সাম্প্রতিক মনিপুর
মনিপুর খুব বর্নময়। বর্ষার ইম্ফলেরতো তুলনা নেই।কাল মেঘ সারা আকাশে।আচমকা বিদ্যুৎ চমকায়।গাড়ীতে যেতে যেতে ওই আলো- আঁধারে চোখে পড়ে যায় অভিমানী কাংলা দূর্গ।ওই দূর্গের পরতে পরতে ইতিহাসের ছোঁয়া।একদা ওর ভেতরেই জন্মনিয়েছিল আজকের মনিপুর।কাংলার সামনেই ফাঁসিতে ঝোলান হয়েছিল বৃটিশবিরোধী লড়াইএর সেনানী রাজকুমার টিকেন্দ্রজিৎ বীর সিংকে। মনিপুর খুব সুন্দর।সেখানকার প্রকৃতি ও বাসিন্দারাও।ইরিল নদী ও লোকটাক- সূর্যাস্তের আলোয় কবিতা হয়ে যায়।এই জনপদ বহুবছর ধরে আমার প্রিয়।ভালবাসারও।কতবছর হয়ে গেল সেখানে যাচ্ছি।কখনো শান্ত,ধীর ইম্ফলে,কখনো আবার আগুন জ্বলা উপত্যকায়।মনোরমার খুন হওয়া,বিনিতার শহীদ হওয়া,চিত্তরন্জনের আত্মহনন,মনোরমার মায়ের সেই বিষাদমুখ কখনো ভুলবনা।মনিপুরের গ্রাম,শহর বস্তি,বাজারে ঘুরতে ঘুরতে তথাকথিত গনতান্ত্রিক আইন আফস্পার নির্মমতা দেখেছি।যা তুলে নেওয়ার দাবীতে কাংলা দূর্গের সামনে মায়েরা নগ্ন প্রতিবাদ জানিয়েছিলেন।চিত্তরন্জন আত্মহত্যা কোরেছিলেন।আর দীর্ঘ ১৬ বছর অনশন চালিয়েছেন ইরম শর্মিলা চানু।অনশন,লড়াইএর জন্যে যেমন আর আজ তা থেকে সরে আশার কারনে সে আবারও সংবাদ শিরোনামে।শর্মিলা অনশন ভেংগেছেন তা তার সিদ্ধান্ত। অনেকেই বোলছেন যে সারাজীবন একটি মেয়ে বৃহত্তর সমাজের মুখ চেয়ে নিজের যাবতীয় সুখ,আনন্দ,চাওয়া,পাওয়া বিসর্জন দেবে তা কোন যুক্তি হোতে পারেনা।১০০ শতাংশ ঠিক কথা।একমত।শর্মিলা বোলেছেন,তিনি দেবী নন।এও ঠিক।মানবীর চাহিদা শর্মিলার থাকবে এটাইতো স্বাভাবিক।অনেকে লিখছেন শর্মিলাই জানিয়েছেন আফস্পা কত বিপদজনক।অনেকে শর্মিলার হয়ে কথা বোলতে গিয়ে অজান্তে নিজেরাই তাকে দেবী কোরে তুলছেন।এমনিতেই শর্মিলা লার্জার দ্যান লাইফ।নাহলে তার মাথায় সরাসরি মুখ্যমন্ত্রী হওয়ার ইচ্ছে জাগতোনা।কিন্তুু শর্মিলার কথা বোলতে গিয়ে আমরা বোধহয় তার অনশন ভাংগা যারা মানতে পারছেন না তাদের পুরোপুরি খলনায়ক কোরে দিচ্ছি।তারমধ্যে শর্মিলার মাও পরিবারের অন্যরাও আছেন।প্রথমত,শর্মিলা আন্দোলনের মধ্য দিয়েই আজকের আইকন হয়ে উঠেছিল।শর্মিলার পিছনে ছিল মনিপুরের মহিলাদের দীর্ঘদিনের লড়াইএর ইতিহাস।১৯০৪ ও ১৯৩৯ বৃটিশ বিরোধী বিদ্রোহ -- যা ইতিহাস হয়ে আছে প্রথম ও দ্বিতীয় নুপিলান নামে।তার নেতৃত্বে ছিলেন মহিলারাই।মনিপুর একমাত্র রাজ্য যেখানে একদিন মশাল হাতে প্রতিবাদী মিছিলে হাঁটতেন শুধু মহিলারাই।মহিলাদের সংগঠন মেরাপাইবি বহুদিনধরে রাষ্ট্রীয় সন্ত্রাশের বিরুদ্ধে সতত সোচ্চার।তাদেরই১১ জন অসমসাহসী নগ্ন হয়েছিলেন।আফ্স্পার বিরুদ্ধে।শর্মিলা চানুও নিছক আকাশ থেকে নেমে আসা কোন দেবী নন।অজস্র ত্যাগ,শহীদ হওয়া,ধর্ষিতা কয়েকশো নারী,সন্তান হারা মায়ের কান্নার মধ্যে দিয়ে উঠে আসা এক আইকন।সমষ্ঠির মধ্য দিয়েইতো নেতা উঠে আসেন।তাই একজনকে মহৎ কোরতে গিয়ে আমরা যেন অনেকের অনেক হারিয়ে যাওয়া,ত্যাগকে ছোট না কোরি।আসলে শর্মিলারর ওপরে কিছুটা অভিমান হয়েছে মনিপুরের।হয়তো।তাও কিন্তু স্বাভাবিক।শর্মিলার আজ প্রবল খ্যাতি সে মুখ্যমন্ত্রী হবার স্বপ্ন দেখতেই পারে।কিন্তু মনোরামার মাতো আজও বসে আছেন মেয়ের খুনীদের শাস্তির আশায়।বা মার্সি কাবুই যাকে দিনের পর দিন ধর্ষন করা হয়েছে,ভলিবল মাঠে যে ১৩ জনকে গুলি কোরে মারা হয়েছিল,তাদের পরিবার,এমন অজস্র পরিবারের কাছেও শর্মিলা ছিল আশার ও বিশ্বাসের প্রতিক।যে কারনেই হোক আশাভংগের কিছু বিরুপ প্রতিক্রিয়াও তাই অস্বাভাবাবিক নয়।আর একটা কথা,যারা মনিপুরের সমাজকে একটুও জানেন তারা বুঝবেন মনিপুরের অভিমানের পিছনে আরও একটা কারন আছে।মনিপর কোনদিন,কখনো,প্রাচীনকাল থেকে আত্মসমর্পন মেনে নিতে শেখেনি।পারেওনি।তাই রবীন্দ্রনাথের চিত্রাংগদা নিয়ে সেখানে বুদ্ধিজীবিমহলে প্রশ্ন আছে।তাদের কাছে ব্যাখ্যা নেই কোন যুক্তিতে তাদের রাজকন্যা উচ্চবর্গের অর্জুনের কাছে নিজেকে সমর্পন কোরবে! একই আবেগে বিরাটসংখ্যখক মনিপুরির কাছেও আজ প্রশ্ন কোন যুক্তিতে শর্মিলা চানু আজ প্রতিষ্ঠানের কাছে মাথা নোয়ালেন! শুধুই নতুন পথে চলবেন বোলে!

http://www.epaper.eisamay.com/Details.aspx?id=25001&boxid=1553838

Some more from the unpublished "My Days with People Guerrilla Army"

"A sharp whistle woke us at dawn.  Our muddled minds took a while to figure out where we were, and the sight of the squad members brought reality back. We were ordered to go into the nearby forest for ten minutes for our morning ablutions.  Raja, Bishnu and I began to march towards the forest as indicated. I didn't have the nerve to look Bishnu in the face, but over my shoulders I had seen his countenance turning red with rage.

 On our return to the field we found a headcount going on and we too fell in line for the tally. It was a beautiful sunny day with a gentle breeze blowing.  I tried in vain to figure out where we were, but it was just like any other forest. Later we were told that it was a forest close to Kirandul. The line stood at attention with a dusky, slim and smart girl in the front. She held up her AK 47. All the members had sacs on their backs and carried modern weapons. Commander Anil asked the squad to march forward, naming a place and then said R.B.  When I asked what that meant one youth said, a little contemptuously, it meant Retreat Back. Suppose you had walked to a destination after marching for an hour, but there you found danger lurking, you would have to retreat back very fast to your original location."

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Excerpts from a filmmaker's journey to the Maoist lair in the heartland of India:

We travelled on and had no inkling of where we were heading to. Our young guide smiled whenever we asked him. 'Come on, he said, you'll get to know in good time'.  The road seemed endless as we went on and on. It was getting warmer and we were hungry. After a quick meal in a roadside dhaba the jeep began climbing a hilly road. By this time I had figured out that we must be going towards Bastar. Darkness fell fast on the hills. We passed dimly lit villages with groups of people sitting at tea shops and listening to radio sets. There was no more halt, and the high speed of our vehicle didn't allow us to read the signs that flashed by from time to time. After some more distance we saw bright lights, pucca houses and outposts of Police and CRP.  We had arrived at Jagdalpur, the district headquarters of Bastar, which meant we had covered a distance of nearly four hundred and fifty kilometres.  It was quite late at night when our jeep pulled up in front of a small STD booth. Our guide asked us to make quick calls to our families,   adding that the next opportunity may not be soon. The anxious voice at the other end had many questions, had I eaten, was I safe, was I in a hotel? I had no answers, our whereabouts and plans were far out of my hands and I finished the conversation in monosyllables. I thought of my parents and my little daughter. Maybe I had been unwise to take such a big risk, I thought.

 Today in hindsight, as I write this account, I am glad I could take the risk and accept the challenge. An experience of a lifetime has been gained. I have been able to document a major turning point in history, a feeling very precious to any documentary film maker. The filming experience too was unique and completely unconventional without a script, without correct usage of camera. 'Days with guerrillas -phase I' remained like a journey. More phases had been planned, but in this country one gets blacklisted by attempting to make such kind of films. How does one convince the State and Bureaucracy that a democracy cannot be saved unless we listen to all voices, even those of dissent?

From JOURNEY THROUGH CAMERA: My Days With People’s Guerilla Army

                                            The Unknown story of the Maoist territory

                                       By Soumitra Dastidar  

                                      (will be published soon)

 

or click on  http://www.epaper.eisamay.com/Details.aspx?id=24696&boxid=14549345

Report from Times of India on Maoist documentary

(Read here or click on the link)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/Way-of-the-gun-is-no-way-Documentary/articleshow/19571037.cms

KOLKATA: A man in combat fatigues points his 9mm pistol at the sky and fires three shots, shattering the stillness of the forest - and marking a new chapter in insurgency that would kill hundreds and plunge large swathes of the country into a vicious circle of violence. It's September 21, 2004. The People's War Group has merged with Maoist Communist Centre. On one side of the forest clearing in Bastar, a hand-held video camera whirrs almost noiselessly. The mini-cassette would travel in a handbag to Kolkata, and join a stack of other such cassettes. It would rest there for nine years.

Only a handful of persons have ever viewed this footage. And now you will, says researcher and documentary maker Soumitra Dastidar - the man behind the documentary titled 'Journey Through Camera: My Days with Maoist Guerrillas'. He plans to screen an abridged version of his record of the Maoist movement, shot deep in the rebels' jungle lair, in New Delhi later this month.

Much of this video chronicle is unseen by anyone else but him and includes extensive footage of several top leaders, including Kishanji, says the filmmaker. Dastidar's youthful curiosity about the Maoists turned into a lifelong mission to try and understand why a well-educated Brahmin, a poor farmer, a brilliant college girl or a tribal would take up arms against the largest democracy on the planet.

"It was a leap into the darkness," recalls Dastidar of his first foray into Maoist territory, armed with only his raw excitement, and accompanied by a cameraman who had "absolutely no clue what he was getting into". "In fact, I chose a strapping six-footer so that he would come handy if things got rough. I was so naive," he laughs.

But why now? Why release the film that he has guarded so zealously for so long? "Now is the best time for the documentary to come in the public domain. I want my work to provoke a debate - is there space beyond structural politics? My documentation will hold up a clear picture for people to analyze. Debate is so important in democratic politics, but sadly, the space for discourse is getting constricted now," he says.

"If democracy is to be revived, such debates are necessary. I am no Maoist sympathizer. I am not even an intellectual. I simply tried to visualize social science. It's a political essay from the field," he said, calling his brand of documentary "guerrilla film-making".

Another more topical reason is whether a Maoist insurgency is at all valid in the 21st century society, he points out. "I hope my film shows a way. Is killing going to solve any problem? Was any of this killing necessary? We need to introspect," he adds.

Having spent much of his time in the rebels' lair in the company of Kishanji, he acknowledges that the Maoist military commander's death marked a turning point, "not only for the Maoist movement but for me, too". The researcher sees the lull after Kishanji's killing as an indication of a change of strategy - a hint of a "makeover" of Maoist politics. "Perhaps, even a slant towards mainstream politics. Maoists are moving into urban areas, slums and trade unions, following the path of neo-communism," he says.

Dastidar remembers discussing the issue passionately with Kishanji. "He was known as Ram-ji, then. It was in Bengal that he took the name Kishan. Back then, he was more of an ideologue. He was very well read and sharp. I still cannot reconcile myself with the Ramji I met in Bastar with the Kishanji of Bengal. What did all that bloodshed get him? How can anyone justify killing teachers in front of students in a classroom?" he asks.

His videos capture dreaded Maoists playing volleyball in jungle clearings, cooking, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, ribbing Kishanji to sing songs in his "besur voice" - and training to kill policemen. The regimen is almost military-like and the drills and exercises clearly remind of Army bootcamp training - the emphasis on Hindi commands so that training is uniform across the Maoist corridor... The weapon-handling drills to get a recruit familiarized with his rifle... Isometric exercises... The art of living off the land... Water control... Marching discipline... Fire control.

The rebels are seen being trained to lay an ambush, how to trap the security forces in enveloping arcs of fire, and just how long to press the attack before escaping to fight another day rather than risk a close-quarter firefight with better trained forces. They are taught how to operate in squad or platoon levels for different tactical objectives. And how to most effectively use an AK47 or an Insas in a squad armed mostly with single-shot .303s or .315 rifles.

Then, there is the ideological training, where Mao Tse Tung's political theory merges with Marx. "Keeping abreast of international affairs is a must, as is reading newspapers. Every Maoist base has a library and cadres are taught English and Hindi," says Dastidar.

It all sounds like a perfect picture. "But I could sense that they were failing to turn the insurgency into a political movement. They couldn't see beyond the barrel of the gun. I first noticed it in Bihar and Chhattisgarh, where caste politics continued to be a factor in the Maoist ranks. The Maoist movement seemed to be moving away from Marxism in the last few years. The leaders couldn't break out of their Robin Hood penchant," says the filmmaker.

"I have tried to show a different India. It's a scene I might or might not see five years from now. In that sense, my 13-year-long effort is a documentation of history. And now, hopefully, it will trigger a debate in the country, from living rooms to the Parliament House," says Dastidar.

This is an youtube link of Times Now report on banning Musalmaner  Kotha

Soumitra Dastidar is based in Kolkata and has been a documentary film maker for the last 15 years. He has a Master’s in Political Science and started his career as a journalist. Later on, he switched into making documentary films and worked closely with Catherine Berge, a renowned French documentary filmmaker, while she was making Gaach (The Tree, 1998) on the life of the colossal figure of Bengal cinema, Soumitra Chatterjee. The film was produced by Nayeem Hafizka and Ismail Merchant.

Soumitra’s path- breaking documentary was Nothing Official (2002), when he went to Gujarat to document the pogrom unleashed by Hindutva brigade risking his life. He again went to Gujarat in 2003 to see the aftermath and made Genocide and After (2003). These two films brought accolades galore. In 2005, Soumitra made A Letter to My Daughter on the state repression in Manipur, which was critically acclaimed in India and abroad. After making some thought provoking documentaries on ecological issues like Story of a Golden River and India Mortgaged, he made another path-breaking documentary Musalmaner Kotha (Story of Muslims) in 2013. Soumitra has won numerous awards from India and abroad. His films have been shown in many universities across the country.Soumitra Dastidar is a popular filmmaker of India keeping ‘people’ at the centre of all his documentaries.

REMEMBERING GUJRAT

Director : Soumitra Dastidar

The Maoist insurrection of India

The Maoist insurrection of India is an important phenomenon in recent times. According to the Indian government, the insurrection has posed grave threat to the internal security. So the state had gone all out to thrash the movement militarily without any result. It spread like a wildfire and a vast swathe of central India simply turned into a virtual red corridor.

Almost fifteen years ago, when the insurrection was unfolding, noted documentary filmmaker, Soumitra Dastidar set about to capture the contours of it from a close encounter with the guerrillas in the Junglemahal of Chhattisgarh. Initially he travelled with them for more than a month; and took footage of the Maoist lairs hitherto unseen witnessing People’s War Group (PWG) and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), the two main outfits of the movement, merging to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Having travelled extensively to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar, the film “My Days with Peoples Liberation Army” ultimately took fifteen years to come to its final stage. It is an important document of this radical movement in India.

In the present context, when many untoward events are happening in that area, this film will give people the opportunity to see rare glimpses of the daily lives of the guerrillas, their viewpoints and ideological mooring. In a first person account, Soumitra describes his unique journey and explains many nuances of the movement with flair.