The writer Nirad C Chaudhuri famously described Bengalis as an ethnic group that had committed “suicide”. However, his assertion seems highly exaggerated in light of fresh events at Sandeshkhali, which was until recently an obscure village in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district. That the Bengalis haven’t yet committed suicide, that their society still has some vitality in it, is being demonstrated by the rebellious agrarian Bengali women of Sandeshkhali, who, even in this ‘progressive’ 21st-century era, can be seen sporting their white shaankha and red polaa bangles as well as vermillion sindur marks on their proud foreheads—all unmistakable symbols of ethnic Bengali identity. Sticks and brooms in hand, they’ve sparked off a mass movement against tyrannical power and lawlessness in the state.
For weeks, these Bengali women have been agitating against what they allege to be a prolonged and systematic physical-economic-cultural exploitation of their community members by a local Trinamool Congress leader and his henchmen. Such is the tenacity and intensity of their collective agitation that not only the Bengali news media, but the entire nation has been compelled to sit up and take notice of the incidents unfolding in this obscure Bengal village.
These Bengali women didn’t have to go to university to learn how to or when to protest, using which language or medium. They didn’t have to take any leadership management course to organise or lead their movement. They didn’t even seek guidance from any political party. When, by their accounts, day after day their tormentors devoured and laid waste to their cultivable lands; when night after night, daughters, daughters-in-law, and mothers were abducted from their households; when their innocent and helpless sons, husbands, and fathers were physically, mentally, and financially persecuted, these agrarian Bengali women burst into protests with a righteous anger that mirrors the sublime rage of the Puranic Goddess Chandi herself.
They have fearlessly complained before the media that they’ve been constantly seeking protection and justice from the institutional guardians of the law—but in vain. They say they’ve been repeatedly denied justice or protection from their tormentors, and were even told to go to the wrongdoers themselves and get ‘approvals’ on their written complaints, or to simply ‘settle’ the matter.
It’d be an understatement to say that the allegations and grievances of these agrarian Bengali women are extremely serious. They bring to mind Company Rule, greedy European indigo-planters, and even the tyrant Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah from an earlier period of Bengal’s history.
By raising accusations of horrifying oppression against hardworking Bengal farmers, highlighting spectacular failures of law enforcement institutions in a Constitution-ruled, 21st-century country, and hitting the streets in the hundreds to demand justice, the Bengali women of Sandeshkhali have ignited a spontaneous mass movement that future historians will likely document.
This movement is an expression of the collective anger of the most vigorous and vigilant section of Bengali society against decades of injustice and misrule in the state. By the sheer intensity of their movement, these agrarian Bengali women have left the opposition parties far behind. Different political parties are now merely trying to catch up with their movement. For their watchfulness and their stand against tyranny and injustice, every one of these hardworking women deserves praise and veneration from all sections of Bengali society, as well as Indian society at large.
However, the overall role played by the educated upper stratum of Bengali society in this regard is shameful, to say the least.
Miasma of self-contempt
The majority of ‘enlightened’ Bengalis—who otherwise never miss a chance to protest real/alleged injustices occurring everywhere from Gaza to Ukraine—have remained spectacularly silent on a major issue in their own backyard. They are neither protesting on the streets nor expressing solidarity with Sandeshkhali’s women on social platforms or mainstream media.
Even the opium addict Kamalakanta—an eccentric literary character created by the great 19th-century Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay—never refrained from speaking up on the right occasion, despite his drug-induced stupor.
Today’s ‘enlightened’ Bengalis have brought shame upon all of Bengali society by pretending as if they cannot hear the complaints of extreme injustice and tyranny being raised by agrarian womenfolk of their own state. Their stupor seems to be quite deep. But this is no opium-induced stupor. Instead, it is induced by their self-obsessed pursuit of creature comforts.
The majority of ‘enlightened’ Bengalis have become far too handicapped—intellectually, physically, and morally—to even perceive where their duty vis-à-vis country, religion, or society lies, let alone actually think or work for the welfare of these. They have forsaken the noble legacy bequeathed to them by Bengali colossuses such as Raja Rammohun Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
These ‘enlightened’ Bengalis haven’t just abandoned the legacy of their illustrious ancestors. They are also constantly denigrating this precious inheritance in a blatant display of self-contempt, or oikophobia, as the British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton termed it. The moral, social, and religious ideals found in the Bhagavad Gita— which Rammohun-Vivekananda-Bankim held in high regard—attract scorn from this lot. The current crop of highbrow Bengali columnists characterise the universally beneficial teachings of the Bhagavad Gita as narrow, sectarian, fundamentalist—and, therefore, evil—in mainstream Bengali publications. They paint it as a tool to incite and/or justify riots and wars.
Sri Chaitanya, one of the greatest and best-known Bengalis worldwide, worshipped Sri Krishna all his life and spread his exalted teachings throughout the Indian subcontinent. Bankim Chandra, author of our national song Vande Mataram, depicted Sri Krishna as the greatest embodiment of human ideals in his celebrated book Krishna Charitra, using rare dialectical ingenuity. And yet, today’s Bengali children are deprived of the chance to learn about Sri Krishna’s life and teachings. Why? Because, the Bhagavad Gita, a repository of Sri Krishna’s wisdom, is being denounced by today’s ‘enlightened’ Bengali writers as an evil, warmongering book.
Also Read: Sandeshkhali is Mamata Banerjee’s most dangerous quicksand in 12 years
It’s time to wake up
This barrage of scorn, this aversion to their inherited cultural legacy, does not make today’s educated Bengalis a community intent on ethnic suicide. It merely makes them a self-contemptuous or oikophobic community. We cannot, therefore, agree with Nirad C Chaudhuri’s assessment of Bengalis. Instead, it can be inferred that the educated upper stratum of Bengali society, with all its pretence to intellectuality, is suffering from self-contempt or oikophobia.
The Bengali ethnicity may survive the onslaught of time. But what is perhaps more painful than extinction is the stigma and infamy being inflicted on Bengali society by the self-contemptuous actions of this educated elite, especially because Bengal has had a glorious past.
Ironically, this state of affairs is reminiscent of what Sri Krishna tells the self-deluded Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita:
“[O Arjuna,] people will proclaim your infamy for eternity; for a respectable person, infamy is worse than death. …Those who wish for your downfall, will endlessly disparage you by speaking ill of your ability. What could be more painful than that?” (Bhagavad-Gita II.34 and II.36)
To avoid incurring such permanent stigma of dishonour, slumbering educated Bengalis, presently deluded by their self-centred pursuit of creature comforts, should immediately stand by the most vigorous and vigilant section of contemporary Bengali society—the agrarian women of Sandeshkhali. This intelligentsia must express unhesitating solidarity with the ongoing movement against tyranny and misrule initiated by Sandeshkhali’s Bengali women. Shrinking from it out of diffidence, in Rabindranath’s words, is nothing but self-abasement.
Sreejit Datta is an educator, researcher, and social commentator, who writes on subjects critical to rekindling the Indic consciousness in a postmodern and neoliberal world. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Very articulate and clear.