It is politically very different from the Hindi heartland States as the people are Bengali first and everything else, including religion, comes later
The clash between BJP party workers and the police on the west side of the Hooghly river on October 8 was not unusual for West Bengal politics. But such clashes should not be taken as a measure of the State’s political ethos. The BJP is seeking to capture this bastion of the east but its leaders rue that since the unfortunate passing away of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee in 1953, Bengal has not produced a single leader who particularly cared for the Hindus. That’s because the State has always prided its cultural identity over the religious one.
Also, there was nothing concrete done for the Hindu refugees of East Bengal post-Partition and it was pretty much left to the State to handle the fallout. Instead of helping them out, the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote several times to Chief Minister Bidhan Roy in this vein. To quote from the PM’s letter, dated August 16, 1948, “There is no reasonable solution of the problem if there is a large influx from East Bengal. That is why I have been terribly anxious throughout to prevent this, whatever might happen... I think that it was a very wrong thing for some of the Hindu leaders of East Bengal to come to West Bengal.” On August 22, Nehru wrote another letter and I am quoting only a highlight: “If that (crossover) happened on a mass scale it would be a disaster of the first magnitude. I shudder at the prospect.” When Nehru tried similar arm-twisting in Punjab, it was reported that his life was threatened.
Ironically, in the years before the Partition and for a while thereafter, the Congress was known as a Hindu party. All this goodwill drowned in the rivers of Bengal. The beneficiaries of the refugee voters in the following decades were the communist parties, who had actively supported the Partition. The Jana Sangh, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha tried hard to be of help to the refugees but in Bengal of that time, they had very few workers and fewer resources. They were completely overshadowed by the communists. What a paradox! One-third of the refugee voters became the eventual votebank of the Left Front. The sun virtually set on the Bengal Congress in 1977 over four decades ago.
For a couple of general elections, the Hindu Mahasabha won four MLA seats but only in Bankura district. The Jana Sangh and its allies could win little electoral support. Nor could they field a single popular leader since the death of Dr SP Mookerjee. It is true that Professor Haripada Bharati was a respected person but he was not a vote puller. For this, the substantial reason lies in his Bengali genius as well as the kindness of his heart. And this is something that the BJP needs to understand.
Whether Christian, Muslim or Hindu, the people in this State are Bengali first and everything else, including religion, comes later. For example, to illustrate this contention, the national anthem of Bangladesh is a song written by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. Reportedly, the finest singer of Rabindra sangeet today is the Dhaka-based Rezwana Choudhury Bannya, who wears a sari and a tika. Religion does not inhibit her, like many other Muslim women in Bangladesh.
The root of the Bangladesh liberation movement was language more than anything else. In February 1948, Qaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah visited Dhaka for the first time and happened to address university students. He asserted that Pakistan would have one national language and that was Urdu. When the audience asked, “what about Bengali? We are the majority in Pakistan,” Jinnah was provoked to counter them. He asked them if Bengalis of East Pakistan had any notable exploits or achievements to their credit.The response to this was the first agitation on the streets of Dhaka. Before long, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of Bangladesh’s current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, resigned from the Muslim League, inaugurated the Awami League and led the movement for the assertion of East Bengal and its eventual secession from what was the initial Aligarh dream of not only a Muslim homeland but also a new Medina.
The abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 by Mustafa Kamal Pasha, the great moderniser of Turkey, was a big blow to the momins of Sunni Islam. The scholars at Aligarh University wanted Pakistan to throw up a new Caliph. But the East Bengalis were not a party to these dreams. In fact, in 1946-47, Fazlur Rahman, who was the Chief Minister of the eastern wing for a few years and a popular peasant leader, and Abdul Rahim, were negotiating with Sarat Chandra Bose, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s elder brother, for a united Bengal as the third dominion after Independence. The other two dominions would have been Hindustan and Pakistan. Most of the Muslims in Bangladesh were converted by maulvis, who in turn had settled in Chittagong for generations. These Muslim clergymen had accompanied Arab traders since the 11th century. Except for being formally Muslims, the inhabitants of the then east Pakistan remained culturally Bengali. Many of them wore dhotis and the women mostly dressed in saris. Incidentally, even in Kolkata, Hindu gentlemen wore lungis at home.
When referring to their fellow Muslims, the Bengali bhadralok often called them “bechara Musalman.” The explanation was that the richer Hindus had exploited and socially discriminated against the Muslims, especially in the villages. To the extent, when they were invited for dinner to a Hindu wedding, they had to clear their own thalis and often clean them as well. The servants served only the Hindu guests. In any case, most Muslims in East Bengal were treated like serfs by the Hindu zamindars. They never dared to describe Hindus as kafirs even when talking among themselves. Most of the offenders who abducted Hindu girls and created trouble to chase out Hindu property owners during Partition were those who had come from outside and settled in Bengal.
Even today, it isn’t difficult to recognise the difference between the locals and the once outsiders. For instance, Khwaja Nazimuddin, the second Prime Minister of Pakistan, belonged to a family of settlers whereas Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was a local ethnic Bengali, as is his daughter. But Khaleda Zia, the previous Prime Minister, clearly appears to be from a settler family.
One cannot deny an undercurrent of Hindu-Muslim differences regardless of what I have described above. The word Hindutva was believed to have been first used in a writing in 1863 by Raj Narayan Bose, the maternal grandfather of Sri Aurobindo. The Anushilan Samiti was founded in Bengal as was Hindu Mela. Similarly, whenever a Muslim thinks of a Bengali Hindu and his socio-economic superiority, he resents him. He expresses his resentment by being more Muslim than normally so. Otherwise, he looks upon the Hindu as a fellow Bengali. He does swing between using akash paatal and asmaan zameen (heaven and earth), as has been noticed in Bangladeshi media. Given this backdrop, it is clear that West Bengal is politically very different from say, the Hindi heartland States.
(The writer is a well-known columnist and an author. Views expressed are personal)
