Over the years, a clutch of political activists, ‘intellectuals’ and professional time-servers have made flattery of the West Bengal chief minister into a thriving cottage industry. Yet, despite active state sponsorship of her inspirational leadership, the public’s bewilderment over her intriguing poetry, creative history and innovative geography has disturbed those who have hitched themselves to her political bandwagon.
In recent weeks, the drumbeaters of West Bengal’s first daughter have discovered the virtues of cultural refinement. Beginning with the all-round mirth over Narendra Modi’s reference in Parliament to the creator of “Vande Mataram” as “Bankimda” and extending to a TV commentator’s mispronunciation of the legendary Matangini Hazra during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, Bengalis are being advised to guffaw at the cultural illiteracy of the Delhi durbar. The exasperation over the unfamiliarity with the Bengali ethos has extended to the denunciation of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls. The upholders of Bangla asmita are livid that the AI software employed by the Election Commission of India is unable to accord the right of free passage to a Nobel Prize winner, a Test player and countless representatives of those the impish Nirad C. Chaudhuri used to call the “Netaji Trading Company”. Simultaneously, there are furious outbursts over the supposed persecution (and even murder) of Bengali-speaking migrant labour on the grounds they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
The subtext of these explosions of mirth, feigned indignation and contrived anger is a heartfelt lament: the world (or at least the rest of India) doesn’t understand us. Rather, the others are out to get us.
As a child, I was exposed to this sense of deprivation from a member of my joint family when conversation invariably veered round to two subjects: politics and cricket. The contrarian voice was of my grandfather’s brother who was quite obsessed by his conviction that public life was a conspiracy against Bengalis. That Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were against Bengalis was evident from their shoddy treatment of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. This belief, of course, was part of the larger Bengali consensus that holds good even today. Where he deviated from the rest was his strong belief that the India’s cricket authorities had consciously prevented Bengalis from playing Test matches. He used to taunt me for thinking the world of the then Indian captain, Nari Contractor, who had an exquisite leg glance. To him, the best Indian batsman was always Pankaj Roy, and the best seamer was Shute Banerjee. I forget the names on his list, but he always felt that India would have been better off with six Bengalis in the Union cabinet and six in the Test side too.
It would be interesting for a social historian to examine the genesis of this victimhood, which has dominated the politics of West Bengal since 1977. The Left Front railed incessantly against the imbalance in Centre-state relations ever since Jyoti Basu became chief minister in 1977. However, given the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s avowed commitment to proletarian internationalism, the attack on Delhi was always posited in terms of a fight for a greater federal balance. The CPI(M) in West Bengal was essentially a very Bengali party. From the white dhoti preferred by its top leadership to its interventions in the world of theatre and popular culture, the Left operated within a Bengali idiom. At the same time, its espousal of a regional identity hardly ever involved rubbishing the cultures of the Hindi belt and western India.
Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress should ideally have been a local version of the Indian National Congress — a regional party with a national orientation. However, once its principal rivalry shifted from the CPI(M) to the Bharatiya Janata Party, its orientation altered too. From a very natural advocacy of regional pride, it took up cudgels for a separatist Bengali identity and, in 2021, launched a sharp attack on ‘outsiders’ by which it meant a caricatured picture of the BJP. Of course, the portrait of the BJP as the party of the Marwari trader in his Burrabazar gaddi was completely at odds with reality. However, the BJP’s initial dependence on its national, Hindi-speaking leadership became a convenient ruse to suggest that Bengal’s very identity would be jeopardised.
This approach yielded initial dividends for two reasons.
First, despite its long innings in national politics, the BJP in West Bengal was a relatively new and marginal force. Till it surprised everyone with its stunning performance in 2019, the BJP was preoccupied with securing a place in a bipolar polity. In fact, it is only after the Modi victory in 2014 that the party was able to establish a meaningful presence in the districts. It was the party’s relative unfamiliarity in Bengal that allowed the AITC to get away with portraying the BJP as an alien cultural force.
Secondly, there is a direct correlation between Bengal’s economic decline and the onrush of victimhood. The ridicule heaped on the Bengali babu for his faux Anglophilia — Rudyard Kipling was particularly savage in debunking the pretentiousness of the Westernised Oriental Gentleman — should have made Bengalis retreat into a cocoon. However, West Bengal’s importance as an industrial and commercial centre, second only to the Bombay Presidency, till the mid-1960s, ensured that a fierce cultural pride coexisted happily with economic well-being. Bengal’s love affair with ultra-Left politics that began after 1967 led to a sustained process of deindustrialisation as well as a suspicion of Bengalis in other parts of India. To compound matters, the Left Front’s catastrophic decision to abolish the teaching of English at the primary school level led to a loss of competitiveness. Earlier, Bengalis were decried as a community of clerks; now they are known as the principal suppliers of migrant labour.
The cultural insularity that the Mamata Banerjee government has idealised as the new Enlightenment is centred on blunted aspirations and a celebration of mediocrity. Had the past 15 years been marked by a pragmatic recognition of decline, society would have started taking remedial steps. Instead, needless battles with the Centre and a delusion of having achieved greatness have prompted a brain drain from the state. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the young have either left or are buying one-way tickets out of the state.
In normal circumstances, the outcome of an assembly election doesn’t alter the fundamentals of a state. In the case of West Bengal, politics is still paramount, and a wrong turn may lead to a state entering an area of unending darkness. The time to snigger at someone’s clumsy pronunciation can wait.
