How Bengal's Rebellious And Contrarian Culture Has Harmed The State And Bengalis

‘Cholbe na, cholbe na’ is a slogan many generations of Bengalis have grown up with; they have either mouthed it or heard it every day on the streets of cities, towns and villages of Bengal.

This slogan has come to define not only the contrarian political ethos of Bengal, but also the naysaying philosophy of Bengalis. Specifically, the Bengalis who are left behind in Bengal after the best and the brightest of the community have migrated to other states and foreign shores in pursuit of a better life.

While ‘Cholbe na’, loosely translated into a defiant ‘won’t do’ or ‘won’t work’, is directed as a challenge to capitalists, political parties (both ruling and in opposition) and sundry others, and even workplace rebellion, it finds its most vociferous and spirited expression when directed at the ruling dispensation in Delhi.

The opposition to, and defiance of, the powers-that-be in Delhi is not a post-1947 phenomenon. Bengal’s rulers have, for a long time, defied Delhi and even tried—and succeeded—in throwing off the yoke of imperial rule from the throne in Delhi.

From ancient times to the advent of the British:

In the ancient Vedic period, the Bengal province was ruled by a number of indigenous rulers who often fought each other and expanded their territories. The kingdoms of the Gangetic delta which came to be called Bengal (it included present-day Bangladesh) were first brought under imperial rule by the Magadh rulers, and then the Mauryas and Guptas.

But the various kings of the region, which was known as ‘Gangaridai’ to ancient Romans and Greeks, often revolted and came out of imperial rule till they were subjugated again by imperial forces.

Bengal had various indigenous dynasties and mahajanapadas (kingdoms) like the Guada kingdom, and the Varman, Khadga, Pala, Chandra, Sena and Deva dynasties who even expanded their territories to other parts of the subcontinental landmass, including the Gangetic plains and central India.

Bengal came under Islamic rule with the defeat of the Sena king, Lakshman Sena, who had expanded the Sena empire to present-day Bihar, Odisha and Assam, by Mohammad Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1204. Bengal thus came under the Delhi Sultanate and remained so till 1352.

But during this 150-year period of ‘central rule’ (from Delhi), various Governors of Bengal appointed by Delhi’s Mamluk, Khalji and Tughlaq dynasties staged revolts and attempted to throw off Delhi’s yoke. Some of them succeeded for small periods, but were eventually subjugated by the imperial forces.

By the middle of the 14th century CE, three breakaway kingdoms emerged in Bengal and existed for barely 15 years before the first ruler of the indigenous Ilyas Shahi dynasty defeated the rulers of the three kingdoms and formed the Bengal Sultanate that ruled for 72 years. A native uprising in 1414 led to the rule of the province by a succession of little-known kings till the rule of the Ilyas Shahi dynasty was restored in 1433.

Next came the Hussain Shahi dynasty that ruled till 1538 CE before Bengal became part of the Suri empire for 25 years till the Karrani dynasty of Bengal established control over Bengal in 1564. Though all the rulers and dynasties of the Bengal Sultanate period were of Persian-Turkic-Afghan origin, the roots they established in the province made them lay claim to the ‘indigenous’ tag.

Even as the Karrani dynasty was ruling over Bengal, the Mughals started attacking Bengal and inflicted heavy losses on the Karrani rulers. The Mughals finally defeated and ended the reign of the Karrani dynasty in the Battle of Rajmahal in 1576 and made the province a part of their empire.

But the Mughal rule did not go unchallenged. A confederation of twelve native zamindars, called the baro-bhuyans, revolted and defeated the subedars appointed by the Mughals. Many of them carved out their own kingdoms and this continued till 1610 when the Mughals defeated the baro-bhuyans and banished them from the province. Bengal was then administered by a succession of subedars appointed by the Mughals.

Again, within a century, the rebellious spirit of the Gangetic delta influenced these subedars, who had by then been redesignated as Nawabs. The Nawabs had by then established roots in the province by marrying locals, and they became de facto independent rulers while maintaining a nominal and token allegiance to the emperor in Delhi.

The Nawabs established their own dynasties. The first ‘independent’ Nawab of Bengal was Murshid Quli Khan who started ruling the province from 1717. Next came Alivardi Khan who established the Asfar dynasty in 1740. Alivardi’s grandson Siraj-ud-Daullah was defeated by British forces at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, thus paving the way for British rule over Bengal.

British rule:

The British rule itself faced stiff challenges from Bengal’s nationalists and revolutionaries. Bengal birthed the largest number of revolutionaries who attacked and killed British officers and bombed government institutions and infrastructure in a bid to end colonial rule. Bengal also produced a huge number of nationalists who preferred to adopt non-violent tactics and civil disobedience to achieve the same goal.

The seeds of Bengal’s present-day contrarian politics were perhaps sowed by the antipathy shown towards Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose by M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Bose was elected the Congress president in 1938 and re-elected the next year by defeating Gandhi’s nominee Pattabhi Sitaramayya. But Gandhi and his clique put pressure on Bose to step down, which he did.

This antagonised Bengalis and bred in the community a strong dislike for ‘central’ leaders. Though many nationalists from Bengal remained in the Congress and with Gandhi, a deep distrust between Bengalis and the ‘central’ leadership of the party was born.

Post-Independence Angst:

This distrust turned into anger due to the perceived indifference of Nehru to the plight of millions of Bengali Hindu refugees who flooded into Bengal in the run-up to and after Partition from East Pakistan.

The treatment of Bengali Hindu refugees was distinctly different from that meted out to Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Pakistan. While the latter were provided considerable material aid and plots of land in Delhi and other parts of North India to settle down in, the Bengali Hindu refugees were largely left to fend for themselves.

Repeated pleas from then Bengal ‘premier’ Prafulla Chandra Ghosh and then Bidhan Chandra Roy (both belonged to the Congress) to Nehru for aid and help to resettle the Bengali Hindu refugees in Bengal and other parts of the country were initially met with refusal, and then by Nehru’s exhortation to Ghosh and Roy to send them (the refugees) back to East Pakistan.

Nehru told Ghosh and Roy he would ensure that the Bengali Hindu refugees who returned to East Pakistan were not harmed and he would strike a deal in this regard with the Pakistani authorities.

But with the millions of starving refugees who crowded into Calcutta refusing to go back, Nehru ultimately perfunctorily arranged for their resettlement in the inhospitable Dandakaranya—a vast forested area in central India spread over the present-day states of Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

The refugees were only given plots of arid land and abandoned in that brutally inhospitable terrain. This bred acute antipathy towards the Congress central leadership and, by extension, the central government.

Leading sociologist and former JNU Professor Dipankar Gupta had written that “if there is anything that has contributed to Bengal’s anti-Delhi sentiments, more than the marginalising of Subhas Chandra Bose (in the Congress), it was the Congress’ insensitivity towards refugees from East Pakistan. Remember, many leading Bengali savants, poets, as well as revolutionaries, had deep roots in East Pakistan.”

The Bengal government had to take care of the subsequent waves of Bengali Hindu refugees who fled East Pakistan after pogroms against them in 1950, 1965 and 1971 with no help coming from the central government. The apathy of the central government to the plight of Bengali Hindu refugees, whose numbers swelled to eight million by 1971, roiled all Bengali Hindus and deepened their dislike and antipathy for the central government.

The Left took advantage of this sentiment and built on it. Jyoti Basu and his comrades strongly opposed the resettlement of Bengali Hindu refugees in Dandakaranya and facilitated the return of many of them to Bengal.

The popular perception in Bengal about the Centre’s apathy towards Bengalis and Bengal was reinforced by Delhi’s indifference towards the plight of the people of the state during the 1959 food crisis.

Food crisis of 1958–1959

An acute shortage of rice had been building up from the end of 1958 and was acquiring the nature of a famine by next year. The Left parties led by the Communist Party of India (CPI) launched protests against the failure of the then Congress governments in both the state and Centre to address the crisis.

But under pressure from the Nehru government in Delhi, the state government let loose brutal and repressive measures against the Left parties and people agitating for food.

From July 1959, massive demonstrations immobilised Calcutta and on 31 August that year, the police gunned down a number of people who were agitating on the streets of the city. The official death toll was 20, but the CPI claimed that more than 80 people had died from bullet wounds.

This, and other failings of the Congress governments in the state and the Centre, led to the Left parties gaining ground in Bengal. “The Left very adroitly capitalised on the anti-Delhi mood of the Bengalis at that time and further fuelled the anti-Centre sentiments born out of perceived indifference for and insensitivity towards the sufferings of Bengalis by the central government,” Calcutta University sociology professor Sudhangshu Pal Chowdhury told Swarajya.

The downfall of the Congress started from that time and was hastened by the demise of Bidhan Chandra Roy (the chief minister at that time) in July 1962. Roy, an eminent physician, was a revered figure in Bengal and it was his eminence which sustained the Congress in the state despite its many failings and anti-Bengal image.

Freight equalisation policy

Another major issue that riled Bengalis was the Centre’s freight equalisation policy that was formulated and implemented by the Union Government in 1952. That policy, of subsidising the transport of minerals to any part of the country so that the minerals would be available at the same price all over India, took away the natural advantage enjoyed by mineral-rich states like Bengal, Bihar (which included the present-day Jharkhand) and Odisha.

That policy was perceived to have been formulated to benefit the western states. That Eastern India suffered as a result of this unfair policy is a fact that was acknowledged by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last year.

After Bidhan Roy’s demise in 1962, the Congress won the Assembly elections that year, but the communists had already started growing in strength and had drastically increased their presence in the state Assembly.

The Congress split in 1966 due to a revolt by some young party leaders on the issue of over-dominance of the central leadership in the affairs of the state unit of the party. That split, with a new Bangla Congress being born, was another manifestation of the growing anti-Delhi sentiments within even the Congress in Bengal.

“Young Congressmen like Pranab Mukherjee, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Ajoy Mukherjee and A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury who were left-inclined revolted against the traditional and conservative elites of the party who used to blindly follow the diktats of the Congress central leadership. They formed the Bangla Congress. Though they later joined the Indira Congress, the damage inflicted on the Congress in Bengal was permanent,” veteran Congress leader Sushil Gupta (85), who retired from active politics two decades ago, told Swarajya.

The Congress fell short of a majority in the 1967 Assembly elections, and the Bangla Congress, with support from the Left parties and a number of Independents, formed the government headed by Bangla Congress leader Ajoy Mukherjee.

A tumultuous phase in Bengal’s politics followed with the Bangla Congress clashing with the Left on policy matters like land reforms and the handling of the radical Left uprising in Naxalbari. The central Congress leadership started fishing in these troubled waters and engineered a split in the Bangla Congress.

Former Congress leader (and former Bengal premier) Prafulla Chandra Ghosh formed an alliance between the Congress and 16 MLAs who defected from the Bangla Congress, and staked claim to form the government. The Governor, on instructions from New Delhi, dismissed the Ajoy Mukherjee government and installed Prafulla Chandra Ghosh as the Chief Minister.

The Bangla Congress and the Left parties set aside their differences and launched a protracted agitation against the Congress government, leading to frequent violence with Congress cadres. The Naxalite uprising complicated matters and led to a complete collapse of governance. The Centre dismissed the Prafulla Ghosh government, dissolved the Assembly and imposed President’s Rule in February 1968.

Assembly elections were held a year later. The United Front (an alliance between Bangla Congress and Left parties) won a comfortable majority and came to power with Ajoy Mukherjee as the Chief Minister in February 1969.

But the Congress (Requisitionists), led by Indira Gandhi, formed after the November 1969 split of the Congress into Congress (R) and Congress (Organisation) led by Kamraj, again engineered turmoil within the United Front government and got the Governor to dismiss it in March 1970. President’s Rule was reimposed and lasted for a little over a year.

Meanwhile, the Bangla Congress merged with the Congress (R) and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi got a Congress government backed by the CPI (the communist party had split into the pro-USSR CPI and the pro-China CPI-M) installed in the state in April 1971. But the intensified Naxalite uprising and the need to impose stability in Bengal due to the turmoil in East Pakistan that necessitated India’s intervention led to the dismissal of the Ajoy Mukherjee government and reimposition of President’s Rule in June 1971.

Fresh from the victory in the 1971 Liberation War that created Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi ordered Assembly elections in Bengal in March 1972. The Congress, which had regained the goodwill of the people of Bengal due to the 1971 War, aligned with the CPI (USSR’s support to India during the war generated support for the CPI as well), and won the 1972 elections with a huge majority.

Siddhartha Shankar Ray became the Chief Minister. What followed was one of the darkest periods in the history of Bengal. While the rise in the radical Left and their acts of subversion, sedition, and violence led to a huge crackdown on Naxals that led to extra-judicial killings, custodial torture and a lot of collateral damage, the imposition of Emergency in June 1975 led to suspension of civil liberties and the jailing of thousands of Opposition leaders and functionaries.

The excesses of the Siddhartha Shankar Ray government and the Emergency led to a huge loss of support for the Congress. The Congress in Bengal never recovered from that.

The 34 years of Left rule that followed crystallised the anti-Centre feelings amongst Bengalis. The Left frequently blamed the Centre for its own failings and ‘Centre’s step-motherly treatment’ became its oft-repeated excuse for its disastrous performance and misgovernance.

As the outflow of capital, including human capital, from Bengal turned into a deluge under Left Front rule, the Left Front stepped up its anti-Delhi tirade as a poor apology for its disastrous policies and many failures.

After 34 years of misrule that generated acute anti-incumbency, the Left was swept out of office by the Trinamool tsunami. Mamata Banerjee has, since coming to power in 2011, kept up the anti-Centre tirade and taken it many notches higher than the Left. Blaming the Union Government for everything that afflicts Bengal has become her political credo.

And years of this propaganda—that New Delhi’s apathy and antipathy towards Bengal is responsible for the sorry plight of the state and Bengalis who continue to wallow in its cesspool of poverty and hopelessness—has entrenched the belief in the minds of Bengalis in Bengal that the rulers in Delhi are responsible for all their miseries.

Bengal’s cultural and intellectual snobbery

The Bengal Renaissance, spanning the roughly 150 years from the late 18th to early 20th centuries, instilled in Bengalis a deep sense of cultural awakening and pride.

The social reforms that took place during this period, as well as the advances in science and technology, various art forms, literature, academics and other fields, made Bengal outshine other provinces and made it a cradle of intellectualism and liberalism.

Bengal’s achievements were undoubtedly stellar. And Bengalis took justifiable pride in these achievements.

However, Bengali contrarianism provided a fertile ground for this pride, giving way to intellectual and cultural snobbery and disdain for other regions as well as the Delhi-centric dominant political culture of the country.

Bengal does not have medieval warrior heroes like Chhatrapati Shivaji, Maharaja Ranjit Singh or Maharana Pratap. Instead, Bengal’s icons are more recent: Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Raja Rammohan Roy, Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose, Satyendranath Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray and many others.

This gave Bengalis an identity that is distinct from the rest of the country, and it also intensifies Bengalis’ contrarian ethos.

What also makes Bengal different, and makes it stand apart from the rest of the country, is the absence of a rigid caste hierarchy like most other parts of the country. Bengal has been free of upper-caste dominance.

In fact, instead of only Brahmins, Bengal had two other upper castes—the Kayasthas and the Baidyas (the practitioners of Ayurveda). But these upper castes were barely dominant and whatever little caste hierarchy existed dissolved in the aftermath of the renaissance and the advent of communism.

Thus, these distinctive features of Bengal have bred a cultural and intellectual superiority amongst Bengalis, especially the bhadralok (genteel) class, and this sense of superiority has only fuelled the contrarian ethos.

The Negative Fallout

But the sense of otherness, and the sense of cultural and intellectual superiority, has resulted in the Bengalis living in Bengal suffering from a ‘frog in the well’ syndrome.

The refusal to accept the fact that Bengal has fallen behind the rest of the country and that Bengal’s best and brightest have long forsaken the state is proving to be suicidal for the state.

Bengalis in Bengal still refuse to accept the hard reality that the Bengal of today is best known for its political violence, fractious politics, hooliganism, political chicanery, rampant corruption, abysmal standards of education, healthcare and infrastructure, poor governance, a declining economy that has taken the state to the verge of bankruptcy, terrible work culture and rising crime graph.

Bengal is today a less-than-pale shadow of its former self.

These inglorious features and ills afflicting Bengal today put it below the league of most of the states that had been termed so disparagingly as ‘Bimaru’ by (who else?) Ashish Bose, a Bengali and a prominent demographer and economic analyst of the last century.

The Trinamool Congress today thrives on a stringent anti-Delhi rhetoric. A rhetoric that has only harmed the state and hindered its progress in various fields. The benefits that can flow from an amicable relationship, instead of an unnecessarily adversarial one, with the Centre have eluded the collective intellect of the Bengalis of Bengal.

Because, perhaps, as social and political commentator Indranil Ghatak puts it, Bengal today is quite devoid of intellect. This is not to say that the intelligent, forward-looking and successful Bengali is extinct. The species exists, but outside Bengal.

The Bengali bhadralok flourishes, but not in Kolkata. He lives in Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and also all across the world.

And he is no longer contrarian. He quotes Tagore and Swami Vivekananda very liberally, but is equally appreciative of Subramania Bharati, Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad, Premchand and Amrita Pritam, among many others.

He celebrates Durga Puja with great fervour at Delhi’s CR Park or Bengaluru’s Koramangala or Chennai’s Besant Nagar, or Pune’s Khadki, but also actively participates in Onam, Ganesh Chaturthi, Baisakhi and Dussehra festivities.

And he rarely thinks of returning to Bengal, except for family weddings, anniversaries, funerals and other social occasions. Or to sell off that old property in that North Kolkata para.

All that Bengal’s rebellious ethos and its contrarian philosophy have done is make the state the best place to get away from.