An Intimate History of Bengal

BOOK XI

East is a Career –  Tancreed, Disraeli

Tale of Two Lands – Scotland and Bengal

After having a discussion of Tale of Two Cities in the previous book – between Calcutta and London, in this BOOK, we are going to discuss the seemingly elusive historical connection Bengal and Scotland share. It is one of those singular instances in the History of Bengal where no major forces of history so far – in the domain of ideas or an active field could ever ignore Bengal. Nirad C Chaudhri was the only historian of India who could comprehend this phenomenon in its widest impact and his Continent of Circe deals on this singular theme in a Pan-Indian context. Apart from a few exceptions, historical studies in India was done by academicians lacking that sublime poetic quality without which historical works are un-readable. Pre-Independence historians of India suffered from a disease which I call necromantic nationalism and post independence ones are arranged in schools and types which can only be compared to a huge honeycomb with innumerable compartments, pinned securely to the political establishment or its against and nonetheless specializing in individual gardens. The labour of those ardent workers is sweet perhaps but not wholesome as each declares vehemently that the drop in his compartment is the honey in essence. This situation, by and large denied Indian people the sweet delight of reading readable histories of their land, written by their own people collected from all corners of the world as well as retaining the indigenous unity that remain in the histories. A historian in the primal sense is a story-teller and it has nothing to do with whether he chooses to tell the story of only kings or peasants or warriors or professionals. If a historian knows the art of telling a story nicely, retaining the organic richness of any story, he will write a readable history. If a work on history lacks this quality, it will not be readable. Any historical work that is non-readable is either for the consumption of students, or for glorifying the most powerful or a literary work, outlined with time to get grant, professorship and other benefits about which the writer and evaluator have reached a tacit understanding. A man who has never lost a home, or fallen in love, or never felt a sad loss in life or wandered aimlessly is not qualified to be a historian.

Every civilized and vigorous race instinctively understands the tremendous strategic value of history. If nations can be thought as multi-national corporations, then history of the individual nations is the individual brand that makes all the difference. The most striking example is that of India and her history. During 1450 – 1750, when a new world was taking shape, India failed to pull her greatest brands to the world stage and remained as a target for other races who were prepared for their trajectories. Her greatest creative achievements remained untold or under-stated and the brand weakened substantially. History like brand is a combination of everything and what makes historical studies so fascinating is that the intangible and tangible are all mixed up in an organic way and they cannot be divided into parts, which other than simplifying the job would make the whole completely un-recognizable.

As Francis Bacon has said that study of history makes an individual wise and wisdom in individuals varies in degrees but collective wisdom is always greater than what triggered it. This is the reason why a sufficiently complex system (weather, Internet, genetics) always defies the common sense perception of design and order. History is one of the most complex disciplines and as we are entering into arena of genetics, most of the histories that were written exploiting the grey areas (The Aryan Invasion Theory, Human Migration Theory. Theory of Linguistics, Studies on Imperialism, Studies on Race) or exclusively written under the ruse of less knowledge will be forgotten. Some of the eminent historians will have the ordeal of facing a Strachey somewhere many among them will be condemned guilty of being careerist. The role played by science to challenge some of the belief-systems of Christianity since fifteenth century will be replayed by technology for History and its fundamental methodology. Most of the speculative and careerist variety will fare a tough time and genetic studies will posit fundamental issue between instinct and choice. Only the true story-teller will remain. It is the duty of this book to bear in mind that near future and continue our discussion on a very interesting period of history in general and Scotland and Bengal in particular.

             In retaining the organic unity of history, climate and weather is as important as any other factor for a race under study. Taking the lesson from modern chaos theory, these initial conditions may be at the root of all future developments. The climate and weather of Bengal and Scotland are markedly different. A Scottish mind naturally will be attracted to outbound tendencies – of escaping the cold, brutal and harsh climate. Bengal on the other hand is endowed with a climate which naturally finds itself at home, in relative sense also. The philosophy of this land will reflect man’s fight with Nature whereas in Bengal the philosophy will be naturally to be harmonious with Nature. The former makes a race adventurous, tough, carefree and militant whereas the latter makes a race discovering the inner recess of mind because the outer nature being benign, subsistence is easy and does not require that much labour. In short, the former race has more natural tendency to look outward, in the geographies and the latter race will have natural tendency to be introspective, sensual and caring. It was this natural tendency that brought natives of Scotland to Bengal.

            In the domain of ideas, three Scotsmen feature pre-eminently – David Hare, David Drummond and Alexander Duff. They all came in early 1800s – Hare came in 1805 in Calcutta, Drummond in 1813 and Duff in 1830. Calcutta at that time has already evolved as the Eastern Terminus of Pax Britannia in the most wholesome sense and Hindu Society is finding a different set of values in all sorts of human affairs. Trade was flourishing and a merchant class became quite rich by transferring capital from land to trade with English traders at the bank of Hoogly. Rural Bengal was in ruins – her fabulous wealth was funnelled off, her village industries died, heart of religion became senseless superstitions and rituals and she was poised in a crossroad. It was a very interesting time for new ideas to capture people’s mind and new ideas came. Initially, they touched the surface, i.e. to the literate class and as time went on, it trickled down under dual pressure – zeal of missionaries and the reaction against it. It was that time that our three Scotsmen arrived in the warm, sunny and green Bengal – forever washed in water of sky and rivers. But before we understand what they brought from Caledonian soil (the ancient name of Scotland since Roman Conquest) we need to know what was growing there and governed their development.  

            They all have one common shared memory and value – the moral learning from the Scottish Enlightenment which gave the world ideas from the thinkers like David Hume and Adam Smith. It has become quite fashionable to suppose that Adam Smith was an economist. Nothing can be further from that – he was the best practical moral philosopher the world has ever seen. His moral ideas found expression in the contemporary Scotland which was flourishing in trade of tobacco, Calico, Tea and Coffee. He foresaw as how the invisible hand of chance can really become a destructive force in a moral vacuum and here he joined Hume whose atheism or theism was fashionable at the best minds of Hindu School of Calcutta. The lesson from the Scottish Enlightenment brought about by Scotsmen and the works of other Scotsmen proved to be like hammer blows in the best Bengali Hindu mind and the first reaction was admiration in the pure moral message of it. It has to be because it was true – the ideas of social equality and social intercourse clashed with the idea of caste which was a barrier – structurally and socially. At the next stage came the idea of Christianity as a prescription but the patient who was so convinced about the diagnosis was deeply sceptic of the remedy prescribed. Why?

            True learning with a passion not only enables a prepared mind to assess situation but the same faculty of judgement forewarns him to evaluate his own assessment. No other community of East except Bengalis perhaps read with a passion and reverence the historical and moral works of Europe during the period under examination and any reader of Gibbon is too difficult to be converted by Christianity (ask missionary critics of Mr. Gibbon !) strictly on the ground of superior moral value. The Scottish Enlightenment also brought another grand idea which touched the mind of Young Bengal – the political destiny of a nation is not necessesarily its creative destiny. The greatest proof was Scotland of Hume when its prince was in exile, it was in war, its language (the Gaelic) was supposed to be a corrupt tongue but in the whole of Europe, it was burning the flame of genius that was going to invent a new world in the shores of America, in India and other part of the world in less than a hundred years.  This grand historical fact too strong a conclusion to be kept hidden. Ideas are like germs, they mutate and the more you try to tailor it with some ends in near of far, they mutate into something completely unknown even to the designers and propagators. Due to this factor, young Bengal movement never became a militant nationalist movement, not even in Bengal although the idea of nationhood and colonial status was a matter of deep scrutiny.

            Within seventy years from the date Alexander Duff landed in Calcutta, Victorian England started showing symptoms of age – the learning from the Scottish Enlightenment was suppressed and individual worth was more linked to the ties with Government rather than on one’s own ability and merit. It has been a recurring theme of history that whenever people start consider Government as a kind of a large Insurance Agent insuring almost everything from birth to death and offering an easy and secured life hereafter, freedom and growth are not insured ever since. This holds equally true in moral and religious sphere. The moment people start practising religion through proxy – either through church or through middlemen, both start getting corrupt and sooner or later, each try to cannibalise. Able men of all ages are fundamentally sceptic of Government, not because they want to be tyrant but a healthy scepticism of tyranny makes the flame of liberty breath stronger.  

            We will have a Transatlantic flight from the Scottish soil and look at the symptom at America – another shore where Scots carried the ideas they themselves got impregnated with – in the classrooms of Glasgow or Edinburgh or in the public libraries which were the highest in number in Europe that time. In this way, America was another experimentation of the evolution of the ideas of Scottish Enlightenment which was carried by immigrants who amounted some two million. The rise of America was largely based on Enlightenment values – one’s worth is to manifest its destiny and this manifest destiny became the driving factor in the society. By 1900s, America became the land which invited everyone having a hope on one’s own destiny and as Gibbon says – Hope, the most perfect condition in this imperfect planet remains, the land of America invited all. Leading Signatories of the Declaration of Independence were of Scotch Origin and the value system prevailed and America was the land of the free, away from the old clutches of Victorian England. From Californian Gold Rush to till date, the core American value of having a man’s worth in his own ability drove this nation in spite of all vicissitudes. But there are fatal signs and we will examine that but before that we need to re-visit Bengal where situation has changed much, in certain areas – beyond imagination.

            By 1900s, as Victorian England reached its formal end, Bengal’s greatest historical opportunity was missed. If it could have been the Master of its own fate by 1830s, we would have found a huge enterprising community – trading, manufacturing, building, and learning as we find the symptoms in the wealth generation by some of the Calcutta aristocrats. But the very ideas of Scottish Enlightenment that prepared Bengal for its extra-ordinary rise prevented its further growth. Bengal rose like a rocket in the Eastern sky, illuminating the vast darkness of the Bay of Bengal below and Himalayas above but the propulsion itself was not for a long and sustained flight. The original propellant, which was capable of a sustained and longer flight, had been adulterated in between. There was only confusion and the energy was spent more on political domain and cultural leadership came to an end. The power centre at New Delhi – graveyard of Empires took its revenge. Post WWII England, serving her historical role fared the same way as that of Rome leaving her vestiges everywhere she went, in her best and worst role. In due course, colonial relics was called heritage monuments and what was once a deplorable institution of Colonial Exploitation becomes, mellowed by time, memory and distance a tender document smelling like old daguerreotypes. Generations to  come will use different weighing scale to measure that grand enterprise and what was seen yesterday as the issue will be lightly laughed over and what was unspoken will be reverberated at the strongest pitch.  The city landscape of Calcutta, fragmented in the mind of a nationalist of 1930s is different to that of today and brings different memories, of different concerns.    

This process which had far reaching effect for Bengal took place in the early twentieth century. Jole Ole Victorian England was tired and old. There was no Burke or Mill anymore. Old men talked about how to manage things rather than how to chalk out the next future. There was complacency and within twenty years England will pay a heavy price for it and committing one blunder would prepare another blunder after twenty odd years. We are talking about WWI and WWII.

            The Partition of India in 1947 divided Indian landmass into India and Pakistan and Punjab and Bengal got divided. After fifty odd years, we find that both the communities constitute a high migration rate. In Bengal, the Sylhetis of modern Bangladesh remain being leaders in numbers as well as in consistency in migration, especially to UK, the birthplace of Adam Smith. We will examine the core ideas of that time which was first aired in the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

             Scots were responsible for the invention of three ideas which laid the foundation of modern world in the most practical sense because Adam Smith all said and done was a practical moral philosopher. The ideas, though interconnected can be divided into three areas – Free Trade, Specialization and Competitive Advantage. Modern Economics and the social process of creating wealth rest on these three pillars. Free Trade, as every man living in this imperfect planet knows that we are not talking about fair trade. It is something like the concept of God, the Merciful has shades of meaning associated with it. Specialization – in the time of Adam Smith was easy to prove as something necessary for efficiency but as situation becomes complex and as Karl Marx told us that specialization gives rise to alienation and is a more important cultural issue than that of economics. For Adam Smith, specialization was something of a trade issue but as industrial revolution propelled more complex means of production, the import of alienation became significant. In Information Society, the high stress on specialization has critical cultural implications, questioning the very stability of an individual identity.

            Free Trade meant free movement of goods and labour. Industrial societies imported huge labour from those regions where labour was available and cheap. This started the first Policy based industrial migration. Migrants were looked down upon and started the great cultural interactions. Government looked upon the migrants as some issue to manage like other thousand issues. So from Policy Point of View, it was managing migrants but seldom Government policies are subtle enough to understand that there is a difference between managing migrants and managing human beings. Human beings are complex, without any prefix. They are not individual numbers but a social process in movement. They are driven by instinct, hope, despair, love, hate, curiosity, emotion and the urge to survive and to aim for a better life, whatever way it might take shape in individual or collective unconscious. For Government, having more concern for the next election cycle than that of long term human concern in democracies, it was a issue to be solved within a deadline – to the officials it was a 9-5 job but for the migrants, it was a historical issue for the whole genealogy. In the migrant’s cultural horoscope, it was a transformation as significant as that of getting from an analog world to digital world.

            Free import of labour was a solution that fitted well with the process of industrial enterprise of the last centuries. The process of innovation, which will spring as soon as mass education and specialization will have share a harmonious balance and market competition, will be the counter-point against this balance. However, it was not thought at that time that import of labour can be viewed functionally as the same thing – export of jobs. Import of Labour, in economic sense, without any boundary is same that of export of jobs. Instead of the labour coming in the land to earn wages, if the work itself can be made such that it can be exported, then where comes the question of difference?  Job is nothing but a function and Outsourcing is the natural fall-out of evolution of work where it can be exported. The angst about Outsourcing should be at the root – the historical process that made work itself exportable. Our denial of the situation would do no good and the outcry of loss of jobs has nothing to do with Policy, it is the invisible hand. Whether we like it or not, we are living in a cusp of history where fundamental transformation have taken place. We no longer and cannot afford to be economically and culturally attached to a single nation, we have to find global dreams and global solutions which means that we will be confused and solutions will require rare insights. We are in uncharted waters. A rational man should always be quite apprehensive about sure solutions and smug confidence. This arises, either with a covert intent or from pure simplification of the issue. Migrants were the first to get this lesson, on a personal and collective level and hence remain pioneer in this new situation that is slowly emerging for us. A rush of literary work on Imaginary Homeland theme is a symptom that we are living in a learning time.

            It is an empirical theory, collected after talking with real migrants that it requires cultural qualification to be a migrant. Only economic necessity and opportunities will not make a migrant. Migration is a historical and genetic imperative. Soon, we will have genetic technologies and then we will have hard evidence of correlating genetic traits of individual communities. Until then, we may use the existing means at our hand and will compare two communities who excel in the art of migration. We will be observing Scots and Sylhetis and as the author, I remain connected to both – to Scotland as a resident to Sylhetis as descent. As migrants, they shared something similar – A generation has given their life to bring that economic prosperity so that the next generation gets better education and better quality of life. It is one of the happy instances that successive generation of both Scots and Sylheti migrants became successful.

A Tale of Two Communities – Scots in England and Sylhetis in Bengal

[Part of a Travel Diary Notes]

Then I went to Birmingham last Friday to help a Sylheti discuss with the Local Real Estate agent for buying a house and after pocketing  £ 120 and a nice Sylheti lunch proceeded to Bristol (the port whose port area I have seen from my ship journey some four years back )and visited its cemetery where lies Raja Rammohan Roy since 1833. As I stood near the grave, an overwhelming feeling of history and belonging came over me and it was snowing and I wished this moment should have been frozen just like these water droplets are. This was a  man who was a true aristocrat and in a symbolic way, we owe him all the strength we have today in dealing with a foreign civilization. My brother, he was the man arguing for a pan-national Civilization instead of only national freedom because he loved man more than votes ! He was talking of Globalization in terms of Civilization (and he made it also clear that he is not talking about the globalization of a python which wants to gobble everything up!) some two hundred years before Bertrand Russell’s idea of international state.  What a visionary! Then took another cheap bus and travelled to Oxford and came to the house where lived Nirad C Chaudhri - the crooked genius of Bengal and now death has silenced his tongue, my mentor who introduced me to the city of Calcutta of the living and he was born in Kishoreganj, not very far away from the village in Sylhet where my grandfather was born as a posthumous son in 1904. 

            During my researches in the arena of economics, I got clue of an economic fact that all this wealth of this small nation was predominantly the wealth of India, mostly Bengal which produced 12% of world's GDP at 1757 and the summary is this: This wealth of Bengal, then the workshop of the world became the Venture Capital of    . The University of Yale, Oxford and Cambridge got huge fund from Englishmen who grew rich at Bengal (India) apart from other colonies. Do you think it was only military skill, deceit, treachery or some better financial skill that made the rise of a small island into such a powerful force? The greatest  sons of Bengal (and here Calcutta again) have made me eternally indebted to them for this distinction : It is not military power, nor finance nor deceit or statecraft - under all these lie a force of character, a sense of noble mission which these people undoubtedly  possessed in their best people. The people who produced  critical knowledge - at least the best of them  never wanted to be rich themselves but made their learning free, taught people, spread the delight of learning, knowing full well that what materialistic gains hidden in the application of the new knowledge. This sacrifice in terms of being the residual claimant or no claimant of supreme comparative advantage makes rise of a true aristocratic class possible.

            Now I come to some of my thesis about a strong parallel between Scots and Sylhetis which is too strong to discount just as my own day-dream originating from sufficient intake of Scottish perfumed water (i.e. whisky). Here are they :

            Scots speak a tongue which is not English and is of high Gaelic content and all Scots have a complex about the tongue they speak and even today they take lessons to speak pure English. Sylhetis speak a dialect of Bengali (of the chaste variety - kolkattaia bhasa) and have little complex about their tongue. They also use formal Bengali in writing just as Scots do the formal English.

            In case of Scots, especially the Highland Scots (North of England), the language is more difficult to understand and they finally became united with England by the Act of Union in 1707 which is again a political issue and they remained culturally separate. Sylhetis were an autonomous cultural group as early as 1300s (when Hien-Tsang came to India) and had relationship with other centres of Bengal (like Navadeep made famous by Sree Chaitanya - again of Sylheti descent) but the politics of last hundred years made them altogether different.

            Scots have been one of the most successful migrants of this millennium and there are more Scotsmen in USA than they are in Scotland. The University of Princeton, Harvard and Yale all are works of Scotsmen who were educated in Glasgow and Edinburgh or London. The lesser ones were entrepreneurs in the areas of food chains. McDonald. Sylhetis were migrating to UK as early as 1910s and the Balti and Curry owe their origin and iconic status to those migrants.

            Scots share a very tenuous relationship with the city of London since 1400s and when the Act of Union came in 1707, they found it practical to be an ally to the growing British power but underneath there was the great sense of loss of an identity - of Highland regalia, of simple folks, of the virtues of a tough life stricken with poverty, hunger and war. Remember the movie Brave Heart - this was Scotland in 1600s where London was premeditating on a naval fleet to guard her colonies. Sir Walter Scott captured this sense of loss - of bargaining the idyllic life with a life of more creature comfort, of becoming the lesser brother of a worldwide dominion emanating in preparation from London. Sylhetis shared the same relationship with Calcutta and they still do. Their tongue is not understood here but Calcutta was an immediate material need to get empowered in terms of education, of job, of going with the times. We are still waiting for our Walter Scott who has to deal with this subtle issue demanding the same talent of the heart and of the soul. 

            I reserve the last one because this is the most startling and of grand significance:  The contribution of Scots in the British Civilization has been enduring in one simple idea: The idea that we evolve in the world as knowledge grows, unless there is a moral code there will be dangers of the same wealth becoming a block for further growth. This moral code can only be provided by education which will teach equality and respect for the greater good. This was Adam Smith as a pure moral philosopher. This idea was picked up in South where England was poised for its trajectory in historical future and if British Civilization has survived the vicissitudes of its historical journey, it was this idea of freedom and continuous education that helped and propelled it among its best of sons. Sree Chaitanya, a man of Sylheti descent  came two hundred years before and had some of the best Apostles who were Sylheti descent  and their work became a work of freedom in the Bengal society where the driving factor was caste and it was  a dividing force. If Adam Smith was talking about a concept called Capital and its variant shades of evolution, Sree Chaitanya identified the same concept as Caste in his contemporary Bengali society and by the discipline called Bhakti, he nationalized it, brought Bengal in the orbit of Greater Indic Civilization, re-discovered Krishna of the Vedas to the lila of Vrindavan and signalled an internationalized vision which ISCON did four hundred years later. His chief disciples started writing verses, prose and lyrics which actually signalled the birth of Bengali Literature. If songs of Tagore are immortal features of Bengali life now, it was because he himself drank deep from the fountain of Vaishav Literature which the goswamis created.

It now comes to me of no surprise as how British could so easily understand certain issues of Indian life being so distant in geography and culture because they found it in their homeland.

            However, it seems that there is a Roman among each of us. Migrants share a strange destiny. Their tremendous urge to survive and succeed in a different land gets slowly merged into the common dreams of the citizens and voters finally. At a certain point when they seamlessly merge with everything of their adopted land except in the genetic code, they demand rights and privileges just because they were citizens. There emerges an urge to be close with the Government, either supporting or opposing and in short – becoming to close to state as the provider. The glorious idea that an individual is worth not how much state connection he has but as his individual merit is forgotten. The Life Boat Ethics sets in and a fresh migration becomes an imperative to prevent that fatal languid decay which eats the core from within and without.   Outsourcing, in this analysis is a logical conclusion of that elusive cultural destiny.  

            The voice against Outsourcing from United States which is the largest and most successful multi-ethnic migration experiment of history so far needs to understand the ironical nature of things. Outsourcing to India and other countries is a necessary cultural destiny and it should be thankful that it is operating in this cycle of civilization where technology is matured enough to make those varieties of jobs exportable which would not have been possible fifty years back.

            Citizens who were once migrants need to look back and see that forgotten corner of their initial days, notwithstanding their present position. In this exercise will emerge insights and that glorious inspiration that has always strengthened human heart.  In this analysing of their finest hour lies critical insight that the world will find helpful to face the coming challenges.         

I bow to that future historian of our land who would have that genius and strength and the courage to undertake this noble task of examining these issues on a global canvass.  

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