Reading
Sundarbans beyond the Border: Studies in Soharab Hossain’s Novel Gaang Baghini
Md. Sahinur
Rahaman,
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
Department of English,
Presidency University,
Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Abstract: Most
of the traditional approaches to the Sundarbans Studies relate and reflect the
ecological praxis of the Bengal delta and are limited within the discourses of
its allied areas like the ecological crisis, legends of Bono Bibi and Dokkhin
Rai, issues of sufferings and resistance and the politics of representations.
But the question long neglected in the context is that of the issues of the
partition and the consequences it led to upon the people and the environment
alike. The 1947 Indo-Pakistan partition divided the Sundarbans geographically
with the barbed wire throwing challenges to the dynamics of life in the tide
country. Soharab Hossain’s Bengali novel Gaangbaghini (2011) points this issue
poignantly through the central metaphor of a tiger of the Sundarbans of the
Bangladesh part that struggles hard to cross the sharp bordering wire in search
of his female companion in the Indian part and dies wretchedly mortally
wounded. But the metaphor is stretched beyond this simple connotation in the
novel: the tiger speaks for Adhar, a coastguard in the Sundarbans posted near
the Indo-Bangladesh border who is the protagonist of the novel. Adhar, earlier
a refugee of the 1971 War still harbours his memory of a bleeding past---the
border, the wire and also wounded nostalgia for the land beyond the fence. He
likens himself with the tiger and always seeks to find a home for himself like
it; he dreams to stand under an undivided sky with Kajla, the woman he desires
to be with. But Adhar’s dream is torn apart like the tiger’s, he could not make
it possible fulfill it. Kajla dies and thus ends Adhar’s constant search for an
identity that transcends much beyond his political periphery of nation and
nationality. Apart from this, Soharab’s narrative delves deeper into the dimensions
of time, space, nation and nationality from present to past only to bring out
the Sundarbans more animating and alive from the perspectives of ecology,
anthropology, mythology, history and also the politics of power structures and
identity.
Keywords:
Nation, anthropocene, Sundarbans, nationality, identity
“Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the
myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind's eye. Such an
image of the nation — or narration — might seem impossibly romantic and
excessively metaphorical….” ----- Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: narrating the
nation”, Nation and the Narration
Since
the inception of the history of mankind, nature has had to pay silently
whenever the question of border, partition, nation and nationality has arisen.
If a nation is defined by a state it holds in terms of space and a certain line
bordering it from other nation/s, nature with all its landscapes and resources
must be a factor in its formation. In 1947 when the Indian sub-continent was on
the verge of giving birth to new nations, the Sundarbans, the tide country of
the Bengal delta, was partitioned with sixty percent in the newly defined India
and the rest in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.
The barbed wire divided the salted water, the mangroves and the tigers
of the Sundarbans throwing challenges to the dynamics of life in the tide
country. Most of the traditional approaches to the Sundarbans Studies relate
and reflect the ecological praxis of the Bengal delta and are limited within
the discourses of its allied areas like the ecological crisis, legends of Bono
Bibi and Dokkhin Rai, issues of sufferings and resistance and the politics of
representations. But the question long neglected in the context is that of the
issues of the partition and the consequences it led to upon the people and the
environment alike. The 1947 Indo-Pakistan partition divided the Sundarbans
geographically with the barbed wire throwing challenges to the dynamics of life
in the tide country. Soharab Hossain’s Bengali novel Gaangbaghini (2011) points this issue poignantly through the
central metaphor of a tiger of the Sundarbans of the Bangladesh part that
struggles hard to cross the sharp bordering wire in search of his female
companion in the Indian part and dies wretchedly mortally wounded. The paper seeks to study how Soharab Hossain’s
novel Gaang Baghini poses a vital question to the discourse of nation and
its formation: Does the Sundarbans have really a nationality or can it really
be divided by borders defined and recognized by nations bound by different
political ideologies and strategies?
Hossain’snarrative points
to these issues of nation, nationality and partition poignantly through the
central metaphor of a Royal Bengal tiger of the Bangladeshi Sundarbans that is
seen to struggle hard to cross the sharp bordering wire in search of his female
companion in the Indian part and dies wretchedly mortally wounded. But the
metaphor is stretched beyond this simple connotation in the novel: the tiger
speaks for Adhar, a coastguard in the Sundarbans posted near the
Indo-Bangladesh border who is the protagonist of the novel. Adhar, earlier a
refugee of the 1971 War still harbours his memory of a bleeding past---the
border, the wire and also wounded nostalgia for the land beyond the fence. He
likens himself to the tiger and always seeks to find a home for himself like
it; he dreams to stand under an undivided sky with Kajla, the woman he desires
to be with. But Adhar’s dream is torn apart like the tiger’s, he could not make
it possible fulfill it. Kajla is shot wounded and leaves behind herself a
devastated Adhar. Thus also ends Adhar’s constant search for an identity that
transcends much beyond his political periphery of nation and nationality. Apart
from this, Soharab’s narrative delves deeper into the dimensions of time,
space, nation and nationality from present to past only to bring out the
Sundarbans more animating and alive from the perspectives of ecology,
anthropology, mythology, history and also the politics of power structures and
identity.
Soharab Hossain (1966-2018)is a strong
voice in the Bengali novel in the recent times whose much acclaimed narratives
like Saram Alir Bhuban, Maath Jaadu Jaane, Dahan Bela and Gaang Baghini
are animated with the simple lives of the people from the rural and remote
Bengal, their happiness, sorrows, feelings and the ways of the world. Hossain’s
novels aptly document the plight of the people from the lower and lover middle
classes of society who live amidst struggle, poverty and other adversities of
life. His Gaang Baghinior the Tigress of the Ganges (2011) is his only
novel written in the context of the Sundarbans. In the novel Hossain weaves his
fiction into the labyrinths of waterways and the fragile islands of the tide
country, one of the most dynamic ecological hotspots of the world, home to
thousands of species of both flora and fauna. This article seeks to explore
Hossain’s fictionalized presentation of the issues nation and identity of the
Sundarbans unfolded through the accounts and activities of different characters
with different social and cultural backgrounds in the novel.
Hossain contextualizes his novel into
the remote islands of the Indian Sundarbans near the Indo-Bangladesh border,
such as Chhoto Chamte, Kolom, Dangaduli, Burir Dabri, etc. The local represents
one of the most unique and most diverse biosphere reserves of the world.
Located at the eastern fringes of the Indian subcontinent in the delta region
of Padma, Meghna and Brahmaputra river basins, the Sundarbans is a tropical
mangrove forest expanding through the eastern coastal region of both India and
Bangladesh that covers Khulna, Satkhira, Bagerhat districts of Bangladesh and
South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas districts of West Bengal, India. Measuring
more than ten thousand square kilometers, the Sundarbans is designated as a
UNESCO World Heritage Site and declared a Biosphere Reserve for its exceptional
biodiversity and its constantly changing environment and the way humans live
with it. The Sundarbans is also famous for the fact that it provides home to
the largest remaining natural habitat of 600 Royal Bengal tigers in both the
Indian and Bangladeshi parts. The name “Sunderbans” means “beautiful forest”
named after the sundari tree, Heriteria minor, a species of mangrove. The Sundarbans
is also called Badaban, after the
mangroves, and also known as Bhatir Desh, the tide country, the land of
eighteen tides that has its
mention in historical records of the
Mughal emperors andin Bernier's Travels in the
Mughal Empire. The contours
of land in the Sundarbans are always in a state of flux, as the ebb and flow of
water in the tide country constantly throw challenges to the idea of space for
the people living there. “Muddy sandbars, washed up into existence one moment,
are immediately eaten away if left bare of mangrove vegetation. Thus the
rivers, along with their allies, the tides and storms, continually redesign
island topographies, destroying some parts, adding to others, sometimes
reclaiming them completely only to reassemble them a few kilometers away” (Jalais,
1). Apart from this natural adversity, people are also aware of their
co-existence with the more powerful species like the tigers or crocodiles there
and often find themselves victimized by them and lose their lives. But this
fatal encounter with all these adversities have made them stronger in the face
of challenges both from the surrounding nature and the predators. It has taught
them to strive for existence with their survival strategies developed
themselves with the help of their native instincts and provided them a profound
understanding of the rhythm of life and the environment there.
The narrative deals with the plight of
the two groups of characters here, one of the local woodcutters who braved into
the salted waterways of the tide country for a living by cutting and selling
woods and the other consisting of the government officials, namely Adhar, the
coast guard and his young assistant, Bankim. There are also Kajla and Sankari,
the only two women characters in the narrative, who accompany the woodcutters
to the Chhoto Chamte. The novel concerns the predicament of the individuals
against the adverse geographical backdrop of the Sundarbans over different
periods of time highlighting the man-nature inter-relationship in the
wilderness of the tide country. The tide hits the archipelago twice daily,
resulting in the uprooting of anything permanent there and also the constant
reshaping of the land. This constant uprooting and reshaping of the
geographical space they live in, confronts the people living there often
bringing in catastrophic consequences to their daily lives. They cannot be
indifferent to this inevitability of nature and escape their own vulnerability
in the face of the wilderness as it is the only source of their livelihoods.
Nature as both destroyer as well as preserver has rather become the integral
part of their existence in their daily life providing them a mysterious
understanding of it, an understanding that is deeply rooted in daily life
experiences as well as in religious traditions, history, myths and folklore and
often transcends the so-called scientific assumptions of ecology and
environment.
As the novel opens, Holodhar, the leader
of the woodcutters with his followers is found to meet Adhar at Kolos Camp and
secures his permission to go to Chhoto Chamte and cut woods in the jungle
there. Actually, it is Adhar’s weakness for Kajla, the young widow that
persuades him to grant the permission for them. Kajla is considered by many in
the area as the Bonobibi, the lady deity of the forest who is believed by the
locals to protect the Sundarbans from the clutch of the Dokkhin Rai, the evil
incarnation symbolized by the tiger. Kajla’s relationship with Adhar is ambiguous.
Adhar has previously given her proposal of marriage only to get rejected. But
now when he meets after a long time, he falls for her once again and Kajla here
cunningly uses his attraction for her as a way to manipulate him and secure the
permission to go to Chhoto Chamte with the woodcutters.
The moment Adhar arrives at Chhoto Chamte
and watches over the other side beyond the border from the watch-tower of the
island, his mind is clouded with the tragic remembrance of things past, his
firsthand experiences of sufferings as a refugee during the Liberation War of
Bangladesh in 1971. The war took from him his family, happiness, his root and
identity. Now what he has is only a wounded heart with memories of blood,
deaths, sorrows and sufferings. Yet, Adhar dreams of a better life for himself
with a meaningful identity and happiness. And it is this spirit that has
enabled him to survive in the face of sufferings and helped him to earn a life
and living in India. So, when he looks other side beyond the barbed wire of the
border from the watch-tower of Chhoto Chamte, his mind is filled with the
nostalgia of his past days in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. When Holodhar asks
him why Adhar always spends most of his time in the watchtower, he answers that
he has found there aatharobaakirsompod,
the never-ending treasure trove of the country of eighteen tides where the sky
is undivided by the border, where the Sundarbans is not found identified with
two different nations:
----So, you have
a sky in the tower?
----Yes, a sky.
An undivided sky.
----What? Can
sky be divided, babu?
----Yes….Once
upon a time, there was one single sky that integrated India,
Bangladesh and
Afghanistan. That undivided sky was then divided into three pieces.
They were broken
into pieces once again—Pakistan was divided from India and again
Bangladesh from
Pakistan…. Even Bengal is now divided into two pieces of
sky….(Hossain,
48)
For Adhar, the watchtower on the island
is way-out of his feelings of nostalgia. Though he is a permanent resident of
India now, his heart yet throbs for the nation over the barbed wire. As he
confesses to Holodhar---
“Yet I have
failed to recognize this country as my own…My heart yet beats for
Bangladesh….But in the watchtower there is no division. All is undivided here.
Isn’t it a treasure?…I taste this undivided treasure here in the watchtower….”
(Hossain, 49)
When
Kajla appears on the watch tower to meet Adhar, he asks her---
“Baagherkonodeshvaag hoi, Kajla? Is there
any partition for the tigers, Kajla?”
“What?” Kajla
asks in her utmost simplicity, “How do I know that, babu?”
“The barbed ware
cannot partition the river, can it, Kajla?”
“No, can’t.”
“Do the tigers
have the divided Bengal?”
“I don’t know.”
“If a tiger
comes into India by crossing the border, can it go back home?” (Hossain,54)
Adhar’s
question evokes the issue of partition, nation and identity. Himself a victim
of the 1971 War, Adhar, then a young boy studying at Jagannath Hall of Dhaka
University left his country to escape the inhuman tortures of the Pakistani
military forces and took shelter beyond the border for an uncertain future in
India. Now, on the watchtower when he looks beyond the border, Adhar gets
emotional and his nostalgia of the past leads him to a trance like state
throughout the rest of the novel.
The novel turns a different turn the
moment when Adhar and Bankim while watching over from the watchtower spot a
tiger from the Bangladesh side that is trying hard several times to cross the
border to reach the Indian side. After swimming over the rivers like
Jhingakhali, Harinbhanga the tiger crosses Burir Dabri Island and now it
attempts to cross the Chhoto Chamte through the fence of wire. As Kajla
explains to Adhar, the tiger is trying hard to come over the border to meet its
companion, a young tigress on the Indian side. Adhar at once likens the
desperate tiger to himself. The earnest plight of the tiger to cross the
bordering fence reminds him of his very own image, an Adhar of forty years ago
who desperately tried to cross the barbed wire of border to reach the refugee
camp on the Indian side. The tiger makes three attempts to jump over the fence,
but fails each time wretchedly. Adhar grows sympathy for the tiger and proposes
to help it cross the fence:
Can’t we cut some portion of the fence?....A
tiger that leaves its home to find another
does not harm
anyone….It only aims to find a shelter for himself….The tiger won’t return back
home, though wounded, it would again try to cross the fence when the fragrance
of aatopchal, the sunned rice—the
pheromone of its companion would makes him restless once again…An uprooted man
always try to find a root anywhere. No place is provided to him to find his
root, he must find his own. (Hossain, 101)
Adhar
goes on to describe his own tragic plight to cross the border like the tiger,
how he finds himself uprooted from his homeland and then how he finally reached
the refugee camp over the fence at Bongaon and tried hard to make a living on
his own and thus find a new home and a new root for himself on the other side
of the border. But Adhar finally collapses psychologically when the tiger makes
a final attempt to cross the fence and jumps over it only to fail again
mortally wounded. The death of the tiger makes him wounded too in his heart as
he goes on to express his own hapless plight:
I’ve also jumped
over and over for long ten years, o tiger! Not a single time or two, a hundred
and thousand times….I’ve endured tortures ad sufferings everywhere, have
studied here, got a degree, found a job of the coast guard. You can’t make it
by one or two jumps, man. You have to be wounded again and again and jump a
thousand times. I’ve found a life here only after many wounds my life suffered.
(Hossain, 124)
For
Adhar, the tragic plight of the tiger is the symbol of all the rootless
refugees of the 1971 War like him who have braved into the face of sufferings
only to get a new home and a new identity for their own. Adhar’s life is a life
of sufferings and pain like it. But unlike the tiger he has succeeded to “jump”
over the fence and find a living. But yet memory turns him back to his bleeding
past, when the tiger dies wounded on the fence. Adhar actually found in Kajla a
young tigress of the tide country that as it emits her pheromone as a signal to
her companion during the mating season. Whenever Kajla appears nearby, Adhar
senses the fragrance of aatopchal,
the sunned rice that works for him as a pheromone informing him of her
presence. But after the tragic death of the tiger, the heart-broken Adhar becomes
revengeful on everyone on the island, even on Kajla herself. He breaks down
psychologically and blames everyone for the death of the tiger. Even
impulsively he shoots Kajla in her leg and shouts at the others with desperate
and agitated yet meaningless words—
“Don’t approach
forward. Don’t walk a step ahead. You all are responsible for it. This is
Jawaharlal Nehru, catch him. Catch that one, Jinnah. There is Ballavbhai Patel,
catch him too. Beat everyone.” Adhar shouts again and again, shoots two times
more into the air gasping rapidly. (Hossain, 161)
Adhar’s
psychic disorder and its catatrophic consequences brought about by the tiger’s
death on the fence actually testify to his wounded remembrances of the
partition, sufferings and his own desperate struggle for existence on the both
sides of the border. For Adhar the tiger itself is the symbol of the thousands
refugees like him who have suffered, died or wounded physically or spiritually
since the partition of 1947. The pains the tiger endured and its tragic destiny
function as an objective correlative to Adhar’s own long past memories of
sufferings. The tiger may be of the Bangladesh side or the Indian, it doesn’t
matter. What matters is the question of nationality and identity, a question
which has long been unanswered to Adhar since the last forty years of his life.
Adhar’s life has been traumatic since he fell victim to the partition and came
over the Indian side of the border for a survival. But his tragic memories of
the past have never left him alone. The ghosts from the past have haunted him
always whenever he has tried to find a meaning and a root for his own life. He
may have survived death in the face of sufferings unlike the tiger, but the
wounded past accompanied him throughout the years: His conjugal life of five
years has been a disaster; he also tried to find solace of mind by taking the
job of a coastguard at the remote waterways of the tide country far from the
world he has been before. He has even tried to dream a new life with Kajla by
his side as his wife. But here too his dream is not realized. His meeting with
her after long years since her rejection of his marriage proposal has ignited
his dream again, but the moment he finds the tragic plight of tiger while
crossing the fence and its death, the wounded memories become alive once again
in his mind leading him to psychic disorder and frenzied behavior and to the
tragic consequences. Here, thus the tiger’s death and the subsequent psychic
disorder Adhar goes through are rooted into the single thread of identity
crisis of a helpless individual who is victimized in the game of power,
partition, nation building and nationality.
Works Cited
Bhabha,
Homi K. Nation and Narration.
Routledge, 1990.
Hossain,
Soharab. Gaang Baghini. Deys’ Publishing,
2011.
Mukherjee,
Upamanyu Pablo. Postcolonial
Environments: Nature, Culture and the Contemporary
Indian Novel in English. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Jalais,
Annu. Forest of Tigers. Routledge,
2010.
---.
“Dwelling on Morichjhapi: When Tigers Became ‘Citizens’, Refugees ‘Tiger
Food’.” Economic and Political Weekly,
vol. 40, no. 17, 2005, pp. 1757-1762.