By Deepa Majumdar
This essay is dedicated to all Bengalis ever killed in pogroms in the northeast.
While nobody can literally be an identity, we each experience ourselves as a mosaic of identities – that is, until we get to know ourselves better. In the northeast, the linguistic identity has always been pronounced. In my kindergarten class in Shillong, children would ask, “What language are you?” instead of “What language do you speak?” Although superfluous in the ultimate, identities matter historically. In post-independent India, the Bengali identity has been particularly striking.
To be a Bengali has been both a boon and a bane. Given the illustrious history of Bengal and its innumerable contributions to the cultural tapestry of India, the Bengali identity has been a boon. We are spread between two nations – India and Bangladesh. Like other Indian languages, Bengali comes in many dialects. Bengal has contributed great stalwarts, both intellectual and spiritual. Some of the greatest luminaries of the twentieth-century have come from Bengal, which has produced not only writers, poets, dramatists, artists, musicians, historians, scientists, and thinkers, but also saints and savants. Yet I contest the stereotype that Bengalis are inherently intelligent. Because intelligence comes from virtue and closeness to God – not from an identity. Bengal has also produced numberless freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives for the freedom movement. Some of the greatest revolutionaries of post-independent India hail from Bengal. The Bengali culture is therefore rich intellectually, politically, and artistically. But more importantly, it is rich morally and spiritually. Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and Tagore are only a few in Wikipedia’s long list of illustrious Bengalis. All this despite the trials Bengal has undergone. Having survived not just the Bengal famine, but the partition of India and many other tribulations, Bengalis are a resilient people.
From the Bramho Samaj of yore, to the Baul and Bhakti traditions, Bengal has produced myriad religious expressions, including the highest flights of mysticism that have attracted both Hindus and Muslims. Bengal’s poets include poet-seers, who have unlocked to the mysteries of mysticism. Bengal is also known for its uniquely rich traditions of goddess worship. From the great Durga, to the dark Mother Kali (representing the benign and the terrible), we have a large pantheon of goddesses. Perhaps a result of this rich tradition, the feminine ideal in Bengal has always been that of motherhood. Elderly women sometimes express a beautiful spiritual motherhood towards not only humans, but also animals.
Our elaborate and healthy cuisine is served in a logical order (from the standpoint of digestion). My beloved grandmother would cook sumptuous feasts that began with simple greens and bitter foods, followed by dal, hors d’oeuvres, vegetables, and the proverbial fish curry, and ended with chutney and dessert. Bengal is well known for its variety of desserts.
The landscape of West Bengal is beautiful and varied – from seascapes on the shore of the Bay of Bengal to the hills and mountains of Darjeeling. On a train trip through the countryside, the swirling paddy fields exude tranquility. Like the poor elsewhere in India, poor villagers in Bengal can be spiritually sophisticated. Despite their destitution, they are hospitable. Although not xenophobic, rural Bengalis are not necessarily friendly. They can be surly on the first encounter. But once the ice thaws, poor Bengalis can be hospitable. During my last visit, a humble sweeper’s wife mothered me, bemoaning the mosquito bites on my face. She was upset that I had not been provided a mosquito net! That the poor in Bengal and India still have so much love in their hearts, despite their sufferings, speaks volumes for the resilience and glory of human nature.
To sum up, the Bengali culture accommodates variety within a broad and loose unity that is rarely xenophobic. One reason for this catholicity may be the healthy universality embedded in Bengal’s unique particularity. This means, the Bengali culture is cosmopolitan, without forfeiting uniqueness. Unlike the suffocating oneness born of xenophobic communalism, Bengal’s unity is deeply pluralistic – almost too much. The excessive idealism of the Left perhaps destroyed brotherhood among Bengalis, even as it united us with the larger world. Hindu Bengali society may be divided by caste. But the Bengali culture unites, through art, cuisine, language, religion, pujas, shared moral values, etc., while leaving enough room for dissent and differences. Contrary to the stereotype that Bengalis are clannish, I have always known us to be fractious, argumentative, and quarrelsome. If anything, we fight among ourselves. Historically, violence in Bengal has been political and economic – not xenophobic.
The only forms of Bengali xenophobia are relatively benign. First, Kolkata Bengalis regard those outside Bengal (leave alone the diaspora) as “foreigners.” Never ever has this mild intra-Bengali xenophobia degenerated to violence against the perceived outsider. At best antiquated, this chauvinism is, at worst, conceit that is easily checked. Never has it degenerated to the violent xenophobia characteristic of the northeast. Second, the political party, “Amra Bangali,” which arose as a defensive measure, spurred by anti-Bengali violence in the northeast, comes with the potential for xenophobia, given its demand for a separate Bangalistan. It has opposed the bid for Gorkhaland. Third, of late, xenophobia against non-Bengalis has been on the rise in West Bengal. But thankfully, none of this has erupted in pogroms of the kind Bengalis have faced in the northeast.
In my experience, it has always been a boon to be a Bengali, because it is difficult not to take reasonable pride in such a rich heritage – a perspective to be distinguished from the anachronistic pride Bengalis often take in their former glory. But in post-independent India, the Bengali identity has declined to a bane that eclipses the boon it bestows. That the Rohingyas, described by the UN as “one of the world’s most persecuted minorities,” are Bengalis, should not surprise us, for we too are a persecuted people. Despite Bengal’s illustrious heritage and enormous contributions to pre and post-independent India, Bengalis have been persecuted, especially in the northeast, but also in the north. Instead of expressing gratitude for Bengal’s enormous contributions to the freedom movement, especially its back-breaking trauma of the partition – anti-Bengali Indians have persecuted Bengalis with prejudice, hatred, violence, and xenophobia. The recent furor against Bengali speaking Miya Muslims in Assam is only the latest symptom of a long-smoldering problem.
I have long tried to understand this anti-Bengali prejudice, but in vain. It is hardly the fault of the Bengali if the British used him to administer other parts of India. Moreover, anti-Bengali prejudice has often morphed from mere bias (which can be ignored) to virulent violence, which should never be tolerated. I could understand (without justifying), if Bengalis had first persecuted Khasis, Assamese, and other anti-Bengali Indians with violence. But this is not the case.
What is the underlying cause? Is it toxic envy and resentment of a remarkable culture? Or, is it disdain for the suffering Bengali, so wronged by history? Or a bit of both? Partition broke the confidence of the Bengali people, leaving them diffident, fearful, and impoverished. Even the aftermath of partition cast a long shadow that lingered for decades. If indeed anti-Bengali prejudice is spurred by disdain for the suffering Bengali, it is a sadistic evil that can only hurt those who engage in it.
Sadly, the history of the northeast bears ample testimony to such evil – from Bongal Kheda (1960 onwards) and the Goreswar massacre (1960), to the North Kamrup violence (1980), Khoirabari massacre (1983), Silapathar massacre (1983), and Nellie massacre (1983). In the Silapathar massacre, more than 1000 people were killed in clashes, with eyewitnesses reporting babies being snatched from their mother’s arms and thrown into the fire. In the Nellie massacre, AASU (All Assam Students Union) unleashed a pogrom on February 18, 1983, attacking Bengali Muslim peasants in 14 villages. According to unofficial sources, more than 10,000 people died. According to official sources this figure is 2,191. The fact that not a single culprit was prosecuted or punished, thanks to the 1985 Assam Accord, shows how lawless and unjust identity politics can be in the northeast. Bengalis may have lost their lives, but their killers lost their souls, poisoning their own societies by their presence. Where is the atonement for such unprovoked sadism?
Who can resolve this macabre prejudice against Bengalis? The solution should come from two groups – the youth of the northeast and the wise. Smelling the winds of change, the youth should educate their elders that the future lies in growing cosmopolitanism and globalism, with identity politics and perhaps even the nation state, historically obsolete. The wise should atone, educate, and transform their societies, recognizing that savage unprosecuted violence against innocent unarmed people boomerangs back with full vengeance – taking the form of cultural toxins that destroy their societies from within. Such destruction is far more catastrophic than the demographic extinction the xenophobe fears in his extreme paranoia, hatred, and ignorance.