A wake-up call: Exploring the Gramscian notion of False consciousness in the poems of Subhash Mukhopadhyay

Abstract: The Marxian concept of False consciousness, as developed by Gramsci, participated in the discourse of the unscrupulous deviousness of the dominator, and the unsuspecting blindness of the victim, along with a deliberate misrepresentation of reality. This paper would try to locate the poems of Subhash Mukhopadhyay in this larger context, showing how many of his poems are addressed to an unknown and almost anonymous ‘comrade’, in whom Mukhopadhyay instils the fire of revolution, be it by asking him to bring in a new era, or making his comrade forcefully question the constructs about him. Thus, in the poems of Mukhopadhyay can be located a subtle yet sure hint of the deliberate misrepresentation of reality in the consciousness of the dominated class to perpetuate exploitation. This paper would try to see how the basic Marxist concept of a revolution, which called for a change of the ‘base’, and not just the ‘superstructure’ is propagated in the poems of Mukhopadhyay. A few of his poems reflect the generic acceptance of the ruling people’s ideas as they become the dominated ideas, while a large number of his poems on this subject are focused on toppling the hierarchy by making the working class aware of their own consciousness within their class. Finally, this paper would try to analyse this awareness as a kind of recognition of the unconscious of the working class, which, if completed, would lead to the elimination of the symptom, namely domination.

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The rift between the dominated and the dominators is a discourse which raises its ugly head in almost every academic discipline; and recent developments in the areas of Postcolonialism, Psychoanalysis and Marxism have shown that what was apparently the dominated section in these spheres, namely the colonised, the unconscious and the working class respectively, have the potential to stage a return, which can, and in one of these dynamics, is called, the return of the repressed. Subhash Mukhopadhyay, the highly political and politicised Bengali poet of the twentieth century, and his poems, put forward a worldview where the dominated can overthrow the dominator, by realising the fact what Shelley briskly put as, “Ye are many, they are few”. Mukhopadhyay talks of revolution, and he tries to instigate the sleeping lion in the Bengali youth, by exposing the ideas that False consciousness puts forward for the dominated class and its occupants. This paper will try to locate how Mukhopadhyay does that, with an attempt at a detailed analysis of a few of his earlier poems, and then try to compare his own stance towards an out-and-out Marxian revolution at the beginning of his poetic career to his stance towards the end of the past millennium and the first three years of the present one. Though there have been attempts at translating his works into English, for convenience's sake this paper is going to refer to all the poems and quotes in the original Bengali, before offering a rough and ready translation of the lines concerned.

The Marxian concept of False consciousness, as developed by Antonio Gramsci, participated in the discourse of the unscrupulous deviousness of the dominator, and the unsuspecting blindness of the victim, along with deliberate misrepresentation of reality. False consciousness leads the members of the working class to identify with their individual consciousness, and prevents a perspective where that member can view himself as a member of its class, and thus share his consciousness with other members of the same class, which would be a recognition of his true consciousness. It is the inability of the working class to recognise the inequality and oppression in the society because of carefully cultivated views within the same society that tends to neutralise and legitimise oppression. If the poem ‘Sokoler gaan’ [The song of the people] ^[i], which features in Mukhopadhyay’s famous collection Padatik is scrutinised in this context, then it would bring to the fore how the revolutionary poet tries to make his comrade aware of his real or true consciousness, by asking him to bring in a new era, where there would be no False consciousness. Mukhopadhyay says,   (Mukhopadhyay 6) [A hard-hitting mist of unison awaits us/ the red tattoo, our mark of distinction], requesting his comrade to identify his fellow sufferers. The pivotal question in any schema of domination, is that why is the majority of the people dominated by a minority, and one of the reasons behind that is the lack of unity and the widespread False consciousness within the dominated many. Thus, Mukhopadhyay says that to fight the good fight and bring in a new era, the working class has to know who is on their side, and they cannot leave out anyone from the oppressed lot. The seeds of revolution along with the directions to successfully bring it about are sown right from this poem, where Mukhopadhyay mocks the dominators by saying that they bend down to see the activities of flora and fauna. He simultaneously asks why we cannot bring the hammer down on their backs, and the answer to that question probably lies in the unequal distribution of resources, mostly economic, among the various classes of society.

The deliberate misrepresentation of reality in the consciousness of the dominated class, to perpetuate dominance is very well reflected in the following lines of the poem ‘Sokoler gaan’,



[Does the moon in the sky call you out?
It is but a bourgeoisie allusion
For butterflies we do not scout;
Their shadows we have managed to shun”]

The ‘Maaya’ or trick of the bourgeoisie is what False consciousness is, and that is precisely how they mislead the proletariat into believing that they have nothing to do about the situation they live in, when all they have to do, to borrow the very famous opening line of The Communist Manifesto, is “Workers of the world unite” (Marx and Engels 1). The several ways of deception, by which the bourgeoisie keep the working class and their ever-increasing demands in check is very aptly summarised in the metaphor of the visible and apparently reachable moon in the sky because the promises made are just as distant and elusive as the queen of the night herself. György Lukács in his discussion on False consciousness said that the worker’s consciousness identifies with the ruling class’ ideas like Nationalism, radical identification and so on, not only because of indoctrination carried out by institutions like family, school, church and press, but more importantly because of the sense of powerlessness that has already set in. As a result, instead of questioning attitudes of deference; submission and self-subordination became the new norm.  The most striking thing about this poem by Mukhopadhyay is the fact he does not fail to identify the fact that the submission practised by the proletariat is only because of the fact that they do not have enough awareness and knowledge of their own power. In a desperate call, he preaches the motto of starting the revolution by attempting to alter what the Marxists have defined as the base, consisting of economic controllers of power, even if the participants do not know where it would lead them to. What is even more pertinent in the lines quoted is the fact that Mukhopadhyay clearly hints at the fact that the bourgeoisie can never gain true class consciousness, because of their scarcity. The alienation and distance between the two classes are what constitutes the founding stones of Marxism, and that awareness goes on to replete False consciousness; thus, the comrades need to avoid even the shadows of the upper class.

The poem ‘Prostaab-1940’ [The 1940 proposal] talks about the various kinds of oppression that the working class has to face in order to live, and there are subtle hints of the creation and introduction of distortion or errors in the minds of the proletariat by the ruling class, which prevents the former group from noticing the quite obvious fact that they are dominated. The narrator here calls the dominator by the name of ‘Prabhu’ or ‘Overlord’, which simultaneously brings forth Mukhopadhyay’s sarcastic take on the subject and the fact that this domination has been accepted as a fact of life by most of the members of the dominated class. The gap between the two classes is very subtly hinted at in the following lines:



[We sang; for weapons we had none.
Despite the childhood practise with bow and arrow,
The enemy might surprise us with a canon!
But our civilisations we shall not shallow,
With closed eyes shall we turn to the sparrow.]

The fact that the overlords have kept information from them is very clear from the way in which Mukhopadhyay laments the lack of availability of weapons. He wants his reader, his comrade whom he indirectly addresses this poem to, to maintain a kind of pretence and sarcasm towards their dominators, so that the latter does not have the emotional upper hand at all times.

The second chapter in a book, entitled ‘Modernity and Urbanity in Calcutta: The mid-twentieth century’, says the following about Mukhopadhyay,

…there is bound to be something special about Calcutta which would appear in the poems of Subhash Mukhopadhyay that did not feature in the poems before him…. by incorporating the themes of class oppression, class struggle and socialist revolution in the backdrop of Calcutta of the mid-20th century in his poems, Subhash Mukhopadhyay culls out his own true niche in the global context of urban modern poetry. (132)

This niche is the setting against which Mukhopadhyay structures most of his poems. He shows his readers how a normative citizen’s relationship with any one power dynamic cannot be understood without a thorough understanding of all the dynamics of power which are at work in that respective set of circumstances. False consciousness, as Gramsci points out in his Prison Notebooks, works best if there is some kind of a deviation at work in the scenario, that is to say, if the dominated few succeed in convincing the dominated many that they are better off than most of the people, and that becomes immensely easy in the setting of the violent city, where active politicians are being killed for breakfast, and their bodies being stacked for lunch, during the Naxal movement in particular. By dinner, the police and the government tuck themselves back into their comfortable soft beds, and the general public sighs in relief that they lived to see another sunset. False consciousness, points out Mukhopadhyay, works best in tandem with terror, which was flowing fast through the veins of the Bengalis of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, which is why the class conflict did not appear to them as a pressing issue. 

The representation of the mentality of the working class as falsely led by the numerical minority gains a different perspective in a democracy. In a country like India, though the people making or breaking the law may be a handful of about five hundred people, the position they hold, of legislative authority, has been granted to them by what could be called a significant proportion of the population, if not the majority. Voters in a diversified country like India, with a history of conflicts between communities with different beliefs, are easily manipulated by the kind of false consciousness which makes them root for causes which are inefficient at best, and communal at worst, tricking them into ignoring issues which have a larger impact of the future of the nation. Mukhopadhyay, though he did not live to see the testing times that the very recent turn of events has pushed the country into, was quite prophetic in predicting the way to get out of it — revolution. Like the first poem discussed, the people of the country have identified their comrades, taken to the streets with them despite their apparent differences, and, as if in a linear narrative, these revolutionaries have not used any kind of violence or gunpower, but have used their creativity (like the song suggested by Mukhopadhyay) to express their dissent.

The working class is in a unique position of being the only class capable of achieving true class consciousness, by becoming aware of the historical role of class. This consciousness can liberate humanity from a class-based society and the bourgeoisie are incapable of achieving this consciousness insofar as its aim is to enforce the rule of the minority over the majority, and from that standpoint, it is always already against the majority. György Lukács has pointed out that the class situation itself, by the means of an ‘objective barrier’ makes any class consciousness of the bourgeoisie a False consciousness. (32). Lukács points out that the condition of the working class in their everyday lives marked by an inadequate and false understanding of social relations because of certain gaps or lacks in what they ought to know makes sure that their false consciousness stays on. He says that a true revolution, a ‘Nobojug’ [New era], as it were, is not only a struggle of the working class against an external class enemy but also an internal struggle against itself and its false consciousness. Mukhopadhyay sounds a little sceptic, and only partially hopeful about the dawning of this revolution in the first section of the poem ‘Aalap’ [Interaction],



[Is spring stubborn for sure, comrade?
The call for a new dawn sits on a far creeper
Will spring arrive? To arrive is but futility
Year after year has it found shelter in the crowd of the wealthy]

Spring here, quite obviously, is the metaphor for revolution. This extract from the poem goes on to show the generic lack of faith that the revolutionaries have in their own prowess. This only goes on to highlight the fact that true consciousness is class consciousness, and that only ‘the people united shall always be victorious’^[ii]. There is a lack of unity, and if we extend our reading of Gramsci’s notion of False consciousness onto this lack of unity, it could be argued that the lack of unity is another of the ploys using which the bourgeoisie keep the working class in check. Mukhopadhyay might be implying the fact that even if a revolutionary spring does arrive, it would not last long.

Marxism in the poems of Mukhopadhyay is not subtle, but very pronounced. While a few of his poems reflect the generic acceptance of the ruling people’s ideas as they become the dominated ideas, a large number of his poems on this subject are focused on toppling the hierarchy by making the working class aware of their own consciousness within their class. The basic Marxist concept of a revolution, which called for a change of the ‘base’, and not just the ‘superstructure’ is propagated in the poems of Mukhopadhyay, and that is very evident in the subsection called ‘Panditmurkho’ [Pseudo-intellectuals] of the poem ‘Aalap’, which roughly translates to an erudite fool, where Mukhopadhyay directly refers to Lenin, Engels and Marx, saying that he knows their philosophy like the back of his hand. Thus, along with the lines of a Marxist revolution, there has to be a transfer of ownership of the means of production, because all the changes that take place in the superstructure are far less meaningful. The silent resignation that was there in the quoted lines, gives way to strong belief as the poet declares with a monolithic determinism, that a revolution is not far away in India. This revolution would have to be a battle against what Gramsci defines as hegemony, divided into its two sub-parts, social hegemony and political government. It is by the subtle yet sure imposition of hegemony that ensures the permanence of False consciousness in the working class, and that imposition is what Mukhopadhyay contests in many of his poems. He addresses his readers, his comrades in such a way that reminds the proletariat of their true position. In a way, it could be said that this is a recognition of the unconscious in the working class, and the moment the unconscious is given recognition, it ceases to be unconscious, and comes into the consciousness, giving the subject relief from their symptom, which in this case can be called unnecessary domination.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, the unconscious always finds a way to express itself, be it through the formations of dream, symptom, wit or error. In this case, the unconscious expresses itself through the poetry of Mukhopadhyay, as Friedrich Joseph Schelling had said in his System of Transcendental Idealism, that art always has an opportunity for the expression of the unconscious. Schelling pointed out that the spirit of the time would always already be present in every work of art, irrespective of the conscious wish of the artist. The only salient difference between what Schelling says and what Mukhopadhyay does is the fact that the latter consciously portrays the unconscious of the working class in his poems, so that, following that instigation and exposition of the unconscious at a generic but pertinent level, the proletariat would be made aware of their own strength and abilities, which would relieve them of their ‘symptom’, that is, being dominated by the minority.

In the poems of Mukhopadhyay, thus, we find a generic adherence to the Marxist notion of revolution, which comes to age in the later poems of his. There is a gradual development, from being a radical revolutionary who advises his comrades to start the revolution at the earliest possible opportunity, to one who would rather wait and pounce at the right moment, to ensure that the revolution is fully effective. It can be argued that the declaration of independence took away the added amount of rage that his early collections like Padatik had (which was published in 1940, while he was still a student), but the development could more surely be attributed to the dying out of the Naxal movement in Bengal. In the 1970s his poetry took an allegorical turn, and the directness with which he addressed his comrades was nowhere to be found. In one of his later poems called ‘Aschorjo Kolom’ [Pen of wonder], he criticises the fact that almost anyone can become a ‘writer’ or ‘poet’ if they are given the pen. He, however, continues to write about unity among the class members, in a more subtle way; for instance in the poem called ‘Bondhu’ [Friend] where he says that he cannot recognise any of his friends in the dark, which is an allusion to the fact that many of his comrades have sided with the ruling class, betraying the ideal that they believed in. Mukhopadhyay tries to fight a lost battle till his last verses, but his focus is now a little shifted, as age and experience have made him more mature. One could argue that Mukhopadhyay found theory (or in this case literature) to be just as effective as activism, though Marxist critics, poets and theorists would probably disagree with this notion which has been so effectively established by Homi Bhabha in ‘The commitment to theory’.

To conclude, it could be said that the ideas of Gramsci have been well appropriated by Subhash Mukhopadhyay in his poems, which offer a wide range of possibilities of growing out of the False consciousness which the system has trained the majority to believe as their reality. Irrespective of this appropriation, the fierce Bengali poet stands as a revolutionary on his merits, for he used the notions of Marxism in a context which was relevant to his location, culture and time. His poems adapted themselves to changing times, but the crux of the working class realising their oppression and as a result achieving class consciousness is something which remains constant in some shape or form in most of his works. The readings of these poems along Gramscian lines only go on to strengthen the case of critical literature being ubiquitous in its approach, application and execution in foreign cultures. In the present scenario, the majority population of India need to understand the role of the oppressors as deceivers, not only to regain their class identity and complete a revolution on Marxist terms, but also to retain the essence of the country against odds which currently trouble the citizens.

Works Cited:

Printed sources:

Bhabha, Homi K. The location of culture. Routeledge Publications, 1994. pp- 19-40.

Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the prison notebooks. Translated by Quentin Hoare and Nowell Smith. Lawrence and Wishart Publications, 1971.

Lukács, György. History and class consciousness. Translated by Rodney Livingstone.  Merlin Press, 1967.

Mukhopadhyay, Subhash. Collected Poems. Biswabani Prakashani, 1957.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The communist Manifesto. Translated by Samuel Moore Progress publishers, 1888.

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph. System of transcendental idealism. University press of Virginia, 1978.

Shelley, Percy Byssshe. ‘The Masque of Anarchy’. Published by Edward Moxon, 1832.

Web sources:

http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/133055/7/07_chapter%202.pdf

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^[i] All translations provided in italics and square brackets after their Bengali originals has been done by the author of this paper

^[ii] El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido, one of the most celebrates songs of the Nueva cancion chilena movement, which has since been translated into English, and has become a popular slogan for revolutionaries