Partition of Bengal: Division and distinction

Conventionally speaking, the 1947 partition is seen as a painful, unwarranted, disappointing and negative event. We do not say this is untrue. The division of Punjab and of Bengal led to massacres, bloodshed, rape and violence on either side of the borders. There were panic-stricken people, being chased or in fear of being chased. It was humans who were assaulted or the target assault. They fled from their homes, running hither and thither, and finally leaving their homeland.

However, the stories of people being attacked, leaving behind their homesteads and fleeing the country, were not all visible to the same degree in context of place and time. Reading on the Partition of 1947, you do not hear the degree of anguish among the people who left West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh as you hear in stories of separation of the people who left East Bengal. Similarly, we also do not hear so much either of the non-Muslims who became a minority in Bangladesh and their predicament brought about by the Partition of Bengal, as we hear about the losses of the non-Muslims who left East Bengal. That is why many will call the conventional narrative of the Partition of Bengal to be a half truth.

Other than these discrepancies, my research over the past few years indicates an absolutely different narrative, other than the one of the Partition smeared with blood and tears. It is imperative that we look into that. In the interests of truth, we must say that on the flip side of the distress, the Partition of Bengal in also ushered in hope. On the flip side of pain, it ushered in joy. It is not that the Partition of Bengal in this land was totally unwarranted. The Partition of Bengal gave birth to aspirations of a new identity for Bengali Muslims.

As a result of the Bengali nation state being founded in 1971, the religion-based identity apparently was diminished, but now it surely does not need to be pointed out that this identity has an important place in society. The conventional studies of Partition have always overlooked the historical importance and far-reaching significance of the emergence of the Muslim identity in East Bengal. That is why it must now be asserted that Partition studies are still India-centric and do not, consciously or unconsciously, take into cognizance the experiences of the varied people, of the diversified land, and even the divided and paradoxical experiences that exist. The repetitive boring and pitiful narrative establishes India as the single victim of Partition. This narrative plays a role in India maintaining moral pressure on its neighbours. That is why Partition studies remain an example of epistemological aggression and hegemony.

The popular understanding of Partition also views another matter as the gospel truth. That is, the Partition was a despicable conspiracy of the British, a toxic manifestation of their 'divide and rule' policy. This canard stands on yet another half-truth. This understanding fails to see that Partition took place as a result of political bargaining. The politicians of undivided India took active part in this. They certainly were not unsuspecting prey to the conspiracy of the British rulers. This half-truth is also blind to the fact that undivided India had long been prepared and readied the political and social realities that prompted Partition.

Take Bengal for instance. No matter how much one talks about a common Bengali culture today, for a long time an indelible difference has grown between the two Bengals and the two main religious communities. It is not at all logical to consider the Partition of Bengal to be the moment that two Bengals broke apart or to hold it responsible for this split. In his biographical writings, Abul Mansur Ahmed points out that long before the Radcliff Line was drawn, the Bangla-speaking Muslims in the remote villages of East Bengal realised at every step that their Bangla-speaking Hindu neighbours did not view them as equals. When writers and thinkers of the calibre of Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah would attend the Bengal literature conference, it was as if they were poor relations invited to the home of the wealthy elite.

In social terms, East Bengal was basically an agricultural society riddled with poverty, the majority being Muslims. They neither had education, nor gentility. The refined Kolkata never looked upon East Bengal and its populace as equals. They viewed "Bangals" as a strange race. Kolkata had the inherent gloss of colonialism. In contrast to the wretched "Bangals", this glittering metropolis became the hub of the newly educated office-going salaried middle-class. So the splitting of Bengal actually took place before Partition. In short, the two Bengals from beforehand were existing in two different historical and sociopolitical planes of reality.

We saw this manifest when seeds of the Pakistan movement were sown. At that time the Bangla-speaking Muslim writers, editors and litterateurs, even those in Kolkata, started exerting their distinctive identity. Rather than India, they committed themselves to constructing the Pakistan vision. But their vision of Pakistan was not that of Jinnah.

Within Pakistan, they wanted to establish the separate East Pakistan vision. In East Pakistan there was the land and the lives of the people awash with the rivers on one hand, and on the other they shrugged off the Kolkata sphere of influence with metaphors and memoirs of Islamic ilk, a distinctive language and literature. The poetry of Farrukh Ahmed is an excellent example of this exercise. Writers like Farrukh Ahmed at time inducted a large amount of foreign elements in the Bangla language.

But the unhappy short-lived marriage of the politicians of the two Pakistan's very rapidly broke up. That linguistic-literary endeavour of East Pakistan never came to fruition. Later when Bengali nationalism was promoted and Bangladesh became an independent state, many viewed the endeavour of their predecessors through the nationalistic lens, seeing it as a regressive "step backwards".

At the time, linguistic nationalism was considered superior to religion-based nationalism. The independent Bangladesh began its literary practice with the belief in Kolkata's academic, cultural and literary supremacy. The debate as to which of the two nationalisms is superior, which is more inclusive, can continue. But the standpoint that Kolkata is ideal and venerable simply serves to discard the question of Bangladesh's linguistic and literary practice. Instead, a celebration of a common Bengali-ism is forced forward.

It is true that once upon a time the literature, music, cinema, etc. of Kolkata had a significant role in the lives of Bangladesh's educated middle class. Our previous generation would listen to Sachin, Jaganmoy and Satinath, would watch Uttam and Suchitra. We too have turned time and again to Sumon, Nachiketa or Sunil, Samaresh, Shirshendu or Joy Goswami. This celebration of Bengali-ism and the lamenting about the divided Bengal is an important element in the discourse on the Partition of Bengal. A wistful reminiscence is cultivated at national circles in Bangladesh and West Bengal, of sighing "if only we two were together as one," or "if only there was no border." But we fail to probe into the fact that despite speaking in the same language, the two Bengals diverged down different paths very long ago, the two Bengals were never one.

We do not even stop to think that in 2011 when the two Bengals (actually two states, India and Bangladesh) commemorated 150 years of Rabindranath together, exactly at that moment perhaps Falani had been shot at the border and was dying. Other than a very, very few, our advanced scholar friends in West Bengal did not utter a word of protest. What sort of Bengali unity is this? What is this lamenting about not being able to live together?

Clearly, West Bengal and Bangladesh are bound together in a culturally disparate relationship of superiority and inferiority complexes. These complexes have emerged through historical differences. No one from either side or the Bengals can deny these differences.

Added to this inequality on a state and political sphere, is a moral burden -- the debt for the 1971 liberation war. India's policymakers, politicians, even the public, never forget to remind the people of Bangladesh at regular intervals that India had helped Bangladesh in the 1971 liberation war and that Bangladesh should remain eternally grateful and indebted to India. It must be remembered that when it comes to war and politics, no country does anything out of altruism. The fact that Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan and became independent in 1971, gave India significant advantages in regional politics.

Surrounding Bangladesh on three sides, India paved the way for imbalance in relations, whether it was in the sharing of common river waters, rail transit and all sectors. In recent times, by supporting Sheikh Hasina's unelected autocratic rule, and sheltering her after the fall of her government, India has taken a stance against the aspirations of the Bangladeshi people.

It was because of all these reasons that an anti-Indian mindset grew in the minds of the people of Bangladesh over the past one and a half years. In recent times when India lost to Australia in World Cup cricket, the people of Bangladesh celebrated effusively. The Indian media and analysts reacted sharply to this, shocked at Bangladesh's "ingratitude".

It is from this anger in their minds that the people of Bangladesh want to make their distinct identity clear. The Partition of Bengal in 1947 paved the way for this difference between the two Bengals. This difference later strengthened Bangladesh's own distinct political and cultural journey down history. And through that, the project for a common Bengali-hood gradually became defunct.

* Syed Ferdous is a professor of anthropology at Jahangirnagar University and a researcher on Partition.                                      

* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir