Not very long ago, Bengalis had a dominating presence in Bihar and Jharkhand. They were associated with educational, medical and legal professions. Today, this community is gripped by an acute identity crisis in the region, writes Sujoy Roy
The first half of the 20th century witnessed a large number of middle class Bengalis settling down in Bihar. Those were different times. Bihar, Bengal and parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh — both geographically and emotionally — seemed the same State. Apart from historical reasons, people also had far less provincial leanings and ‘provincialism’ was never considered a polite word. Most Bengalis were associated with educational, medical and legal professions. Several small towns in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh had a large number of Bengali settlers who were held in high esteem by the local populace.
With more yesterdays than tomorrows at my disposal at this juncture in my life, with some memories rendered yellow and faded and some still bright and fresh, I just had a fleeting thought, of sharing a collage of memories with others who might find a few events and characters familiar.
Today’s senior citizens will fondly remember middle class Bengalis from Kolkata going west for a vacation (called Hawa Bodol in Bengali) in small towns like Shimultala, Madhupur and Jasidih in today’s Bihar and Jharkhand. It was an annual ritual maintained with religious sincerity. These people were called ‘Danchi Babu’ by the local folk, because these tourists found in the village haats everything delightfully inexpensive and their spontaneous exclamation was ‘Damn Cheap’! The entire local economy depended on these tourists. Amsterdam, Bangkok, Paris and london were virtually unknown and unthinkable, and therefore not considered in the scheme of things. Affluent people, however, did visit the United Kingdom (courtesy India’s British connections) for purposes other than sightseeing — mostly for higher studies.
Since my grandfather and father were settled in today’s Madhubani district of Bihar as lawyers, I was brought up as a child in the 1950s in this obscure hamlet near Nepal Terai which later became famous for its unique paintings. The Madhubani painting, a style practised in the Mithila region of Bihar, is done with fingers, twigs, brushes and matchsticks using natural dyes and pigments and is characterised by eye-catching geometrical patterns. Its origin is shrouded in mythology.
With a passage of time, my grandfather became a renowned lawyer. He was awarded the title of ‘Rai Bahadur’ in the 1930s by the British Government for his social work and philanthropy, although my friends insinuated, albeit jokingly, that only ‘yes men’ got this title from the Raj. He had established schools for boys and girls, colleges, an orphanage, a library and a proper municipality in Madhubani. He personally appealed to the rich local businessmen to donate land and money for this purpose, explaining to them the value of education.
By that time my grandfather had become a legal advisor to the Maharaja of Darbhanga and continued to impress him with his skills as a lawyer. The royal family of Darbhanga ‘ruled’ over the territory which is now part of Mithila and Darbhanga district of Bihar. The Maharaja’s estate, called ‘Raj Darbhanga’, was estimated to cover an area of 2,410 sq miles, incorporating 4,495 villages and employing over 7,500 officers to manage the estate. Despite being the largest, it was the best-managed estate at the time of abolition of the zamindari system.
There were around 15 Bengali families in Madhubani. My mother had her own circle of friends, not a large group; they used to come and spend a few hours together. Homemade sweet sondesh and sugary tea, followed by paan, were the usual snacks they relished together. As a small boy, I used to move around in the house and periodically run up to my mother, embrace her for a split second, smile at the other elderly ladies whom I used to call Dadi,
Nani, or Mashi and vanish again before they could grab me. It was simple, unadulterated love.
We had an old lady in the neighbourhood whom we referred to as Thakuma. Very close to my mother, she was one of the sweetest persons I could ever come across. She was not rich and had very little to share except oodles of love and affection. She was our next-door neighbour and apart from her other endearing qualities, she was a great storyteller and had mastered the art of laughing at herself which most of us find extremely difficult to do.
In north Bihar, especially Mithila — the birth place of Sita — the ethnicity and the language were quite alike. The Maithili language, both phonetically and alphabetically, is similar to Bengali; and the two have a common culinary craving for fish and rice — ‘Machh-Bhat’.
The contributions of these Bengali families belonging to small towns of Bihar — through authors like Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay, Satinath Bhaduri, Bibhuti Bhushan Mukhopadhyay and last but not the least, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay — do not require elaboration. Obscure places like Ghatshila, Purnia, Darbhanga and Bhagalpur continue to bask in the reflected glory of these illustrious personalities even today.
But over all, the link between the two communities is all but severed today. A couple of years ago, Bishwajit Sen wrote in an article in Mainstream Weekly on how the Bengali community “which was the prime mover behind setting up of modern educational institutions in Patna”, is today facing a deep identity crisis. He reminded how the RMR Seminary at Khazanchi Road, Patna, was established by Shivnath Shastri, who belonged to the Brahmo Samaj. How the ‘Aghore Prakash Shishu Sadan’ holds the memory of BC Roy’s (the second Chief Minister of West Bengal) parents who relentlessly fought idol worship and superstitions. How the PN Anglo-Sanskrit High School was established by Purnendu Narain Sinha, a philanthropist. How the TK Ghosh Academy, where Rajendra Prasad, the first President of independent India, underwent schooling, came into being. Today, these places remain, though listlessly, but the community to which the founders of these institutions belonged are almost extinct.
How could things come to such a passIJ One reason, of course, is the 15 years of utter misrule in Bihar under the RJD rule. But to blame lalu Prasad and his extended family alone for the great Bengali migration would be wrong. Even during the Congress regime in the 1980s, Bengalis faced several cases of house-grabbing. There was a great hue and cry over these happenings, but it was wrong to see these incidents as assaults on the Bengali community as a whole, rather than a law-and-order problem. There were, after all, many instances in which the houses of many Biharis, some of them prominent, have also been forcibly occupied by bahubalis, as the strongmen are referred to in Bihar. The problem, thus, was less about a community being targeted, and more about growing lawlessness in the State. Bengalis as a whole panicked, selling their home and hearth in a hurry.
Today, there are hardly many Bengalis in Bihar; the elders have disappeared, the young generation is primarily leaving the small towns of Bihar for greener pastures outside and also because the law and order situation isn’t too encouraging in the State. The gray-haired Bengalis who have moved their tents to Kolkata now live with the memories of those small towns as they slowly walk towards their own graves with unsteady steps.Sad indeed! This domiciled tribe will probably be extinct with the passage of time.
