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Of dharma and Ramayan
Academic, writer and cultural activist Jatin Sarkar talks to Sanam Amin about his childhood enclosed in books and the numerous concerns that keep him busy long after retirement
photo by Momena Jalil
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‘I am khash geyo,’ Jatin Sarkar says, writing down a phone number on paper instead of saving it in his cell phone. He is entirely dependent on his daughter for doing that; currently, however, he is staying at his sister’s flat in Dhaka’s Bhuter Goli, where a wide range of visitors come to greet him, from writers to students to journalists. His phone rings at the elapse of every ten minutes. It is not always for him, though; one phone call is from the mother of someone who travelled with him to Dhaka, asking to speak to her son.
The 71-year-old, who has been the recipient of many literary awards over the years, the last one being the 2007 Bangla Academy Award, has spent most of his life in his home district of Netrokona. ‘But I have travelled all over Bangladesh. I know the village life, the farmers’ life and their psychology. These things aren’t written and don’t seem to have historical value, but who knows? There are things in my books that academics wouldn’t understand.’
Born on August 18, 1936, Sarkar was the eldest of three children — two brothers and a sister, all of whom are now retired and settled in different parts. ‘My parents had a daughter before me,’ he says, ‘but she died as a child, and my family was very anxious about having an heir to carry on the family line and name.’ His grandparents were so worried about losing him as a child that they shut him up indoors and didn’t let him go outside to play for fear of some fatal accident. ‘I was surrounded, entrapped by books,’ he laughs. He read Bangla classics as a child, from the writings of Bankim Chandra and Michael Madhusudan Dutta to the epic Ramayana.
Today, however, he sees the same works in a different, more critical light. ‘Michael Madhusudan, in a letter, said that “I despise Rama and his rebels.” He rather admires the character of Ravan, whom he calls a “grand fellow”. From my perspective, the importance of Ravan’s character is nothing new. There is much in the original text that supports this view; Madhusudan’s interpretation is not as strange as it seems.’ In fact, after Ravan’s defeat in the epic, Rama comes to the dying Ravan and placed his palms together to say ‘namaskar’. ‘Rama needed Ravan’s advice to rule,’ Sarkar says. ‘It was Ravan who, as he was dying, said that as there was little time he could only give two simple pieces of advice: when you have the opportunity to do shubha kaj, the right thing, do it right away and do not ponder over it and postpone it. Ravan gave the example of himself and the things he could have done to preserve his kingdom. Instead, he had dedicated his efforts to unnecessary things, wrongdoing that eventually brought about his demise.’ The advice from a mythical demon holds true for any system of government in the real world.
He has been writing steadily for decades and has been a teacher even longer, since his first teaching job at Ashulia College, at Netrokona, in 1957. In his words, ‘ami school mastery kori’, his last post was at Nasirabad College, Netrokona, where he taught for nearly 40 years, from 1964 till retirement in 2002.
Though Sarkar retired six years ago he finds his life busier than ever. ‘People ask me, now that I’m retired, how do I pass the time? I tell them that I don’t have time! People keep coming to see me, calling me, and I’m involved in so many different things.’ He has been twice elected president of the Bangladesh Udichi Shilpi Gosthi, a cultural organisation that has in the past frequently spoken out against ‘chaotic politics’ and militarism. He started a magazine, Shomaj o Orthonithir Rastro, which has so far been through only one issue. ‘There was supposed to be another issue now, but staying in Netrokona, there’s a limit to how much you can do,’ Sarkar says. He has never been involved in journalism outside of this one magazine.
He has two children, a son, Sumon Sarkar, and a daughter, Sudipta Sarkar. Sarkar is quite entertained by his three granddaughters and one grandson, although he does not get to see his son’s children too often, as Sumon lives in Slovakia and is married to a Slovakian woman. Sarkar himself visited Slovakia a few years ago to visit his family and also touched base with other parts of Eastern Europe and London as part of a cultural initiative from Udichi Shilpi Gosthi.
Many concerns occupy him and he frequently takes part in seminars and conferences on a variety of topics. He shared with me a speech that he would be making, based on folk religion that picks up a thread that Rabindranath Tagore once voiced — that dharma cannot be translated as ‘religion’ or vice-versa. ‘This is something I support strongly and always bring up,’ Sarkar says. ‘Dharma is a much wider, much bigger concept than religion, which cannot simply be seen as a question of Hinduism or Islam. But what about the expressions “tor dharma shorbe na” or “apne amar dharmer ma” — here you cannot translate dharma as religion. What about “dokhon kora hochhe aguner dharma” — do you translate that as “burning is a religion of fire”? It doesn’t make any sense! There is no word in Bangla that conveys the meaning of the English word “religion”, which is from the Latin root of “religio”, meaning “bond”. Religion answers the questions of life and life after death, the supernatural if you will. Dharma is used to convey that, for lack of a better word. But similarly, no word in English will truly convey the meaning of dharma.’
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