War and Peace

dagdarsab

commies had a unique art. since many came from bougoise (sp?) background, they were driven to do arty stuff like plays and poetry. even the western rock has big contribution from 60s artists like baez, dylan, who wrote non-lovy songs.

anayways you have moved on to fp...

I learnt about Paash from you earlier. He certainly appears to be a revolutionary, going by this poem. I think that Punjab does not have the strong economic disparities needed for communism to take hold. Communists who succeeded in Punjab did so by showing immense integrity and sense of devotion to the masses, rather than because of their ideology.
It is sad that he was killed by the Khalistanis.

#2 dost-mittar ji,
communist movement never got strong hold in Punjab because of very weak trade union movement.Punjab, anyhow,never had big industry and communists followers were mainly from peasantry with smaller and medium sized holdingd., many of whom again went into other professions or migrated out.
Second major group was always students and they got distracted towards religion based organizations and political parties after 1970s.Till even 1980, biggest chunk of students were affiliated to Students Federation of India(CPM),All India Students Federation(CPI) and Punjab Students Union(CPI-ML,or Naxal groups).
Killing of many prominent communists like Darshan Singh Canadian, Baldev Singh Mann and many others by khalistanis and before that torture and killings by the then Akali govt. also acted as deterrents.
On individual level,yes, many `comrades` have been very popular among masses because of their committment,integrity,simple life style and readiness to help people in day to day problems at any time.
Splitting of CPI after 1962 war, failure of Tilangana armed movement in Andhra earlier, failure of Naxalite movement and then spliting into many small groups and then disintegration of USSR and near capitalization of China have been other obvious factors.

Coming to Paash, he was very young when he rose to fame and then remained dormant for many years after the failure of the movement.Became active against the communal ideology of khalistan when he migrated to America, and started a periodical as well,which ultimately led khalistanis to murder him.It has been a huge loss to the punjabi poetry, because after Shiv Kumar, he was easily the most loved punjabi poet, though belonging to entirely different school of thought and expression.

#1 jang
There were few from relatively affluent families, mainly driven by too much idealism(Hindi filmi type) and what was called `revolutionary romanticism`, but they left the ideology when there was no overnight revolution....many of them went into burgeoise parties like Congress or even shifted to the right exteme,joining Akali Dal or alike.
But Paash did not belong to that class.He came from middle class peasantry.

The only sane voice amongst leaders during partition was a communist socialist Tiwana.

Re: # 4
Tiwana was staunch opponent of TNT...his arguement was that Tiwanas are Hindus,Sikhs as well as Muslims, but they are all Punjabis....how can they belong to different nations??

Communism has many flaws.....but some of what Karl wrote is true.....communists in India have done much better than other religious affiliated parties.

Most of the world depicts communism to be all evil......for selfish interests, and its threat to the dope called religious fanaticism.......

Nice work daagdar sahib. Do try to put up something by Shivkumar Batalvi if time permits. Thanks.

Re: # 2

DM, This is a very good point(Communism`s failure in Punjab).

#7
Thanks rahul_capri. Shiv is one of my favourites, but probably most difficult to translate because he used very comples symbolism and also he wrote mainly rythmic poetry. I will try and see how it goes.

#8 dilliwala

That problem has been there not only for Punj, but all other places as well where the ideology was not translated to suite local inequalities,needs and cultures.

I have rarely read such a good translation. First time i read pash, i am almost ashamed so say. Thanks for the punjabi original too.. some lines just cannot be translated i know