A Bengali intellectual or bhadralok, even if the person is inclined towards Hindu activism, can never go full throttle on communal issues. That is why the Mominpur incident can happen within Kolkata, with bhadralok voices remaining under lock and key.
Ask a Bengali of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, pat will come his quote, “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow.” It is the only saying of a Congress leader from outside the state which has penetrated deep into a Bengali heart, though nobody mentions in what context did Gokhale say this. There is no reason to explore also as long as the sentence satisfies a Bengali ego. Clearly the quote attributed the intellectual superiority as well as leadership in India, rest can be rested. What is more, once said the statement of Gokhale remains axiomatic to a Bengali even today.
The reluctance of intellectuals (or whoever is called/claims to be such in the state now) to criticise the abysmal record of administration in the state and the trend in political discourse there may be read in this context. There had been several instances which deserved outrage in media and intellectual discourse. Certain incidents will explain this.
In March this year two children and six women, all belonging to the minority community, were burnt to death in a village near Rampurhat in the Birbhum district.
The incident was in retaliation to the killing of a TMC panchayat member from the same community. One month before that, Anis Khan, a student activist, was found dead when he apparently was pushed from his home on the outskirts of Howrah. It was alleged by the family that four persons paid a visit to Khan’s home, one of them was in police uniform. In October, a clash broke out between two communities at Mominpur, a Muslim majority area in Kolkata. There have been meanwhile several arrests of high-profile politicians, ministers and advisers connected to the teacher recruitment scam in the state. Those who cleared the state’s recruitment examinations but did not get employment as school teachers due to widespread and deep rooted corruption and extortion, are on a sit-in strike for more than one and a half years now. Recently they were brutally evicted from around the state education department office in the middle of the night. But there was hardly any protest from the intellectuals. TMC leaders are connected to smuggling of cow, mining or sand, coal and stone and are under investigation, some are rotting in jail without bail. State government employees have never been paid their rightful dearness allowance even though adjudicated by the state’s High Court. The state government has been merrily spending money from the consolidated fund without approval of the legislature. In short, politics aside, there are umpteen incidents which demand attention of any right thinking person and mainstream media of the state. But West Bengal’s thinking types so far have not found merit in joining the protesters.
What could be the reason for their silence while their active protests over the death of Rizwanur Khan, police firing at Nandigram and land acquisition at Singur saw to the defeat of the 34-year old Left Front government? The “thinking types” of the state are well aware of their strong political voice in a Kolkata centric politics of West Bengal. In fact, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the last Left Front chief minister, lamented in his autobiography, Phire Dekha, how activism by “intellectuals” backing a “small section of people” ended his sincere effort to invite industry in the state. They all marched over Rizwanur’s death, police actions at Nandigram or killings at Netai and pleaded that change was a necessity. Strangely they are reluctant to come out openly against mal-administration, hopeless economic policies and party-led atrocities of the present state government. Only of late, since the instances of the state government’s misrules are badly exposed in the courts, some are criticising, though carefully, the TMC government. The question is why a Bengali who still proudly repeats what Gokhale said on their leadership in setting up the national thought strings, is so shy of criticising the wanton mismanagement of the state.
The reason lies in the alternative that is the BJP, which has come up in the political stage. Brought up on the staple diet of secular left teachings, these “intellectuals” are reluctant to even think of a political option which espouses free market economics as also nationalism spiced up with Hinduism. Their reluctance reminds one of M.N. Ray, when he wrote on the tragedy of Nehru, a modern mind caught in the medievalism of Gandhi and subsequently caught in the lure of power, Nehru had to balance between his secularism and Hindu chauvinism which was the binding force among the middle class across India. M.N. Roy, the intellectual, an executive committee member of the Comintern (Communist International) in its formative days under Lenin, did not have the need to maintain his financial and social position and could therefore come to sharp conclusions, but the “intellectuals” of West Bengal are concerned over their own and their children’s future, hence are careful in voicing views. They send their children to work outside the state, or abroad flaunting the national passport, while in West Bengal remain confined in the narrow local favour-seeking path. Hence their voices of protest are muffled.
If one takes a careful look at the origin of Bengali intellectual it will be apparent that it was to derive benefit from the ruler’s largesse. That was the principal reason for them to plead for English education which brought economic gains for their young. And since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery the English educated young Bengal opted to denounce orthodoxy and adapted the then prevailing liberal thoughts from the West. This turned towards communism after the Russian revolution. Despite the atrocities of Stalin and his great purge that saw a Bengali communist, Abani Mukherji, executed there, the romanticism of a Bengali to communism remains unabated even now. The last refuge of communism today is in the heart of a Bengali in Kolkata. If M.N. Roy found Gandhi’s Congress obnoxious due to its tilt towards Hinduism, the Kolkata intellectual will certainly consider BJP a pariah in the political discourse. Even if this means sacrificing the economic prospect for a cash strapped mal-administered state, the majority of prominent personalities from the world of literature, theatre, arts and music stood opposed to BJP in the state election 2021. Contrast the same with the 2016 Assembly election when many of the Left-leaning intellectuals were hoping for a defeat of TMC. BJP was not a force in the state then. That the “intellectuals” (read prominent persons which includes cricketer Saurav) are reluctant to come out in the open in support of a change illustrates the fact that the alternative to TMC now is BJP. And BJP, for them, is a party steeped in backward Hindutva. A Bengali intellectual, since the beginning of modern times, starting with Rammohan Roy, is always stirred by something that comes from across the seas. How can his heart warm up to something that is originating only within the backward Hindu belt? Look at the history. In 1857 the nouveau cultured Bengali viewed the sepoy mutiny as regressive, a rebellion against the British rule which he felt was beneficial. Many Bengali families in Kolkata kept transport ready in case sepoys enter their city.
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta had put it well when he wrote, “just because the Ganges flows through West Bengal, the problems endemic to the Gangetic Plain do not automatically drift into this state as well”. A Bengali intellectual or bhadralok, even if the person is inclined towards Hindu activism can never go full throttle on communal issues. That is why the Mominpur incident can happen within Kolkata, with the bhadralok voices remaining under lock and key. A Bengali knows well the abject stage of development in his state, the migration of younger generation in search of livelihood, and the ludicrous arguments of its political class which are nowhere near the culture that the state’s inhabitants are proud of, yet they will stop short of change of rule. For them the BJP led by Narendra Modi is a Hindi chauvinist party, which will pollute the language of Tagore, affect the peace and communal harmony (peace and harmony of a graveyard though) of the state. A state which does not have any hero—ancient, medieval or modern—worships the few who excelled and won global laurels. Without any prominent son of the state in current discourse in film, literature, sports, administration, politics or education, a Bengali thrives on deriding the Hindi heartland which today is more prosperous and growing faster than an old-age home styled West Bengal. Naturally its “intellectuals” love to remain, like the proverbial frog, happy in the same well, never to come out in the open.
Author Sugato Hazra’s latest book is “Losing the Plot: The Political Isolation of Bengal”.