From the Ramparts

In his review of Ashok Mitra’s book From the Ramparts, G P Deshpande has hailed the author as a “renaissance man” (June 30). Undoubtedly, Ashok Mitra is one of the finest commentators of our times, and his Calcutta Diary in EPW was an eminently readable column. GPD referred to AM’s “most moving tributes and obituaries” published in this column. However at least three unfortunates – historian Dharma Kumar, Bengali poet Subhas Mukhopadhyay, and a Marxist ideologue Mohit Sen – were not as lucky as many others to be “blessed” in his column, but they received harsh treatment. While Dharma Kumar was not a “fellow traveller”, the other two broke ranks with the communist party. But then AM, according to his own admission, is a “communist and not a bhadralok”.

A K DASGUPTA
Hyderabad