An Intimate History
of Bengal
BOOK II
West,
Germination and Expression
No soldier of both sides of the battle of 1757 of Palassey had any faintest idea of the futuristic stakes in the battle involved. To the Victors, led by Lord Clive, it was a plunder hitherto unknown to sailors of Europe. The systematic and un-systematic plunder of Bengal that followed had two far-reaching effects more in European History and in retrospect, in global history. Firstly, this wealth became the Venture Capital for Industrial Revolution and secondly, to guarantee that this Venture Capital Zone remains secured and safe internally and externally, the present city of Kolkata (then Calcutta) owes its phenomenal growth and rise into international fame in so quick a time. During that period, Bengal used to produce 25% of world’s finished goods and Made in Bengal was perceived as something totally opposite to what is generally perceived today by the mark Made in Bengal (India). One hundred and fifty years from the fateful battle, Bengal’s legacy to history, in a very cryptic sense, is to become the Eastern Terminus of Europe. The virile, greedy and energetic Europe, rushed into the wild seas, with sword, religion and opium, with valor and curiosity, with dreams of titanic wealth and beauty. It encountered Bengal, lost and dreamy in her landscape, her fields, her rivers, her women, her connection with the West, nearest to Howrah and furthest to Benaras. For Bengal, it will not be unjustified to paraphrase something heard often – “Those who are not aware of geography are condemned to learn it from the furthest of its corners”. West rushed onto Bengal, half-known, absent-minded, the land rose from the slumber, it became insomnia of such intensity that it forgot any indigenous sleep. Bengal, the Eastern Terminus of Modern Europe in the geography of ideas and proto-history of dreams and myths shared its destiny of being always in the lookout of new culture, new geographies, and new ideas. Two portraits of two noble sons of this land separated by the Western Seas, looking at each other, connected by a montage can only capture this seminal destiny of Bengal – Raja Ram Mohan Roy looking from Bristol and Swami Vivekananda from Belur, by the Hoogly. Former was in the chain of historical reasoning – a telescope and the latter, a reaction, which also looked into the telescope but panned it vigorously from Vedantic past to the contemporary Rise of American Capital in vivid flashes of insight, inspiration, vigour and diffidence. But we are over-carried. Its now time to return to the sights of present Central and Central-West Calcutta, where the air smells old and weary, where history wafts from structures about which the greatest poet and architect of Bengali language spoke – “..One way, it can be said to be a forest and another way a city.” This modern Capital was born in a time, timidly and out of timidity when Mughal Saltanat ka Chiraag Buuj raha tha
Post-Palassey Bengal was somewhat
like a gold mine, unprotected and any Johnny holding a strong stick could grab
a handful of the outpourings from its interior. Lord Clive, now a prodigious
hero, one of the rare caprices of fortune led the loot. At a single stroke,
this young man of courage and tact ruled over revenue and law and order of the
land. The regime that bade farewell to history remained a caretaker, of
architecture and loan-burden, indigenously manufactured by the victors alone.
For all practical purposes the Muslim rulers of Bengal became a memory,
occasionally compared with the recent suffering. The administration passed,
after sufficiently cunning maneuvers into the hand of the Company whose
official’s contribution to history is worth mentionable. Just like a Great War
or Invasion brings to light great display of human potential in terms of
greatness and profligacy, post-war scenario of Bengal witnessed the rampage of
greed by petty officials of the Company. First they consolidated on law and
order and then they started sucking the very fountain of Public Revenue. These
officials, whom Contemporary England looked with scorn at homeland, became
businessman and respected people. Bengal - prostrate, confused, burdened by her
own prosperity and fabled wealth endured. These petty officials opened their
own businesses and ran parallel revenue collection. Nothing in the world is
paid free, even at gunpoint. Bengal gave in without much resistance into the
most flagrant economic exploitation as a price of a stable law and order that
the muskets of Company Seapoys provided. The Lion, the Rat, The Jackal and the
Hyenas – all joined the party that was the Loot of Bengal. This attitude of sacrifice to get a minimal
state of law and order went deeper in the psyche. At any historical moment,
wherever Bengal was in a political chaos, the agency that provided minimal
state of law and order was the best choice. It was much later, almost a hundred
years hence, Bengal, within a mere fifty years of
Hastings-Cornwallis-Dalhousie-Bentinck era absorbed the incandescent
radioactivity of European renaissance through the channel of English
rule and realized its essence through its Literature. Modern Bengali Language
was waiting in the wings. Nationalism or the real or false sense of it was
permeating Bengal and in its wake or rather as the jamana was eager for badalte
karbat, memories surfaced which went past the evil-benevolent British Rule,
went deeper into realms of Civilizations and worked through those fissures of
our mind where lies our sense of identification with something beyond state,
beyond language and beyond history – Religion.
gal’s population, including Greater Bengal of
today comprising West Bengal and Bangladesh, South and North-Western Assam,
parts of Bihar and Orissa was mainly Hindus and Muslims. A considerable part of
Muslim population was converts in successive periods of Sultanate and Mughal
rule. The religion that was born in Arabia entered Bengal from West and again
the landscape worked magic. In the domain of abstract theology, the landscape
of Bengal synthesized Islam’s ideas into the Bhakti tradition of Radha-Krishna,
shaped by Sree Chaitanya’s genius. There is a story that the patron saint of
Sylhet town of Bangladesh, Sha Jalal (whom Chinese traveler) came from distant
Yemen to spread the faith of Islam in Hindoostan. His Master gave him a
handful of soil with the instruction that wherever in Hindoostan, this soil
matches, he should settle and continue the evangelism. The match happened in
Sylhet and there still stands his dargah, venerated by Hindus and
Muslims alike. The call from the desert
of Arabia found its echo in the lush-green and tea garden spread Sylhet of
Bengal. Just like Malabar in South had
its St. Thomas long before Europe became Chirstian, Bengal had Sha Jalal long
before Islam became a religion to reckon with in India, in terms of
international prestige and in demographic calculations. These two factors were
interwoven in a complex grid of processes about which no history can and need
give full explanation. Once the former slowly gave way to European merchant
ships sailing in all seas with advanced navigation and defense system, the
latter became a local force. Bengal’s landscape again worked its wonder – it
gave a sense of rooted ness to Islam in Bengal as a local force. Within some
one and fifty years hence, this will become one of the most significant factors
of Indian History – Partition. But before the Partition of India came in 1947,
Bengal had a foretaste in 1905 when Lord Curzon pushed the idea of Partition of
Bengal. The protest was spontaneous and to trace its origin, we will not take
the route of a historian but that of a novelist, digression is one of his ways
to communicate the broken image we have in our front while we put the Mirror in
the advancing wheels of Time whose creaking and galloping we call as History.
Not a man of mother born will fail to observe a sense
of motherliness if he travels in the countryside of Bengal. An idea of one’s
own land as Fatherland like Russia or Germany is unthinkable for this landscape.
Son or a daughter of Bengal is always searching for a motherly wholeness and
tenderness – it is evident in all authentic and enduring Bengali
heritages. As in customs and
traditions, as in social events and even in individual lifestyles, a true
Bengali always hopes for shades of feminine tenderness. The Greatest Festival
for Bengali Hindu is Durga Puja, the archetypal Bengali beauty in marriage
market as well in common speech is not of curvaceous and bony types but a
slender, soft, round-faced and kind facing form that is compressed in a single
mysterious and soft adjective – Rupashi. An old Bengali humourist
generalizes this common but singular fact in so nice a manner – “A Bengali male
spends his childhood under his mother’s anchal, youth and middle age
under the thumb of the wife and old-age at the mercy of the daughter-in-law.”
There is even better description from Tagore, plain, sincere and even though it
can raise the manly ire but all the more justifies the truism behind it. He
writes, while talking about contemporary Calcutta Bengalis of early tweenth
century –“..How much we may imbibe the foreign dress and manners, how much we
may speak of changing the world and breath fire into the air, we like our antapur.
We take break from all the hullabaloo of the outside and occasional visits to
the air of inside relives us, gives us peace and we just cannot pass our lives
without these regular visitations.” The
Partition of Bengal, other than its political implications, of cutting at the
heart of the interests of the beneficiaries of the Permanent Settlement, in
opening up fissures between Hindus and Muslims of Greater Bengal about which
none parties including English have full idea, was perceived as a threat to the
image of the Land as an Iconic Mother. It was severely opposed so much so that
when the Capital of India was shifted to Delhi after some six years, Calcutta
did not find it a great issue to mourn for, such was the intoxication of the
Victory in finally being able to prevent the Partition. In more cold and sober
judgment, this signal act of shifting of Capital of Indian Colony to Delhi from
Calcutta carried more significance for the future than for the present. It actually
sealed the economic fate of the region. Fix yourself up at Calcutta of 1920s
and imagine for the moment that we have no idea of Future and then only we will
be able to see through what channels the accumulating historical forces may
choose its course like a river chooses its path from mountain to plains. The
Rulers at that time were highly suspicious of Bengali middle class, partly due
to increasing interest in acts of terror by revolutionaries, secondly due to
the Empire itself being sacked of its vitality and poise by the War and high
administrative burden of a world-wide Empire without matching communication and
military (aviation) technologies of cheaper cost. The Partition of Bengal on
the part of English was either an administrative procedure or a bad surgical
one or a completely devious one with hidden agendas to cripple Bengali
Nationalism. Shifting of Capital
immediately made it clear that Ruling British are weary of the Bengalis and a
more poignant fact for the future – the initiative will now lie more and more
in Central India and North for India that is still going to witness Mahatma’s
magic and Bose’s escape and dramatic re-surfacing at Far-East as another war
will bleed England white and immediately - Freedom. To understand the second
factor why shifting of Capital to Delhi implies passing of initiative we need to
undertake a retrograde motion in historical time in India’s history and this is
one of the sublime moments where a single action, in retrospect seems such
beautifully connected in a pattern of past-present-future and beyond.
Very
few cities in the world can claim to attain such international fame in so quick
a time as Calcuttans can. Before British consolidated, Bengal was more or less
homogeneous, in demographic distribution and terra firma. It never played the
role of a crucial strategic point as Northwest played. Its significance to the
power at Delhi Durbar was almost like Surat
- a trading post, fertile land and having a high repository of finished
goods. There was nothing special being a man of Bengal as late as 1700s. Now
imagine the situation in 1800. Decline of Mughal Power at Delhi made the
Central and Northern India a soft cushion on which fell the sharp and
undisciplined but strong arrows of Taimur, Nadir and Sha Abdali. The same geopolitics that prevented the
North-West Osmosis of previous centuries strike Bengal relatively in a lesser
and diluted intensity saved it from the pillages and loot of the trios. Delhi
remained in disarray, Rajput and Maratha forces dissipated, Indian society
tired by bearing the burden of ancient
civilizations for long and it was that time, seemingly in a fit of luck but
following a consistent military and political logic, Calcutta became Capital of
the greatest Colony of Contemporary Rome – the British Empire. In 1800s, India
as a whole could not debate this fact that there is something special of being
a Bengali. And being a Bengali at Calcutta was something fortunate in terms of
education, job and building a career in the new world of European order. Shift of Capital in 1911 was the turning of
the circle again. It was the re-establishment of India’s seat of Government to
Indraprastha of Mahabahrata or the Capital of Pan-Islam’s Dar Us Islam
in the previous age when we remember that Europe was on all trade routes of the seas and clash with
Persian interests at sea was imminent and fatal for the Persian Empire. Post
First World War made it clear that it is the age of Europe, of white men and
then the shifting of Capital at Delhi signified something very ominous, if only
Bengal could see from the heady and intoxicating smoke of romance, chivalry and
dreaminess that were part indigenous and part colonial import-export.
We
are going to enter into the most intense import-export cycle of
Euro-Bengal Relationship which was not only important for Europe and India but
for the world itself. If you remember an earlier imagery of Raja Rammohan Roy
looking from Bristol, England and Swami Vivekananda looking from Belur,
Calcutta, it becomes a kind of a logo if such a import-export venture can be so
businesslike termed. This period, compressed period of 1870 to 1930 - mere
fifty years is justifiably turned as the period of Bengal Renaissance in terms
of cultural output and a misnomer if considered from long-term strategic
viewpoint. However they are interlinked and nowhere else in the world but in
Bengal this kind of a renaissance can take place and except taking into account
the high feminine content of its ethos, this cannot be explained. In short, the Renaissance of Bengal pointed
a situation for Bengal where its cultural destiny pointed to the political
destiny and not otherwise. Colony of a declining world-power, an imperial
Capital which is showing signs of unrest and a social system where political
awareness giving rise to a twist to the social relationship between castes (an
intra-factor in Hindu Society) and religions (an inter-factor in the same
society), an experiment on education system that has been delivering its first
batch of results and quite in contrast to the expectations of the
Syllabi-designers and the pupils – Bengal stood at the cross-roads. In one
hand, where the insemination of virile Europe to the feminine interior has been
vigorous and strong, there were stifled cries for freedom, self-governance and
where the interior has been denser and more resiliently conservative; there
were feeble whispers of expectations and hope.
The historical pivot was suspended on these opposing poles of social
interpretation and the equilibrium was uneasy, unstable and perhaps, for
this reason, singularly creative.
While
entering into the intense creative output of Bengal, marketed by the English
power over media and institutions worldwide and the spiraling aspiration of
Nationalism in South-East Asia, Middle East and Africa. But all divergence
process requires a belt of meaning and Language is the cheapest, most
sophisticated and easily copy-enabled at source itself. There are three
enduring and authentic contributions of Renaissance, which have passed the test
of time and they are in order: Growth and Flowering of the architecture
and potency of Bengali Language, Realization of the fact that our fate
is an inter-linked one with global fate and last and the crucial one in the
later political perspective – Clash of Civilizations. Before we enter into the
discussion of these factors, let us take a small break and veer into the grand
stage that was nothing, but a procession of personalities whom every age and
every society would have been delighted to own. Bengal’s greatest nostalgic
past, its latest glorious horizon and it was, in comparison, a tour de
horizon.
The
first sign in Literature was not re-reading of old classics as was in Italy but
the same tussle between dual loyalties – massive gravitation of a hoary and
distant past of Vedas and Epics counterpoised and shaken by the proximity of a
highly kinetic colonial present. One prodigious Bengali, from an aristocratic
Sinha family went onto translating the Mahabharata into Bengali and
another academician-hero and fighter-scholar Vidyasagar unleashed Kalidas into
the mind of Bengalis closest to the spoken tongue. These two phenomenon were
actually an experimentation where the load-bearing capacity of the forged
Language was tested and not its power of communication. It was like the testing
of a marble-slab’s strength to bear colossal weights, which being passed will
pass onto the hand of craftsman who will transform its strength onto
architectural memory. It was one of the
greatest co-incidence and good fortune for Bengal that the craftsman came and
he became the hammer, crucible and designer – all in one. A school-drop out during the time when the
first thing was to enroll in a good desi or sahebi school, this
man was destined to be the Architect-Designer of Bengali. He was a genius as
much as in this sense that he was like a catalyst which accelerated the growth
of language to such a level in his lifetime, which otherwise if following its
previous course of development would have taken thousand years. A flood followed thereof. A new language at
hand, infinitely inviting with million promises like the demure and mobile eyes
of a Bengali maiden, a landscape which is bewitching, presence of the world’s
greatest power near the doorsteps with global wars nearing, Bengal rose like a
meteor, Calcutta’s benchmark was nothing in India or South-Asia even, it was
comparing itself with Europe, notably London, half knowing, half-forgiving that
there lies a subtle and gross connection between the loot of Bengal and
prosperity of London. Calcutta, in the
early decade of the twentieth century was like a city, for which some Greek
philosopher whose name I have forgotten spoke briefly – “The first condition for a man’s happiness is to be born in a
great city.” As time passed, it was slowly transforming into a Cultural Nerve
Center of Bengali Cultural Space and in this, Calcutta was more like Paris than
the city of London. The first War was pending and Colony of India has been more
or less a hundred years old and then happened something, a very inconsequential
affair having more impact in the future and traces its roots to Greater Bengal.
We are making a brief exit from Calcutta now, moving Eastward, into a small
place called Sylhet where lived my forefathers.
The spotlight on Calcutta was so strong and so
point-beam that Greater Bengal became footnotes in most cases. So much so, that still a genuine Calcuttan speaks of his brother in outskirts (in Greater
Bengal) as Para-gaye (Rural/rustic) and the most
audible symptom to distinguish is the City-Speak – the language and the accent.
The arrogance, to some extent natural and justified was respected but not long.
During the great wars, a considerable population of Sylhet and other areas
bordering the Bay of Bengal joined British Navy as ancillary units. These
sailors, mostly Sylheti had a tremendous contribution in British Naval
exercises in the Mediterranean. Calcutta, while in melancholy and sadness and
somewhere little anxious as the second war progressed but about its outcome
little doubt remained. Bengal, already a headline in India in national struggle
got the momentous news of Bose’s escape and forming of INA and taking Indian
mainland from Far East. These sailors, now in more geographical vicinity of
British Isles finally settled down in the port-cities of Britain itself. This
settlement and subsequent peaceful migration went slowly, the migrants took the
war of colonization to the heart of the Colonists and after some thirty years,
they became the largest ethnic minority in UK. Now, while the British Empire
largely commands a worldwide good-will and a keen business sense, it is given
back its art of colonization in a way which is summarized by a British Cultural
Observer, again very briefly – “Britain is apprehensive of getting submerged in
the globalized swamp”. Those intrepid, strong and marginalized people of
Greater Bengal whom the British sahibs and sahib-brothers of Calcutta largely
ignored or marginalized originated this lumping of “global swamp”. These New
Colonists suffered discrimation and humiliation beyond measure but they held
firm. The loot of Bengal was paid back by a slow, steady and small but
irreversible reverse flow of capital from London to the distant villages of
Greater Bengal. At this stage, it may be too early to predict but the future
belongs to those transnational communities, having bases at homeland and
channeling funds and expertise from distant lands not for single instant being
unaware of the fact that they are condemned to suffer double
home-sickness.
Onwards
the mutiny of 1857, the strategic calculations of British went a sea change and
first time in Indian polity, a religious factor was introduced. A peace lasted
for some forty years and in that time Hindus, especially Bengali Hindus imbibed
core competencies relevant for the age to have a leadership position. Muslims,
the best among them were in crossroads in their own way. For them, the coming
of British was loss of political power if he identifies himself as being a man
of ruling class and its religion. Hindus, in general was apprehensive of only
one loss that is being converted. The best and the worst among them were all de
facto converts while being judged by hardliners. So repeated a cultural
process, which finds its parallel in the domain of agri-culture where a land
left idle for long increases its fertility and potential for a new and healthy
harvest is created. Calcutta became the
center for this process and since the cultural bubble was triggered and to some
extent sustained by foreign element and ideas, a specific type of decadence was
implicit in such type of growth. History confirmed this after some fifty years
and the confirmation has been a tragedy of such magnitude that has been echoing
till then. The moment the foreign element went weak and later shifted itself
partially and then completely, Bengal witnessed severe reaction and the inertia
for aligning with foreign ideas and methodologies prevailed. This was the time
another grave historical deviation took place; the cultural destiny of Bengal
was overlooked to give place to a selective political destiny. The result has
been worse than the Occupation of Paris by Germans because a physical
Occupation ends sometime or other but manipulations in culture works in the
time-span radioactive materials decay. Mr. Pramathanath Bishi- a wordsmith of Bengal,
richly versed in French summarized – “The death of a body is registered, but
not of the soul.”
In BOOK III,
we will continue our journey as Bengal was searching for its soul and it was a
Mental Wanderlust where it gained as well as lost. This saga of Gain and Loss
will push us almost to the frontier of the critical years of 1945-47, beyond
which there are the stories of Frontiers.