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Chinmoy Banerjee
Man of Ideas and Actions
by Robin Roberts  Chinmoy Banerjee does not believe in heroes. Instead, he believes in everyday people doing good deeds every day. The retired SFU professor and social activist considers the time he’s spent fighting racism and defending human rights unremarkable, never mind heroic.
As a child growing up in Calcutta in the 1940s and ’50s, Banerjee was deeply affected by the poverty around him. Banerjee’s father had been dependent on an older brother after their father died young. When Banerjee’s uncle quit his job and joined the anti-British movement after Mahatma Gandhi called for non-cooperation, the family became destitute. Banerjee’s father began weaving homemade cloth and selling it village to village to eke out a living. With help from a wealthy and patriotic lawyer and from another brother, Banerjee’s father eventually went on to get an education and become a doctor. Having experienced what it was like to be impoverished, he devoted much of his practice to treating the poor for free. It was that example of compassion that inspired the younger Banerjee to get involved in social causes. It also showed him how important a part education plays in escaping poverty.
Chinmoy Banerjee attended Scindia School in Gwalior, and St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, then went on to earn his BA and MA at Delhi University. He won a Fulbright scholarship to study in the U.S., and did his PhD in 18th-century English literature at Kent State University in Ohio. It was the height of the Vietnam War, and demonstrations were not uncommon. What was uncommon was when members of the National Guard opened fire on students on his own campus. He was in the middle of teaching a class when he heard the gun shots. He ran out to see what was going on and was met with the tragic aftermath of the clash – four students lay dead, many others wounded and bleeding on the ground. Chaos ensued, ambulances and police cars screamed onto the campus. It was a shocking eye-opener for Banerjee, and a turning point. “That was when I got engaged in activism and the anti-war movement,” says Banerjee, who began to join demonstrations in Washington.
If he thought he’d have a more peaceful life in Vancouver, he was wrong. When he landed a position in the English department at SFU in 1970, the Vietnam War was still raging, but it was the latent racism and sexism lurking in his new backyard that caught his attention. “Much of it was graffiti written on doors and walls,” he recalls. So he got involved in groups like the Indian People’s Association of North America, Canadian Farmworkers’ Union, and was a founding member of the B.C. Organization to Fight Racism. He also served on the board of the Committee For Racial Justice for many years. Besides creating awareness of social injustice, it got the attention of racists.
“I got hate calls and threats and so on,” he says matter-of-factly. When the phone rang late one night, with a voice telling him, “I’m going to kill you and float you down the river,” he realized he needed to protect himself and his young family. “I slept with a loaded shotgun,” he says.
Fortunately, he never had to use it, but recalls the late 1970s and early 1980s as a particularly tumultuous time in Vancouver. “The KKK and Aryan Nations [white supremacy groups] were walking up and down Robson Street and hanging around schools wearing hoods and distributing [hate] leaflets and cards,” he remembers. “People were getting shot at by passing cars, homes in Surrey got shot at, there was a fire bomb at a wedding in Richmond, a young man was kicked to death at a park near 41st and Fraser, swastikas were being painted on gurdwaras. There was a lot of violence; it was a period of extremely concentrated attacks.”
He struggled with the media, taking issue with outlets for giving what he saw as an open platform to former KKK head David Duke. He even tussled with the CBC over a W5 segment on Chinese Canadians taking up space in universities.
“It’s different now,” he says. “The political situation has changed, the discourse has changed, the media has realized it can’t carry on with that stuff.”
The change did not come easy, but Banerjee never backed down. “I don’t get frustrated because I know change is slow,” he says. “One has to keep working at it, be patient, and remain hopeful. Without hope you can’t struggle. If things are wrong and make you indignant and annoyed, then you have to do something about it, and you have to have hope that you’ll make a change. Today there is a serious change, and I’m proud I have participated in it.”
His part in that change did not come without personal consequences, however. His war on racism left his own children somewhat battle-scarred. He had believed it was important for son Anand and daughter Nandini to see the world for what it was, and to be involved in fighting unfairness alongside him. “I’m not sure they were terribly pleased because children like to go and play with their friends rather than being dragged to meetings and demonstrations,” he says quietly. “I’m not sure I’ve been forgiven entirely for that. I certainly didn’t have that sense of balance that I have now, when you are involved in things and you’re young and you just do them. It’s only later on when you realize you wish you had a little more balance in regards to your children, that you didn’t deprive them of things that children should be doing. They certainly appreciate [my accomplishments] a great deal now, but what they lost in terms of play time, they lost.”
He has a second chance, however, with his six-year-old grandson and three-year-old granddaughter, who are “too young to listen to my lectures on human rights,” he says with a chuckle.
Still, Banerjee remains actively involved in human rights causes, most notably as a member of the South Asian Network of Secularism and Democracy, which works to promote a democratic and just society through education. “Chin has very global concerns,” says his friend Ashok Mathur, a fellow member of the group. “He’s very aware of what goes on in the world, but his action is local. A lot of people who are inclined to activism take on obscure Internet causes which are geographically far removed from them. Chin acts where he lives.”
Mathur says what he admires most about Banerjee is that he is well-read and knowledgeable about a wide variety of topics, and is “always interested in passing some of that knowledge along to anyone who’s receptive. Chin is an educator. He’ll talk about a bunch of things, but ‘educator’ sort of defines him. He has a very curious mind. He’s always learning, trying to figure things out. And I think he assumes other people have the same kind of curiosity about the world we live in. As people of South Asian origin — and I think that’s true for all of us — we are cultural ambassadors of the land we come from. At some level we try to build bridges.”
One of Banerjee’s current passions is cinema. He co-founded the South Asian Film Education Society, which now boasts about 50 members who gather once a month to watch South Asian films, and then dissect them. “We use those films to talk about India, South Asia and what issues are being taken up and how these films are situated in the cultural landscape of South Asia, how they’re affected by the politics, how they’re intervening in the politics,” explains Banerjee.
And this esteemed academic is not above watching lighter fare. “Actually, Bollywood does something we take quite seriously,” he says. “Though it is popular entertainment, it can be taken seriously. For instance, we raise the questions: What does a popular film do? Why does it represent society? What is its impact? Our intention is to take everything quite seriously, even if it is quite trivial.”
Although Banerjee has a serious demeanour, his close friends see another side of him. “Chin is very, very funny in a wry, self-deprecating way,” says South Asian Film Society co-founder and friend Patricia Gruben. In addition to being an associate professor in Contemporary Arts at SFU and a director at the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters, Gruben is a writer-director and has benefited from Banerjee’s critiques of her work. “He’s got a really sharp, analytical eye and a great appreciation for film at all intellectual levels,” she says. “He’s been a hugely generous and enthusiastic mentor for me as someone who has come only lately to South Asian culture.”
It was Gruben who first learned about a cache of about 150 Hindi films that had been discovered behind the screen of the old Raja Cinema on Commercial Drive. The theatre was slated for renovation when workers came upon the 35mm reels from the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, which would likely have ended up in the trash. “I knew that if I told Chin about this he would mobilize the troops to save the films,” she says. “He’s full of energy for things that interest him.”
Sure enough, Chin, his wife Robyn and Ashok Mathur went down to the theatre, rolled up their sleeves and dug through the films. The most valuable reels have now found a new home in the SFU library archives. Some of them will be shown at the new Woodward’s building in Downtown Vancouver, where the university now runs its Contemporary Arts program. The films will be used in a variety of courses related to film, culture and literature, which makes Chinmoy Banerjee very happy. After all, that is precisely the goal of his film education society — and his life.
“If he believes in something, he’s willing to act on it,” says Mathur. “It’s kind of rare; there aren’t many people who combine that level of intellectual activity with actual activism. People live either in the realm of ideas or in the realm of doing things. Chin combines the two rather nicely. He’s quite a guy.”
Even, perhaps, a hero?
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