Page 56 - GOTIL (ENG) Sample

24 Glimpses of Traditional Indian Life

movies which have polluted the minds of Indians. Tighter
censorship is because of the influence of Islam, which
despite so much denigration levied against it, exerts
beneficial restraints. 19

Many of the villages are so remote that people know little
about what is happening beyond them. Local goings-
on and gossip are the all-important news. Listening to
relatively innocuous Bengali programs on battery-run
transistor radios is common, by which people may hear
of affairs of mighty nations. But to most villagers a more
important news item would be a dispute over a goat
having strayed into a neighbor’s field.

One writer has described that during celebrations
following India’s independence an elderly villager was
accosted for working his fields instead of observing the
holiday. “Why aren’t you celebrating?” he was asked.
“Celebrating what?” came the reply. “Today the British
are being driven out!” “The who?” the old man asked. He
had never heard of the British.

I would catch up on world news after returning to Dhaka
from the villages. Summit meetings, a dollar crisis,
missile-test protests, German election, soccer violence
— it all seemed unreal, like fragments of a dream once
vivid but now almost forgotten, voices from a world so
far away as to be irrelevant.
19. Since the first edition of this book was published, electricity
and television have become standard accessories in Bangladeshi
village homes, and Indian movies standard fare therein — with
inevitable degrading effect.