The Shiv Sena is perceived as a benchmark in bigotry. Now, a party in West Bengal has started posing a serious challenge to the Sena?s monopoly on prejudice. Recently, Shyam Benegal?s film on Subhas Bose kicked up a storm when some Bengalis objected to the depiction of Netaji as a married man. This shows that the kind of hero worship which led to the demand for the banning of James Laine?s book on Shivaji in Maharashtra, is also prevalent in Bengal, supposedly the land of culture and enlightenment .
No one has burnt the Benegal film yet, but few would be surprised if such an outrage is ever perpetrated in a city whose change of name also reflected a mentality not dissimilar to that of Bal Thackeray, who christened Bombay Mumbai.
The mindset behind these moves is the same: the desperate antics of a frustrated people. Why didn?t anyone of note think of changing Calcutta?s name in the decades after independence? The reason is simple. Bengalis, like Maharashtrians, had a sense of confidence born of their rich heritage and the contributions of many luminaries. Calcutta then had its Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Tarashankar, Manik Bandopadhyay, and its Firpos and Fluries.
Us versus them
The prevalence of a Sena-type fanaticism in Bengal is evident in the do?s and don?ts issued by one of Bengal?s foremost writers while arguing the case for changing Calcutta?s name. If anyone talks to you in English or Hindi, answer back in Bengali, he advised; if anyone uses the word ?Bong? to describe Bengalis, catch him by the hair and shake him up. The crude pugnacity is no different from what the Sena advocates in Mumbai. During its periodic rampages against ?aliens? in the city, its followers stop people on the streets and ask them to speak in Marathi. If they fail, they are thrashed.
That much of this brazen assertiveness flows from an inferiority complex is obvious. When a state is riding high, its people feel no need to flaunt their identity in such a despicable manner. The warped mentality was evident during a recent Doordarshan programme in which participants wanted to know why the names of shops, streets, and so on should not be written in Bengali only. A suggestion was made, and in all seriousness, to begin by writing down telephone numbers only in Bengali. Even the Amra Bangali group hadn?t thought of this.
Touch me not
What these righteous residents fail to understand is that a language cannot be sustained by changing the name of a city or by forcing oneself to use it in noting down telephone numbers. A language grows and blossoms when the state where it is spoken prospers. Prosperity ? artistic, commercial, academic ? brings in outsiders who learn the language, helping it to flourish. But when a state is on the decline, its language too fades away.
Subhas Bose?s iconic status is not only because of his heroism, but also because he feeds the self-perception of Bengalis of being at odds with the rest of the countrymen. Just as the communists allege that Bengal has suffered because of the Centre?s step-motherly attitude, Netaji, too, is seen as the victim of a conspiracy of the ?non-Bengalis?.
There are other attributes conferred on him. Those of a sanyasi ? heroic, determined, patriotic and celibate. Bose?s mysterious disappearance has added to his aura, fuelling hopes of his return to avenge all the wrongs that he has suffered at the hands of the ?non-Bengalis?. Just as the Sena is peeved with the portrayal of Shivaji as a human being, supporters of Bose?s party, the Forward Bloc, and other Bengalis, find that references to his marriage and death make Bose a little more human than they would like him to be.
