વિપુલભાઈના નિબંધોની ખાસિયત એ છે કે એ લલિત નિબંધની માયામાં ફસાયા નથી. એ વિચારપ્રધાન નિબંધમાં ‘માઇલસ્ટોન’ – માર્ગસૂચક સ્તંભ બની શકે એમ છે

વિપુલ કલ્યાણીના ડાયસ્પોરા નિબંધોનું બળવંત જાનીએ કરેલું સંપાદન વાચતાં પ્રશ્ન થાય. વિપુલભાઈ ડાયસ્પોરા લેખનની સીમિત વ્યાખ્યામાં બંધાય એવા છે ખરા? નિરંજન ભગત તો ડાયસ્પોરાને વિસ્થાપિતોનું લેખન કહે છે, જ્યારે બળવંત જાની નોંધે છે. ‘દેશ’ સાથે જેમનો ગહન સંબંધ છે, ‘પરદેશ’ જેમની નિયતિ છે એવો વૈશ્વિક પટ પર પથરાયેલો પ્રજાસમૂહ ‘ડાયસ્પોરા’ની ઓળખ પામ્યો છે. ‘ડાયસ્પોરા’ હકીકતે તો બે પ્રક્રિયા સૂચવે છે. એક વિખૂટા પડવાની વ્યથાની અનુભૂતિનો વિસ્તાર અને બીજું સ્થાયી થવાની જીવનરીતિ (પૃ. 17, વિપુલ કલ્યાણીના ડાયસ્પોરા નિબંધો)

મારી છાપ એવી છે કે વિપુલભાઈ વિસ્થાપિત મનોદશાના કે ઘર ઝુરાપાના માણસ નથી. એ આયોજન અને સંગઠનના માણસ છે. ‘અમે વિશ્વના ગુજરાતી, આપણો એક થવાનો યોગ’ નામના નિબંધમાં એ સ્વામી સચ્ચિદાનંદનું અવતરણ ટાંકે છે. આપણી પાસે સંખ્યા છે, પણ સરવાળો નથી, જ્ઞાન છે પણ દૃષ્ટિ નથી, પૈસો છે પણ આયોજન નથી. એટલે છતી શક્તિએ શૂન્ય છીએ.’ ગાંધી વિચારની ગળથૂથી પામેલા આ પત્રકાર બ્રિટનની ગુજરાતી લિટરરી એકેડેમીના કર્મઠ અગ્રણી તો ગુજરાતી સાહિત્ય પરિષદ જેવી સંસ્થાઓને દિશાનિર્દેશ કરતા પત્રકાર છે. અમેરિકાવાસી મધુસૂદન કાપડિયા જેમ ગુજરાતીના ઉત્તમ વિવેચક છે તેમ વિપુલ કલ્યાણી બ્રિટનમાં રહીને ભાષાસાહિત્યની પ્રવૃત્તિઓ વિકસાવતા અને હવે ટકાવી રાખતા કર્મશીલ સારસ્વત છે.

સાહિત્યિક પત્રકારત્વના ક્ષેત્રે પ્રદાન કરનાર બે જ વ્યક્તિઓનાં નામ યાદ કરવાં હોય તો એક છે અમેરિકાના ગુર્જરી ડાયજેસ્ટના સંપાદક કિશોર દેસાઈ અને બીજા આ વિપુલ કલ્યાણી. અશોક મેઘાણી ગુજરાતી કૃતિઓના અંગ્રેજી અનુવાદ માટે ખ્યાતિ પામ્યા એ ખરું, પણ રામ ગઢવીના પ્રમુખસ્થાને ચાલતી ત્યાંની અકાદમીના વાર્ષિક મુખપત્રને ઘાટ આપવામાં અશોકભાઈનો નોંધપાત્ર ફાળો છે. ગુજરાતીના લાડીલા સર્જક મધુરાય ત્યાં બેઠા છે. ગઝલકાર જનાબ આદિલ મન્સૂરીનો તરવરાટ છેક સુધી અનુભવાતો. અમેરિકામાં ગુજરાતી ભાષા શિક્ષણનું કામ અક્ષર પુરુષોત્તમ સંસ્થા કરે છે તો બ્રિટનમાં વિપુલભાઈના નેજા નીચે ડો. જગદીશ દવેના સંચાલનમાં ગુજરાતી ભાષાશિક્ષણ અને પરીક્ષણનું વ્યવસ્થિત કામ ઘણાંએ જોયું છે. બ્રિટનમાં લેખન અને વાચનને પોષતાં ગ્રંથાલયો પણ છે. સરકાર બિનશરતી મદદ કરે છે.

ભાષા, સાહિત્ય, સંસ્કૃિત અને ગાંધી મૂલ્યોના આધારે વૈશ્વિક કક્ષાએ લોકશાહી પરિબળોનો અભ્યાસ એ આ નિબંધોની સામગ્રી છે. વિપુલભાઈએ પોતાના વિચારપત્રનું નામ ‘ઓપિનિયન’ રાખ્યું, અેમ કરવાનો એમને હક હતો, આફ્રિકાનું ટાન્ઝાનિયા એમનું જન્મસ્થાન (1940) ત્યાં અને જામનગર-મુંબઈમાં ઉચ્ચ શિક્ષણ મેળવ્યું. ભારત અને બ્રિટનમાં કામ કર્યું. ઘર જેટલું પોતાના માટે એથી વધુ મહેમાનો માટે, કુંજબહેનનો એમાં સવાયો સાથ. ઘસાઈને ઊજળો થયેલો આ પરિવાર ક્યાં ય કશું ય અઘટિત લાગે તો ઊછળી પડે. વિવાદમાં ઉગ્રતા, સંબંધમાં પ્રેમ, ગુજરાતના બધા અગ્રણી લેખકોનું આતિથ્ય કર્યું છે અને ‘દર્શકે’ તો એમનું આતિથ્ય માણવા બીજો અવતાર લેવાનો સંકલ્પ કર્યો હોય તો નવાઈ નહીં.

વિપુલભાઈના નિબંધોની ખાસિયત એ છે કે વિશ્વના ચિંતકોનાં અવતરણ આપીને એ પોતાના મુદ્દાનું સમર્થન કરે છે. એ લલિત નિબંધની માયામાં ફસાયા નથી. એ વિચારપ્રધાન નિબંધમાં ‘માઇલસ્ટોન’ – માર્ગસૂચક સ્તંભ બની શકે એમ છે. ‘મશાલો સાવ બૂઝી, તેલ ખૂટ્યું, વાત થઈ પૂરી’ એ નિબંધના સમાપનમાં એમણે આપેલાં અવતરણો આજેય લાલબત્તી ધરે છે: સને 1921માં ગાંધીજીએ નવજીવનમાં લખેલું:

‘મારું ઘર બધી બાજુએ ઊભી દીવાલોથી ઢંકાયેલું રહે અને એની બારીઓ અને બાકોરાં બંધ કરી દેવામાં આવે એ હું નથી ઇચ્છતો. મારા ઘરની આસપાસ દેશ દેશાવરની સંસ્કૃિતનો પવન સુસવાતો રહે એમ જ હું ઇચ્છું છું, પણ તે પવનથી મારી ધરતી ઉપરથી મારા પગ ફગી જાય અને હું ઊથલી પડું એ હું નથી ઇચ્છતો.’ (પૃ. 68)

સૌજન્ય : ‘સાહિત્ય વિશેષ’, ‘રસરંગ’ પૂર્તિ, “દિવ્ય ભાસ્કર”, 22 નવેમ્બર 2015

http://www.divyabhaskar.co.in/news/MAG-sahitya-visesh-by-raghuvir-chaudhri-in-sunday-bhaskar-5175140-NOR.html

We tell the untold story of the women and children from the Indian subcontinent who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. Many remember arriving with little more than £3 in their pockets because of currency restrictions imposed by their governments back home. Kavita Puri hears the story of the pioneer women of this three-pound generation: their first impressions of Britain, the unlikely friendships, and their struggles at work. And we learn how in 1966 when England won the World Cup, these women were more excited by Miss India winning Miss World; which they said, put Indian women on the map!

Suresh Grover's family came to the UK from Kenya in 1966 for a better life and a British education. But what he saw and heard growing up in the 1970s changed him. (This article contains language that some readers might find offensive.)

Suresh was a child when he arrived. His father was highly educated and had worked in the civil service. But in Nelson, in Lancashire, the only job available to Asians was factory work, which he did in shifts – day and night.

And there were plenty of moments of overt racism.

"Our woodwork teacher would openly call us wogs. All the kids laughed," says Suresh. He went to the local comprehensive where he was known as Billy.

"Suresh was a foreign name and they didn't want to call me by it."

Suresh Grover grew up in Lancashire in the 60s and 70s

Suresh remembers how his schoolmates reminded him of his difference on a daily basis.

"Somebody would pick a fight and everybody would surround you and so you had no option but to defend yourself. Every break time, there'd be a sense of a fight."

And every journey home contained the potential of trouble.

"They knew you'd be passing, you'd be surrounded and again you'd have to fight. My first reaction was to be totally frightened. I would try and argue with them that I am a Hindu and I don't fight because of Mahatma Gandhi."

He lets out a belly laugh as he recalls the scene. "It's ridiculous. They just laughed and smacked me one."

Suresh believes that he never became "anti-white" as there were always small gestures of kindness throughout his childhood.

One act of solidarity sticks out clearly in his mind. Suresh recollects a long period of time when no-one would sit next to him in class.

One day three white girls came up to his desk asking to sit next to him. He was shocked by their action. Then one of them asked if he'd like to go out with her.

"I said why do you want to go out with a Paki? So I reacted in a bad way. I understood her act of kindness but I was too angry to think – do you really want to go out with a Paki? Which is, are you really willing to suffer the consequences?"

He never took her up on her offer. "No I didn't go out with her. I will always remember her and I wish I would meet her again because I want to thank her for it."

When the early pioneers from the Indian subcontinent came over to post-war Britain many remember being met with curiosity. Kulwant Sehli arrived in 1954 with £3 – the maximum amount you could bring from India because of strict currency controls.

Children seeing Kulwant's turban would affectionately call him the Maharaja. He says racist incidents were extremely rare in the 1950s. But by the 1970s they occurred almost every time he left the house.

In the early 1950s there were around 43,000 South Asians in Britain. But by the beginning of the 1970s the numbers had increased to around half a million – because of family reunions and Asians fleeing East Africa. Immigration became a politically charged issue. And around the UK, the National Front were on the rise.

Suresh Grover pinpoints 1973 as a time when things got worse in Nelson, as the skinheads arrived. He recalls vividly his encounter with them one Saturday night when he and his nephew were at the cinema to watch the latest Clint Eastwood movie.

A gang of skinheads came up to the pair, broke his nephew's jaw, and stabbed Suresh. He went to the police station and saw a senior officer. Suresh says no incident report or statement was taken and the policeman never followed up the attack. "I knew I was different and I knew they would not accept me. You realise your lives are very cheap and that burns you inside and it actually hurts you and it makes you angry."

A photo taken shortly after Suresh was attacked

Suresh's father had lived through the violence of partition in 1947 which divided India and saw the birth of Pakistan. His first reaction was that Suresh – a Hindu – must have been stabbed by a Muslim. "My father could never understand why a British person would stab me, he would think it was another Asian person. He believed in British people – he knew that was not true but he had to believe it to survive in a place like Nelson."

Suresh had enough and left Nelson for good. He went to college for a year in Burnley and then moved to Southall, West London.

He was shocked by the number of Indians there. But then an event occurred which changed his life. His political awakening occurred in a busy part of Southall's High Street.

On 4 June 1976, Suresh, then aged 22, came across a pool of blood on the pavement. He asked a police officer standing by it what had happened and was told someone had died the previous night – he remembers his exact words – it was just an Asian.

Suresh was furious at the policeman's dismissive attitude. He went to get a piece of red cloth to cover the blood. He put bricks around it so no-one would walk on it, as a sign of respect. He erected a makeshift sign saying someone had died.

Suresh didn't even know at that point who it was. But by the evening everyone knew the victim's name. Gurdip Singh Chaggar. The 18-year-old student had been murdered by racists. Suresh and hundreds of his generation took to the streets in protest. The blood on the pavement had still not been cleared.

Asian community leaders head a procession through Southall after the stabbing of Gurdip Singh Chaggar, 1976

"It was the first time young people – mainly Asians but with a sprinkling of African-Caribbean people from Southall – took to the streets and organised themselves as a youth movement against racial violence and police harassment in Southall," says Suresh. "The older generation were totally bewildered and fearful of what we were capable of. They were really frightened of what the police would do to us."

Many from the first generation had kept their heads down when confronted with abuse. Gurhurpal Singh, a second-generation migrant, grew up in Leicester. He was at school and university in the 1970s and is now a professor at SOAS in London.

"I think the first generation were generally not very reactive. They were inclined to be unresponsive to acts of violence and discrimination or take it in their stride. They felt that they were visitors in this country."

When Chaggar died, Kulwant Sehli had been living in England for 22 years, well over half his life. He says his generation had to be "deaf and dumb to racist abuse", but he understood why his children's generation reacted as they did to violence and abuse and fought back. "Why should they be told go home? This is their home."

After Gurdip Singh Chaggar's death Suresh Grover became one of the founding members of the Southall Asian Youth Movement. Similar groups sprung up across the country.

Their slogan was: "Come what may, we are here to stay."

"We were British Asians with black politics and we wanted to unite people to combat the issue of racism," says Suresh. He remembers at that time there were no divisions between the South Asian community. "We realised religion, ethnicity, identity had no role or significance in what we were doing, so those issues didn't come up."

Suresh found himself at the centre of events again three years later when, weeks before the 1979 General Election, the National Front decided to hold a meeting in Southall's town hall.

Thousands – mainly Asians – but also anti-racist supporters took to the streets in protest. Suresh was in the middle of it all.

He witnessed a white priest defending an old woman with an umbrella who had been hit by a policeman with a truncheon. "The priest got charged with threatening behaviour," says Suresh.

But the death of one man, a New Zealand-born teacher – Blair Peach – protesting against the National Front, would become iconic. Gurhurpal Singh was watching these events on television as a university student.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Blair Peach's death

Blair Peach's coffin being carried during his funeral

• Clement Blair Peach (1946-1979) was a white New Zealand-born teacher who was killed during an Anti-Nazi League demonstration against the National Front in Southall

• Died from injuries to the head, and a jury recorded verdict of death by misadventure; his partner, Celia Stubbs campaign for many years for public inquiry into his death

• In 2010 a Metropolitan Police report admitted that one of its officers was probably responsible for Peach's death

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

He believes the events in Southall following the death of Gurdip Singh Chaggar and Blair Peach were a turning point for South Asian communities across the country.

"The significance of 1976 and 1979 is extremely important because Southall was one area where the Asian community was settled in large numbers and right-wing groups were deliberately intent on provoking a reaction and that reaction came in a very strong way, in response, to the death of Blair Peach and it also drew a red line – we won't take this."

For Suresh these were pivotal events not only for him but also many of his generation. He is now a prominent anti-racism campaigner.

Back in the late 1970s he came to a conclusion which still guides him.

"We are likely to die in this country. We don't have a place we can call home like our elders, which is going back to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. We want to live as equal citizens. So if it means staying and fighting that's what we have to do and we're not going to give an inch to that."

Suresh's and other stories can be heard in Three Pounds In My Pocket (series two) at 11:00 BST on 5, 12, and 19 August on BBC Radio 4.

Producer Smita Patel

Editor Bridget Harney.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ws7gm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xgslp

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03y3kgl

courtesy : BBC Radio 4, Three Pounds In My Pocket

Book review — Revenge : Bio-terrorism unleased, Partridge India (Associate Penguin USA) 2013; Author : Navin Vibhakar

Ullug is a brilliant scientist who leaves his homeland in Uzbekistan for further studies in Moscow. There he meets Dr Khoshev who takes him under his wings, and together they go to a remote reserve at the border of Congo and Tanzania to research on chimpanzees. They find some of the monkeys are infected with a terrible disease that leaves them dead after just three days. They collect blood samples, and leave quickly and furtively, without telling anyone, not even an English researcher who was also working on the same primates. Thus begins a journey of secrecy and mystery that the author, Navin Bhai Vibhakar plots adeptly with the pen of a veteran novelist. Trained as a doctor, Navin Bhai Vibhakar is able to clearly explain the medical procedures in a story in which the transmission, preservation and effect of the Ebola virus plays a central role.

Navin Bhai is a well-known Gujarati writer with 40 published books to his name and many short stories that have appeared in magazines such as Akhand Anand and Kumar. Born in East Africa, he holds the covetous Parishad Award from Gujarat’s most respected Sahitya Academy. Revenge: Bio-terrorism unleased, is the English translation of Navin Bhai’s award winning book that was first released in Gujarati bearing the title Virus. In 2012 the novel claimed 2nd prize from Sahitya Academy from among literally thousands of competitive writers of Gujarat. This state in India has a vibrant reading culture. To win a literary award in a society that cherishes its rich literary heritage is no small achievement for a writer. Hundreds of new novelists and books appear each year in Gujarat with a population of forty million and a high literacy rate of nearly 80%. There are tens of Gujarati laureates who have been honoured by such famed academies as Gujarat Vidhya Sabha, Gujarat Sahitya Sabha and Gujarati Sahitya Parishad.  Libraries abound in every small town, a tradition that the Gujaratis carried to East Africa. Today, wherever they settle, Gujaratis have a library set up within the temple, the derasar and the jamat khana premises.

The history of Gujarati written literature is grouped in three periods or yoogs. The ancient yoog starts from around AD 1000 while the Medieval Yoog is counted as four centuries from 1450 to 1850. The Modern Yoog, within which Virus (Revenge) falls, is from 1850 to the present.  Each yoog is then sub-grouped or has minor yoogs that reflect on the spiritual, intellectual or political character of the time. For example, the Medieval Yoog (1450-1850) is characterized by the poetry, songs and stories of spiritual awakening in three sub-yoogs: Bhakti, Sagun and Nirgun. The most recent sub-category of the Modern Yoog is from 1985 and is also known as Anu-Adunik Yoog.  This sub-category includes literature relating to social themes such women’s issues in Gujarat, some written from feminist perspectives, and the lot and struggles of the Dalit undercaste Gujaratis. Virus has already made a name as a book of literary merit of our time. The novel may add Terrorism to the growing body of Anu-Adunik Yoog – a contribution that Dr Navin Vibhakar brings to Gujarati writing of the Modern Age. But Virus also belongs to the new and growing group of Gujarati Diaspora Literature. In fact, Gujarati Diaspora Literature is the largest of all the other Indian languages outside of India. This is according to Dr Balvant Jani, a prominent scholar of Gujarati literature at the University of Saurashtra. http://www.generallyaboutbooks.com/2011/05/gujarati-diaspora-literature.html  It’s so large that Dr Jani compiled an anthology of Gujarati Diaspora Literature that led to the establishment of Gardi Research Institute for Diaspora Studies or GRIDS as it is called. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v  It remains to be seen how the Diaspora literature will be named in the Yoogs. Will it merge into the Modern Yoog as a sub-group or will it be called literature of the Diaspora Yoog in a separate category in its own right? With thousands of Gujaratis in the 21^st Century living as third and fourth generations on almost all the continents on the planet, this may justify a separate category of the Diaspora Yoog.

The story of Revenge moves as seamlessly in the Diaspora as does terrorism. It affirms what one sees on TV channels and reads in newspapers. Revenge reminded me of the Reluctant Fundamentalist, a novel by the Pakistani writer, Mohsin Hamid (2007). 

While the Reluctant Fundamentalist  moves between two countries, that is the USA and Pakistan, and there is a ‘manageable’ number of characters, Revenge journeys across many. Some of the countries traversed in Revenge are Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Russia, the Congo, USA, England and the Caribbean. Then there are as many characters set in family, work and love lives as there are the countries they live in. Truly that’s the global range of terrorism today that is not confined to any one country, social group, ethnicity or profession. One may think this would make a complicated reading but it’s not so because Navin Bhai Vibhakhar writes flawlessly through the geographies and the lives of the characters whose names like Zeba Khalid and Mulla Maqsood bear witness to their ethnic background and beliefs. While both the names sound Muslim, Zeba is an America FBI agent and Mulla Maqsood is a committed terrorist. Hence the message: One cannot judge a person by her/his religion or name. The two characters in the book are as different in their outlooks as they can get. One is a loyal American citizen and the other sees his loyalty to his religion as being above all.

The book in fact begins with a prologue on jihad – what is said in the Quran and how it is misinterpreted. The story then traverses landscapes and networks of terrorists plying through lives of families and friends on the Diasporic stage as it is in the real world.  But the question that underlies the book is why a young man, a brilliant and honest scientist, a devoted son and a loving husband like Ullug, the protagonist, should turn into a terrorist? While Navin Bhai Vivhakar is not sympathetic to violence that he depicts in gruesome deaths of innocent folk who get infested with the Ebola virus at a village feast in Kazakhstan, he also shows the need for understanding how circumstances can change human beings. Revenge is about how a young Muslim man falls victim to terrorism when embroiled by emotions of loss and humiliation that humans are prone to due to changes in life. The protagonist in the Reluctant Fundamentalist  changed from being a CEO in the USA to a terrorist in Pakistan. The novel in fact has been made into a fine movie by Mira Nair who also made Mississippi Masala that’s about how a Uganda Asian refugee girl’s racial and caste attitudes altered in the USA. Both the movies are about how people act differently when their surroundings change.

Ullug’s loss and humiliation turn to hate and hate to revenge in a country occupied by America. Such a story is not unreal. The Guardian recently reported (May 28^th, 2015) that a US-trained commander, Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov who led the Tajikistan’s special-purpose police force, defected to ISIS. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/28/tajikistan-police-chief-defects-to-isis The Guardian report shows how close to reality is the story in Revenge: Bio-terrorism unleased, which is a work of fiction.

Sultan Somjee is the author of Bead Bai ( http://thebeadbai.blogspot.com/) and curator of the Asian African Heritage Exhibition, National Museums of Kenya 2000 -2005. He was born in Kenya and trained as an ethnographer. He now writes from Vancouver, Canada and teaches how to write from memories.