VIEWPOINT
Romit Bagchi
The no-holds-barred electoral battle has culminated in a tectonic political shift in the battle-hardened and battle-enamoured West Bengal. Quite expectedly, it was followed by a full-throated triumphalism in one camp and a baffled quiet in the other. While the saffron camp had banked heavily on the anti-incumbency rage, combining it astutely with Hindu consolidation and development vows, the Mamata Banerjee-led camp had, on its part, fiercely fallen back upon the time-tested Bengali asmita factor. The BJP had branded the TMC as a party recklessly fawning on the ‘anti-national’ infiltrators and defending the all-permeating Syndicate Raj, while the Trinamool camp had dubbed the BJP as a party of the outsiders bent on foisting a ‘foreign rule’ and transforming culturally rich Bengal into a lackey of the ‘India’-dominated saffron empire.
After the dust had settled down, the mandate prodded both the elated and dejected think-tanks and the seasoned analysts to figure out the overt and covert factors which propelled the decisive turning of the tide defying the expectations of a tight race.
I will not go for a threadbare analysis of the mandate. A number of analytical pieces have already come up in print, electronic and social media and we have all been enlightened by them. I will just harp on the Bengali asmita factor through a comparison with a similar vitriolic scenario that West Bengal witnessed in tumultuous 1967. That was when the iron-fist of the Congress had weakened much, yielding a vacuum that led to a robust revival of Bengali pride concomitant with a shrill anti-Centre rhetoric in the aftermath of the dismissal of the United Front government, a coalition of 14 parties, by the then Governor Dharam Vira. The President’s Rule that followed was marked by prolonged instability: mass arrests, general strikes and the rise of the radical Naxalite Movement.
We will now see what Nirad C Chaudhuri wrote in his controversial article ‘The Problem of Bengal’ on those restive days and then consider whether it bears resemblance to the acerbic campaigning we have just seen in the just-concluded polls.
“The Bengalis are thinking that the removal of the UF Government has amounted to the imposition of non-Bengali, foreign rule in Bengal. The basic factor in it is not only the provincial feeling which has always been strong but also the hatred for the rest of India generated by the clash of this provincial sentiment with the Central political authority in India.”
Delving deeper into the Bengalis’ psychological conundrum, Chaudhury wrote, “The course of this alienation has been long, and its causes are deep-seated. A strong sense of regional individuality, which may be called provincial nationalism, was bound to be created in any case by the linguistic, cultural and social evolution of Bengal over something like seven centuries, which has run along lines very different from those seen in northern India. Politically too, Bengal had stood more apart from India than with her. For considerably more than half the period of time since the establishment of the Muslim rule in India in 1206, Bengal was independent of any central authority or any central authority outside Bengal…”
“During British rule, the Bengalis acquired a sense of superiority over the people of the rest of India. Taking English education first, they took the lead in creating modern Indian culture-they created a fine literature of their own, initiated religious and social reform, and were the first to launch a nationalist movement. There was even a sort of Bengali imperialism in northern India…In short, they came to think of a Bengali Raj by the side of the British Raj. This Raj was undermined by the transfer of the capital to Delhi, which at one stroke reduced Bengali influence on the Central Government, and also Bengali employment in it. In addition, with the growth of education in the other provinces, the Bengali cultural superiority was not also as undisputed as before…The last injury was inflicted by the Gandhian movement, which not only deprived Bengalis of their political leadership, but made them subservient to a non-Bengali leadership. A large element in Bengal never accepted this subordination.”
But this is just one side of the subjective riddle of Bengal. Though true, this ignores another side: deeper, more interesting and intriguing-the confused tapestry of contradictions.
Bengal did not reject the Gandhian hegemony and the Congress outright. The two leaders who dared throw down the gauntlet to Gandhi, namely Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Chandra Bose, failed to rid Bengal fully of the Mahatma magic. Interestingly, even Bose’s full-blooded revolt against Gandhi did not find the expected sympathy among the majority of the Congressmen in Bengal. The factional feud between the followers of Bose and Gandhi was quite fierce, making some historians to aver that Bose had left the country more due to the caustic antagonism shown to him by the rival faction in Bengal than to the frigidity in his relation with the mighty Gandhi coterie.
The Bengali psyche is quite complex: an intense interplay of centripetal forces-the centre seeking-pulling toward a common cultural/national centre and centrifugal forces pushing outward toward independent, distinctive identities, separate from, though within, the whole. As this dynamic powerfully shapes the collective consciousness of a section of the Bengali people, who, by their own right, are the cultural vanguard of the race, its psyche, often in a state of flux, operates between these two poles, creating thus a multifaceted identity both vibrantly unified with the rest of India and at the same time superciliously separate from it.
Let me explain things more clearly. The Bengali character is a curious mix of the ‘Lyre’ (emotional sensitivity) and the ‘Lightning’ (dynamic push) and the central string of this ‘Lyre’ is a fierce clinging to freedom of thinking and acting according to its own light, free from the decreed constructs foisted from outside. If the central chord of this ‘Lyre’ snaps, the ‘Lightning’ will follow.
Sanatana Dharma for Bengal is what Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa exemplifies in his life – as many faiths, so many paths, meaning that just as one reaches a roof by different means like ladder, stairs or rope, various religious traditions and spiritual systems lead to the final destination: Self-realisation and God-realisation.
Bengal believes in a spiritual laissez-faire, which favours minimal external interference in an individual’s inward journey, putting a premium on natural growth unburdened by mandated practices. Those who believe in the Formless One Brahma as the Ultimate belong to the Sanatana Dharma as much as those who seek God passionately through the worship of myriad deities. Even the staunch atheists cannot be disowned either. Sri Aurobindo beautifully defines an atheist as ‘God playing at hide and seek with Himself’. This cathedral of inclusive universality is what constitutes the fulcrum of Bengal’s culture.
No one now knows how things will unfold. It is uncertain whether the half-dead, deeply decadent Bengal will be awakened with a crude strike on its ‘Lyre’ bringing in its wake the inevitable ‘Lightning’ or whether Bengal will be allowed to breathe fresh life once again into the stagnant flow of ‘Santana Dharma’ whose ‘clear stream of reason’ seems to have ‘lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit’.
