The Spirit of the Spring Thunder Era

An Interview with Timir Basu

In this interview taken by by Rabin Chakraborty and Farooque Chowdhury, Timir Basu, the longstanding editor of Frontier Weekly, describes his involvement with Frontier from 1979, and how the weekly embodies the spirit of the Spring Thunder Era.

Q: Please tell us about your involvement with Frontier particularly about what attracted you to it. How old were you at the time?

Timir Basu: Well, my proper and somewhat regular association with Frontier dates back to 1979 though my first article, Contract Labour in Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC), appeared in 1975. Frankly speaking, in those days I didn't even know the exact location of Frontier's office. I used to send articles through Anrudh Singh, a veteran trade unionist. He was a whole-timer of the undivided Communist Party of India for many years. He is no longer alive.

What requires special mention is how I got involved in journalistic writing in the first place. After my release from jail at the end of 1970 I was searching for an identity to carry on social activities without being branded as a Naxal. I began to organize trade union movement almost as a whole-timer, without any remuneration of course, first in the CESC and then in a limited way in the West Bengal State Electricity Board.

I was the secretary of the CESC Contractors' Mazdoor Samity [CESC Contractors' Labor Union]. Harenda — Haren Mukherjee — was the president of the union. One day somewhat casually I read an article in the EPW [Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai] regarding contract labor engaged in ‘grass-rope' making in Gujarat. It was a short piece but it provoked me to write an article on the plight of the contract workers in the CESC. So I sent a very short piece to the EPW without bothering about whether they would publish it or not. After a few weeks, one of my friends, a regular EPW reader, informed me that they carried my article. Later, I sent the article to Frontier as well through Anrudh, and Samar Babu too published it without delay. Incidentally, the Delhi-based Call, the Central Organ of the RSP, also reproduced it with due acknowledgement to the EPW. So I began to think the unthinkable — a label of a freelance journalist could be a good identity to carry on political activities. I requested Krishna Raj, the editor of the EPW, to send me a copy of the magazine in which my article had appeared. Pat came the reply with the request for writing on labor. I began to write almost regularly for the EPW, mostly on labor issues.

My EPW pieces created a lot of controversy, attracting rejoinder after rejoinder, court cases and all that. As usual I used to send some articles to Frontier as well.

One day I summoned courage and went to the Frontier office at 61, Mott Lane. At that time, only Samar Babu was there. After a brief discussion over this and that he asked me to contribute short commentaries, though he appreciated my EPW articles. So I began to write commentaries. Not that all of them were published. I was producing short write-ups in abundance, like a madman while exposing political bankruptcy of the CPM and their misrule. On one occasion he clubbed together three of my short pieces and made it a column — Calcutta Notebook. Well, in the initial days, Frontier ran a regular column Calcutta Diary. Ashok Mitra, a former finance minister of West Bengal, India, and Gyan Kapur used to pen it alternately.

In those days Bhabani Babu — Bhabani Chaudhury — was working as a part-time helping hand of Samar Babu. Proof-reading apart, he used to contribute edits and comments. After all he had a professional background with The Statesman. Bhabani Babu said, Calcutta Notebook being a column, should be published every week without any break. After that I didn't look back. Calcutta Notebook became a regular feature, and it was well-taken by readers. Samar Babu once said that foreigners who used to visit Frontier office in those days would invariably inquire about Calcutta Notebook and its writer. Notebook ‘in good measure' drew attention of Asoke Mitra (ICS), Samar Babu's close friend as he wrote about it in his write-up on “Samar Sen” in the commemorative volume The Truth Unites, edited by another Ahsok Mitra.

What troubled me most was how Samar Babu despite his weak health and advanced age had to manage a lot of official work as the structural arrangement of Frontier was somewhat complicated. And it is still so. Well, it is a Private Limited Company — Germinal Publications Pvt. Ltd. Germinal owns Frontier and Germinal is run by a board of directors as per the Company Law. In reality Frontier itself has no independent existence of its own, at least technically and legally. And Private Limited Joint Stock Company means all the mandatory compulsions of Company Law. Law is always against the weak and the small. Big shots don't bother about it. Annual Return to the ROC (Registrar of Companies), Income Tax Return, Trade License, Annual Audit, proper maintenance of account books and ledger, regular recording of minutes of the meetings of the Board of Directors, all these were a real headache for Samar Babu. As Frontier, or for that matter Germinal could not afford to employ a full-time office executive to look after company related affairs, Samar Babu himself had to spend a lot of time to keep company-related matters updated. Moreover, once Samar Babu said, somewhat disgusted, that his creativity would be finished because of the boring job of proof-reading. So I voluntarily began to share his agony and workload while continuing to write regularly and managing the printing press as well. In short I became a full-timer for Frontier, without any salary of course. As for personal expenses private tuition and freelancing in the EPW, and later in Business Standard (at that time it was an Ananda Bazar Group of publication) saved me.

Well, I was in my early thirties at that time. That is really not the point at issue. Many people, young and old, used to visit Frontier office and passionately inquired about Samar Babu's health, Frontier's condition, and so on and so forth, but nobody really came forward to help him in a positive way by offering their free service and suggesting practical steps to raise funds.

Q: Samar Sen, founder-editor of Frontier, was there when you got involved with the weekly. Tell us about some of your more interesting experiences besides the routine jobs at Frontier.

A: Professor Ruth Glass used to visit India once a year. She had some special interest in the Left Front rule in West Bengal, rather the communist experiment in a bourgeois set-up. After each visit, she used to write a comprehensive report “India Diary”. And she was well-known to Jyoti Basu, the former chief minister, Ashok Mitra and others. As she was always a state guest, Raj Bhavan, the state governor's official house, was her temporary residence. She would invariably like to discuss political issues with Frontier, with a hope to understand our line of criticisms and arguments against the Left Front rule — or miss-rule. So I had to go to Raj Bhavan, and face her questions as Samar Babu was not very interested in such interviews. Barbara Scriber of Germany once made an appointment with Jyoti Basu to assess the social-democratic experiment in Bengal for her report to be published in Germany. So, before meeting Jyoti Basu, she came to our office and discussed at length about the past, present and future of the Left Front rule.     

The French Consul General, posted in Calcutta, once came to our office to discuss political issues and understand the cross-currents in this part of the globe. His earlier assignment was in Japan. He was surprised to notice how Frontier was criticizing Government of India's policy towards China against the backdrop of the India-China border clash. He admitted frankly that no French journal would take such risk by criticizing their government when the issue involved a foreign country and that too in respect of the sensitive border dispute. He invited us to his office for free discussion. Samar Babu asked me to go to the French consulate and face the situation. So I had to oblige the grand old man. He was a nice fellow. Incidentally I have forgotten his name. I was somewhat shocked to know that he was about to form his opinion on Bengal, based on reports published in second grade local vernacular dailies.  Anyway we spent more than an hour discussing Bengal, Communist Left and related topics. Frontier means voice of dissent, and they counted on it. One deputy Consul General from the Russian Consulate [in those days it was the Soviet Consulate] used to visit our office frequently to go through old volumes of Frontier as he was studying for a doctoral degree on communist movement in India. He was to submit his thesis to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in a year or two. And I had to take the trouble of briefing him about the on-going trends in the communist movement in India, the impact of Naxalism on the movement, and all that.

Q: What was the condition of Frontier at the time?

A: Well, financially ours was a case of hand to mouth existence. The same tradition continues unabated. Always surviving on a shoe-string budget! Most of the old writers deserted us. New writers were not emerging. Samar Babu was reluctant to talk to people who were distancing themselves consciously or unconsciously from Frontier. But I began to meet them separately, and requested them to contribute to Frontier and sought their suggestions for the rejuvenation of Frontier. Amiya K Bagchi, Asoke Mitra (ICS), Ashok Rudra, Ranjit Sau — I discussed Frontier with them. Almost a door to door campaign! Ashok Rudra used to stay at the Indian Statistical Institute (Baranagar) for 2-3 days a week. I made an arrangement so that he could write an editorial comment regularly.

Incidentally Samar Babu was so frustrated that he began to think over the worst scenario —closure. And at the end of 1979, once he was seriously pondering over the heading of his last editorial — “Enough is Enough”. I asked him not to write the obituary. And, from that point, I started to organize or reorganize. Initially, Probodh Dutta, a fanatic admirer of Samar Sen and a shareholder of Germinal helped me in reorganizing. He knew most of Samar Babu's friends and important writers personally. He used to accompany me whenever I went to someone's house for Frontier.            

Q: Please tell the way Samar da used to work as the editor of Frontier, the hardship he braved, the way he encountered those burning and bleeding times.

A: Samar Babu used to do most of the subbing [editing] and writing at home as I do now. At office he had to do proof-reading, public relations, some office work and a little bit of editorial work. At that time Bhabani Babu was also there. His main job was proof-reading and writing editorials, but not every week.

In those days Calcutta was crowded no doubt, but it was still not so difficult for old people to travel. Samar Babu used to travel in trams. It was convenient for him to reach office. Generally he remained in office for two hours unless there was some emergency work. Before my arrival he used to stay a bit longer. In fact disruption in tram services made his home to office journey troublesome.

Q: What were the circumstances that led you to the editorship of Frontier?

A: In the eighties we developed an editorial team, and Samar Babu got some breathing space. Partha Chatterjee, Sushil Khanna, Anjan Ghosh, Rudranshu Mukherjee, Swapan Dasgupta (The Statesman), Arindam Ghosh-Dastidar (The Statesman) were the main contributors.

Samar Babu was keeping indifferent health, and he somewhat hurriedly finished his autobiography — Babubrittanta (A Babu's Tale). He had to spend a month or so in hospital. One day Bhabani Babu asked Samar Babu to think over the future of Frontier, because his health was not permitting to take so much stress. He was very anxious about the continuity of Frontier after Samar Sen. His suggestion was plain and straight. He asked Samar Babu to popularize my name at least as an official of Frontier on the front page.

Samar Babu was already working on that plan, which I realized later. As Samar Babu was very soft-spoken, he didn't elaborate his idea to anybody. For quite some time in a planned way he was introducing me to his relatives, family members and very close friends like Asoke Mitra (ICS), Debi Chattopadhyay ( of Lokayat fame), Debu Chatterjee (industrialist), Santi Roy (documentary film maker), Kiranmoy Raha (a prominent activist of the film society movement and the holder of subscriber No. 1 position, which was a kind of honor he enjoyed), Khitish Chandra Das (Samar Babu's cousin and a banker, their family was one of the owners of pre-nationalized UBI) and many others. Well, it was K C Das who actually structured Frontier's (rather Germinal's) organizational set up. Once he told me that he was “not happy about Samar's appeal in the pages of Frontier for financial help''. He was a company man and he wanted to run it as a company. They could not foresee the possibility of bank nationalization so early. He arranged over-draft facilities for Frontier just over phone. That was before the nationalization. Samar Babu didn't have to face any procedural hazards in bank matters. Perhaps K C Das's plan was to secure massive bank loans and modernize Frontier with an elegant office and a printing press of its own. And private limited company was ideal for it. At the start he was also on the Board of Directors. Germinal's Memorandum & Articles of Association has enough scope to diversify business in areas other than publication of journals. Export, import, manufacturing... what not!

That Samar Babu was slowly but steadily preparing ground for shifting a greater responsibility to me became clear later. Robi da — Robi Sen, a Frontier's man for all seasons, also confirmed it. Asoke Mitra (ICS) gave some hint about it in his piece on Samar Sen in the volume (The Truth Unites). Also, Debi Chattopadhyay, at a function at the Calcutta Book Fair, on the occasion of releasing some books of Samar Babu's poems (Reprints) by Anustup, told me about it. He said ‘Samar used to show unusual restlessness and panic' if some day I remained absent in office even due to illness.

One day I found my name was printed as assistant editor below Samar Babu's name. Frankly speaking, I never thought of it, but Bhabani Babu heaved an audible sigh of relief. It was in 1983. In 1985, Samar Babu became seriously ill — perhaps a wrong diagnosis complicated the problem — and I had to look after everything, i.e., every aspect of Frontier production. After the demise of Samar Sen in 1987, the Board of Directors of Germinal — Robi Sen (Samar Babu's cousin) and Anil Sen (Samar Babu's younger brother) — decided to appoint me as the acting editor of Frontier. After a few weeks, I was declared by the Board as a full-fledged Editor of Frontier. Yes, in terms of years I have long surpassed Samar Babu's tenure.

Q: How do you compare the days of Frontier between the days of Spring Thunder and now?

A: The days of “Spring Thunder” were turbulent. After all “Naxalbari” galvanized an entire generation for a radical change. Even bank employees and insurance agents ignoring their comfort zone were discussing revolution. Students and scholars were leaving colleges and universities, they were restless. Mao motivated a large number of young men and women to sacrifice their career; they went to villages to serve the grassroots masses and get integrated with them. As Frontier tried to chronicle the spirit and momentum of that era, quite naturally the magazine Samar Sen founded and ran in a humble way, became a source of inspiration to many.

But things are poles apart today. Nobody is seriously talking about revolution. Nor are they interested in revisiting the failed revolution. This is the basic difference between then and now. Social movements independent of party control are emerging across the world, challenging the system and status quo. Activists who are in the forefront do not have a long-term perspective. Their language of revolt has so far failed to the attract attention of the masses. It's localism all the way! The issue of social change and liberation of the oppressed sometimes becomes bizarre and vague. Unless new slogans to attract the imagination of the young emerge, the situation won't change for the better. Frontier's crisis in a sense reflects the crisis of stagnation in revolutionary thoughts.

[Excerpted from an interview taken for Frontier online on January 19, 2016. Rabin Chakraborty is associated with Frontier editing its online edition, and while Farooque Chowdhury is a freelancer from Dhaka.]