While Hindus and Muslims slaughtered one another on the eve of the Partition in Bengal, and even after in Bengal, impoverished and exploited peasants – Hindus, Muslims and Adivasis – trampled their divisive religiosity and challenged together with arms the rapacious landowners and the Muslim League government of East Bengal which backed them. Hailed as the glorious Tebhaga revolt (1946-50), demanding three-fourths of the agricultural produce for the tillers, this movement spread like lightning in 18 districts of Bengal. It was led, among others, by Ila Mitra, also known as Ranima (queen-mother). She, indeed, was the most resplendent embodiment; Tebhaga and her name turned synonymous. Her exemplary valour is being honoured much more in Bangladesh at present, her year of birth centenary, than in West Bengal.§Parul-oh my sister, by Subhas MukhopadhyayDarkness crawls back/ Wall of barrier breaks / Seven brothers protect her/ Parul, oh my sister / Let us see who again / Chains your two feet / She is counting days while lying, / Parul, my sister.When will the shepherd / Sit again on the throne of golden corn / When will the flood of joy overflow / When shall we have dawn / Seven brothers remain awake / They drive away death / Flower will bloom, million hopes / Life extends its two hands / Who dares to chain her again?(Bengali poet Subhas Mukhopadhyay wrote this poem after visiting Ila Mitra in a hospital in Dhaka in 1953. In it, Parul is the archetypal sister celebrated in Bengali legends and fairytales. Her seven brothers are known as Champa whose mission is to protect her.)§A portrait of Ila Mitra. Photo: Author providedHomage to Nachol-er Ranima, Ila Mitra (October 18, 1925-October 13, 2002), has gone way past her birth centenary year 1925 celebrations, and is spontaneously continuing in Bangladesh with fervour. No fewer than six books on her have been written this year, many memorial meetings held, and this outflow of reverence reached its apex last week in Raotara village in Nachol (in present day Bangladesh) itself where a three-day symposium, from October 10 to 13, was held in a museum built there to preserve her memory. Omar Tareq Chaudhury, my close friend, who attended this event said, “It was so vibrant and heartfelt. Artistes from all corners of the country assembled, they sang and danced. Activists and political leaders recollected her historic role and the three-day oblation ended with the singing of The Internationale.”It is not that West Bengal has been a victim of total amnesia. While a memorial volume was published edited by Bandana Bhatttacharya last year, the most penetrating study on her is the book Satabarse Ila Mitra, Anya Choke (1926), a joint venture edited by Omar Tareq Chaudhury of Bangladesh and Subhasis Mukhopadhyay of Kolkata, West Bengal. This book, which has been sold out in both Bengals, is a rich documentary evidence. It needs to be read with its creative counterpart, Selina Hossain’s inspired novel Kantare Projapati/ Butterfly on the Barbed Wire based on Ranima’s life. Selina Hossain, on one hand, celebrated her defiance and, on the other, did not hesitate to articulate graphically the hellish torture she was subjected to at Nachol police station, after her arrest. We are prompted to ask who was her mentor? The mentor was her husband, Romen Mitra, the ‘king’ or ‘landlord’ of Ramchandrapur who had de-classed himself thoroughly. So the ‘queen’ followed the ‘king’ and de-classed herself as well. She could speak Santhali with admirable fluency, she simply merged with the landless peasants, Hindus and Muslims, and challenged the landowners as well as the repressive East Pakistani regime armed to the teeth.What is so exemplary about this book is its meticulous documentation. In the fourth chapter, for instance, the two editors have compiled all newspaper reports on this subject which were published from 1950 to 1955 in the two Bengals and even beyond. In 28 pages, they have provided the complete history based on news coverage, and, as we read, our eyes remain rivetted on the report filed by Shibdas Banerji, a roving correspondent of Blitz, which carried the heading East Bengal Court sobs as Ila Mitra bares her wounds (page 68).Banerji wrote: “When Ms. Ila Mitra was asked by the Court to give her statement, she narrated a story which made the aged pleaders, Muslims and Hindus, weep. They hung their heads down in shame and heard Ila in rapt and sorrowful silence”. (page 69)Though those present in the courtroom sobbed, Ila Mitra, herself, recalled her revolt after many years, as quoted in the book. She said, “I, in my humble way, tried to play my part, for which I have nothing unusual to speak of. Time generally helps a person to take up a role. For me, the time that I passed through has left its indelible marks, may be majestic, or heroic, or cowardly. For peace in this country, I look for a signal from my star” (page 84).I really wonder how she could attain this grace after the horrendous torture, multiple rapes, that reportedly included pushing up four steaming boiled eggs through her vaginal passage. The best chronicler of this movement, the Leftist icon of East Bengal, Badruddin Umar, emphasised in particular that even after the movement had ebbed somewhat in other districts of East and West Bengal, it continued to glow in Rajshahi district, especially in Nachol. In his essay Peasant Uprising in Nachol, which forms the second essay of the book, this indefatigable Leftist wrote, “Tebhaga came to an end in entire Bengal in 1947, but Nachol remained the only exception. Indeed, the region which came under Nachol Police station bristled with persecuted Santhal peasants and they persisted doggedly with their struggle from 1948 to 1950; that was the new phase.” (page 25). Ranima led the uprising, along with her husband as well as Azhar Hosain, Shuku Koramudi, Brindaban Saha and others. As a student of literature, who had delved deep into the subject Gender and Partition in the East, I emphasise, basically, the creative articulation of Tebhaga, which is, by no means, insignificant. I recall Manik Bandyopadhyay’s incredible short story Haraner Nat Jamai/ The Son-in-Law of Haran that was converted into a gripping play by one of our great Thespians, Arun Mukhopadhyay; Saukat Ali’s novel Narail which ended with a Muslim and Hindu peasant joining hands and advancing to fight for Tebhaga; and, above all, Akhtaruzzaman Elias’s masterpiece Khowabnama/Dream Elegy, which posited Tebhaga as the redemptive counterpart or Utopia to the disjunctive Dystopia of Partition. A sketch by Somnath Hore on Tebhaga, an old peasant leader addressing young peasant women warriors. Photo: Author providedThese texts incited me like the poem on Ranima by the famous Communist poet, Gholam Quddus, who hailed her as ‘Stalin-nandini/ Daughter of Stalin’ and also the intense though raw and rough sketches of Somnath Hore which were included in his Tebhaga Diary. Gholam Quddus wrote in tragic ardour: Still-silent night, immobile wind / Intense flames in the field of Nachol / Ila Mitra is being sentenced to death / Rajshahi Court is overflowing with people. In fact, I was waiting for the documentation to serve as a basis for the creative expression I have outlined above. It includes almost everything – questions and answers on Ila Mitra as well as discussions held in the Indian parliament; statements which Mitra made in the West Bengal assembly as an MLA of the Communist Party of India; fervent recollections penned by Pravash Chaudhuri Lahiri, Anisuzzaman, Mahbubul Alam Chaudhury and Satyen Sen. Equally moving are the memories of her son Mohan Mitra in two separate chapters, one titled Amar Ma/My Mother and the other recalling the indispensable connection between her mother and the peasant uprising in Nachol, in an intimate interview. The last lines of this dialogue are memorable, even educative, “She didn’t indulge in intricate theorizing, on whether the revolution should be ‘national democratic’ or ‘people’s democratic.’ Nonetheless, she was a brilliant orator.” (page 140).Not only an eloquent speaker at party meetings and in the state assembly, she was also a superb writer. The book ends by underlining her contribution as a writer and translator. She translated contemporary Russian short stories, the classic Girl of Hiroshima by Ar Kim, wrote Letters from Prison and Lenin’s biography. Ranima received the coveted Soviet Land Nehru Award for Girl of Hiroshima. Ranima Ila Mitra was like a redemptive contagion who created hundreds of other Ranimas in the villages of Bengal who fought with clenched teeth and raised hands. Who else but the great Akhtaruzzaman Elias, the greatest novelist in Bengali literature after his mentor Manik Bandyopadhyay, has saluted Ranima most eloquently by picturing the other Ranimas – the multitude invoking the central figure – in his unforgettable novel Khowabnama (Dream-elegy). Recalling Ranima and her fighters, Elias wrote: “Even the wives and daughters of peasants attacked with brooms, cooking spuds, kitchen knives… the cloth covering the arses of the landowners has fallen, the scoundrels are running, hiding in the arseholes of the police… They have come down like cholera, like small pox. Peasants and their wives attack them with their scythes and sickles. The scoundrels gasping for breath cannot find the path to escape.”Subhoranjan Dasgupta is a former professor of human sciences, a scholar, a columnist and an author of several books in English and Bengali.