radical’s slogan so popular with a section of the students: “Yeh azadi jhuta hai [This independence is false].” DP does not go that far, but comments that “[some] sort of independence has been achieved”.What other type of independence would have been fully satisfactory is not clear. One dimension of decolonization, disunity among the radicals, is underlined. The causes are traced to the inadequacy of contact with the working class. It is not, however, made clear if unity would be automatically achieved through closeness to the workers.
It is not clear if DP was a Marxist. He writes respectfully of Marxism, and this book locates Marxism within the humanist tradition. He certainly does not share the post-Soviet glee over the failure of Marxism, which, to him, was certainly beneficial to mankind. Unless it was assumed that Independence would mean a total revolution in society, and there was no good reason for such an assumption, there was no reason to sniff at the terms of the transfer of power. So far as the British role was concerned, there was nothing false about their withdrawal. Doubts as to its reality merely created confusion.
Insofar as the anti-European stand is an element of this discourse, it comes via the attack on individualism. This alienation of the individual, a characteristic of bourgeois culture, is a product of capitalism and an evil shadow on the evolution of man. Renaissance humanism was something positive. Individualism had undermined the positive potentialities of humanism. One had to attempt recovery by resorting to the Indic tradition, through recourse to purushatvavada, an impressively vague concept of total man who is an independent agent. This incarnation of man as conceived by the rishi could save the species, although it is not clear how. But Sanskrit words have a magic effect, at least on Indians. Even scholars deeply read in modern Western social sciences are not free from this ancestral magic.
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