THE CRITICISMS AGAINST ENID

In the last few years a veritable avalanche of criticisms has been directed at Enid Blyton, long dead in the 1960s. 

One of these is the contradiction between her behaviour in personal life compared with what her characters portrayed. She saw her children minimally, leaving them to the care of nannies. Her books project a mother always there for her children, something that Enid claimed for herself personally also. 

I dont mind the truth about her life pointed out by biographers, but i dont appreciate the criticisims of Enid's work on this account. Do we discount Einstein's work because he may have been unfair to his two wives ?

Enid's work must stand or fall based on the objectives it sets for itself :

Does it get into the minds of young readers ?

Does it inspire in them a moral compass and to be a fair, balanced human being ?

Does it entertain and excite young readers ?

Does it preapre young readers for the ups and downs of life ?

Does it tell them more about the world - science, nature, the rythms of life ?

I think it does, and remains relevant, seven-eight decades after she wrote it. 

These are classics. Just because she wrote for children, was so prolific and so successful, that is no reason to see her work with a jaundiced eye. 

All the other criticisims : that she used the word queer (not in the sense it is used today), or portrayed black or working class people a certain way (generally not as heroes of her stories - though that is not true. Jack of the Adventure series is an orphan), are a product of her times.. she wanted to talk to the children about the world they saw around themselves. 

Would you rather have Homer talking about Apple watches ? I find the criticisisms on such counts ridiculous. 

WHAT HAS ENID BLYTON MEANT TO ME

 ENID BLYTON GAVE ME A FAMILY

All the characters in her books that I loved, became my family.. I laughed and cried with them, worried and felt guilty with them, and eventually grew up alongside them. 

I saw how they helped each other through crisis, and learnt how valuable families could be. 

SHE POINTED TO QUALITIES THAT COULD SEE ME THROUGH LIFE

Her characters learnt the value of patience. diligence. Keeping their temper in check. Being kind. Life taught them these lessons, not lectures. I learnt them too. 

Some of the characters were vain, headstrong or cruel, and were not well liked. I learnt to check my own behaviour too. 

LIFE WASNT A FAIRY TALE

Life wasnt the same always.. there were ups and downs, adversities and joys, comings and goings.. She taught me to accept all with equanimity.. that this was the nature of life..

BEING INDUSTRIOUS

The children were industrious.. always upto something that was productive.. the homeless ones made themselves a makeshift home.. the hungry organized food..  they helped their parents make ends meet when times were tough... they ran around trying to discover what was behind a mystery..

All this taught me the fun of work and how one could be one with it. 

OBSERVING NATURE

The biggest contribution made by Enid Blyton to me was to introduce nature.. to a girl brought up in little houses with no gardens, she taught me the beauty of blue skies.. white clouds.. huge welcoming trees, climbing creepers, and the scents of a garden... 

I WAS NOT LEFT WANTING

Because I had these virtual or families in my mind, I did not feel wanting, or deprived.. I had the confidence to follow my instinct.. I did not need to participate in things that did not interest me, just to belong.. I felt there must be people like me somewhere in the world, if not immediately around me... 

SHE GAVE DIRECTION TO MY LIFE

I think she gave direction to my life.. to focus on what was really valuable.. curiousity, industriousness, to be with nature, and to do what interested me.. I did not even interact with stereotypes of what would be expected of girls of my age and era.. 

Not all the heroic characters in her books excelled at studies, or were first in sports.. or were rich.. but they were good human beings, who looked out for others... So I did not feel the need to follow a template set by someone else for me.. I could follow my own calling.. 

What more could a parent have done for a child ?

Which is why I have always say : Enid Blyton raised me. 

DISCOVERING ENID BLYTON

I must have read my first enid blyton book at the age of 10, more than 50 years ago. Yet, the impressions remain as strong and have shaped my character, indeed my life choices. 

She is a prolific English author, writing some 800 books around the lives of english children. Yet, they go through heartbreak, loss of parent, rejection, happiness, being loved, feeling alone, curious, skillful - the whole melange of emotions and happenings around children anywhere in the world. 

The Five Find Outers

The first character I encountered in the 'Five Find-outers' - Fatty, was inspirational - he accepted he was fat, and went on with what he liked to do - solving mysteries... 

Fatty (The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage) by Treyer Evans

While the mysteries were absorbing, what was equally interesting was the chatter between the children - and their high teas ! So they had scones, pastries, sandwiches with their evening teas - many other snacks i have forgotten about. To an only child like me, the companionship, and being served great food by your mother, was all great (my mother was busy working - and surviving)...

Also in the books were myriad descriptions of nature.. children lying down in an open field and gazing at the blue sky.. at the wind chasing the clouds... or gazing at a thick tree trunk and spreading branches above them... No had ever spoken a word about nature to me before that.. so nature became engrained in my psyche... 

The Famous Five

After the Five Find Outers, I encountered the Famous Five Series... Here was George - actually a girl, Georgina, who rejected the trappings of being a girl.. who was alone mostly, but had a dog.. She slowly joins up with other children to go on advantures...

My brother was possibly named after George's dog - Timmy !

I lived in small 1-2 room houses in crowded urban areas in Delhi.. So the settings of the books : always rural England, and situated in cottages, islands, the English and Welsh countryside and sea shores, was enlightening to me about the big world outside of where i lived.

The first Famous Five book was published in 1942

Here is a good video showing one of the Famous Five adventures.. 

Boarding School Series

I then encountered the St. Clare's series and the Malory Tower series. These are girls boarding schools with a variety of characters.. amiable, timid, bold, cheeky, spiteful. Lots of things happen between them. Eventually, everyone learns lessons and grows up to go to the next class.. I did my growing up alongside too..

From midnight feasts to illicit hook-ups to smuggling to bullying, all these make for great drama.

The St. Clare's story follows two twin girls- Patricia and Isabel O’Sullivan. The series sees their growth from conceited and arrogant girls to dignified and kind young women.

The Family Books

Next I encountered the Family books which are about families in trouble, and pulling together in the time of adversity. I found them hugely inspirational. 

For example, they might have a parent who has gone missing, or both, presumed killed. Or an injured father who was the breadwinner of the family. Or their city house burns down, and overnight they have to live with cousins at a farm. 

The settings are always rural, where the children help tend to hens or sheep, and farm. They help their family put food on the table and there is always laughter, despite the sadness. 

Wraparound dustwrapper from the 2nd edition, illustrated by Barbara C. Freeman

Wraparound dustwrapper from the 1st edition, illustrated by Harry Rountree

I am sure i was helped to cope with my own troubled family situation. More than that, I even found my family in these characters and their lives.

Because of the changing situation of the characters, which mirrored my own refugee family, my world expanded from what it might otherwise have been. For example, the Willow Farm house is constructed partly of timber recycled from old wooden sailing ships and one of the children says, touching a black oak beam, "Funny old beam — once you knew the fishes in the sea, and you creaked as great waves splashed over you. Now you live in a house, and listen to people's feet going up and down the stairs."

NATURE BOOKS BY ENID BLYTON

Finally, I discovered the nature books by Enid Blyton.. of seasons, animals, birds, as they go about their daily lives.

I disocovered these books at the fag end of my childhood, growing into late teens, and did not read all I could have, had i found them earlier. 

But they introduced me to everyday nature, all around us, wherever we live. 

WHY HAS THE WEST PROGRESSED SO MUCH MORE THAN INDIA SINCE THE 1940s ?

By 2014 I had spent decades trying to improve the circumstances i found around me in India, for the public good. Both professionally and in my own time / resources. Including giving an entire year, 20 hours a day work for a new political party that we all hoped would address the corruption and low level of governance in our country.

But I could see we were not able to make the change we wanted to. Sure, India has improved in so many ways (including now touching base with the South pole of the moon !) but we still have enormous poverty, hunger, lack of medical care, natural environment that is not cared for, and a low level of governance in most areas of life : urban planning, support to small farmers, job creation, and so on.

At the same time, I had read intensively on what happened in Europe during WW2 and realized how devastated were most european countries at the end of the war. Yet, they had picked themselves up from their bootstraps and their success of most of the countries was for everyone to see.

So my family and I decided to tour the english speaking countries first (except the US and Canada where friends and family had lived for long and we had more feedback). So we went in 2014 to the UK and Singapore (as a South-East Asian inspiration, closer to home), and in 2015 to New Zealand and Australia, to find answers to some questions. Ofcourse this was impressionistic, not a study per se, but surely that counts too. From 2017 onwards we visited Europe too.

We found that farmers were under stress in the UK and Europe too. Many committed suicide because of business failures. But we could see farmers had more support from their governments than in India.

Everyone we met performed some civic duties - their kept their neighbourhoods clean, helped the poor, volunteered at church. We would imagine the percentage of those we knew back home helping others, to be lower.

It was not true that family bonds were weaker in the west we felt.. Everywhere we saw, parents doted on children.. we saw them playing for long periods in public gardens with their children.. north indian parents (whom i have lived amidst) do not seem to spend that much direct time with their children. We saw children and grandchildren supporting grandparents in going to church, or assisting them at farm or with various tasks.

Ofcourse there were gory pieces in UK tabloids of some parent leaving young children locked at home alone, and so on.. but there are plenty of fathers in north india who beat children violently under influence of liquor and so on...

Everywhere we visited in the developed world we saw the rule of law, cleanliness, orderliness, a predictability to life, which was very relaxing.. one could breathe deeper. Indian cities in contrast cause tension when you step out.. because of the noise, disorderly traffic, and lack of normal conveniences of sufficient public transport, smooth pavements to walk on, and so on.

Ofcourse there may still be big-ticket corruption in the West, but it does not always affect residents in an everyday sort of way.

So we felt that there were cultural factors at play here that we needed to know more about. 

THE ANTIQUITY OF PANCHANTANTRA

The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian collection of animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose. The surviving work is dated to about 200 BCE, but the fables are likely much more ancient. 

Panchatantra illustration in Nalanda Temple, 7th century CE
(Turtle and the Geese), Panchatantra - Wikipedia

It has been translated in some 50 languages outside of India. One version reached Europe in the 11th century. The Pañchatantra was first published in 1863 in Hungarian.

Story of a tortoise and two geese, Journeys across Karnataka: Stories in stones, Tripurantakesvara Temple (karnatakatravel.blogspot.com), 1070 AD. 

The earliest known translation, into a non-Indian language, is the Pahlavi language of Iran in 550 CE by Borzuya. The book had become popular in Iran, and was translated into Syriac and Arabic whose copies survive as Kalīla wa Dimna. This is considered the first masterpiece of "Arabic literary prose." It is the 8th-century Kalila wa Demna text, that has been the most influential, not only in the Middle East, but also through its translations into Greek, Hebrew and Old Spanish. 

The King of the Crows conferring with his political advisors, 1210 CE,

                               Arabic version of Kalila wa dimna, Panchatantra - Wikipedia

The stories in the Panchatantra deploy metaphors of anthropomorphized animals with human virtues and vices. Its narrative illustrates, for the benefit of three ignorant princes, the central Hindu principles of nīti, or wise conduct of life.  It is also explained that nīti "represents an admirable attempt to answer the insistent question how to win the utmost possible joy from life in the world of men" and that nīti is "the harmonious development of the powers of man, a life in which security, prosperity, resolute action, friendship, and good learning are so combined to produce joy".

Panchatantra is in five parts.. 

Panchatantra - Wikipedia

Panchatantra - Wikipedia

The Panchatantra, tells wonderfully a collection of delightful stories with pithy proverbs, ageless and practical wisdom; one of its appeal and success is that it is a complex book that "does not reduce the complexities of human life, government policy, political strategies, and ethical dilemmas into simple solutions; it can and does speak to different readers at different levels."

HUNGARY AND INDIA

 I think I read somewhere that the Hungarian Government offers a 100 scholarships a year to Indian students. I looked up the information now and it says 5000 fully paid scholarships are given a year to students from 70 countries, including Indians. That would be about 71 scholarships a year to each of the 70 countries, but ofcourse there may be more or less from each country. 

Several videos in this regard are featured on the official Hungarian Government website, which are helpful. 

We certainly do see students around from many countries in Budapest (and doubtless many students study in other Hungarian cities as well). I have personally met students in Budapest from Nigeria, India, Bangaladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Georgia.

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There are a couple of lovely stories on the net linking Hungary and India :  the story of the president - the painter - and the indian ambassador

And about a Hungarian Jewish girl who grew up in Budapest, and married Pandit Nehru's cousin.

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A book entitled 'India with the Eyes of Hungarians' was published with the support of the Embassy of India in Hungary in 1987. 

Its introductory greetings were written by Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India : 'Hungarian  Indology  has  great  traditions. It  was  no  accident  that  many Hungarian scholars chose India as their new homeland, wishing to know it better. Three  among them  – Sándor  Kőrösi  Csoma in  the 19th  century, Erzsébet  Sass  Brunner  and  Károly  Fábri  in  our  days  –  are  buried  in Indian soil.  However, even  before the  journey to  India of  Sándor  Kőrösi Csoma, famous Indian works were translated into Hungarian. The visit of Rabindranath Tagore to Hungary  in  1926 further deepened  and enriched our relations. And the famous painter of India, Amrita Sher-Gil, was born to a Hungarian mother.'

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Another scholar notes that Tagore's journey to Hungary in 1926 had a significant influence on the deepening and the evolution of the cultural relations between the two nations.

During his stay in hungary, Tagore's renewed cardiac problems were treated in the sanatorium of Balatonfüred. A tree planted in Balatonfüred by the poet commemorates this as well as the promenade named after him in 1957 and the bust placed on the promenade, near the commemorative tree in 1956.

The Clay Mine and Other Matters

A friend, Hamza shared a searing well-known poem : ‘Mitti Ki Khan’ by Afzal Ahmed Syed. Hamza reads it here for us. 

It describes the fate of those tied to work in slavery like conditions. 

Some 40 million people or one in every 200 people are languishing in slavery across the globe, according to the International Labor Organization. This might well be a conservative figure as many forms of slavery are invisible and largely unreported. Yet the figure is more than three times higher than the roughly 13 million people captured and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries in the transatlantic slave trade.

About 70 percent of slaves are women and girls, while children account for 25 percent or 10 million slaves worldwide.

Slavery is a highly lucrative business in the modern world that generates as much as US$150 billion in profits every year.

Slavery is a condition or practice that people accept against their will, ranging from forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage and human trafficking to the commercial sex industry.

China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines and Russia account for 60 percent of modern-day slaves.

Endemic poverty, unsafe migration, weak governance and abuses of cultural practices, are all blamed for fuelling slavery in Asian nations. But a major driving force is a lack of anti-slavery legislation in many countries, which means one cannot be prosecuted and punished in a criminal court for putting another human being into slavery.

Some 94 out 193 member states have not passed laws prohibiting slavery.  Most of these countries are in Asia. Most Asian nations have anti-trafficking and labor laws but such legislation does not necessarily address slavery.

Asia is both a source and a destination of human trafficking, one of the many forms of slavery.

Global supply chains for agriculture, construction, fishing, clothing, fashion, beauty and the sex industry are feeding grounds for trafficking. The global sex industry has some 4.5 million women and girls trapped in perpetual slavery and about two-thirds of them are in the Asia-Pacific.

Every year, tens of thousands of poor young girls and women from relatively impoverished regions like South Asia are trafficked and sold into the sex industry in well-off countries in Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Middle East and even Europe.

India is home to the largest numbers of slaves, ranging from 14 to 18 million with women and girls making up the majority. It is a major source country for sex trafficking to Southeast and East Asia and a prime destination of sex trafficking from other South Asian countries. According to a 2017 study, India has around 16 million sex workers and about 37 percent are minors.

A common and cruel form of modern-day slavery in South Asia is debt bondage. Under this unlawful and humiliating system, men, women, children and even entire families are enslaved by the debt holder to repay debts through endless labor. The debt holder often squeezes laborers with psychological pressure and physical violence, denies freedom of movement and offers a lump-sum amount that is never enough for survival. A bonded worker remains enslaved until death.

Debt bondage is still prevalent in agriculture, brick kilns, construction sites, rice mills, embroidery and garment factories, stone quarries and even private houses. Pakistan has an estimated 2.1 million bonded laborers out of 3.1 million people living in slavery. The bonded labor system still exists in agriculture, brick making, carpet weaving, mining, fishing, domestic work and handicraft production, where a significant number of laborers are children.

The above referenced poem entitled 'Clay Mine' allegorically refers to their situation.

There is a shocking article on the plight of workers in the tea industry in Bangladesh. From what I could gather, several large tea estates are still owned by the British. 

The Clay Mine poem was written in the context of those selling everything they had to be able to migrate to the middle east to make a decent living. But many low-level workers suffer terribly in unjust systems in the middle east to this day. 

Sadly, it appears that some Western democracies are making up their labour shortages via the same very exploitative systems.