People's Democracy

HELD in its central office at New Delhi, on December 29, a meeting of the Janwadi Lekhak Singh (JLS) condoled the untimely demise of Comrade Israel and paid him heartfelt homage. The meeting was attended by a good number of writers and others interested in literature and its problems.

It will be noted that Comrade Israel, a member of the CPI(M) West Bengal state committee and editor of Hindi weekly Swadhinta, passed away in Kolkata on December 26. He had been suffering from jaundice and some other ailments for some time.

Born in 1935 in a poor family in what was then Chhapra district (now Gopalganj) in Bihar, Comrade Israel joined his father as a chatkal mazdoor (jute mill worker) in a Kakinada mill; the mill is in North 24 Parganas district today. It was here that this youth developed a taste for Hindi literature. Israel joined the Communist Party in early 1950s and worked on the trade union front. He remained a wholetimer of the CPI(M) till his last.

Israel was among those who enriched the nayi kahani movement in Hindi. Later, in early 1980s, he was to become one of the founders of the JLS. He wrote a novel Roshan on the travails and struggles of a chatkal mazdoor family and authored two collections of short stories entitled Farq and Roznamcha.

At the time of his death, Israel was one of the secretaries of the JLS and the president of its Bengal unit.

Comrade Israel’s last rites were performed on December 28 after the arrival of his widow, son and three daughters from Bihar.

Paying their homage to Comrade Israel, several noted writers threw light on his life and work, his firm commitment to Marxism-Leninism along with his amicable nature, his simple way of life and always smiling face and, most of all, his creativity. Isreal’s pen created a number of working class characters who all have their own strong and weak points, but none of them appears contrived. In fact, all of them appear to be real-life workers.

Those who spoke on Israel’s literary and political personalities included Rajendra Yadav, M M P Singh, Kanti Mohan, Vishnuchandra Sharma, Ramesh Upadhyaya, Rajkumar Saini, Neelabh (from Allahabad), Pankaj Visht, Kewal Goswami, Uday Prakash, Bhagwan Singh, Mahesh Darpan, Dwarka Prasad Charumitra, Pankaj Singh, Bhagwan Prasad Singh (from Begusarai, Bihar), Sanjeev Kumar, Ajay Tewari, Chanchal Chauhan and veteran JLS leader Dr Mahadev Saha. All the speakers also stressed the need for making Israel’s writings available anew to the readers.

The meeting concluded with a condolence resolution moved by JLS secretary Chancal Chauhan, followed by two minutes’ silence in memory of the departed writer.