New IMF Terror in India Can Kill My Family

Note: Please also read my other post on this subject: IMF Just Bought A New India President. Click on this link at http://onefinalblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/imf-just-bought-new-india-president/. Thank you for your feedback and share.

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[Please, for those who want to understand the silent, global terror in the name of economic reform and development, watch this short, 2-minute simple cartoon video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1Qht7Hjm3s]

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India’s one billion people are now going through a massive and catastrophic terrorist attack. On the surface, this attack is bloodless. On the surface, this attack is not even violent. This new terror is silent.

This is a well-organized, pre-planned economic terror attack. And it is going to kill countless people.

You can consider this article as an urgent terror alert: a red alert. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have, and willing to be a part of any debate mainstream media is bypassing. My hope is that you would not overlook this grave scenario unfolding right now.

The newest economic terror unleashed in India and on the Indian people — one billion of them — brings with it terrifying weapons of mass destruction. The new weapons are massive devaluation of the Indian rupee, historic price hike, and forcing harsh, neoliberal economic “reforms.” India now has the world’s steepest and fastest price rises for essential commodities — such as cooking oil and gas, rice, wheat, vegetables and pulses. I’m not even talking about the huge price rise in health care, education, housing and transportation.

Corporate India, Wall Street, IMF and their mouthpiece big media tout these new, harsh, horrific reforms as “necessary for growth.” They have their friends in the Indian government. In fact, India’s queen mother Sonia Gandhi, prime minister Manmohan Singh, and longtime finance minister Pranab Mukherjee who now assumed the position of India’s ceremonial president are all involved in and aware of this neoliberal economic terror, unleashed full-scale by IMF, World Bank and their corporate forces. These forces have now re-colonized India.

Update (September 22): It’s extremely disturbing that India’s media has completely bypassed this extremely important discussion. The only discussion that they were forced to take on was because of West Bengal’s firebrand leader Mamata Banerjee, who pulled out her support for the Manmohan Singh government on the issue of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): where the government gave away carte blanche rights to Wal-Mart, Mansanto, GE, Coca Cola and such sinister corporations to invade India’s huge retail market, replacing and destroying local economies. Even in this discussion, media’s wrath has been against Mamata Banerjee, and NO substantive discussion of the role of IMF has ever been done.

I have lots at stake in India. My father, sisters, cousins, in-laws, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, teachers and students and a large number of friends live there. All my childhood neighbors live there. All of those people who helped me to survive, grow up and prosper live there. My twenty five years of living memory lives there.

This new massive and catastrophic terrorist attack could kill them all. And a direct consequence would be: here in the U.S. where I live now with my little nuclear family could be killed too.

This is a real scenario. This is very real. This is very scary.

I blame the current Indian government. They have failed again to prevent a huge terror attack — just the same way they failed to prevent the 2008 bloody Mumbai terrorism. And many others that happened before and after.

I also blame the International Monetary Fund. I believe IMF with World Bank is responsible behind this new terror.

Stop IMF Terrorism, Now!

How does IMF unleash the economic catastrophe? Here’s a quote from Malaysia’s former prime minister Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad, who showed us a way to break away from IMF.

“In the old days you needed to conquer a country with military force, and then you could control that country. Today it’s not necessary at all. You can destabilize a country, make it poor, and then make it request [IMF] help. And [in exchange] for the help that is given, you gain control over the policies of the country, and when you gain control over the policies of a country, effectively you have colonized that country.”

The Mahathir Mohamad quote can be easily applied to India. In the 80′s, Rajiv Gandhi became (or was put in as) the prime minister of India after his mother Indira Gandhi was assassinated — allegedly by a CIA plot. Rajiv Gandhi who had no prior experience in politics, naively and ironically, opened up the floodgates of India’s socialist (and “stagnant”) economy to foreign corporations, and India has ushered in the new era of “reform.” The present prime minister Manmohan Singh was one of the chief architects of that so-called liberalization. This new reform has pulled India out of a so-called stagnation that the country’s elite did not like, made them extremely rich, and created the largest-ever inequality and rich-poor divide in India’s history. India’s corruption and black market have stooped down to an historic abyss.

Through this two-decade-long “reform,” India has succumbed to Western multinationals and directives of IMF and World Bank. India now has one of the highest price rises especially for oil and gas; its currency has devalued from 11 Indian rupees per U.S. dollar to 55 Indian rupees — in just twenty years. Unexplained by media. Accepted by the status quo. There is a cultural shift.

This is the same policy IMF imposed on countries such as Argentina. What is happening in India right now is a stark reminder of what happened in Argentina just a decade or two ago.

In the 1990s Argentina was the poster child for globalization. They followed the IMF and World Bank program. Soon after, their economy and infrastructure were destroyed. Western media did not care. India media did not tell that story either. Now, Greece is going through the same IMF horror. Ireland, Spain and Italy have begun suffering greatly, thanks to the global economic terror and anti-poor austerity measures in the European Union. (Gosh! Why don’t they ever ask the super-rich to do some austerity too?)

The “reform” plan for Argentina then, just like it is for India now, had four steps.

Pathetic Gold Greed.

The first step was capital market liberalization. Its liberalized markets freed capital to flow in and out across borders. But once Argentina’s economy began to wobble, money simply flowed out.

In India, money now leaves the country like crazy. Or, in a more India-like fashion, it simply goes underground: either into Swiss Banks or the country’s biggest-in-human-history black market. Nobody in the government ever discloses the amount of black (unaccounted-for and/or untaxed) money: there is no legal mandate to do that. Corporate media, strangely, never get to the bottom of it. The infamous Bollywood movie industry or India’s rising-star cricket industry with game-gambling — two biggest profit makers — are known to be run by smuggled or mafia money. Then you have India’s largest-in-the-world gold industry: particularly in crisis, black money changes to gold.

Grotesque Gold in India. And the Greed is Growing. India Govt also gave a tax break to gold merchants.

The second step in the IMF-World Bank regimen in Argentina was privatization. Both at the urging of lenders and out of financial necessity, Argentina throughout the nineties sold off the state’s oil, gas, water, and electric companies and the state banks.

Since the fall of the Soviet Empire, India has rapidly succumbed to the hands of globalization pushers; particularly its banking industry has been taken over by foreign banks. Nationalized banks such as State Bank of India have practically dwindled on the verge of collapse; Citibank, HSBC and such others have taken over the entire country’s middle class and their savings. Investing U.S.-style into the globalized stock market — particularly its financial sector with an aspiration to be quickly rich — has backfired on the middle class.

In 1994, at the World Bank’s urging, Argentina partially privatized its social security system, diverting much of it into private accounts. The US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) calculated the revenue loss from this decision alone to be almost equal to the nation’s budget deficit during the period.

For that matter, India never had a social security system. But its nationalized insurance industry has collapsed too at the hands of Metlife, New York Life, now-fallen-from-grace AIG, etc. This is a direct result of never-well-disclosed IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program. I wrote about it in my Outlook India oped a couple of years ago. Click on the link here if you’re interested to read it.

The third prong of the push was “market-based pricing.” In Argentina, the main target of this initiative has been labor, that most inflexible of commodities.

“A major advance was made to eliminate outdated labor contracts,” states the CEPR report, noting approvingly that “labor costs” (i.e., wages) had fallen due to “labor market flexibility induced by the de facto liberalization of the market via increased informality.” Translation: workers who lost unionized jobs were forced into ad hoc arrangements, with far less protection. Here, the report asks the government to decentralize collective bargaining, a move that would reduce union power.

Child labor at Delhi Commonwealth Games. Nobody minds. The game must go on!

A very similar development in the labor sector has happened in India. Labor unions have seen harsh repression, governments and corporations have taken away their precious collective bargaining, and the once-mighty leftist or other pro-worker trade unions have practically died. Indian construction and manufacturing industries have used child labor that international human rights organizations have reported to be the worst-case scenario in the world. Women workers are often the victims of sexual violence and grossly underpaid, even by Indian standards. Worse, work, workers and poverty are now looked-down-upon — just the new trickle-down American way.

Step four of the IMF program was free trade. The loan terms of the two institutions had required Argentina to accept “an open trade policy.” As recession set in, Argentina’s exporters — whose products were effectively priced, via the peg, in US dollars — were forced into a spectacularly unequal competition against Brazilian goods priced in that nation’s devalued currency. Argentina grows a special kind of long-grain rice favored by Brazilians, and yet even as Brazil faced a hunger crisis tons of rice went unsold.

Dying Farmers and Families

India has seen more or less the same. “Free trade” has seen a one-way free trading where multinational corporations such as Monsanto have devastated Indian farmers: they have forced, with collusion from their operatives in the Indian government, permanent seed replacement with their own genetically modified seeds. Indian farmers, forced to take vast loans to keep their farms and produce, have become destitute and the country has recently seen the largest-in-human-history suicides of farmers. Indian farmers have also been forced to sell their traditional trademark products like Basmati rice to multinational corporations. In fact, the age-old name Basmati has been owned by a Texas rice company!

Before 1980, when the World Bank and IMF set out to rearrange the economies of developing nations, nearly all of them adhered to Keynesian or pro-worker, bubble-up, demand-side economy. Following the “import-substitution model”, they built locally owned industry through government investment, behind a protective wall of tariffs and capital controls. In those supposed economic dark ages, spanning roughly from 1960 to 1980, per-capita income grew by 73 percent in Latin America and by 34 percent in Africa.

India also saw an equitable economic system and price control for the essential commodities kept the poor and lower middle class happy and content.

My father didn’t earn much from his factory, but we had no debts.

I came from a poor or lower middle class family in Calcutta and I know for the fact that in spite of the low income of my father who worked in a factory was enough for us. Now, in 2012, with this new economic terror unleashed by IMF and World Bank and their operatives in the Indian government (such as the finance minister who is also, as I said before, the country’s official head of IMF), my poor cousins simply cannot survive with the money they make.

Health care costs are now so high that one of my cousins cannot send her mother to a good-quality private hospital; the poor woman is dying practically untreated at home (update: just this past weekend, she died). A friend whose son was a bright student in school could not go to an expensive private college; his dreams are shattered. Public sector health care and education, along with employment — once strong pillars of India’s somewhat egalitarian economic structure — have been purposefully destroyed. Public transportation is going to see the same fate in the coming days — again, the U.S. neoliberal way.

Sky-high rents and other essential living costs are driving the middle class into major debt; they’re driving the lower middle class into poverty, and the poor into destitution and death. One of my childhood friends in Calcutta killed himself because his parents were both ill and he was overwhelmed with debt because of their medical expenses. He and I played alley cricket and football together.

The newest round of oil price hike and sharp devaluation — under directives from IMF — will bring even more desperation for those people I left back there. A brother in-law recently died when he was only forty; he could not take anymore his lifelong unemployment, hopelessness and embarrassment. The sister he married nearly died too. IMF’s official India director who is also India’s national finance minister (nobody knows!) might want to face these families — on camera. (I want to be present there as the interview moderator.)

All of the above have had direct impact on my home here in the U.S. A failed globalized economy is running amuck worldwide. My family and I keep paying for its impossible price.

I want to live happy here in the U.S. But I can’t.

This new terrorism is ruining my people’s lives. And my life.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

Very Sad but Very True!

T = mc2 . Einstein. That’s My Life.

(You can call it Part 2. I urge that you read both Part 1 and Part 2 together.)

The Time of Life Clock. Simple Description.

Recap from Part 1 of this post.

I came up with a plan and figured that T = mc² perhaps could be one simplistic way to summarize my life – life of an ordinary, no-name, no-pedigree, mediocre, half-poor, half-educated, brown person who spent the first quarter of his life in India and the second quarter in America. I thought I could use my basic arithmetic and algebra skills (practically no math learned past high school) and come to a final tally of my life’s income and expenses, and profits and losses.

So, I thought, this could be the simple formula to summarize my life:

T = mc²

Where T is total time of life, m is total involved money (used, gained or lost), and c² (or c x c) is the product of two major costs I had to incur over all these years — both in India and America.

Therefore, to put it in words, it is:

Time of life = Money involved x Cost₁ x Cost₂ .

[That's Equation One]

Now, the question is, how do you break down the equation and show it part by part?

Here’s an attempt to do it.

First, let’s talk about the costs. In today’s market-maniac world, that’s perhaps essential: to know the costs to live.

Okay. Let’s see.

Cost₁ or C₁ is a product of all these factors, and I’m putting them together as they should be.

C₁ = Earning Education x Earning Experience x Building a new life in an old land and in a new land x Winning Relationship x Building Family x Making Friends x Winning Praises and Rewards x Accomplishments x Achievements x Finding Coworkers x Keeping Supporters x Sustaining Sympathizers x Creativity x Activism x Critical thinking x Organizing x Making people think differently

[That's Equation Two]

In short, C₁ is the total product of all the good things that you earn, gain, develop, nurture and refine — because you want to do it.

In short, C₁ is the total product of positive things I built in life — things that made me nice, happy and smile.

My Dr. Jekyll

Cost₂ or C₂ on the other hand is the total product of almost the opposite things you find in C₁. Here they are.

C₂ = Spending experience* x Spending education* x Loss of lives that directly impacted me x Loss of hopes x Sacrifices I was forced to make because of leaving behind my family, friends and society x Loss of friends x Lost and betrayed relationships x Insults x Injuries x Loss of stability x Stress x Anxiety x Fear x Physical and Emotional Abuse x cheating by establishments

[That's Equation Three]

In short, C₂ is the total product of negative things impacted my life — things that made me ugly, crabby and sad. The Mr. Hyde in me — that I often talk about.

(But look at the elements with an asterisk *  — i.e., spending experience and education — these are not necessarily negative. We might say these are “necessary evils.” You must spend some to gain some.)

I hate him. But he is so real!

Now, for the math buffs out there, you might immediately find a fallacy in Equation Two and Three. The fallacy is, things that I built (or won) and things that I lost (or destroyed) are really inversely proportional to each other. In other words, spending experience (from C₂) is really inversely proportional to earning experience (from C₁ ).

Like, spending experience = 1/earning experience.

Another example would be, losing friends or family members is inversely proportional to making friends and building family. A third example would be rewards and praises: are they just the opposite of insults and abuses?

Like, rewards and praises = 1/insults and abuses.

So, in other words, people might say, it’s total fallacy, because C₁ essentially crosses C₂ out, and therefore, we end up with a cliché or conundrum, which is T = m. Time of life = Money in life.

You might say, what new did you teach us? We always knew that “Time IS Money!”

You made a good point. But unfortunately, you are wrong.

[You, at this point perhaps a little irked]: Show me I am wrong. I’ve been very patient so far.

Yes, that you have, indeed. Thank you.

Well, wait a minute then. Let me explain.

See, you need to find the end result of those multiplication products. I’ll give you an example. In my life…in anybody’s life…spending education cannot be exactly inversely proportional to earning education; do we use all the education we gain, ever? Of course, we might say, we never really “spend” education — that is one treasure in life that we can never run out of how much ever we use it. But that’s too much philosophy. My philosophy here in these formulas is much simpler: this is a philosophy you can touch, taste and smell. It’s real. There is nothing abstract about it.

Similarly, you see, earned rewards, praises, promotions and compliments are not exactly the same amount you lose by being insulted, injured, or physically and mentally abused. Again, you need to see the end result of the product: do you have more insults and abuses than rewards and compliments? Or, do you have more on the plus side of the equation? You find out. You are the ultimate judge.

I won’t take too much of your time. You’ve been very patient.

Therefore, at the end of the day, it all boils down to this.

T or total time of my life = Total Money involved in my life X Total product of Cost₁ elements X Total product of Cost₂ elements.

I think it is a very fair, balanced, realistic and simple formula to summarize my life. I really do.

I would ask you to test this formula in your life’s situation. See if it works for you too. If it does, then it’s a universal formula – irrespective of man’s economic or social class, caste, race, nationality, religion, lifestyle choice or color.

I have every reason to believe my formula would prove to be universal.

I’ll let you decide on the other, possible mathematical and scientific aspects of the formula.

Remember, T sits on the left hand side of the equation. Time of life is the most important determinant here. All the other aspects of life – including the so-called all-important money in today’s world – sit on the right hand side (the variable side).

T is the absolute truth here. Whatever way you come up with your own measurement of T for your own life, it’s going to be an absolute truth – for you.

Everything else is there to help calculate our total time of life.

That’s the ultimate message here. From me.

I hope I came across nice, simple and clear with that message.

Thanks for brainstorming with me. It’s been fun.

Thank you, Sir Albert. You’ve been quite an inspiration. You brought out a mini-Einstein in me. That’s incredible, given where I was and where I am now!

Wow! So gratified!

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Post Script. — I also doubled checked on the qualitative applicability of the equation by trying its various possible forms. Like, if Time = Money X Costs, then Costs = Time/Money. Also, Money = Time/Costs. Think about it: all the various possible forms actually work quite well.

___________________

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

People have had other concepts of time-money relationship. I think my formula is unique and much easier to understand.

T = mc2 . Yes. That’s My Einstein.

That’s His Theory. I Have My Own. (with a million apologies)

(Part 1)

Please read it together with Part 2 of this post. That link is here. Thank you.

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That Einstein – Einstein the outside world knows – said:

E = mc² .

You know, Theory of Relativity? Everybody knows it.

But this Einstein, my inner Einstein, says, T = mc² .

Yes, T = mc² .

T = mc² ??

[You] : Are you joking with me? What the heck does it mean?

Well, wait. Let me explain.

The equivalence is described by the world-famous Einstein equation – in textbooks it is also called mass-energy equivalence equation:

E = mc²

Where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light in a vacuum. The formula is dimensionally consistent and does not depend on any specific system of measurement units. The equation indicates that energy always exhibits relativistic mass in whatever form the energy takes. Mass–energy equivalence does not imply that mass may be “converted” to energy, but it allows for matter to be converted to energy. Through all such conversions, mass remains conserved, since it is a property of matter and any type of energy. (This is according to Wikipedia).

In my inner-world Einstein equation, as I put it above, it is T = mc² .

Physicists and mathematicians and other such hardcore scientists and Einstein fans, forgive me. My equation is never to undermine the great scientist. It is neither to mock him nor to ridicule him. I am too small and illiterate to do such atrocities.

My equation is rather philosophical. But I thought in order to simplify it, I could come up with a simplified formula – a formula that sort of describes my life. I wanted to explain and clarify and summarize to myself – and all others who might show any interest in my life – the events, experiences and education I went through, where I earned something, spent something, and got some kind of a net result. It’s like a country grocer’s store – a small farmer’s market – where at the end of a day of labor, the grocer or the farmer looks at his handwritten account book to find out his income and expenses, his profit and loss, and decide whether he should be happy or go back home sad.

This is a business management concept. My formula is much simpler.

At the end of my day – so far – through this perhaps two-thirds or three-quarters of my life, I decided to do the same unsophisticated accounting. And I thought, just like the great scientist explained such a very complex subject in such a small, succinct and easy-to-understand few letters, perhaps I could give it a shot to emulate him. (with profuse apologies).

All seemingly audacious emulations, I hope, will be forgiven by the learned readers with empathy. You have stayed with me all these months. I hope you stay with me through this experiment too. Let’s see if it works.

I thus came up with a plan and figured that T = mc² perhaps could be one way to summarize my life – life of an ordinary, no-name, no-pedigree, mediocre, half-poor, half-educated person who spent the first quarter of his life in India and the second quarter in America – in a rather simplistic way. I thought I could use my basic arithmetic and algebra skills (nothing learned beyond high school level) and come to a final tally of my life’s income and expenses, and profits and losses.

So, without much further ado, here’s the equation one more time:

T = mc²

Where T is total time of life, m is total involved money (used, gained or lost), and c² (or c x c) is the product of two major costs I had to incur over all these years — both in India and America.

Therefore, to put it in words, it is:

Time of life = Money involved x Cost₁ x Cost₂ .

[This is Equation One]

A similar clarification for my new formula to the one Wikipedia did for the world-famous Einstein theorem would be:

The formula T = mc² is also dimensionally consistent and does not depend on any specific system of measurement units. The equation indicates that time always exhibits relativistic money in whatever form of time one uses (for example: one could use total time of an entire life, or they could use total time for a particular phase of life; of course, in case of the latter one would need to use m, c₁and c₂ for that phase only).

Time-money equivalence in my equation does not imply that money made in life (or a phase) may be “converted” to total time of life (or that phase), but it allows for involvement (or effort) to make money to be converted to time. One example following this logic is, you can sacrifice involvement (or effort) to make money — to obtain more time of life.

(Please come back for more detailed explanation. I shall draw them out for you, I promise. I shall do it very soon. Return and read Part 2: click here.)

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

I shall derive my equation too, no worries!

One Last Tagore Birthday Before My Death

Satyajit Ray, an agnostic, thought Tagore was like a God.

It took me a long time to decide on the title. I thought about it and thought it over.

I read it once. I read it twice. I paused and read it again. Finally, I decided. This is it. This is the title.

No, I don’t want to make it sound corny. That’s not the purpose. I truly feel that it could be one last time I get to live on the 25th of Baisakh — Tagore’s birthday — which normally falls on the 8th of May. This year, it’s the poet’s one hundred fifty-first birth anniversary. This year, just like any other year, much fanfare is happening in West Bengal and Bangladesh, various Bengali neighborhoods of India, as well as cities across the world wherever there is a community of Bengali people — big or small.

There will be Tagore’s songs. There will be Tagore’s plays. There will be Tagore’s poetry. There will be Tagore’s dances. There will be talks about the poet-philosopher’s poetry and philosophy. More resourceful Bengali communities in places such as Calcutta (Kolkata) and Dhaka and London and Toronto will put out special literary publications to observe the special day. Some will try experimental music — using Tagore’s songs. Some will stage Tagore’s famous plays — Post Office, Land of Cards or Red Oleanders from a new, refreshing point of view. Some will perhaps have an exhibition of Tagore’s paintings.

I know here in New York, a group of Bengali musicians and artists is putting together an audio book of Tagore’s short stories — the Man from Kabul, Return of the Little Boy, the Postmaster — with help from young-generation, college-age Bengali-American boys and girls. Kudos to them.

I have no doubt there’s going to be countless other events, programs and performances all over the world to celebrate this occasion. Especially, Tagore’s 150th birthday was particularly celebratory; it is likely this year many places are perhaps completing their year-long observance with special wrap-up celebrations.

Tagore Dance Drama in U.K.

I could not be a part of any of the numerous gatherings — either in America or Bengal. I am not a part of any of the numerous Bengali clubs, societies and organizations — either in America or Bengal. I do not live in India anymore. I live in a Brooklyn neighborhood where there is a small smattering of immigrants from West Bengal; I know once they had an association that held Durga Puja and therefore, perhaps, Tagore Jubilee as well. But I know the group slowly dwindled, some old inhabitants left this unsung corner of New York City and some others went back to India. In any case, we never hear from them.

There is a large Bangladeshi community within walking distance of where we live in Brooklyn. In fact, working as an immigrant rights activist especially among the South Asians, once I had made an estimate that only this community counted about 30,000 people. It is a large community that has associations from many known and unknown districts of Bangladesh; they frequently host their picnics, street fairs and Eid dinners. But I am not sure if they ever hosted any Tagore birthday celebration. I learned from various friends that most of them came from conservative-Muslim areas in Bangladesh where “Hindu-liberal” Rabindranath Tagore was not such a household name. That is not to say all conservative Muslims are anti-Tagore or anti-Hindu.

In some other West Bengali and Bangladeshi communities in New York and New Jersey, there will be programs and performances. But these days, after working with and for especially the Bangladeshi community, it has dawned to me that inviting someone like me who is not from political Bangladesh is not a priority. After living in New York City for so many years, my family and I have accepted the fact that in spite of our desire to belong with a larger, undivided Bengali diaspora, we are not, in any real sense, part of either a “mainstream immigrant” Bangladesh or West Bengal. (Apologies for using an oxymoron.)

Chances are, we will not know if there were Tagore celebrations in New York or New Jersey where my long, post-9/11 activist experience once had an estimate of some two hundred thousand Bengalis — over eighty percent of whom were from Bangladesh. Practically all the weekend Bengali-language parochial schools and practically all of the two dozens of weekly Bengali-language newspapers and magazines operating and publishing out of New York are Bangladeshi.

The Land of Bengal: a Glorious History of a Thousand Years.

For a long time, my family and I were actively involved with one of the weekend schools where I taught advanced-level Bengali to just-graduated students, and my family members participated in their cultural programs. For a number of years, especially after 9/11, as an important part of my immigrant rights activism, I wrote columns in a number of Bengali weekly newspapers and magazines — Thikana, Ekhon Samoy, Bangalee, Sangbad, Porshee.

With the schools and publications alike, I always did what I always do: educate the community about the difference between culture and kitsch, and speak and write about human rights and justice. When I worked professionally for two immigrant advocacy organizations — one in Jackson Heights, New York City and the other in New Jersey, I also worked with Bangladeshi immigrant families who bore the brunt of a terribly unjust and primitive immigration system here in the U.S. Among other activities, I worked with a few men and women who were in prison for a long time for minor immigration violations; I also worked with some others who were spared from prison detention or deportation because of our work.

I have many friends and acquaintances. I built precious connections with journalists, activists, writers, singers, playwrights and music teachers. I always felt proud to have thought I was a member of the larger immigrant Bengal and immigrant South Asia.

Tagore Festival Toronto

Yet, there is a strange disjunct — an insurmountable wall — between me and my family and the societies both in the Bangladeshi and West Bengali community. West Bengali immigrants do not know us well: we live in a not-affluent area in Brooklyn mostly inhabited by African-Americans, Jewish people, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Bangladeshi immigrants do not think we are one of them because we came from India — a country they do not know anymore. The conservative-Muslim Bangladeshis (the variety I mentioned above) do not like or understand a liberal-progressive, one-nation Bengal that Tagore and his predecessors from Bengal Renaissance envisioned. The young-generation, liberal-educated Bangladeshis do not know the common history and heritage of two Bengals shared over one thousand years before the British cut the land of Bengal in halves, erecting insurmountable, blood-soaked borders.

Yet, a very large section of Bangladeshi Bengalis (it’s a very strange term, in my opinion) — most are Muslims — are moderate in their religious and social views, avid music, theater and literature lovers, and are the biggest consumers of music and movies from Calcutta and West Bengal — even today. Strangely, however, some of them have a general apathy, indifference, ignorance and often anathema about political West Bengal and India. When they find out I am from India and not from Dhaka, Sylhet or Chittagong, they talk to me differently. Again, I’m not generalizing. How can I, when I have so many special friends from Dhaka, Sylhet or Chittagong?

New York’s Bengali paper Thikana published a nice review of my Tagore album. I keep working with them.

There are quite a few other Bengali immigrants both from Bangladesh and West Bengal — highly educated, scholarly and erudite — who are satisfied with the small society they have and therefore do not feel any particular urge to invite outsiders like us. New Jersey or Long Island — where most of these more affluent, educated West Bengalis live — is like a group of islands only connected by long-distance, car-driven highways, creating more distances between people. We do not have the time or desire to go out of New York City to see either a Durga Puja or a Tagore performance, and return more depressed that we never felt truly welcome.

All of the above — the entire, personal, true story I told here — is a slow but sure recipé for death. If I was not a high-energy, activist, never-say-die-type personality who would go out of his way to find new friends, colleagues and communities and stay involved with newer and ever-challenging, creative activities — immigrant movement or labor education or Brooklyn For Peace or Durga Puja or Bengali New Year celebration (or even the Tagore-150 we organized in Manhattan last year with help from New Yorker) — death would have come much faster. In my twenty-five-plus years of living in the U.S., I have seen a number of people — a few of them being highly talented but decidedly loners — falling victims of this extreme alienation followed by depression, dark diseases and death. I always, always carry that fear deep inside that one day, I’m going to be a victim of a similar alienation and die untimely.

My new Tagore album: maybe you’ll like the songs — I hope you do

Every year, therefore, at this time when the rest of the world is celebrating the life and work of this incredible genius named Rabindranath Tagore, the question comes to my mind: am I going to live one more year to see the next Tagore birthday celebration? Which song would be the last Tagore song I hear before I die? Which Tagore poem would be the last one I read? Which short story would I translate the last before I perish — and perish prematurely?

I hope I didn’t make you too sad or perturbed and I certainly hope I didn’t make it sound too corny, as if I was trying to draw your sympathy — sympathy for a forlorn soul.

If you feel that way, I am sorry. I do not have anything to offer you to compensate for it — other than the two dozens of Tagore songs I recorded. I also have a few translations of these songs as well as translations of a few Tagore short stories.

I also have a YouTube of one of my talks on culture and Tagore — a talk I gave recently at an Indian university. And if I may say it, I have recently managed to compile a whole host of my essays on Tagore in relation to cultural erosion and globalized kitsch. I’m actually in the middle of writing a book on the above.

I hope you receive these gifts I leave for you, and forgive me for my personal, not-so-cheerful rambling.

Celebrate Tagore. He showed us an educated, modern, progressive way to live. He was not a perfect man. In fact, he had many flaws. I do not consider him a God. I consider him a very important, humanist philosopher-poet teacher who taught us human spirituality, universality and peace.

Tagore taught us the message of emancipation: in Bengali, the word is Mukti. It means inner freedom: liberation of the soul. Nandini showed us the way in Red Oleanders.

If this is the last Tagore birthday before my death, I want to remember him that way.

I hope you get to know him.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha Banerjee

Brooklyn, New York

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