Ibn Batuta was a traveller from Morocco, who visited India in the 14th century and recorded his impressions about Bengal in an intriguingly worded phrase: ‘dozakh-i-pur az n’imat’ – which translated into English means: ‘an inferno full of gifts.’ In other words, despite its chaos and anarchy, famines and epidemics, Bengal offered splendid gifts – a variety of rich cultural output for those inclined toward arts and literature, and a gentle environment of religious syncretism for those in search of spiritual solace. (In fact, Ibn Batuta came to Bengal to meet the famous Sufi saint Hazrat Shah Jalal in Sylhet). It is this coexistence of an inferno-like experience of most of the people at the existential level, and an almost heavenly experience of these same people at the cultural and spiritual levels, that struck Ibn Batuta when he came up with that wonderful expression to describe the paradox that was Bengal.

But the paradox is taking the most absurd forms in the daily living style of the present Bengali bhadralok generation. We find contradictions galore between their postures in public and practice in homes; illogicalities in their efforts to reconcile their devotion to religious gurus for spiritual salvation with their equally powerful devotion to the cult of cut-throat competition to make money; conflict between promises voiced by their politicians and their total negation in their practice. One may argue that such absurdities are not peculiar to the present generation of West Bengal bhadraloks, but are common to most of the urban and rural upper class and upwardly mobile middle class people all over India today. Then, what’s so different about West Bengal? And therein lies the rub!

 

Among the ‘argumentative Indians’, Amartya Sen’s home state can claim to have produced their most egregious representatives in academic and political circles, who are experts in selling their specious arguments and weaving webs of fallacious theories that can swing the Bengali bhadraloks from one end to another in the political pendulum. The most recent example is the emergence of Mamata Banerjee as an icon of sorts in Bengali society – a paradox again, if one goes by the reputation of that society as a citadel of civilized norms and leftist ideology! Mamata stands out in sharp contrast from both. Yet, behind the packaging of Mamata Banerjee as an icon, the Bengali intellectuals played a major role.

On the eve of the last assembly elections, a large number of prominent Bengali writers, poets, artists, film stars and theatre personalities (many among them known for their leftist leanings, like the author Mahashweta Devi, theatre director Bibhash Chakravarty, poet Kabir Suman), canvassed for Mamata Banerjee. It is not that they were unaware of her past career as a lumpen politician, who rose to prominence as a Youth Congress leader in the mid-1970s by demonstrating her skills in jumping upon the bonnet of a car carrying Jayaprakash Narayan in Calcutta, and trying to attack him when he was campaigning against Indira Gandhi’s corrupt regime at that time. Nor were these Bengali intellectuals ignorant of Mamata Banerjee’s later role during the Emergency, when goons of her Youth Congress killed and rendered homeless thousands of leftist supporters in Calcutta and other parts of West Bengal. They were also witness to her later performances when, in her reincarnation as a Trinamool Congress leader in the 2000s, she institutionalized a style of violent street politics (that attracted the media), peppering it with populist rhetoric (that drew large sections of Bengalis who, fed up with the misrule of the CPI-M, and revolted by its violent suppression of the popular movements in Singur and Nandigram, were hoodwinked into believing her as their messiah).

 

The alliance between such a politician and some of West Bengal’s leading left-minded writers and artists looked like a paradox. But, true to their habit of rationalizing the most absurd behaviour, they justified their switching of sides by coming up with a variety of arguments. One such argument which I heard during my visit to Kolkata on the eve of the last assembly elections, ran along these lines: ‘The CPI-M is a fascist party. It has to be defeated. During the 2nd World War, to defeat the fascist forces, the left allied with the bourgeois democratic parties. Today in West Bengal, we should also therefore ally with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which is a bourgeois democratic party, in order to defeat the fascist CPI-M.’ There were other leftist intellectuals (of the Maoist variety) who went even a step further. They reassured me that Mamata Banerjee was almost converted to their ideology, and would release all Maoists in a jiffy once she was voted to power! When she came to power, her first act was the elimination of Kishenji (the Maoist leader who rallied his supporters in West Bengal to campaign and vote for her) in a false encounter. The Maoist activists and sympathizers who were arrested during the Left Front regime, are still behind bars.

 

We shall err on the side of generosity if we dismiss the Bengali intellectual society’s support to Mamata Banerjee as a sign of mere gullibility, or a passing mood of hostility towards the CPI-M. There is a method in the madness. We have a term in Bengali – sheyana pagal (a cunning chap who pretends to be crazy). The Bengali bhadralok intellectuals pose as pagals (crazy and angry dissenters), but at the same time they are sheyana (clever) enough to make good. They switched their allegiance to Mamata during a crucial period – when she was the Railways Minister at the Centre, and when the popular mood in West Bengal was turning against the Left Front government in the state. Thanks to the largesse that she, as a central minister, promised these supporters of hers, they managed to climb up the ladder of upward mobility. Some among them were given posts as advisers or consultants in the railways ministry. Some gained access to the national political sphere by being nominated by her as members in the Rajya Sabha, and some were elected to the Lok Sabha.

These people belong to a new generation of intellectuals-turned-politicians (unlike the professional politicians of the past) who have emerged during the last few decades in West Bengal. Mainly coming from the traditional Bengali middle classes, they consist of university and college teachers, stars from the film world, litterateurs, ex-bureaucrats, small businessmen, and entrepreneurs, among others. By gaining access to positions in India’s hierarchical political structure (as ministers, MPs, MLAs, advisers, consultants and a host of similar other designations), they are tasting a new sense of power.

 

But, even though they have become a part of the ruling political elite of the state, these bhadraloks are facing challenges to their hitherto established territorial and cultural hegemony, and facing an identity crisis of sorts. In the current national scenario, where identity politics is raising its head – marked by increasingly violent demonstrations of religious, linguistic, caste, ethnic and other separatist identities – West Bengal cannot remain immune to these trends.

One of the earliest challenges to the concept of an exclusively Bengali language based state of West Bengal, came from the Nepali speaking hill people of the northern parts of the state in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and the plains, who launched an agitation for a separate state of Gorkhaland during the Left Front regime in the 1980s. The setting up of a semi-autonomous administrative body for them with limited powers within the state of West Bengal – a model invented by the Left government, and still being followed by the Trinamul government – has failed to satisfy the Nepali speaking people who continue to explode into demonstrations demanding a separate Gorkhaland. Conceding to this demand, however, would lead to the diminution of the size of the state, and neither the regional Trinamool party nor the Bengali left, despite their mutual animosities, would agree to the bifurcation of the state of West Bengal.

But, the Gorkhaland agitation has raised echoes among other hitherto silent ethnic communities who had been inhabiting the margins of the Bengali speaking core of West Bengal, like certain sections in north Bengal, and the tribal people on the western borders of Jharkhand, who are demanding autonomy. The age-old Bengali socio-cultural domination over these communities – which was projected as their integration into a loose frame of Bengali identity (e.g. their speaking in Bengali, or adoption of certain Bengali social habits) – is being threatened today. It is a conflict between an established dominating identity and an atavistic assertion of long suppressed hidden identities of the dominated.

 

During the early years of the Left Front regime, the CPI-M and its political allies sought to resolve the conflict by reconstructing the Bengali identity on the basis of an inclusive programme of pro-poor agrarian reforms, recognition of the cultural rights of the tribal and ethnic communities (e.g. written script for Santhals; semi-autonomous administrative unit for Nepali speaking people); decentralization of power through panchayats; and an anti-communal agenda. The left claimed that these set them apart from other states where economic inequity and social injustice, caste and religion-based discrimination continued to fracture their self-claimed homogeneity.

That identity based on economic and political inclusiveness in West Bengal, could not however last for long due to the gradual erosion of the left’s moral commitment to the implementation of inclusive reforms, and increasing isolation from the marginalized sections like the agrarian poor and tribal communities (who were alienated in Nandigram and Jangalmahal by the Left Front government’s aggressive decision to acquire land for industrialization). In fact, the Left Front during the later decades of its regime in West Bengal (from the 1990s onwards), reconstructed the Bengali identity in an elitist shape to woo the new business house investors and suit their requirements in the state in the wake of the Indian economy’s opening up to the global market under a neo-liberal regime.

It was under the Left Front regime that a new generation of young educated Bengalis grew up, trained in the skills of information technology and corporate business, interior design and event management, organization of fashion shows and musical extravaganza among many other avenues of the globalized market economy. Many today occupy top posts in the local offices of multinational firms, as well as major Indian business houses in Kolkata and other cities of West Bengal. Some have set up their own outfits in the entertainment world. These Bengalis who are products of the neo-liberal economy of 21st century globalization, are laying down the norms of social behaviour and cultural activities. They are impacting on the efforts being made by the modern bhadraloks to reconstruct a new Bengali identity in the face of globalization, and new contradictions are cropping up.

 

Such contradictions recall similar tensions that another generation of Bengalis faced when in the 18th-19th century period, they had to reconstitute their identity in the face of British colonization. At that time, after several phases of internal conflicts, the Bengali Hindu middle class managed to formulate a code of conduct that helped them reconstruct themselves as an identifiable distinct community, called bhadraloks. This was done by reconciling their past tradition with the contemporary colonial rule. It was a minced pie, consisting of vegetarian slices from Hindu customs and rituals and pieces of meat from western society and culture. The Bengali Muslim gentry underwent a similar crisis of identity during the same period, swinging between a desire to associate themselves with pan-Arabic Islamism on the one hand and the need to accept English education and still retain their Bengali characteristics on the other. Over the years, both the educated Hindu and Muslim middle classes merged into a Bengali intellectual identity, sharing common concerns of social reforms, and writing in a Bengali which has by now become the standardized form.

 

Today, in early 21st century, the Bengali middle class is facing another crisis of identity. The cultural and religious icons like Rammohan Roy, Vidyasagar, Rabindranath, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda (whose images were built upon a consensus of contemporary Bengali middle class views and opinions during the 19th-20th century period), continue to provide them with cushions on which they recline to boast about their intellectual past. They observe their birth anniversaries every year with ritualistic fanfare. But their children, who form a major constituency in West Bengal’s social, cultural and political scenario, care two hoots for these icons or their ideas.

One section among them, as described earlier, is mostly employed in multinational firms, Indian business houses, IT sector, call centres, the newspaper and television industry, and their various ancillary wings (as contractors in the construction sector, or impresarios in the cultural arena). Both in their professional careers and in their social existence, these Bengalis follow a lifestyle that is more integrated into the globalized economy, and tuned to its cultural reproduction in Indianized forms. They are thus replicating the Gurgaon pattern of urbanization (which again is based on the model of a western megalopolis), in the north-eastern and southern outskirts of Kolkata.

Luxury apartments, shopping malls, and entertainment parks are coming up, creating a hybrid cultural milieu where the parents and their children cannot write in Bengali, and do not speak that language, but talk in a mixture of English, Hindi and pidgin Bengali. They behave in the style of heroes and heroines of Tollywood Bengali films which are photostat copies of Bollywood, which in its turn, pinches stories and techniques from Hollywood to make Hindi films. The cultural tastes of the modern nouveau riche Bengalis are a far cry from the cosmopolitanism of the meticulously constructed framework of Bengali intellectual identity of the 20th century, within which occurred stimulating exchanges of ideas and practices between the West and the East, unlike the present which is being swamped by the onrush of a West dominated globalized homogeneous culture of the 21st century. Yet, the bhadraloks, though proud of their Bengali identity, cannot afford to disown these offspring of theirs, since it is this new hybrid generation of CEOs and commercial agents of neo-liberal globalization which provides a manicured facelift to West Bengal’s sagging economy, and dominates Kolkata’s high society culture.

 

The other section of the new generation of middle class young Bengalis – who are less educated and less fortunate in acquiring the skills that have favoured their counterparts in the IT sector and multinational firms – forms what can be described as the ‘lumpen bourgeoisie’ of modern Bengali society. It has made its way into the informal sector. Some are employed by the land mafia and real estate agencies as musclemen to coerce the original owners of lands to vacate their plots to make way for new residential and commercial complexes, and some are patronized by political leaders as ‘party cadres’ who are used to intimidate their opponents (as witnessed in West Bengal during both the past Left Front and the present Trinamool regimes). Unlike the traditional types of criminals coming from the lower depths of society in the past, these new operatives are children of educated middle class families, who with a smattering of spoken English and combination of brains and brawn, can manage to worm their way into the confidence of the upper strata of society and do their dirty work.

 

Torn between these socio-economic pulls and pressures, today’s bhadraloks are trying to knock up a modern Bengali identity. As in the past, they are looking for a formula which would give them that magic wand to reconcile two mutually uncomfortable tendencies – this time between the aggressively commercial and consumerist cultural norms of the globalized neo-liberal economy that seduce their present generation (as described above) on the one hand, and the traditional Bengali lifestyle that is largely determined by the socio-cultural norms that were laid down in the 19th century, on the other. But in the course of such efforts at compromises they are creating bizarre paradoxes. West Bengal’s socio-cultural scene in particular, has become a funny ‘inferno’ (to hark back to Ibn Batuta), full of such paradoxes which reflect the emergence of a crossbreed Bengali identity.

Take for instance the manner in which wedding receptions are organized in a typical modern upper middle class Bengali home. Following the tradition of barjatri (‘barati’), the bridegroom and his male companions (who may be working in some multinational firm or the IT sector, or belong to a similar high income group as NRIs) arrive at the scene – dressed in an ersatz reproduction of 19th century sartorial fashion: flowing kurtas embroidered with grotesque designs and dhotis dyed in brown. The funniest part of the story is that neither the bridegroom, nor his friends, know how to tie the dhoti – a rather cumbersome process. They are dressed up in the traditional apparel by some events manager who manufactures a ready-made dhoti!

Similarly, the Bengali bride and the women invitees dress themselves up in the 19th century Bengali style – preferring saris, for a change, to their usual attire of jeans and salwar-kameez. But here again, they do not know how to tie the sari. So they have to depend on some fashion designer to deck themselves up in a way that fits into the new Bengali identity on such social occasions.

 

It is this contradiction between their daily living style (which is a part of the metropolitan global system) and their occasional forays into a simulated Bengali past (e.g. wedding ceremonies or Durga puja exhibitions that are recreated in a fake 19th century style) that constitutes the paradox of modern Bengali identity. Most of the marriages that are celebrated in such ceremonies are arranged through matrimonial columns in Bengali newspapers, or even through television channels that specialize in bringing together the parents of the prospective bride and bridegroom from different parts of the world. Despite the metropolitan socio-cultural lifestyle that they follow, these young Bengalis – whether employed in India, or as NRIs abroad – prefer to inter-marry within their respective castes and fix the dates of the wedding according to the Hindu almanac.

This tendency among a culturally confused generation to revert to a pre-modern tradition to construct their identity extends beyond the institution of marriage to other areas of their social and domestic existence. They tend to gravitate towards godmen, put on rings which are supposed to be auspicious, and tie around their wrists a red band (a ubiquitous sign marking almost all Bengalis, irrespective of class or caste) – known as bipadtarini – something which is supposed to protect you from danger! The needs and desires of these mentally insecure people are reinforced by the media – both religious channels on television and Bengali newspapers which carry advertisements publicizing the miraculous powers of tantrik preachers who claim to provide nostrums for all problems – ranging from male impotency to female infertility!

In their search for a Bengali identity, on the one hand they are harking back to the most regressive aspects of the Bengali past – caste-based exclusiveness, profligacy on spectacular extravaganza, superstitious beliefs – against which their reformist forefathers campaigned in the 19th century. On the other hand, they are running to adopt the most uncouth and loutish style of performance from the 21st century’s commercial entertainment industry.

 

Let me end with a report that illustrates this paradox. On 26 March this year, the Calcutta Press Club celebrated ‘Basantotsav’ – a Bengali festival to mark the arrival of spring, which was institutionalized by Rabindranath as an annual event of rejoicing in Shantiniketan. Contrary to its earlier practice of observing the occasion by singing of Rabindranath’s songs, this time the celebration was marked by revelry with rendering of Bollywood item songs and hip-gyrating dancing!