Epaar Bangla, Opaar Bangla :In quest of a cultural bridge
By Md. Anwarul Kabir, Bangladesh
My recent visit to Kolkata has instigated a sort of dismay assessing the imbalanced mode of exchanging cultural aspects between two parts of the Bengal, namely Bangladesh and West Bengal of India. In economic realm, it is evidential that there is a wide gap in trades between Bangladesh and India. We import more commodities from India than we get the opportunity to do export to that country. Perhaps, this imbalance in trades reflects our weak and submissive foreign policies which, in turn, consequences huge loss of our hard earned revenues.
However, exploring the cultural realm one may wonder at the fact that although both the people of Bangladesh and the Bengalis in India, especially of West Bengal share the same cultural heritage, the harsh reality is that in exchanging cultural discourses we lag far behind. In this case also, we are mainly the recipient and contribute less in framing the common cultural dimension for the both parts of Bengal.
The above proposition appears to be true when one walks through the College Street, the biggest book market of Kolkata and browses for books of contemporary Bangladeshi writers. In this famous book mall, it is not that easy to get the books published from Bangladesh. Even the books of Bangladeshi popular writers like Shamshur Rahman, Humayun Ahmed, Taslima Nasrin, Syed Shamsul Haque, Showkat Ali, Rizia Rahman, Imdadul Hoque Milon, Al Mahmood, Nirmulandu Goon are not available due to some restrictions on book import from Bangladesh imposed by the Indian administration.
In contrast, books of most of the popular Bengali writers of India are readily available in the book market of Bangladesh. In New Market and Nilkhet areas of Dhaka, bookshops lavishly display books of Indian popular Bengali writers like Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shrishendu Mukhopadhyay, Samresh Majumdar, Buddhadeb Guha, Sanjib Chattopadhyay which signifies their popularity among the readers in Bangladesh. The market demand of Indian books in Bangladesh has reached to that extent that even the pirated copies of these books are being sold openly in Dhaka market. Obviously due to this we get exposure to the advancement of Indian Bengali literature. But unfortunately we can hardly observe the reverse scenario in Kolkata market. Due to lack of availability of books published in Bangladesh, the readers in India get little chance to assess the dynamism in the arena of our literature.
However, there is a huge demand of Bangladeshi books among the readers of West Bengal. In this context, my discussion with some of Bengali youngsters at the famous Coffee House has revealed that Bengali readers of West Bengal are very much eager to read Bangladeshi books, especially those on literature. Gauranga Mitra, a student of Kolkata University has lamented, "Dada, irony is that, though you also write in Bangla, we hardly get any chance to read your books. A few book stores in Kolkata sell Bangladeshi books." "Why is the West Bengal government reluctant to import books from Bangladesh?", while I raised this question, Subimal Basak, a dedicated editor of a little magazine has pointed out, "The central government (of India) is cautious about Bengali nationalism. They don't want us to develop any strong cultural tie with Bangladesh!"
Perhaps, Subimal has rightly analysed. Once undivided Bengal played important roles in politics, economics and other cultural aspects in the context of all India. Gopalakrishna Gokhale(1866-1915), an eminent Indian statesman whom Gandhi regarded as his mentor assessing the contributions of the Bengal to the Indian socio-economic, politics and cultural aspects once commented -- "….What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow." His evaluation, indeed, was fully justified if we objectively analyze the socio-political aspects of the Bengalis at that time comparing with those of other communities of the subcontinent. Even in the last decades of British Raj, Calcutta (Kolkata) as the capital (from 1772 to1912) of undivided India was the Mecca of India starting from cultural and political dimensions.
In political front we can cite many names of those days like Desh Bandhu Chitra Ranjan Das, Subash Bose, M N Roy, Comrade Muzaffar Ahmed, Abul Hashim, Sher-e-Bangla Fazlul Hoque, and many others of Bengali origin who were at the focal point of Indian politics. In cultural front, Bengali reformers, philosophers, litterateurs of those days were marked as toppers in the context of undivided India. Raja Ram Mohon Roy, Iswar Chandra Bidya Sagar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Michael Modhusudan Dutt, Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Jibanananda Das, Satyajit Roy, Abbas Uddin, Jainal Abedin and many other names can be stated at a stretch who contributed much in shaping and placing the Bengali culture in a distinguished position in the world context. However, if we objectively analyse, since the partition of India in 1947 the dominance of Bengal in all India context has been diminishing with time. The reasons behind this are manifolds. The Delhi centric post independent politics of India and rise of Hindi culture have driven away the prominence of Bengal and Bengali culture in Indian socio-economic and cultural fabrics. Division of Bengal can also be regarded as one of the delimiting factors that has reduced the importance of Bengal in Indian context.
However, here in Bangladesh, if we assess the cultural aspects then we can justifiably claim that we have been contributing much to the total advancement of Bengali culture since our independence. During the dark period of Pakistan (1947 to 1971), no doubt, our achievements were negligible due to the then governments' hostile attitudes in this respect. In fact, during the Pakistan regime, the governments viewed many aspects of Bengali culture as anti-Islamic and so they tried to formulate different schemes (for instance inclusion of more Arabic/Urdu/Persian vocabularies and exclusion of Sanskrit words from our Bengali scripts, restriction on Rabindra Tagore's songs) to undermine our cultural aspirations. But after independence, the situation has been totally reversed and in true sense as Bangladesh has emerged as a nation state, it gets a new dimension of cultural practice.
It may be mentioned here that due to socio-political and geographical boundaries with the West Bengal, Bangladesh has produced different flavour of Bengali culture than that of West Bengal. However, this difference does not imply any sort of superiority or inferiority complexes. Rather, an objective analysis suggests that since our independence in cultural domain we have achieved significantly. Our literature-- poetry, short stories, novels and fine arts, no doubt, have reached the world standard. Many Indian intellectuals are highly appreciative about our endeavour in Bengali literature and fine arts. In this context, the comment of Môhashsheta Debi, an Indian noted intellectual, social activist and novelist can be cited. Appreciating the contributions of Shamshur Rahman, Al Mahmood, Sayed Shamsul Hoque to Bengali poetry she categorically mentioned that, "At this time if any Bengali poet deserves Nobel Prize then he should be Poet Al Mahmood of Bangladesh". Not only the literature and fine arts, our songs, lyrics, dramas have found their new horizons through continuous evolution over the time. Even with all limitations gradually our cinematography has been achieving its new form and uniqueness.
At the time of partition of India when East Bengal joined Pakistan as its eastern wing following Zinnah's so called religion based two nations theory and several occurrences of riots between Hindu and Muslims in the subcontinent before and after partition, created antagonistic attitude between the Muslim majority Bengalis in erstwhile East Pakistan and Hindu majority Bengalis of West Bengal. However after the emergence of Bangladesh based on secular Bengali nationalism, it had been expected that eventually a congenial relationship would prevail between the people of Bangladesh and West Bengal having same ethnic identity. But harsh reality is that the legacy of the past hostility is still haunting the psyche of the Bengalis of both sides of the border.
My interactions with the common people in Kolkata have revealed the fact that many Indian Bengalis perceive a stereotype notion towards Bengali Muslims of Bangladesh. Perhaps this notion has its origin in the Muslim communities in West Bengal who are very conservative and live in closed societies. But in practice, the Bengali Muslims of this part of the Bengal inherently are more moderate and secular. In this context, my discussion with a Bengali businessman who migrated from Tangail to Kolkata in 1956 is worthwhile to be noted. This sexagenarian gentleman, Mr. Sudhir Chandra Das worked hard in the refugee camp in Kolkata during our liberation war. He has pointed at the rise of Islamic extremism in the independent Bangladesh, especially after the brutal killing of Bangabandhu. Indexing at the activities of Bangla bhai, Shaeikh Abdur Rahman and their associates he has argued that unless these religious bigots received supports from the grassroots, they could not had carried out their mayhems in the name of Islam. However, I have succeeded to make him understand the reality in Bangladesh and stated that at the grass root level the extremist groups have received little support. Now it has been revealed that most of the brutal activities of the Islamic extremist groups were in fact state patronised and Islamic extremism as an ideology has got little footings at the grass root level.
Proper cultural exchange is a powerful tool for minimizing hostility between two nations or communities. However, it is quite surprising to note that even at this present information era, India is not that much liberal in exchanging information, particularly with Bangladesh. On the other hand, Bangladesh is very liberal in this context. For instance, Bangladesh has very lenient policy in allowing the cable operators to transmit all the electronic media (almost all channels of the Indian TV) of India. But in West Bengal, the cable operators usually do not transmit any Bangladeshi TV Channel presumably due to some restrictions imposed by the Indian government. This, in turn, largely deprives the Indian people and the people of the West Bengal in particular to understand the Bangladeshi people and their culture more vividly. Assessing the overall situation of bilateral scenario of cultural exchange with Bangladesh, it can be stated that Indian policy in this case is more inclined to a sort of cultural intrusion or aggression than creation of healthy cultural exchange.
In conclusion, we need to consider the impact of globalisation on cultural aspects. High human mobility on the globe at present time has produced trans-national Diasporic culture. In this context, years ago Ketaki Kushari Dyson, a noted non-resident Indian writer and researcher once in a conversation with the present writer commented, "The Bengalis of India have their greater identity of Indianness and nurturing of Bengali culture will not demean their nationhood." In support of her assertion, we can argue that the formation of European Union in the closing decade of the last century has not diminished the individual identity of its member countries. Rather, it has paved the way for the member countries to understand each other in better ways minimising hostilities and cultural distances. So, on part of India this is not prudent to envision that the development of a common or Diaporic Bengali culture will be a challenge to integrity of India. In fact, if the people of the Bengal across the border can have opportunity to exchange cultural aspects in true sense then it will help much in enhancing bilateral relationship between India and Bangladesh. Intermingle of cultural aspects of both parts of Bengal eventually will create a brilliant confluence of Bengali culture and which, in turn, will recreate the past glory of the Bengali nation in the global cultural spectrum. So, the conscious people of both parts of Bengal should give a serious thought over the issue.
-----------
Md. Anwarul Kabir is an educationist, working at the Computer Science Department of AIUB and a freelance writer. He can be reached at kabir@aiub.edu
http://bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidRecord=186649
However, exploring the cultural realm one may wonder at the fact that although both the people of Bangladesh and the Bengalis in India, especially of West Bengal share the same cultural heritage, the harsh reality is that in exchanging cultural discourses we lag far behind. In this case also, we are mainly the recipient and contribute less in framing the common cultural dimension for the both parts of Bengal.
The above proposition appears to be true when one walks through the College Street, the biggest book market of Kolkata and browses for books of contemporary Bangladeshi writers. In this famous book mall, it is not that easy to get the books published from Bangladesh. Even the books of Bangladeshi popular writers like Shamshur Rahman, Humayun Ahmed, Taslima Nasrin, Syed Shamsul Haque, Showkat Ali, Rizia Rahman, Imdadul Hoque Milon, Al Mahmood, Nirmulandu Goon are not available due to some restrictions on book import from Bangladesh imposed by the Indian administration.
In contrast, books of most of the popular Bengali writers of India are readily available in the book market of Bangladesh. In New Market and Nilkhet areas of Dhaka, bookshops lavishly display books of Indian popular Bengali writers like Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shrishendu Mukhopadhyay, Samresh Majumdar, Buddhadeb Guha, Sanjib Chattopadhyay which signifies their popularity among the readers in Bangladesh. The market demand of Indian books in Bangladesh has reached to that extent that even the pirated copies of these books are being sold openly in Dhaka market. Obviously due to this we get exposure to the advancement of Indian Bengali literature. But unfortunately we can hardly observe the reverse scenario in Kolkata market. Due to lack of availability of books published in Bangladesh, the readers in India get little chance to assess the dynamism in the arena of our literature.
However, there is a huge demand of Bangladeshi books among the readers of West Bengal. In this context, my discussion with some of Bengali youngsters at the famous Coffee House has revealed that Bengali readers of West Bengal are very much eager to read Bangladeshi books, especially those on literature. Gauranga Mitra, a student of Kolkata University has lamented, "Dada, irony is that, though you also write in Bangla, we hardly get any chance to read your books. A few book stores in Kolkata sell Bangladeshi books." "Why is the West Bengal government reluctant to import books from Bangladesh?", while I raised this question, Subimal Basak, a dedicated editor of a little magazine has pointed out, "The central government (of India) is cautious about Bengali nationalism. They don't want us to develop any strong cultural tie with Bangladesh!"
Perhaps, Subimal has rightly analysed. Once undivided Bengal played important roles in politics, economics and other cultural aspects in the context of all India. Gopalakrishna Gokhale(1866-1915), an eminent Indian statesman whom Gandhi regarded as his mentor assessing the contributions of the Bengal to the Indian socio-economic, politics and cultural aspects once commented -- "….What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow." His evaluation, indeed, was fully justified if we objectively analyze the socio-political aspects of the Bengalis at that time comparing with those of other communities of the subcontinent. Even in the last decades of British Raj, Calcutta (Kolkata) as the capital (from 1772 to1912) of undivided India was the Mecca of India starting from cultural and political dimensions.
In political front we can cite many names of those days like Desh Bandhu Chitra Ranjan Das, Subash Bose, M N Roy, Comrade Muzaffar Ahmed, Abul Hashim, Sher-e-Bangla Fazlul Hoque, and many others of Bengali origin who were at the focal point of Indian politics. In cultural front, Bengali reformers, philosophers, litterateurs of those days were marked as toppers in the context of undivided India. Raja Ram Mohon Roy, Iswar Chandra Bidya Sagar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Michael Modhusudan Dutt, Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Jibanananda Das, Satyajit Roy, Abbas Uddin, Jainal Abedin and many other names can be stated at a stretch who contributed much in shaping and placing the Bengali culture in a distinguished position in the world context. However, if we objectively analyse, since the partition of India in 1947 the dominance of Bengal in all India context has been diminishing with time. The reasons behind this are manifolds. The Delhi centric post independent politics of India and rise of Hindi culture have driven away the prominence of Bengal and Bengali culture in Indian socio-economic and cultural fabrics. Division of Bengal can also be regarded as one of the delimiting factors that has reduced the importance of Bengal in Indian context.
However, here in Bangladesh, if we assess the cultural aspects then we can justifiably claim that we have been contributing much to the total advancement of Bengali culture since our independence. During the dark period of Pakistan (1947 to 1971), no doubt, our achievements were negligible due to the then governments' hostile attitudes in this respect. In fact, during the Pakistan regime, the governments viewed many aspects of Bengali culture as anti-Islamic and so they tried to formulate different schemes (for instance inclusion of more Arabic/Urdu/Persian vocabularies and exclusion of Sanskrit words from our Bengali scripts, restriction on Rabindra Tagore's songs) to undermine our cultural aspirations. But after independence, the situation has been totally reversed and in true sense as Bangladesh has emerged as a nation state, it gets a new dimension of cultural practice.
It may be mentioned here that due to socio-political and geographical boundaries with the West Bengal, Bangladesh has produced different flavour of Bengali culture than that of West Bengal. However, this difference does not imply any sort of superiority or inferiority complexes. Rather, an objective analysis suggests that since our independence in cultural domain we have achieved significantly. Our literature-- poetry, short stories, novels and fine arts, no doubt, have reached the world standard. Many Indian intellectuals are highly appreciative about our endeavour in Bengali literature and fine arts. In this context, the comment of Môhashsheta Debi, an Indian noted intellectual, social activist and novelist can be cited. Appreciating the contributions of Shamshur Rahman, Al Mahmood, Sayed Shamsul Hoque to Bengali poetry she categorically mentioned that, "At this time if any Bengali poet deserves Nobel Prize then he should be Poet Al Mahmood of Bangladesh". Not only the literature and fine arts, our songs, lyrics, dramas have found their new horizons through continuous evolution over the time. Even with all limitations gradually our cinematography has been achieving its new form and uniqueness.
At the time of partition of India when East Bengal joined Pakistan as its eastern wing following Zinnah's so called religion based two nations theory and several occurrences of riots between Hindu and Muslims in the subcontinent before and after partition, created antagonistic attitude between the Muslim majority Bengalis in erstwhile East Pakistan and Hindu majority Bengalis of West Bengal. However after the emergence of Bangladesh based on secular Bengali nationalism, it had been expected that eventually a congenial relationship would prevail between the people of Bangladesh and West Bengal having same ethnic identity. But harsh reality is that the legacy of the past hostility is still haunting the psyche of the Bengalis of both sides of the border.
My interactions with the common people in Kolkata have revealed the fact that many Indian Bengalis perceive a stereotype notion towards Bengali Muslims of Bangladesh. Perhaps this notion has its origin in the Muslim communities in West Bengal who are very conservative and live in closed societies. But in practice, the Bengali Muslims of this part of the Bengal inherently are more moderate and secular. In this context, my discussion with a Bengali businessman who migrated from Tangail to Kolkata in 1956 is worthwhile to be noted. This sexagenarian gentleman, Mr. Sudhir Chandra Das worked hard in the refugee camp in Kolkata during our liberation war. He has pointed at the rise of Islamic extremism in the independent Bangladesh, especially after the brutal killing of Bangabandhu. Indexing at the activities of Bangla bhai, Shaeikh Abdur Rahman and their associates he has argued that unless these religious bigots received supports from the grassroots, they could not had carried out their mayhems in the name of Islam. However, I have succeeded to make him understand the reality in Bangladesh and stated that at the grass root level the extremist groups have received little support. Now it has been revealed that most of the brutal activities of the Islamic extremist groups were in fact state patronised and Islamic extremism as an ideology has got little footings at the grass root level.
Proper cultural exchange is a powerful tool for minimizing hostility between two nations or communities. However, it is quite surprising to note that even at this present information era, India is not that much liberal in exchanging information, particularly with Bangladesh. On the other hand, Bangladesh is very liberal in this context. For instance, Bangladesh has very lenient policy in allowing the cable operators to transmit all the electronic media (almost all channels of the Indian TV) of India. But in West Bengal, the cable operators usually do not transmit any Bangladeshi TV Channel presumably due to some restrictions imposed by the Indian government. This, in turn, largely deprives the Indian people and the people of the West Bengal in particular to understand the Bangladeshi people and their culture more vividly. Assessing the overall situation of bilateral scenario of cultural exchange with Bangladesh, it can be stated that Indian policy in this case is more inclined to a sort of cultural intrusion or aggression than creation of healthy cultural exchange.
In conclusion, we need to consider the impact of globalisation on cultural aspects. High human mobility on the globe at present time has produced trans-national Diasporic culture. In this context, years ago Ketaki Kushari Dyson, a noted non-resident Indian writer and researcher once in a conversation with the present writer commented, "The Bengalis of India have their greater identity of Indianness and nurturing of Bengali culture will not demean their nationhood." In support of her assertion, we can argue that the formation of European Union in the closing decade of the last century has not diminished the individual identity of its member countries. Rather, it has paved the way for the member countries to understand each other in better ways minimising hostilities and cultural distances. So, on part of India this is not prudent to envision that the development of a common or Diaporic Bengali culture will be a challenge to integrity of India. In fact, if the people of the Bengal across the border can have opportunity to exchange cultural aspects in true sense then it will help much in enhancing bilateral relationship between India and Bangladesh. Intermingle of cultural aspects of both parts of Bengal eventually will create a brilliant confluence of Bengali culture and which, in turn, will recreate the past glory of the Bengali nation in the global cultural spectrum. So, the conscious people of both parts of Bengal should give a serious thought over the issue.
-----------
Md. Anwarul Kabir is an educationist, working at the Computer Science Department of AIUB and a freelance writer. He can be reached at kabir@aiub.edu
http://bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidRecord=186649
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