Canadian poet John McCrae was a medical officer in both the Boer War and World War I. A year into the latter war he published in Punch magazine, on December 8, 1915, the sole work by which he would be remembered. This poem commemorates the deaths of thousands of young men who died in Flanders during the grueling battles there. It created a great sensation, and was used widely as a recruiting tool, inspiring other young men to join the Army. Legend has it that he was inspired by seeing the blood-red poppies blooming in the fields where many friends had died. In 1918 McCrae died at the age of 46, in the way most men died during that war, not from a bullet or bomb, but from disease: pneumonia, in his case.

Compare the mood in the first two stanzas with that in the third. Can you explain why people during the war interpreted it primarily as a pro-war poem although it was often read later as an anti-war poem? Who is the speaker in this poem? What does the speaker want his listeners to do?

In Flanders fields the poppies blow (1)
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

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This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

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Last revsied 4/28/2006.

The British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, wrote to Jewish leader Lord Rothshild, to assure him that his government supported the ideal of providing a homeland for the Jews. The British hoped thereby to win more Jewish support for the Allies in the First World War. The “Balfour Declaration” became the basis for international support for the founding of the modern state of Israel. The letter was published a week later in The Times of London as reproduced here.

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild:

I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty’s
Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:

His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge
of the Zionist Federation.

Yours,
Arthur James Balfour

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This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

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When Lenin tried to organize a Marxist revolutionary party in Russia he faced a dilemma. The ultimate goal of Marxist Communism was absolute freedom; but the only realistic vehicle for attaining that goal was a disciplined party. He was irritated by the dissent and controversy which raged in revolutionary circles. In this famous treatise he outlined his ideas on freedom in powerful words that to later generations read like a denunciation of freedom as it is normally understood. Implemented by Lenin himself after the 1917 revolution and exacerbated by Stalin, they transformed Marx’s dream of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (absolute rule by the people, depriving the old ruling class of its power) into its opposite, a dictatorship over the proletariat. In later decades, the rationale for repression outlined here was advanced again and again by dictatorial Communist governments as they argued that the small “vanguard” of the proletariat was capable of leading the masses for their own good, even in opposition to their express will.

Why does he argue no criticism can be made of socialist ideology?

“Freedom”–it’s a great word, but under the flag of “freedom of industry” the most rapacious of wars were conducted. Under the banner of “freedom of labor” workers have been robbed. The very same internal hypocrisy is contained in the contemporary phrase “freedom to criticize.” People who are truly convinced that they have advanced the frontier of science would not demand freedom for new ideas to coexist next to old, but to replace them. . . .

We are walking in a small, tight group along a steep and difficult path, firmly joining hands. We are surrounded by enemies, and must continue almost always under their fire. We have freely and consciously decided to unite to fight the enemy and not stumble into the neighboring marsh, where dwell those who from the beginning have reproached us for separating into a special group and choosing the path of struggle, and not the path of compromise. And now some of us are beginning to cry: “Let’s go into the marsh!” And when we start to shame them, they object: “What a backward people you are! And aren’t you ashamed to deny us the freedom to call you to a better way? Oh yes, gentlemen, you are free not only to call us, but to go anywhere you like, even if it’s into the marsh. We even consider the marsh to be the right place for you, and are ready to assist you as best we can to move you there. But just let go of our hands–don’t clutch at us and soil the great word “freedom,” because we too are “free” to go where we like–free to fight with the marsh and with those who turn to the marsh. . . .

We said that Social-Democratic consciousness could not exist among the workers. But it could be brought to them from without. The history of all countries testifies that workers left exclusively to their own strength can cultivate only a trade union consciousness– that is the belief in the need to unite into a union, struggle against the bosses, press the government to pass needed labor legislation, etc. The doctrine of Socialism grew out of philosophic, historical, and economic theories which were worked out by the educated representatives of the propertied class, the intelligentsia. The founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels belonged themselves to the bourgeois intelligentsia. Just as in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently from spontaneous growth of a workers movement, but arose rather as a natural and inevitable result of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. . . .

The lack of preparedness of the majority of revolutionaries, a completely natural phenomenon, could not provoke any particular dangers. Once the tasks were correctly organized, once there was the energy for the repeated attempts to execute these tasks, the temporary failures were only half of the problem. Revolutionary experience and organizational skill come with time only if there is a desire to cultivate the necessary qualities, and if there is a consciousness of one’s shortcomings which in revolutionary activity is more than half-way towards their correction.

But what was only half of the problem became full-blown when this consciousness began to fade (although it was very alive in the previously mentioned groups), when there appeared people–and even Social-Democratic organs–that were ready to make shortcomings virtuous and even tried to theoretically substantiate their cringing and bowing before spontaneity. . . .

Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology developed by the working masses in the process of their movement, the only choice is: bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle way (for mankind has not developed any “third” ideology), and generally speaking, in a society torn by class opposition there could never be a non-class or an above-class ideology. Therefore any belittlement of socialist ideology, any dismissal of it signifies the strengthening of bourgeois ideology. There is discussion of spontaneity. But spontaneous development of the workers movement leads to its subordination to the bourgeois ideology. . . .

I could continue my exemplary analysis of the statutes, but I think that what’s been said is enough. A small, tight, solid nucleus of the most dependable, experienced and hardened workers having trustworthy representatives in the main regions and connected by all the rules of secrecy with the organization of revolutionaries can quite capably, with the widest support of the masses and without any formal organization, fulfill all functions of a professional organization, in a manner desirable to a Social-Democratic movement. Only in this way can we secure the consolidation and development of a Social-Democratic trade-union movement, despite all the gendarmes.

It may be rejected that an organization that is so loose and not well formed, that it’s membership is in no way enrolled or registered can even be called an organization. It can be. It’s not the name I’m after. But this ” memberless organization” will do everything required and guarantee from the very outset the solid connection of our future trade unions to Socialism. Who but an incorrigible utopian would want a broad organization of workers with elections, reports, and universal suffrage under absolutism?

The moral from this is simple: if we begin with a solid foundation of strong organization of revolutionaries, we can guarantee the stability of the movement as a whole and realize the goals of Social-Democracy and of trade unions. If we, however, begin wit h a wide workers’ organization, supposedly the most accessible to the masses (but in fact is the most accessible to the gendarmes, and makes revolutionaries most accessible to the police) we shall not achieve one goal nor the other. . . .”

Translated by Jane Scales

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This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Michael Blair, Douglas Hughes, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by American Heritage Custom Publishing.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

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Despite the widely-recognized failure of Freudian psychotherapy to heal disturbed people effectively and the rejection of many of his major theories Freud remains one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Freud’s basic insight that our minds preserve memories and emotions which are not always consciously available to us has transformed the way humanity views itself ever since. Freud said that there had been three great humiliations in human history: Galileo’s discovery that we were not the center of the universe, Darwin’s discovery that we were not the crown of creation, and his own discovery that we are not in control of our own minds. The tendency of modern people to trace their problems to childhood traumas or other repressed emotions begins with Freud. One of Freud’s more important discoveries is that emotions buried in the unconscious surface in disguised form during dreaming, and that the remembered fragments of dreams can help uncover the buried feelings. Whether the mechanism is exactly as Freud describes it, many people have derived insights into themselves from studying their dreams, and most modern people consider dreams emotionally significant, unlike our ancestors who often saw them either as divine portents or as the bizarre side-effects of indigestion. Freud argues that dreams are wish-fulfillments, and will ultimately argue that those wishes are the result of repressed or frustrated sexual desires. The anxiety surrounding these desires turns some dreams into nightmares.

Explain what Freud means by “dreams of convenience.”

Dreams are not comparable to the spontaneous sounds made by a musical instrument struck rather by some external force than by the hand of a performer; they are not meaningless, not absurd, they do not imply that one portion of our stockpile of ideas sleeps while another begins to awaken. They are a completely valid psychological phenomenon, specifically the fulfillment of wishes; they can be classified in the continuity of comprehensible waking mental states; they are constructed through highly complicated intellectual activity.

But as soon as we delight in this discovery, a flood of questions assails us. If, according to dream analysis, the dream represents a fulfilled wish, what creates the astonishing and strange form in which this wish-fullfillment is expressed? What transformation have the dream thoughts undergone to shape the manifest dream which we remember when awake? Through what means has this transformation taken place? What is the source of the material which has been reworked into the dream? Where do the many peculiarities which we notice in dream thoughts come from, for instance that they may be mutually contradictory? Can a dream tell us so mething new about our inner psychological processes? Can its content correct the opinions that we have held during our waking hours?

I suggest that we set these questions aside for the moment and follow one particular path further. We have learned that a dream represents a fulfilled wish. Our next concern will be to discover whether this is a universal characteristic of dreams. . . We must leave open the possibility that the meaning may not be the same in every dream. Our first dream was a wish fulfillment; but perhaps another will prove to be a fulfilled fear; a third might contain a reflex; a fourth may simply reproduce a memory. Are there other wish-dreams? Or perhaps nothing but wish-dreams exist.

It is easy to demonstrate that dreams often have the character of blatant wish-fullfillments; so much so that one wonders why the language of dreams was not understood long ago. For instance, there is a dream that I can experience at will, experimentally, as it were. When I eat sardines, olives, or other strongly salted foods in the evening, I am awakened in the night by thirst. But the awaking is always preceded by a dream with the same content: I gulp the water down; and it tastes delicious to me as only a cool drink can when one is dying of thirst; and then I wake up and really have to drink. The cause of this simple dream is the thirst which I feel when I awaken. This feeling causes the desire to drink, and the dream shows me this desire fulfilled. It thereby serves a function which I can easily guess. I am a good sleeper, unaccustomed to being awakened by any need. If I can slake my thirst by dreaming that I am drinking, I don’t need to wake up in order to be satisfied. Thus this is a convenience dream. The dream is substituted for action, as so often in life.

Recently this same dream occurred in a somewhat modified form. I had become thirsty even before sleeping and drained the glass of water which was standing on the nightstand next to my bed. A few hours later during the night I had a new attack of thirst which was more inconvenient. In order to get some water I would have had to get up and take the glass standing on my wife’s nightstand. I dreamed therefore that my wife gave me a drink out of a vessel. This vessel was an Etruscan funerary urn which I had brought back from a trip to Italy and had since given away. However, the water in it tasted so salty (plainly because of the ashes) that I had to wake up. It is easy to see how neatly this dream arranged matters; since it its only aim was wish-fulfillment, it could be completely egotistical. A love of convenience is not really compatible with consideration for others. The introduction of the funerary urn is probably another wish-fulfillment; I was sorry that I didn’t own the vessel any more–just as the water glass beside my wife was inaccessible. The urn also fit the growing salty taste which I knew would force me to wake up.

I very commonly had such dreams of convenience in my youth. Always used to working deep into the night, it was always difficult for me to wake up early. I used to dream then that I was out of bed and standing in front of the washstand. Eventually I had to recognize that I was not up, but meanwhile I had slept some more. The same lazy dream in a particularly witty form was told to me by one of my colleagues who evidently shared my sleepy-headedness. The landlady he rented rooms near the hospitals from had strong instructions to wake him up at the right time every morning; but she had a difficult time carrying out these orders. One morning he was sleeping especially sweetly. The woman called into the room, “Mr. Pepi, get up. You have to go to the hospital. ” At that point the sleeper dreamed that he was lying in a bed in a room in the hospital, on which was a placard which read “Pepi H., medical student, age 22.” Dreaming, he said to himself, “Since I am already in the hospital, I don’t have to go there,” so he turned over and slept on. Thus he openly confessed the cause of his dream.

It is just as easy to discover wish-fulfillment in some other dreams that I have collected from normal people. A friend who knows my dream theory and had shared it with his wife said to me one day, “I must tell you that my wife dreamed yesterday that she had her period. You know what that means.” Certainly I knew; since the young woman had dreamed that she had her period, it meant that her period had not come. I could well believe that she would liked to have enjoyed her freedom a little longer before beginning the burdens of motherhood. It was a clever way of announcing the onset of her pregnancy. Another friend writes me that his wife recently dreamed that she noticed drops of milk on her blouse front. This is always a sign of pregnancy, but not a first pregnancy; the young mother wanted to have more milk for the second child than she had had for the first. . . .

These examples will perhaps be enough to show that dreams which can only be understood as wish-fullfillments, and which clearly reveal their content, occur often and under manifold circumstances. These mostly short and simple dreams stand out pleasantly in contrast with the confused and overly complex dream compositions which have mostly absorbed the attention of writers. . . .

We recognize that we might have gotten at the understanding of the concealed meaning of dreams by the shortest path if we had simply followed common ways of speaking. Proverbs indeed sometimes speak dismissively of dreams; people think they are being properly scientific when they say, “Dreams are froth.” But in common usage dreams are predominantly the fulfillers of dreams. We cry out, delighted, “I would never have imagined such a thing even in my wildest dreams” when we find that reality has surpassed our expectations. . . .

There still remain anxiety dreams (1) as a special subdivision of dreams with a painful content whose interpretation as wish-fulfillment dreams will be most unwillingly accepted by the unenlightened. However, I can deal briefly with anxiety dreams here; they do not represent another aspect of the problems posed by dreams; rather it is a matter of understanding above all neurotic anxiety. The anxiety that we feel in dreams is only apparently explained by the dream’s content. When we try to discover the meaning of a dream’s content, we note that the anxiety felt in a dream is no better explained by its content than the anxiety felt in a phobia (2) is explained by the mental image which induces the phobia. For instance, is it quite true that one may fall out of a window, and therefore one may reasonably exert a certain amount of caution around a window; but this does not explain why in its phobic form the fear is so powerful and the sufferer pursued by the fear far beyond its cause. The same explanation is valid for phobias as for anxiety dreams. The anxiety is in both cases only loosely linked to the association, and actually derives from another source.

Since dream anxiety is intimately related to neurotic anxiety is must explain the first by reference to the second. In a short publication on anxiety neurosis . . . I argued that neurotic anxiety derives from sexual life, and is the expression of unsatisfied desire which has been diverted from its goal. This formula has since then been proven valid. It enables us now to say that the sexual content of anxiety dreams is the result of transformation of sexual desire.

(1) Nightmares

(2) Irrational fear.

Translated by Paul Brians

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

Try Chambal:
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For a short period in the late sixties the “Little Red Book” containing the thoughts of Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong (or as his name was spelled in English at the time “Mao Tse-Tung”) was one of the most intensively-studied books in the world. Assembled by party editors from old speeches and writings of Mao, it was intended as a guide for those involved in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1969. Mao argued that the Chinese Revolution had become rigid and betrayed its basic principles. To reinvigorate it, he invited young people to join the Red Guards and attack “bourgeois” elements in society. Everyone in China was forced to gather in study groups to spend hours discussing every line of the Quotations and applying them to their lives. The book was also studied by Maoists abroad, including in the U.S. The results were disastrous. Millions died, many others were imprisoned for “incorrect” thoughts such as liking Western music or advocating Confucianism, many of China’s brightest and most creative people were forced to abandon their jobs to labor on collective farms, and a whole generation lost its chance at education as it charged around the countryside attacking the previous generation. The translation used here is that issued by the party itself through Foreign Languages Press in Beijing in the second edition of 1966.

“To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing,” (May 26, 1939)

How does Mao turn criticism into an advantage?

I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.

Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work (March 12, 1957)

This passage was used to justify the intensive “reeducation” sessions which tried to bring all Chinese people into line. The final qualifying phrases were usually ignored.

In our country bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology, anti-Marxist ideology, will continue to exist for a long time. Basically, the socialist system has been established in our country. We have won the basic victory in transforming the ownership of the means of production, but we have not yet won complete victory on the political and ideological fronts. In the ideological field, the question of who will win in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has not been really settled yet. We still have to wage a protracted struggle against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology. It is wrong not to understand this and to give up ideological struggle. All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked. However, the criticism should be fully reasoned, analytical and convincing, and not rough, bureaucratic, metaphysical or dogmatic.

“On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (June 30, 1949)

The ultimate goal of Marxists was not unlike that of anarchists: the complete abolition of state power and the establishment of direct democracy among the people. However both Marx and Lenin had argued that a period of transition called “socialism” was necessary, in which the state would organize the conditions necessary for its own abolition. But the only Communist states which abolished themselves, like that of the Soviet Union, did so in order to transform themselves into conventional states.

What reasons does Mao give for not abolishing state power right away? (This speech was given immediately after the triumph of the Communists.)

“Don’t you want to abolish state power?” Yes, we do, but not right now; we cannot do it yet. Why? Because imperialism still exists, because domestic reaction still exists, because classes still exist in our country. Our present task is to strengthen the people’s state apparatus–mainly the people’s army, the people’s police and the people’s courts–in order to consolidate national defense and protect the people’s interests.

“Problems of War and Strategy” (November 6, 1938)

In its original context this saying meant that the Communists would never be allowed to come to power in China without a successful violent revolution. In the context of the Cultural Revolution it meant that the Chinese People’s Army had to play a leading role in sustaining, purifying, and spreading Communism. And abroad it was often used to justify revolutionary terrorism.

Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Speech at the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (November 18, 1957)

Mao was widely ridiculed abroad for stating that the U.S. and its nuclear arsenal were “paper tigers.” Many supposed that Mao would have willingly plunged the world into a nuclear war out of sheer ignorance. But it seems more probable that, lacking such arms himself, he used his most powerful weapon: the bluff. The bomb was not a very effective tool of diplomacy because the threat it posed was only as credible as the willingness of any nation to plunge the world into a holocaust, very probably destroying itself in the process. Mao had every reason to let the world think he was not afraid of the bomb no matter what his private thoughts might have been.

I have said that all the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? I also said that the tsar of Russia, the emperor of China and Japanese imperialism were all paper tigers. As we know, they were all overthrown. U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atom bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger.

“Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership” (June 1, 1943)

This is the core of the ideology that made the Cultural Revolution so appealing to many young idealists; but in the end learning from the people turned out to mean learning only from Chairman Mao and his allies.

In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily “from the masses, to the masses.” This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again go the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.

Introductory note to “Women Have Gone to the Labor Front” (1955)

Women had been oppressed in China as much as anywhere on earth, and Mao often spoke of the important role they would play in building Communism. Many concrete advances were made for women; however, except for his wife Jian Qing, who was very influential during the Cultural Revolution, women were generally relegated to subordinate positions in the party leadership.

In order to build a great socialist society, it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production. Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (February 27, 1957)

Of all the quotations in the “Little Red Book” none is more inspiring or chilling than this. It comes from a brief period of reform in the fifties known as the “Hundred Flowers Campaign” during which Mao encouraged complete freedom of thought, including criticism of the Party. The result was much more vigorous debate than Mao had expected and the period ended with an abrupt crackdown against those who had raised their voices in opposition. It could stand as a critique of the failures of the Cultural Revolution itself, which tried to settle ideological questions by force under the guise of debate.

Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

Try Chambal:
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155674257/ (vol. 1)
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Elias was a major Bengali fiction writer particularly noted for his subtle sense of humor, realistic use of dialogue and dialect, and for his Marxist commitment to the lower class in both towns and villages in Bangladesh. His last major novel, called Khoabnama (Dream Book), is set in rural Bangladesh during a long historical period spanning several centuries. Some of the major characters in this novel are landless farmers, who still constitute a large segment of the population in Bangladesh. The novel weaves together numerous stories and episodes of struggles, frustrations, hopes, and dreams of these people. What follows is an episode in which the landless farmer Tameez wants to work on the land owned by a large farmer (Abdul Aziz) in an arrangement known as “sharecropping,” which has a long tradition in many countries, and used to be common in the Southern United States. The landed farmer provides the land itself and the landless farmer not only cultivates it and produces crops but also provides seeds and other necessary means of cultivation. When crops are finally produced, the landed farmer receives two thirds of the crop and the landless farmer gets only one. Besides showing how exploitative this system is, the passage also portrays part of a well-known historical struggle of landless farmers against sharecropping.

Contrast the way Tameez is living with the way his ancestors lived as explained in the last paragraph.

Tameez pays a price for his decision. He leaves Khiyar (1) in order to become a sharecropper in his own village. He stomachs all kinds of criticisms. He does not have a cow. He does not have a plow or a yoke or a harrow; nor does he have a single cowrie (2) to buy even a handful of seed. So how can anyone possibly trust his ability to sharecrop? With hands together, however, Tameez desperately prays for a piece of land. He tries to persuade the landowner, Sharafat Mondol, to lease him at least a bit of land. He also tells Mondol that he will be reimbursed for the expenses of cultivation after the harvest.

Tameez’s proposal sounds attractive. It is not that such sharecropping arrangements have not worked in the past. But Sharafat Mondol’s eldest son, Abdul Aziz, is a clever and cautious man. He lives in Joypur where he works as a clerk at an office of land registration. There is perhaps no one in the entire village of Lathidanga who can match his knowledge of matters relating to land. So Abdul Aziz pays in advance only half the prices of cows and other means of production like ploughs, yokes, harrows, and seeds. He whispers to himself, ‘you have nothing yet you want to sharecrop, eh? Well, then, you should simply follow whatever terms and conditions I dictate now.”

But Abdul Kader comments, “These folks have been here for a long time. Even Tameez’s father once worked on our land. . . .”

But landless farmers have meanwhile gone out of bounds. Their agitation (3) has already begun in town and it seems that the wave of protest may soon reach this eastern part of the village across the Korotoya River. Farmers in Khiyar are now insisting on two shares out of three, wanting to give only one to the landowner. Of course you can always demand whatever you want–you don’t have to pay taxes for speaking out. But the farmers argue that one important fact remains unchanged: the landlord cannot command the land to walk into his courtyard and deliver the crop. Or does he suppose that land is a heron that it can fly in a flash from that monstrous Arjun (4) in Kamarpara to the tree overlooking the mansion of the Mondols? What the hell does he know about the value of land? Does he know that plowing even a tiny piece of land costs at least a pound of human blood, oozing from the body like salt?

Abdul Aziz of course watches the uprising in Khiyar–a nagging pain in the ass, of course–while he also wonders if it will soon make the peasants’ blood boil in his own locality. Yet he feels no compulsion to please anyone in particular. All he wants is simply the full enforcement of the sharecropping rules in his locality. “Follow the rules or get the hell out of my land”–that’s the only policy Abdul Aziz seems to care for.

How can Tameez soothe these anxieties of Abdul Aziz? Abdul Aziz is simply Abdul Aziz: one who effortlessly writes his name in English “M. A. Aziz” at one solid stretch (5), one who attends all kinds of meetings and forums, who retails–whenever he gets a chance to do this–all the horrid stories of oppressions Hindus have inflicted on Muslims, and who therefore urges all Muslims to unite under the banner of the Muslim League (6) so as to put an end to those oppressions, But now even Abdul Aziz cannot help scratching his head. Whatever may happen, the fact still remains: Abdul Aziz holds a position in an office of land registration in Joypur where his both hands stay equally alive and active. But as he leaves Joypur to spend a few days in his village, his left hand turns uncomfortably passive, (7) although it daily wipes the shit from his ass after his inevitable response to the inescapable call of nature. Abdul Aziz, however, compensates for the momentary inactivity of his left hand by the unleashed activity of his tongue and teeth.

Tameez himself watched farmers make a great commotion to the West. (8) But does he like all this fuss himself? No, he doesn’t. He still believes the landowner should dictate the terms of sharecropping arrangement simply because he is the owner of land. Yet these landless farmers, armed with weapons, have tried to claim the larger share of the crop. To halt this move, however, some landowners have hired a group of workers to harvest the fields. Although Tameez comes from the eastern part of the country, he has easily gotten one of these jobs. The landowners have, it seems, also informed and bribed the police. And how many places can be policed at once?

That day Tameez had begun harvesting in a cheerful mood because he had been offered a wage-rate better than usual. He was working enthusiastically, thinking that the sooner he finished harvesting the paddy, the better. But as soon as the sun had reached the middle of the sky, he heard the angry demonstrating farmers swooping in. But God-the-Great saved him: he broke into a run before they could catch him by the scruff of his neck. Even the thin wives and daughters of the angry farmers joined in with brooms, large knives, potatoes, and sticks. Had not he run through the field or had not he quickly leapt over the harvest lying scattered in the field, he would have surely received at least a mighty blow from a broom or even a whacking blow of a cooking potato or two. Who knew?

Perhaps he did receive one or two. If a woman beats a man, it is unlikely that he will spread word of it. By the time Tameez reachedf the landowner’s courtyard, he felt their fuss was absolutely pointless and disgusting. Land is after all Lakshmi (9) and crops are her offspring. If the crops are caught in a tug of war, the very body of the land gets hurt! (10) Crops are the soul of the soul of the landowner. Tameez was anguished by the mob’s sheer insensitivity to the sufferings of the land. True, his father and grandfather and great grandfather had all lived on fishing; they were not traditional land-farmers. Yet Tameez empathized with the pain of the land. A long time ago, long before Tameez was born, the legendary largest type of fish–the Baghar fish, as it was called–used to add to the spectacle of the famous Poradaha (11) fair, simply because none but Tameez’s great grandfather–Baghar-the-boatman–could catch it. This is why Tameez’s father later adopted the name of his own grandfather, the name of the famous fish-catcher, to keep the glory of his family alive. This ancestral glory, however, ended with Tameez’s father, who had been known more as Baghar’s grandson than as anything else. And Tameez today is known as simply as Tameez.

Translated by Azfar Hussain

(1) The name of a village in northern Bangladesh.
(2)”Cowrie” means “penny.”
(3) This is a historical reference to the uprising of landless peasants against large farmers in Bengal in the nineteenth century during British colonial rule (1757-1947). The protesting farmers demanded larger shares of the crops.
(4) The name of a tree.
(5) The language of the majority of people in Bangladesh today is Bengali. During the British colonial rule (1757-1947), people who could read, write, or use English–the language of the colonizer–were held in great esteem and benefited from certain social and economic privileges which others without knowledge of English simply could not share.
(6) The leading sectarian political party led by middle-and upper-class Muslim activists. The other sectarian political party led by middle-and upper-class Hindu activists is known as Congress. During the British colonial rule in India (1757-1947), when Bangladesh was part of India, these two parties, which came into being in the twentieth century, were not only involved in anti-colonial struggles against the British rulers but were also responsible for much of the tension between Hindus and Muslims on the Indian subcontinent.
(7) The activity of the left hand has a specific local meaning in Bangladesh: while the right hand does the assigned job, the left hand takes the money as a bribe. The fact that Tameez is a corrupt and dishonest man is indicated by the activity of his left hand.
(8) The western part of the country.
(9) Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of prosperity.
(10) Land is often personified in Bengali literature.
(11) The name of a semi-urban area in the northern part of Bangladesh.

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This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

Try Chambal:
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155674257/ (vol. 1)
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155128262/ (vol. 2)

The popular image of Gandhi in the West involves a saintly manner and “passive resistance.” In fact he was a skillful lawyer whose techniques of nonviolent protest were anything but passive and who could be fearlessly outspoken in defense of his beloved India. In this imaginary dialogue, Gandhi is replying to the question of an interviewer (here labeled “READER”) as to how he would address “extremists” seeking independence from Britain. Gandhi’s replies are labeled “EDITOR.”

What does Gandhi say the proper role of the British in India should be?

EDITOR:

I would say to the extremists: “I know that you want Home Rule (1) for India; it is not to be had for your asking. Everyone will have to take it for himself. What others get for me is not Home Rule but foreign rule; therefore, it would not be proper for you to say that you have obtained Home Rule if you have merely expelled the English. I have already described the true nature of Home Rule. This you would never obtain by force of arms. Brute-force is not natural to Indian soil. You will have, therefore, to rely wholly on soul-force. You must not consider that violence is necessary at any stage for reaching our goal.” I would say to the moderates: “Mere petitioning is derogatory; we thereby confess inferiority. To say that British rule is indispensable, is almost a denial of the Godhead. We cannot say that anybody or anything is indispensable except God. Moreover, common sense should tell us that to state that, for the time being, the presence of the English in India is a necessity, is to make them conceited.

“If the English vacated India, bag and baggage, it must not be supposed that she would be widowed. It is possible that those who are forced to observe peace under their pressure would fight after their withdrawal. There can be no advantage in suppressing an eruption; it must have its vent. If, therefore, before we can remain at peace, we must fight amongst ourselves, it is better that we do so. (2) There is no occasion for a third party to protect the weak. It is this so-called protection which has unnerved us. Such protection can only make the weak weaker. Unless we realize this, we cannot have Home Rule. I would paraphrase the thought of an English divine (3) and say that anarchy under Home Rule were better than orderly foreign rule. Only, the meaning that the leaned divine attached to Home Rule is different from Indian Home Rule according to my conception. We have to learn, and to teach others, that we do not want the tyranny of either English rule or Indian rule.”

If this idea were carried out, both the extremists and the moderates could join hands. There is no occasion to fear or distrust one another.

READER:

What then, would you say to the English?

EDITOR:

To them I would respectfully say: “I admit you are my rulers. It is not necessary to debate the question whether you hold India by the sword or by my consent. I have no objection to your remaining in my country, but although you are the rulers; you will have to remain as servants of the people. It is not we who have to do as you wish, but it is you who have to do as we wish. You may keep the riches that you have drained away from this land, but you may not drain riches henceforth. Your function will be, if you so wish, to police India; you must abandon the idea of deriving any commercial benefit from us. We hold the civilization that you support to be the reverse of civilization. We consider our civilization to be far superior to yours. If you realize this truth, it will be to your advantage and, if you do not, according to your own proverb, (4) you should only live in our country in the same manner as we do. You must not do anything that is contrary to our religions. It is your duty as rulers that for the sake of the Hindus you should eschew beef, and for the sake of Mahomedans (5) you should avoid bacon and ham. We have hitherto said nothing because we have been cowed down, but you need not consider that you have not hurt our feelings by your conduct. We are not expressing our sentiments either through base selfishness or fear, but because it is our duty now to speak out boldly. We consider your schools and courts to be useless. We want our own ancient schools and courts to be restored. The common language of India is not English but Hindi. You should, therefore, learn it. We can hold communication with you only in our national language.

“We cannot tolerate the idea of your spending money on railways and the military. We see no occasion for either. You may fear Russia; we do not. When she comes we shall look after her. If you are with us, we may then receive her jointly. We do not need any European cloth. We shall manage with articles produced and manufactured at home. You may not keep one eye on Manchester (6) and the other on India. We can work together only if our interests are identical.

(1) Independence, self-government.

(2) Gandhi thus foresees the possibility of something like the divisive violence that occurred at Independence, even though it was to break his heart and take his life.

(3) Clergyman.

(4) “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

(5) An old English term for “Muslim.” Note that Gandhi is already trying to be sensitive to both religions. This was the issue that in the end defeated him.

(6) The center of the English cotton-weaving trade. One of Gandhi’s most important campaigns was to persuade Indians to wear only traditional Indian homespun garments, boycotting English imports.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

Try Chambal:
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155674257/ (vol. 1)
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155128262/ (vol. 2)

Tagore won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913–the first to be awarded a non-European–on the belief that he represented the romantic, mysterious East judged by the sentimental translations he had made from the poems in his book Gitanjli. But poetic fashions were changing in the West, and his work soon lost its popularity abroad, though it continued to be loved at home in India. In fact he had a sophisticated Western-oriented education and was not particularly religious. He wrote plays, novels, essays and stories, including this charming one whose mixture of humorous fantasy and thoughtfulness foreshadows the work of a much later Indian-born writer, Salman Rushdie.

What does this story have to say about death?

“Once upon a time there was a king.”

When we were children there was no need to know who the king in the fairy story was. It didn’t matter whether he was called Shiladitya or Shaliban, whether he lived at Kashi or Kanauj. The thing that made a seven-year-old boy’s heart go thump, thump with delight was this one sovereign truth, this reality of all realities: “Once there was a king.”

But the readers of this modern age are far more exact and exacting. When they hear such an opening to a story, they are at once critical and suspicious. They apply the searchlight of science to its legendary haze and ask: “Which king?”

The story-tellers have become more precise in their turn. They are no longer content with the old indefinite, “There was a king,” but assume instead a look of profound learning, and begin: “Once there was a king named Ajatasatru.”

The modern reader’s curiosity, however, is not so easily satisfied. He blinks at the author through his scientific spectacles, and asks again: “Which Ajatasatru?”

“Every schoolboy knows,” the author proceeds,” that there were three Ajatasatrus. The first was born in the twentieth century B.C., and died at the tender age of two years and eight months. I deeply regret that it is impossible to find, from any trustworthy source, a detailed account of his reign. The second Ajatasatru is better known to historians. If you refer to the new Encyclopedia of History .

By this time the modern reader’s suspicions are dissolved. He feels he may safely trust his author. He says to himself: “Now we shall have a story that is both improving and instructive.”

Ah! how we all love to be deluded! We have a secret dread of being thought ignorant. And we end by being ignorant after all, only we have done it in a long and roundabout way.

There is an English proverb: “Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.” The boy of seven who is listening to a fairy story understands that perfectly well; he withholds his questions, while the story is being told. So the pure and beautiful falsehood of it all remains naked and innocent as a babe; transparent as truth itself ; limpid as a fresh bubbling spring. But the ponderous and learned lie of our moderns has to keep its true character draped and veiled. And if there is discovered anywhere the least little peephole of deception, the reader turns away with a prudish disgust, and the author is discredited.

When we were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own. We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth. And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the Crystal Palace of Truth lay and how to reach it. But today we are expected to write pages of facts, while the truth is simply this:

“There was a king.”

I remember vividly that evening in Calcutta when the fairy story began. The rain and the storm had been incessant. The whole of the city was flooded. The water was knee-deep in our lane. I had a straining hope, which was almost a certainty, that my tutor would be prevented from coming that evening. I sat on the stool in the far corner of the veranda looking down the lane, with a heart beating faster and faster. Every minute I kept my eye on the rain, and when it began to grow less I prayed with all my might: “Please, God, send some more rain till half-past seven is over.” For I was quite ready to believe that there was no other need for rain except to protect one helpless boy one evening in one corner of Calcutta from the deadly clutches of his tutor.

If not in answer to my prayer, at any rate according to some grosser law of physical nature, the rain did not give up.

But, alas! nor did my teacher.

Exactly to the minute, in the bend of the lane, I saw his approaching umbrella. The great bubble of hope burst in my breast, and my heart collapsed. Truly, if there is a punishment to fit the crime after death, then my tutor will be born again as me, and I shall be born as my tutor.

As soon as I saw his umbrella I ran as hard as I could to my mother’s room. My mother and my grandmother were sitting opposite one another playing cards by the light of a lamp. I ran into the room, and flung myself on the bed beside my mother, and said:

“Mother dear, the tutor has come, and I have such a bad headache; couldn’t I have no lessons to-day?”

I hope no child of immature age will be allowed to read this story, and I sincerely trust it will not be used in text-books or primers for schools. For what I did was dreadfully bad, and I received no punishment whatever. On the contrary, my wickedness was crowned with success.

My mother said to me: “All right,” and turning to the servant added: “Tell the tutor that he can go back home.”

It was perfectly plain that she didn’t think my illness very serious, as she went on with her game as before, and took no further notice. And I also, burying my head in the pillow, laughed to my heart’s content. We perfectly understood one another, my mother and I.

But every one must know how hard it is for a boy of seven years old to keep up the illusion of illness for long time. After about a minute I got hold of Grandmother, and said: “Grannie, do tell me a story.”

I had to ask this many times. Grannie and Mother went on playing cards, and took no notice. At last Mother said to me: “Child, don’t bother. Wait till we’ve finished our game.” But I persisted: “Grannie, do tell me a story.” I told Mother she could finish her game to-morrow, but she must let Grannie tell me a story there and then.

At last Mother threw down the cards and said: “You had better do what he wants. I can’t manage him.” Perhaps she had it in her mind that she would have no tiresome tutor on the morrow, while I should be obliged to be back to those stupid lessons.

As soon as ever Mother had given way, I rushed at Grannie. I got hold of her hand, and, dancing with delight, dragged her inside my mosquito curtain on to the bed. I clutched hold of the bolster with both hands in my excitement, and jumped up and down with joy, and when I had got a little quieter, said: “Now, Grannie, let’s have the story!”

Grannie went on: “And the king had a queen.” That was good to begin with. He had only one.

It is usual for kings in fairy stories to be extravagant in queens. And whenever we hear that there are two queens, our hearts begin to sink. One is sure to be unhappy. But in Grannie’s story that danger was past. He had only one queen.

We next hear that the king had not got any son. At the age of seven I didn’t think there was any need to bother if a man had had no son. He might only have been in the way.

Nor are we greatly excited when we hear that the king has gone away into the forest to practice austerities in order to get a son. (1) There was only one thing that would have made me go into the forest, and that was to get away from my tutor!

But the king left behind with his queen a small girl, who grew up into a beautiful princess.

Twelve years pass away, and the king goes on practicing austerities, and never thinks all this while of his beautiful daughter. The princess has reached the full bloom of her youth. The age of marriage has passed, but the king does not return. And the queen pines away with grief and cries: “Is my golden daughter destined to die unmarried? Ah me! what a fate is mine.”

Then the queen sent men to the king to entreat him earnestly to come back for a single night and take one meal in the palace. And the king consented.

The queen cooked with her own hand, and with the greatest care, sixty-four dishes, and made a seat for him of sandal-wood, and arranged the food in plates of gold and cups of silver. The princess stood behind with the peacock-tail fan in her hand. The king, after twelve years’ absence, came into the house, and the princess waved the fan, lighting up all the room with her beauty. The king looked in his daughter’s face, and forgot to take his food.

At last he asked his queen: “Pray, who is this girl whose beauty shines as the gold image of the goddess? Whose daughter is she?”

The queen beat her forehead, and cried: “Ah, how evil is my fate! Do you not know your own daughter?”

The king was struck with amazement. He said at last: “My tiny daughter has grown to be a woman.

“What else?” the queen said with a sigh. “Do you not know that twelve years have passed by?”

“But why did you not give her in marriage?” asked the king.

“You were away,” the queen said. “And how could I find her a suitable husband?”

The king became vehement with excitement. “The first man I see to-morrow,” he said, “when I come out of the palace shall marry her.”

The princess went on waving her fan of peacock feathers, and the king finished his meal.

The next morning, as the king came out of his palace, he saw the son of a Brahman gathering sticks in the forest outside the palace gates. His age was about seven or eight. (2)

The king said: “I will marry my daughter to him.”

Who can interfere with a king’s command? At once the boy was called, and the marriage garlands were exchanged between him and the princess.

At this point I came up close to my wise Grannie and asked her eagerly: “What then?”

In the bottom of my heart there was a devout wish to substitute myself for that fortunate wood-gatherer of seven years old. The night was resonant with the patter of rain. The earthen lamp by my bedside was burning low. My grandmother’s voice droned on as she told the story. And all these things served to create in a corner of my credulous heart the belief that I had been gathering sticks in the dawn of some indefinite time in the kingdom of some unknown king, and in a moment garlands had been exchanged between me and the princess, beautiful as the Goddess of Grace. She had a gold band on her hair and gold earrings in her ears. She had a necklace and bracelets of gold, and a golden waist-chain round her waist, and a pair of golden anklets tinkled above her feet.

If my grandmother were an author how many explanations she would have to offer for this little story! First of all, every one would ask why the king remained twelve years in the forest? Secondly, why should the king’s daughter remain unmarried all that while? This would be regarded as absurd.

Even if she could have got so far without a quarrel, still there would have been a great hue and cry about the marriage itself. First, it never happened. Secondly, how could there be a marriage between a princess of the Warrior Caste and a boy of the priestly Brahman Caste? Her readers would have imagined at once that the writer was preaching against our social customs in an underhand way. And they would write letters to the papers.

So I pray with all my heart that my grandmother may be born a grandmother again, and not through some cursed fate take birth as her luckless grandson.

So with a throb of joy and delight, I asked Grannie: “What then?”

Grannie went on: Then the princess took her little husband away in great distress, and built a large palace with seven wings, and began to cherish her husband with great care.

I jumped up and down in my bed and clutched at the bolster more tightly than ever and said: “What then?”

Grannie continued: The little boy went to school and learned many lessons from his teachers, and as he grew up his class-fellows began to ask him: “Who is that beautiful lady who lives with you in the palace with the seven wings?”

The Brahman’s son was eager to know who she was. He could only remember how one day he had been gathering sticks, and a great disturbance arose. But all that was so long ago that he had no clear recollection.

Four or five years passed in this way. His companions always asked him: “Who is that beautiful lady in the palace with the seven wings?” And the Brahman’s son would come back from school and sadly tell the princess: “My school companions always ask me who is that beautiful lady in the palace with the seven wings, and I can give them no reply. Tell me, oh, tell me, who you are!”

The princess said: “Let it pass to-day. I will tell you some other day.” And every day the Brahman’s son would ask: “Who are you?”and the princess would reply: “Let it pass to-day. I will tell you some other day.” In this manner four or five more years passed away.

At last the Brahman’s son became very impatient, and said: “If you do not tell me to-day who you are, O beautiful lady, I will leave this palace with the seven wings.” Then the princess said: “I will certainly tell you to-morrow.”

Next day the Brahman’s son, as soon as he came home from school, said: “Now, tell me who you are.” The princess said: “To-night I will tell you after supper, when you are in bed.”

The Brahman’s son said: “Very well;” and he began to count the hours in expectation of the night. And the princess, on her side, spread white flowers over the golden bed, and lighted a gold lamp with fragrant oil, and adorned her hair, and dressed herself in a beautiful robe of blue, and began to count the hours in expectation of the night.

That evening when her husband, the Brahman’s son, had finished his meal, too excited almost to eat, and had gone to the golden bed in the bedchamber strewn with flowers, he said to himself: “To-night I shall surely know who this beautiful lady is in the palace with the seven wings.”

The princess took for her the food that was left over by her husband, and slowly entered the bedchamber. She had to answer that night the question, who was the beautiful lady who lived in the palace with the seven wings. And as she went up to the bed to tell him she found a serpent had crept out of the flowers and had bitten the Brahman’s son. Her boy-husband was lying on the bed of flowers, with face pale in death.

My heart suddenly ceased to throb, and I asked with choking voice: “What then?”

Grannie said: “Then . . .”

But what is the use of going on any further with the story? It would only lead on to what was more and more impossible. The boy of seven did not know that, if there were some “What then?” after death, no grandmother of a grandmother could tell us all about it.

But the child’s faith never admits defeat, and it would snatch at the mantle of death itself to turn him back. It would be outrageous for him to think that such a story of one teacherless evening could so suddenly come to a stop. Therefore the grandmother had to call back her story from the ever-shut chamber of the great End, but she does it so simply: it is merely by floating the dead body on a banana stem on the river, and having some incantations read by a magician. But in that rainy night and in the dim light of a lamp death loses all its horror in the mind of the boy, and seems nothing more than a deep slumber of a single night. When the story ends the tired eyelids are weighed down with sleep. Thus it is that we send the little body of the child floating on the back of sleep over the still water of time, and then in the morning read a few verses of incantation to restore him to the world of life and light.

Translated by Rabindranath Tagore and C. F. Andrews (1916)

(1) Strict asceticism practiced for a while might lead the gods to grant fertility.

(2) Such childhood marriages used to be quite common in India, although they are illegal today. The idea was to guarantee that the girl was married while still a virgin. The couple were not expected to consummate the relationship (and often not even to live together) until she reached puberty. A case like this in which the boy marries an older woman would be quite rare, but perhaps appealing to a romantic young boy.

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This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

Try Chambal:
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155674257/ (vol. 1)
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155128262/ (vol. 2)

One of the foremost poets in the Indian sub-continent, Faiz Ahmed Faiz was born in Sialkot in Pakistan. He studied philosophy and English literature, but poetry and politics preoccupied him more than anything else. For writing poetry that always antagonizes the ruling Úlite and challenges colonial and feudal values, like such rebellious writers as Ngugi of Kenya and Darwish of Palestine, Faiz had to go to jail repeatedly during both colonial and postcolonial times in Pakistan. Inspired by the Marxist ideology, Faiz’s poetry exhibits a strong sense of commitment to lower-class people, yet it always maintains a unique beauty nourished by the long, rich tradition of Urdu literature. His love poems are as appealing as his political poems, and he is considered primarily responsible for shaping poetic diction in contemporary Urdu poetry. Which poems deal with love, and which ones with politics? What evidence is there that Faiz is a courageous poet? What is his attitude towards loneliness and death?

Loneliness

Loneliness like a good, old friend
visits my house to pour wine in the evening.
And we sit together, waiting for the moon,
and for your face to sparkle in every shadow.

Last Night

Last night your lost memory visited my heart
as spring visits the wilderness quietly,
as the breeze echoes the silence of her footfalls
in the desert,
as peace slowly, softly descends on one’s sickness.

Tonight

Do not strike the chord of sorrow tonight!
Days burning with pain turn to ashes.
Who knows what happens tomorrow?
Last night is lost; tomorrow’s frontier wiped out:
Who knows if there will be another dawn?
Life is nothing, it’s only tonight!
Tonight we can be what the gods are!

Do not strike the chord of sorrow, tonight!
Do not repeat stories of sufferings now,
Do not complain, let your fate play its role,
Do not think of tomorrows, give a damn–
Shed no tears for seasons gone by,
All sighs and cries wind up their tales,
Oh, do not strike the same chord again!

Speak

Speak, your lips are free.
Speak, it is your own tongue.
Speak, it is your own body.
Speak, your life is still yours.

See how in the blacksmith’s shop
The flame burns wild, the iron glows red;
The locks open their jaws,
And every chain begins to break.

Speak, this brief hour is long enough
Before the death of body and tongue:
Speak, ’cause the truth is not dead yet,
Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.

Stanza

If they snatch my ink and pen,
I should not complain,
For I have dipped my fingers
In the blood of my heart.
I should not complain
Even if they seal my tongue,
For every ring of my chain
Is a tongue ready to speak.

My Interview

The wall has grown all black, upto the circling roof.
Roads are empty, travellers all gone. Once again
My night begins to converse with its loneliness;
My visitor I feel has come once again.
Henna stains one palm, blood wets another;
One eye poisons, the other cures.

None leaves or enters my heart’s lodging;
Loneliness leaves the flower of pain unwatered,
Who is there to fill the cup of its wound with color?

My visitor I feel has come once again,
Of her own will, my old friend–her name
Is Death: a friend in need, yet an enemy–
The murderess and the sweetheart!

Translated by Azfar Hussain

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

Try Chambal:
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155674257/ (vol. 1)
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155128262/ (vol. 2)

Nelson Mandela was trained as a lawyer, and joined the African National Congress in 1944 to aid in its struggle against apartheid. During over 25 years in prison he became the world’s most famous political prisoner. After a long campaign of resistance within South Africa and political and economic pressure from without, President F. W. de Klerk ended the government ban on the ANC and freed Mandela in 1990, whereupon he assumed leadership of the organization. He worked tirelessly over the next few years to negotiate an end to apartheid and minority rule, gaining widespread respect and support in the process. National elections were held in April 1994, and on May 10th of that year Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first Black president of South Africa.

What are the most important ideals for the South African future stated in this speech?

Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Distinguished Guests, Comrades and Friends:

Today, all of us do, by our presence here, and by our celebrations in other parts of our country and the world, confer glory and hope to newborn liberty.

Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

All this we owe both to ourselves and to the peoples of the world who are so well represented here today.

To my compatriots, I have no hesitation in saying that each one of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld.

Each time one of us touches the soil of this land, we feel a sense of personal renewal. The national mood changes as the seasons change.

We are moved by a sense of joy and exhilaration when the grass turns green and the flowers bloom.

That spiritual and physical oneness we all share with this common homeland explains the depth of the pain we all carried in our hearts as we saw our country tear itself apart in a terrible conflict, and as we saw it spurned, outlawed and isolated by the peoples of the world, precisely because it has become the universal base of the pernicious ideology and practice of racism and racial oppression.

We, the people of South Africa, feel fulfilled that humanity has taken us back into its bosom, that we, who were outlaws not so long ago, have today been given the rare privilege to be host to the nations of the world on our own soil.

We thank all our distinguished international guests for having come to take possession with the people of our country of what is, after all, a common victory for justice, for peace, for human dignity.

We trust that you will continue to stand by us as we tackle the challenges of building peace, prosperity, non-sexism, non-racialism and democracy.

We deeply appreciate the role that the masses of our people and their political mass democratic, religious, women, youth, business, traditional and other leaders have played to bring about this conclusion. Not least among them is my Second Deputy President, the Honorable F.W. de Klerk.

We would also like to pay tribute to our security forces, in all their ranks, for the distinguished role they have played in securing our first democratic elections and the transition to democracy, from blood-thirsty forces which still refuse to see the light.

The time for the healing of the wounds has come.

The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come.

The time to build is upon us.

We have, at last, achieved our political emancipation. We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace.

We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity–a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.

As a token of its commitment to the renewal of our country, the new Interim Government of National Unity will, as a matter of urgency, address the issue of amnesty for various categories of our people who are currently serving terms of imprisonment.

We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free.

Their dreams have become reality. Freedom is their reward.

We are both humbled and elevated by the honor and privilege that you, the people of South Africa, have bestowed on us, as the first President of a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa, to lead our country out of the valley of darkness.

We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom.

We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success.

We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.

Let there be justice for all.

Let there be peace for all.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world.

Let freedom reign.

The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!

God bless Africa!

Thank you.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This is an excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, edited by Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan and published by Harcourt Brace Custom Books.The reader was created for use in the World Civilization course at Washington State University, but material on this page may be used for educational purposes by permission of the editor-in-chief:

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020

This is just a sample of Reading About the World, Volume 2.

Reading About the World is now out of print. You can search for used copies using the following information:Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

Try Chambal:
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155674257/ (vol. 1)
http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780155128262/ (vol. 2)