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Last edited:
23 September 2005
1
INDECISIVE
IDENTITY IN RELATION TO THE OTHER(S) :
A BENGALI-INDIAN
SIGNIFICATION
-Arnab Das ,
lecturer in anthropology, Bangabasi college, under the Calcutta university and
Subrata sankar
Bagchi, lecturer In Bangabasi (evening ) college, under the Calcutta university
The following
writing is a sort of self-reflexive analytical sketch in terms of the author's
own linguistic
(Bengali)
identity. Whether the fact that the foremost sign used to identify individuals
belonging to any
aspect of culture,
like their own(?) language, has any absolute value is exemplified by the
author's study of
his own subject
position. The author has tried to maintain a first person's discourse. The
writing is
obviouly motivated
by the felt experience of many other sensitive Bengalee
(Baangaalee) respondents, met
in intensive
fieldworks. The field experiences are not directly reproduced in the present
text. The written
texts of some
scholars regarding the Bengalees--which are highly recognized by the said
people--are
chosen with the
purpose of introducing and reinterpreting the incompleteness/indecisiveness of
those
foundational
search for own identity.
The author as
the locus and the wholeness in question:
I am said to be an
urban Bengalee and I have studied the identity questions of the urban Bengalees.
The
empirical
anthropological tradition of research might derive from such a topic a
possibility of prolonged
participatory
fieldwork among all the different groups and subcultures of the urban Bengalees.
The
subsequent
questions might be regarding relevant statistical operation in selection and
collection of the
data from the
urban centres of Bengal and abroad. No, there is no such attempt of representing
any
whole of a culture
or a culture as any whole. I am living in the city of Kolkata, the capital of
West Bengal,
the so-called
centre of the Bengalees. For the last long ten years my conscious effort of
knowing my
people has always
been indecisive and I remain indecisive about the limit of my Bengali identity,
the
periphery of the
wholeness of my culture. I have listened to the voice of those who always speak
of the
diversity in
unity(?), sorry, the opposite, the unity in diversity. The diversity is
indicated by all such
identities of
different linguistic communities, geographical communities, religious
communities, caste
communities and so
on. They are said to be united to form a culturally unified India, a nation
state of
postcolonial(?)
period of twentieth century. Its citizen is supposed to be mirroring a model of
the unity. I
do not feel myself
conscious of such a higher united essence of totality/wholeness from which the
sub-
essence of
identity may be felt or represented, other than the fact that I have to use such
an essential
term in different
discourses of my present citizen life, especially when I have to differentiate
my
community-entity
from any labelled otherness, many times not even enquiring the labelling. For
instance,
I am not decisive
all the time, even in any one situation, whether I am a Bengalee and an Indian
or first
an Indian and
then a Bengalee or first a Bengalee and then an Indian. I have also tried to
think myself in
all the above
sets at different levels of interaction. In terms of the two identities, Indian
and Bengali, I
may try to
explain my cultural, social or any sort of experience, but always uncertain
about where the
boundaries of
identities might collapse or any wholeness of experiences representing just
ideal/typical for
the Bengalees or
for the Indians is disrupted. In fact, it leads to the indecisiveness about the
existence of
any such
type/ideality and wholeness (essence) of cultural experience. This
indecisiveness often raises
difficulty for me
to think and act in demand of the situation. Overcoming that difficulty is
certainly a
matter of
comfort, if it may not entail some other more serious difficulties.
2
The question
of the population and its language:
The term identity
in Bengali is equvalent to Aved, non-difference; Ekatwa, samenss;
ananyata, the state of
being the same.
The issues of sameness and difference of the Bengalees with respect to ohers
evoke
those attribues,
with which Bengalees are identical in their own sense of the term. At first let
us begin
with the very
term Bengali.
Baangla
signifies the language or the land; Baangaali indicates the
linguistic group and is used for the
adjectivial
purposes; Bengali is the English term for the language and an adjectivial
word for anything
associated with
the language or the land of Bengal/Baangla, while Bengalee means
the member of the
linguistic
community. The words accommodate some confusing overlapping of meanings,
however, with
much indifference
to any clean differentiation of the signifiers.
Bengali being the
mother tongue of certain people might serve the purpose of defining their
identity, but
there are Bengali
families whose offsprings learn and speak other language/s better from their
childhood,
not necessarily
migrated outside from the Bengali-preponderant areas. There are people also with
so-
called
non-Bengali surnames whose offsprings are majorly Bengali-speaking. In order to
resolve the
problem, two
options clearly emerge. One is supposed to consider all those people who speak
and write
majorly in
Bengali--including some presently Bengali-speaking people with non-Bengali
surnames and
social-cultural
backdrops and excluding all the offsprings of Bengali families who majorly speak
and write
in other language
and are known to have so-called Bengali cultural backdrops. The second option is
considering only
those people who for several generations are known to be Bengalees--thus,
excluding
those principally
Bengali-speaking people who for the previous generations are known to be
non-
Bengalis, and
those principally other language-speaking people whose previous generations are
known to
be Bengalis. The
implicit criterion of time/generation for becoming Bengalees, though,
whisperingly urge
us to explore
among all the commonly agreed Bengali lineages the actual number of generations
for
which they have
become the Bengalees. Among these strictly defined lineages of the 'pure'
Bengalees
there is
variation of dialect and again in each segment of the dialect there are people
who can not
maintain that
segmental purity of that linguistic variation.
Therefore, at
least for the Bengalees, the language and the language-using population can
never match
exactly, because
the Bengalees are exposed to many languages and linguistic groups before and
after the
British colonial
period. There is no perfect/complete whole of that linguistic population. How
the people
have lost its
boundary is a matter exploration and construction. The exceptions, extensions,
marginalities
etc. of
language-identity of the Bengali-speaking population will enable us to rethink
even the generality
of that
population, whether there remains any possibility of 'pure' Bengalees
(Baangaalis) in terms of
language.
The existence
of language as independent of the
population:
Now, think of a
language which is in use no more, still its text remains. So language has an
independent
existence in so
far as it may be discerned as a language, as a sign system, having its capacity
to mean.
Sometimes the
system may not even be deciphered, as the case of the Harappan language still
persists to
be so. Thus, we
can not identify any present population as Happan-speaking people--excluding the
impossibility of
knowing the actual name used by those 'Harappan' people to address that
so-called
'Harappan'
language. In fact, any language is better identified in its use, not in the
identification of the
users.
In resistence to
the failure in defining a whole of Bengali population in terms of primary
ascriptive
attribute of
language, one might argue that any linguistic community is distinct not only in
their language,
it is also for
other aspects of culture in relation to their linguistic identity. Language is
taken as one aspect
constituting the
whole. So, the linguistic identity signifies something different from language
as the
sufficient ground
for the identification of the people. Bengali culture might be that
transcendental entity,
not the language
( as one aspect of it ) is signified by the term Bengali. Any
individual--learning Bengali
language and even
the literature in equivalent intensity--might lack the socialization of the
Bengalees, the
3
age-old
traditional essences acquired through the process in an age of flux of contacts
of other cultures.
That very unique
essence of any culture as an ensemble of different comparable elements like
language or
if its essence is
comparable to others, that very grounding essence will be subject to the similar
condition
of the language.
The food-habit, for example, of the Bengalees might be seen to differ within the
population, not
in a manner of selection and combination within its own range of food items, but
some
Bengalis are seen
to have principally changed and some other previously known non-Bengalees are
seen
taking up Bengali
food habit or major food items ( like, rice and some vegetables ) as their
principal one.
In every
component/signifier of culture at any point of time there might be no perfect
matching between
the population
and the component. Everywhwre it may be seen that those signifiers are not
wholly
congruent with
the signified population. This variation is not a dynamism within a culture, but
it always
questions the
cultural boundaries of the population, finally problematizing any
enclosed/grounded
essence of the
Bengali culture in terms of finding out any empirically measurable population.
It would be
all about a space
of signification regarding tradition of essence and change, where the population
is not
an ideal measure
of the cultural space.
The texts as
the centres of signification and as the resources of data:
Like the useful
anthropological publication about Bengali culture in other language any Bengali
speech,
text or any sort
of signification about the Bengalis, of the Bengalis may sufficiently be the
authentic
resource of data
for identifying, explaining, analysisng, interpreting the aspects of culture and
even how
do they relate to
its difference. The resourses reasonably include those ancient records and texts
which
explain the
emergence of the language or otherwise as the earliest appearance of the Bengali
identity
amidst and out of
'other' identites. As my awareness may represent that ancient period, the
relation of
Bengali to its
immediate other linguistic identities is non-identical to its present situation;
the contexts
and the symbols
have always been changing. At every point, becoming Bengali in relation to its
otherness
has differed in
meaning; thus the meaning/essence of identity of Bengali has always been
differing. All
the symbols and
their relationships to form the essence of Bengali identity are exposed to the
process of
flux as that is
also at present. For tracing the earlist point/origin ( if anything like that is
at all ) and its
course through
time we might use the relevant non-Bengali signification--in texts or other
records. In
order to
understand the formation of Bengali identity, we have to try in terms of
differential relation to
the
genealogically linked other non-Bengali significations.
On interpreting
the process of becoming 'Bengalee', in other words the formation of Bengali
identity,
such reflexive
search for the essence in itself or in terms of other linguistic population
would prevail. The
second dimension
of identity as stated by the term 'urban' has also the similar consequence for
the
population. In
differentiating those Bengali-speaking people living in urban settlements from
the non-
urban settlers
put both the spatial limit of urbanity in question and the domain of urban
culture in
question. For
example, there are many urban settlers, marginally connected to the dominant
discourses of
urbanity and
there are non-urban settlers who are engaged in major urban practices. Now, the
term
urban Bengali
might suitably signify not only the language-using aspect in urban space, but
other aspects
of culture
in-relation-to language and urbanity. It seems to represent a search for the
essential
absoluteness in
their culture by which the term urban Bengali finds a stable centre of address,
though it
leaves a debate
unresolved. The debate is regarding the identity of those who speak and write
intensively
and authentically
about Bengal and Bengalees in other language, after getting intensive learning
about
them, like an
anthropologist is said to be. An anthropologist by definition becomes a site for
multiple
cultural
subjective positions problematizing or dissolving the problem of relationship of
cultures,
languages etc. It
makes me indecisive again about every individual's subjectivity, whether after
some
considerable
exposure to anthropological experience of different cultures any individual
becomes a space
of multiple
cultural identites. It might be the case of anthropologist-subject's text in any
language to
signify a space
of multiple cultural identities, but where the boundary of one dissolves in
another. Any
attempt to combat
such indecisiveness seems to go through those historical texts, which are
principally
4
and seriously
concerned about the truth-value of informantion, not the quarries on
truth-value. They
have attempted to
recover the history of the Bengali identity majorly from othe texts. I am
attempting
only another
updating of those traces of the past.
The
identification of the Bengal(i):
There are some
established scholarly works about the Bengalees. I am choosing some of them with
a
view to
demonstrating how certain recognised studies forget to recognize the
indecisiveness, inherent in
their texts. What
Haricharan Bandyopadyaya (1966) in his "Bangio Sabdakosh" has collected as the
possible meanings
of the term 'Banga' are the references of the term meant for a region and
/ or in
association with
some other signifieds, none of them inclusive of the others. (a) It meant
cotton, a high
yielding
characteristic vegetation of the locality. (b) A local high yielding variety of
brinjal plant might
have given rise
to the name of the land. (c) Mahabharat, the great Indian epic offers a
mythological-
historical
account of a region. The region was supposed to be owned by Banga, one of the
five sons of
Bali, the great
king. (d) An equivalent alternative is also refered in another legendary account
of Tibet:
'Bans' in
tibetan language means watery, damp etc. It might not be difficult to assume
that Banga was a
riverine and
water-abundant area in some ancient period. In the first episode of
"Angattornikaye" pg. 213
mentions Banga in
the midst of Anga and other states and in the fourth episode the page no. 250,
252
and 360 the term
was substituted by a term "Bans". Bandyopadhyaya explains (1966) that the term
could
have been derived
from the Tibetan word Bans or Ban. This region, accoding to him,
indicates the eastern
riverine part of
Bengal, commonly called Eastern Bengal (Purbabanga). He likes to
corroborate the
assumption of
identification of the region with reference to the great poet Kalidasa's
Raghubangsa where
Rama, the great
king of the epic Ramayana ventures to evict the kings of Banga aided by
the "neval
force". In
addition, the finding from Chaitanya bhagabat done by Rakhaldas
Bandyopadhyaya in his
Bangalar
Itihas alludes to the incidence that Chaitanyadeb, the great
18
th
century saint
reached on the bank
of the river
Padma willing to see Banga. Two other etimological origins of the term is
seriously considered
by the Dr.
Chatterjee. (e) The possibility of the Sanskritic origin indicates to a
derivation like Banga+Aal
> Bangaal
>Baangaal, Banga meaning embarkment given by the kings on
the plain land below the high
hilly range. The
connotation of Banga remaining the same the Dravidian derivation
Banga+Aalam>
Bangaal
gives a substitute meaning of the term, where Aalam means 'to possess'.
(f) The Portugese
merchant Bengala
settled on the bank of rivulet Buriganga for the purpose trading. After the name
of
that European
merchant the region began to be popular as Bengal. The last
interpretation, however,
gaining certain
academic attention can not marginalise all the earlier evidences of the use of
the term. In
Sagartaal
inscription (Silalekh) of king Bhoj of Pratihara dynasty, the king
Dharmapala was mentioned as
the ownwer of
Banga (Bangapati) and his Militia as Bangaalis (Bangaan). On the
inscription of Tirumalay
mountain, done
during the kingdom of first Rajendrachola, Bangaaldesh is described as a
place, "where
the rain-wind
never stopped". On the 11
th
century Tanjour
inscription Banganam term reappears.
Baangaala
is one of the twelfth provinces of the Mughal empire of Akbar.
After the
emergence of the language proper of the region, around the first century of the
1
st
millenium
the term
Banga/Bangaal got associated with many stray contexts and sources in spite of
the fact that the
perpetuation of
the term did not relate to any definite elitist determination/backdrop. The
antiquity and
stability of the
term Banga/Baangal, really provokes much wonder, as it has been narrated by
Sukumar
Sen in his "Banga
Bhumika" ( published in 1999 ). The colonial attention to Bengal led to some
more
exposure to
westernities or global currents, which somewhere helps accepting an identity of
deviance. It
proposes that the
'pre-colonial' Banga was never a part of the orthodox, homogeneous,
close-to-centre of
and positively
recognised by the power on top, pure, dominant, consistent, conformist culture
of the
surrounding, more
Aryanised 'others' of its present nationhood. The indicators of the fact, a
marginalisation/differentiation
of a region with respect to the 'others' (if, at all) are accepted in different
attitudes by the
Bengali scholars, all willingly or unknowingly motivated by the self-orientation
regarding
the facts. Sen
(1999) mentions the continuity of a single term addressed to a region for such a
long
5
period, unlike
any other region of India. Parallel to the fact of such stable traditional
signifier of the
region,
relatively low recognition (by the historically dominant others of the
pre-colonial indian
subcontinent) of
social position of Bengal as a whole might also help situating a view that some
traditions might
also grow out of indifference / forgetfulness / weak reason /indeterminacy /
neglect
/arbitrariness /
so-called unreason. By and large most of the Bengalee scholars on Bengal have
attempted to be
emphatic about determining the traditional character of the land and its people,
even
sometimes
compulsive to do so. Many definite foundational discourses of tradition were
discovered and
articulated in
order to establish the identity of Banga/ Bangaal/Gour-Banga, as
if 'roots', 'foundations',
'reasons',
'originality', 'specialisation/differentiation' etc. may only matter for any
scholarly revealetion of
facts. Still,
there are slips all over the writings, some of such elements are supposed to be
useful for the
present author.
It is, therefore, a time to exemplify the texts that propose the identities of
Bengalees
and/ or the
Bengali thinkers.
Back in the 40s
in "Betar jagat" Acharya Sunitikumar Chattopadhyaya gives a simple version of
the
consecutive
inmigrations of the African black people to Bengal, who were supposed to be
non-existent
afterwards. The
"Nisada" are called by the Europeans as Austric/Austro-asiatic and whose
inheritors
became the
Mundari, Santahali, Kurknu, Gadaba, Sabar linguistic groups of people, most of
whom
became seccluded
in the forested regions, others got mixed in the present non-tribal population.
These
cultivators and
weavers were the actual founders of Indian civilisation. The Dravid-speaking
people, who
are said to
"intorduce" urban civilization, the "Kirats", the inhabitants of southern
Himalayan region, in
the north and
east of Bengal contributed to the formation of the Bengali people. Finally, the
Aryan-
speaking people,
especially settled in the northern states of India, using the hypogamous and
hypergamous
marital practices with the previous settlers secured a hegemony and spread all
over India.
Their language in
the forms of Sanskrit and Prakrit got transformed into early Bengali.
Chattopadhyaya
after expressing
its caring concern for the Nisads, accepting in a few words their endurance and
recognizing great
contributions of the Drabid-speaking people, readily jumps to the hegemonical
role of
the
Aryan-speaking people in the formation of the Bengali ethnos. Those hegemony of
the colonizing
Indo-Aryans is,
thus, made to prevail.
In his article
"Gourbanga" (1967), published in the journal Gourdesh, Sunitikumar
Chattopadhyaya
discusses the
history of naming of the region and justifies the name Gourbanga. He
begins with the
criticism of
colonial principle of mislesding the cultural reality during the idependence of
India and
improper division
of the nationhood, in case of Bengal as well. On doing so he reaches the
pre-colonial
past of the land.
To him the inhabited land of Bengali-speaking people were separately or
sometimes
simultaneously
referred principally by the two terms, Gour and Banga/Bangaal.
Gourdesh included Upper
Bengal / Uttar
Banga (constituted by Barinda/Barindrabhumi- Rajsashi, Maldah, Bagura,
Pabna), Radh and
Sumha (
constituted by Paschim Banga-Birbhum, Mrshidabad, Bardhaman, Hoogly, Howrah,
Bankura, Medinipur);
whereas the land
on both the banks, on its southern plain of the larger river Padma and on the
far east
the places--known
to be Mayamansingha, Srihatta, Kachar, Koomilla (Pattikera), and
Chattal--comprised
Bangadesh.
He also likes to mention that the divisions of the region might be mentioned as
the following
popularly known
ones--Radh, Sumbha, Jharkhanda (Manbhum, Purulia, Singhbhum), Karnasubarna/
Kanasona,
Baarendra,
Samatat, Bagri (Sundarban region), Banga, Kochbihar, Kamtabihar, Mayamansingha,
Chattal, Tripura etc.
Only
Kochbihar, PurbaMayamansingha, Chattal, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling and Tripura
are told to be principally the
residence of the
Bhot-Chin (Sino-Tibetan) people. According to Chattopadhyaya, both the
names date
back to B.C.
period. Gourapur, the urban centre is mentioned in Astadhyaee written by
Panini; We see the
existence of both
Gour and Banga in Mahabharata; in the same epic we find the
mention of Anga-Banga-
Kalinga in
a series, which appeared to Chattopadhyaya as three non-aryan tribes. The
probabale derivation
of the term Gour
is said to be either from the name of the highly populated Gond people or from
Pnur,
sugar cane (
like, Pnur>Gur>Gour). Again, of the two major divisions of the
people of Brahmin Varna
into
'Gour' and 'Pancha', the former one comprises of five
sub-divisions-- Radhi, Barendra, Paschatya Baidik,
Dakhhyantya
Baidik and Madhyasreni. All such links lead him to emphasise the association
of Gour with
6
some broader
northern region of India, representing a constellation of the Aryan-influenced
languages.
Before the
Muslim-Turk invation of somewhere around 13
th
century A.D.
Gour represented the western,
northern and
central regions. Banga was used for the eastern part of a previous larger
territory. He
exemplifies that
even at the time of Sree Chaitanya at 18
th
century the
individuals from Nabadwip and
other parts of
present West Bengal was called as Gouria. The transformation of the whole
into Bangala/
Baangala/Bengal
etc. is shown to be the effect of Muslim, French, British influences. According
to him the
tradition
suggests the couple of terms Gour and Banga to be assembled as Gourbanga, which
seems to
be the ideal name
of the region. The problem of inclusion and exclusion of terms is not
historically
consistent, never
clearly emergent in any historical phase. It is brought to a logical discourse
of
equivalence and a
right to survival. It expresses an anxiety of getting annihilated, a hope for
recovery of
oblivious past in
identifying the present, a search for more inclusive identity. One of the
interesting
aspects of the
writing is the exposure of the reasons of the rise of the term Bengal. They are
mostly
because of the
recognition of the powerful colonial settlers and an effort of upholding the
significance of
the term Gour in
the traditional (in pre-colonial sense) historical perspective of the region,
but it does
not significantly
attentive in explaining the decline of the use of Gour/Gouria. The
disappearance
/silencing of a
previously prevalent sign is mourned and its legitimacy is solicited. It is
again the concern
of the power of
academy/intelligentia, to make discourse public, not the other way.
Almost seventy
years back his long account of Jati, Sanskriti o Sahitya ( Nationality, culture
and literature,
published in
1963) of the Bengalees Acharya Sunitikumar Chattopadhyaya depicts the identity
of the
Bengali Jati
(sect) primarily as that group of people who uses Bengali language as their
mother tongue
and a domestic
(gharoa) language. Secondly, in the region of Bengal, the way of life as
suitable to the
natural
environment of Bengal has been developed among the Bengali-speaking people. It
has also been
nurtured
principally during the ancient and the mideaval period of history. As a result,
material (bastab),
mental/intellectual
(manasik), and spiritual (addhatmik) aspects of culture have been
built up and they
constitute the
"whole" of Bengali culture (baangali sanskriti). And this resultant
culture in its intimate
association of
the emerging Bengali language finds its literary expression, which is Bengali
literature
(bangali
sahitya). The author finds much intimacy of the popualtion with the
territory, natural environment
and
local-regional history, language use that is said to result in an "implicit" and
"inward" attitude to the
self-portrayal of
the Bengali culture and literature. The use of the term Jati has its
multidimensioal
connotations
throughout the writing, sometimes as a subnational (linguistic or cultural)
force, sometimes
as a mosaic of
cultural-religious traditions, sometimes as a surviving historical community,
sometimes as
a
linguistic-regional community, sometimes common-still-different Indian
community--generally Indian
and specifically
Bengali. In the very next sentence he mentions that on the year of 1963 more
than seven
and a half crores
of people speak Bengali. He explains why in terms of number Bengali sect
(jati) is not
negligible and
subsequently how the 'we-feeling', especially abroad (bidesh) among other
language-
speaking peoples,
works. He takes pride in his community identity to adopt an anti-Western
attitude,
which is also
reflected in the very assertive title of the essay, "Jati, sankriti 0 sahitya
(1963)". The generic
cultural space of
India is heterogenous and is built up by many such homogenous cultural
specificities of
linguistic
communities.
Now, we may start
seeing the contradictions and defences of his above discourse in the latter part
of
writing. After
rationalising the central importance of language for community identity in terms
of
national
recognition Chattopadyaya (1963) suggests his concept of United states of India
(Bharatbarser
Sanjukta
Rastra). In such a federation political recognition of every linguistic
state might be integrated in
the name of
ancient indian sovereign entity-cum-civilization (Bharater Sarbabhouma
Bharatio Satta-
Sabbhyata).
This foundation for the establishment of modern unified
India(Bharatbarsa) should
legitimatize the
compulsary acceptence of Hindi as its national languge. The grounding and
unifying
essence of the
ancient sovereign Indian civilizational entity is possibly explained immediately
in the next
paragraph. He
searches a generic commonness found in every common Indian. His first example is
said
to be simple and
external (Sahaj and Bahjya); it is in the morphological-external-physical
appearance in a
7
unique
(ananyadesh-labhya) Indianness. Whatever be the skin color, in the facial
appearance (mukh-chokher
samabese),
in the optical expression (chahani), locomotion, phonetic similarities of
language there is some
visibly
significant expression which is the unique indicator of the Indianness. He
assumes a consolidation
of this empirical
dispersion by an essential suggestion--"if the common Indians from different
regions
are stripped of
their regional-cultural costumes and decorations and claded similarly it would
be difficult
to identify the
respective regional identity of them". He continues his observation and
inference in
another example
of an Indian in english wear seen abroad; he becomes indecisive in identifying
the his
region of origin
in India--Bengal or somewhere else. Suddenly, the author proposes an approximate
measure of
multiple identities in a modern Bengali individual: one fourth of the total
identity is European
(depending on the
individual's socio-economic condition), one half as Indian and the remaining one
fourth is
Bengali. Of this last quarter, one fourth is pure Bengali/rural-Bengali and the
remaining three-
fourth is a
Bengali distortion of Indianness. Before concluding such speculative determinism
about
Bengali identity
he tries to relegate the impact of Islam among the Bengalees to the least and
the last. In
the beginning of
the next discussion he depicts a voice of protest against the pressure of Indian
Muslims
on the author's
own group ("amader athaba bangali hinduder") engineered by the
conspiratorial British
colonialism. He
does not forget to highlight the then-prevalent ressistant-aggressive unity of
the Hindu-
Muslim Bengalis
against all sorts of foreign exploitations. He feels no contradiction in his
immediate
advice for
resisting the growths of other provincial populations within the territory of
the Bengalees. He
suggests that
from the economical perspective the Bengalees must be very much regionalist in
protectinng
themselves; they should prevent those economic exploitation in the name of
nationality,
within the region
of Bengal. This resistence is suggested to be coupled with the approval of
cultural
connection with
the rest of India. His own cherished ideal of Bengali-type culture in the face
of the
concurrent
growths of other Indians desparately urges the sluggish Bengalees to protect a
free (of the
economic
domination of the others), legitimately own economic developmental space for
Bengal. The
hope is to
assimilate desirably his past/parental identity and exchange with other such
present morally
active regional
cultures in the name of the common ancestry. Such a revealation of parentality,
the way of
overcoming the
guilt for aggresiveness in exchange of cultural tribute to the ancestry is aimed
at
envisaging just,
mature and idependent Bengali identity. At the very discussion he launches his
defence
for the ideal
Bengali gender images of Sita and Sabitri. He engages in
contention against the attempt of
relegating the
above images to the images of Malua, Madina and Kamala. In the twists of
analysis the
Malua-Madina-Kamala
seem to be defeated against Sita and Sabitri, in spite of the fact that Sita and
Sabitri were
alleged--by the contender of Chattopadhyaya-- Ray Bahadur Dr. Srijukta Dinesh
chandra
Sen as the lady
foreigners wearing non-traditional ('others') Ghagra.
After such
externalisation/exclusion of other identities from the Bengali one
Chattopadhyaya (1963)
starts depicting
the emergence of Bengali language proper whose consciouness, he thinks, to be
essential
for the awareness
of nationality. He uses a metaphor of a natural process for comparing the
emergence
of the language,
which occurred one thousand years ago. The land of Bengal is the contribution of
river
Ganga, who is
mythologically the daughter of the mountain Himalaya. The Bengali language,
likewise,
was reproduced
from the Aryan, Prakrit--the languages from the northern India. Like the river
Ganga the
downward spread
of Aryan language washed away the ancient non-Aryan languages. The Aryan
language
Prakrit was
gradually transformed to the Bengali; Sanskrit, its mother language came along
with the
Prakrit. Before
the Mauryan capture of Bengal, the Aryan language and its associated northern
Indian
Gangetic
civilization were not spread over Bengal. From Maurya era upto Gupta rule
(300B.C. to
500A.D.), during
these eight hundred years it was Aryanisation of languages. The previous Austric
and
Dravidian peoples
abandoning their (non-Aryan) language gradually adopted the Aryan language
Prakrit
of Magadh area.
The Brahminical religion and civilization of northern India--the
mythology/folklore and
the history ( of
both Aryans and non-Aryans ) written in Sanskrit language by the North
Indians--were
accepted by the
inhabitants of Bengal. After that the Budhhist and Jainist doctrines appeared.
They were
also accepted in
Bengal. The mixing of these three cultural strains, Austric, Dravid and northern
Indian
8
mixed Aryan,
produced the Bengalees. According to Chattopadhyaya the genetic-identity and the
language of the
Bengalees were principally non-Aryan; the ratio of Aryan 'blood' which
contributed to
the formation of
the Bengalees, was also mixed non-Aryan of northern India. However, this newly
becoming
Bengalees along with the Aryan language found out a pattern/discipline. There
was an impact
of Aryan psyche
on Austric and Dravidian nature. According to Acharya Chattopadhyaya it was
good.
The Aryan psyche
or Brahminism imparted on the undernourished (aparisphuta) primitive
Bengalees
certain coherence
in the cultural characteristics. It was the middle of
10
th
century A.D.,
when the
Budhhist scholars
started writing in a special language, the earliest Bengali literature and songs
had their
birth. Quite
alike those Bengalees, less aware of their own non-Aryanness, they adopted the
mould of an
other Indian or
northern Indian victorious Brahminical-Budhhist-Jainist pattern in order to
recast his
psyche, his
society, his tradition. That is the initial pattern of the Bengali civilization,
which still persists.
At present,
Chattopadhyaya says, we are undergoing some williing and unwilling changes to
arrange our
society [
identity under westernizing cultural milieu] in a new mould/pattern. After that,
it is a long, but
precise
historical construction of the Bengalees for almost twenty pages, concluding in
an appeal to the
Bengalees. With
due regards to his own traditions and history, a substitution of prioity is
advised for self-
protection, the
knowledge and work (Gyan 0 Karma) as against imaginative attitude
(Kalpana),
thoughtfulness
(Bhaabukata) and addiction to entertainment (Rasanaanda). The
grounding essence is said
to preexixt from
a thousand years' past inguistic identity and culture, with its added and
privileged
supremacy over
the non-Aryan primitiveness. So to say the domination of the Aryan
(Brahminical-
Budhhist-Jainist
ensemble)--over a previous weak-but-own otherness(?)--gave birth to the present
conscious pattern
of the Bengalees, a cultural-cum-linguistic people, which he termed as
language-culture
group.
"Banga Bhumika"
of Sukumar Sen (published in1999) might add to the constructions of identity of
the
Bengalees. In the
very beginning it addresses the problem of region-language relationship.
"Language
forms
nation/people (Jati) and the peoples form country. At the emergence of
Bengali language the
history of the
Bengalees begins". Is it so that the first-ever text in the language, a new
system of sign,
bears no trace of
its past? It almost views the history of language as equal to the history of the
language-
using people;
better to call it a history of people only identified by the respective text. A
question still
creeps up--by how
many individuals the concerned language was used during its first appearance in
recorded text and
that past took the future course. Sen (1999) in his "Kaler Sopane" readily
follows to
explain. "But
Bengali language has its past history. This language is produced from somewhat
different
previous
language, and that language also comes from more ancient language. In this
manner, tracing the
inheritance back
from the Bengali language we reach Sanskrit language. If we go far back to
follow the
past of Sanskrit
we cross the boundary of Bharatbarsha (India)." The next sentence seems
insignificant as
the context is
concerned, but is worthy of a different focus-"it is mentionable that it (the
land of origin
of sanskrit) has
no relationship with the history of the land /region of Bangabhumi". In other
words, the
distant land,
outside India, where the Sanskrit emerged has no relation with the history of
the land of
Bengal. Does he
indicate the physical contaguity as the sufficient reason for historical
association? The
next sentences
might give the clue-"Sanskrit is not the aboriginal language of Bengal. There
would one or
more aboriginal
languages, but we do not know anything about it. The people who with their
mother
tongue Sanskrit
colonized this land are the direct ancestors of the Bengalees. Before that if
some people
lived in this
land they merged with the colonizers. Those people are also our ancestors, but
anonymous
to us." Sometimes
the anonymity of a certain part of ancestry perturbs little, especially if we
get the
dominant/masculine
paternal part of identity. We could marginalize the importance of the
weaker/passive,
receiving, almost silenced, effiminate aboriginality. It might be a stretching
analogy of
maternity. "It
was well before three millenium B.C. the Sanskrit-speaking people were settled
in this
country". He
maintains that the region (bisay) inhabited by certain people was usually
named after the
name of the
people. Among the people's regions (jati-desh) of eastern India the
earliest mention was about
Banga in a
hymn of Rik Ved (8.101.12). The descendants (or living beings) were
missing ( "praja ha tisraah
9
atyayamiyuh").
The interprtation of this sentence was given in the old scripture of Aitareya
Aranyak in
explaining those
three missing ones as birds named "bangabagadhascherapada:". Sen thinks
the bird
("bayangshi") as
metaphor of nomadic nature and the three names are Banga, Bagadh and Cherapad
all in
plural. The last
two might have been transformed, but banga, the first is yet the same one. In a
Vedic
literature the
eastern land of Bangabhumi was mentioned as Pragjyotish.
Pragjyotish initially meant eastern
horizon.
Kamrup stood for certain people. In Kalidas's Raghubangsa Kamrup and
Pragjyotish were
identical. In a
Vedic mythology there occurred a battle between the gods and demons. The demons
were
strong in mind
and the gods were strong as a result of the fire-worship. The fire at the front
of the god's
frontier drove
the demons to the eastern border. Finally the demons crossed the Sadanira river,
from
where the
Pragjyotish starts. The sacred fire could not cross the river , as a result of
which the land upto
Sadanira seemed
to be sacred by the fire. At the literature of Kalidas the border of Sadanira
was
Brahmaputra. The
spatial orientation of this Aryan purity-pollution concept, an Indian mode of
'self-
other'
differentiation, is also mentioned at the reading of Rakhaldas Bandopadhyaya's
(1923) historical
discussion about
Bengal.
The plural form
of the term Banga, Sumhhah, Pundra would generally signify the people and
their land
(Sukumar Sen,
1999.pg6). The very evidence indicates other implication of the
signification-"Anganang
bisayo
Hangah" meaning the land of the Angas is Angah. If it was
taken for granted, the question is why it
was exclusively
mentioned, communicated to the reader. One possibility might be to make the
signifying
practice
approved. However, Banga, Sumbha and Pundra respectively signified the
downstream Gangetic
bangabhumi,
the land on the western side of Ganga and upper Gangetic land. Patanjali the
interpreter of
Panini on
2
nd
century B.C.
mention the above along with Anga and Magadh. Anga was on the leftern
riverside of
Ganga and the Magadh was the southern riverside of Ganga . For the reson that
Banga was
very special
upto the period of Panini-Patanjali the whole northern area was known as Banga.
The
importance of
Banga was so famous because of its terminological association with cotton
(kapas) and
cotton industry.
One meaning of Banga is Kapas cotton. In Sanskrit and other associated languages
the
meaning is said
to be approved. In Bhojpuri, it is Bag, In Maithili it is Bnago ,
Bnaga, in Hindi it is Bnaga
and so on. Now,
Sen (1999) goes to illustrate the analogical process of emergence of the name of
Pundra
(one type of
sugarcane, still prevalent in its present name of Pnuri aankh) as
a land famous for its
sugarcane
cultivation. His comments that it might be the reason of false derivation of the
name of Gour
from
gnur, the sugar product of the sugarcane negates the derivation as
linguistically least tenable. The
word Gour,
according to him, might be derived from the habitation of the numerically large
Gond
people. He also
accepts that this Gour might be the the Gourpur mentioned by Panini, as the
substitute
of the
archaeologically scriptured Pundranagar (the Pundrabardhan of later period).
Patanjali mentioned
Anga, Banga,
Sumba, Magadh and Kalinga. Among them The last two were clearly mentioned by
Panini,
But Patanjali
mentioned all the five. In addition, he exemplified two 'Puras', Gourpur and
Aristapur in his
"Prachya"
(eastern) division in the threefold Aryabarta into Prachya, Udichya and Madhyama
" traya:
Prachya:
traya: Udichya: traya: Madhyama:". In order to resolve the confusing use of
Gour he explians that as
a city or a land
the term was not found in any old scriptural evidence before seventh century
A.D. In any
ruling statement
of the Pala dynasty the mention of any ruler / owner of Gour
(Goueswar/Gouradhipati)
was not found.
Muslim historian first used the name and it was also told to be the capital of
Laksmansen. The
term was mainly used in literature and perhaps came from outside Bengal. Upto
the
beginning of
nineteenth century A.D. the term was used to indicate a city. At the period of
Chaitanya
Gouria
was synonymous with the Bengalis. However, on and before the time of Patanjali
Banga Bisay (land
of Banga) was
signified as Gangyabhumi (gangetic area). According to Greek traveller-historian
Megasthinis on
the eastern frontiers of the Indian land there were two important groups of
peoples,
"Prasioi" and
"Gangaridoi"/"Gangridoi", which in sanskritic transcription could perfectly be
addressed
as Prachya: and
Gangeya: respectively. Old Latin poet Ovid on the
1
st
century A.D.
indicated the
purabtyas as
Gangekutis< Gangetia Talemi on 2
nd
century A.D.
termed the lower gangetic land as Gange
and identified
the port of that land in the same name. Somewhat hypothetical description of
Kalidas in
10
Raghubijay and
the description of the Greek traveller might help the inference that the region
of the
Banga people was
spread over both the banks of Ganga. The Pundra people settled on the eastern
bank
in large number.
They realised that the physical contact with the Anga land was one the main
reasons of
the cultural
spread coming from the northern frontier. For this reason
Pundrabardhan-Pundranagar
becme important
and so frequently mentioned. Banga on the other hand was loosing its
nomenclatural
mention as a
region from the Gupta period because of the division of the land into two
"Bhukti"s for the
sake of proper
rulership. The leftern bank of Bhagirathi became Pundrabardhan Bhukti and the
southern
half was called
as Bardhaman Bhukti. One thing is accepted by Sen that the loss of
occupation-oriented
identity of the
people reduced the nomenclatural use of the land, which was the priority in the
rules of
identifying the
people and the land. The withdrawal from the previous aquatic lifestyle due to
the loss of
the depth of the
rivers in Bardhaman bhukti made the people move from the gangetic proper to the
more riverine
eastern and eastsouthern regions. However, there were certain areas which were
the
important
centres the cotton (banga) production. This production again made the
term Banga to retun
from senventh to
eighth century A.D. There were no mention of Banga in Samudragupta's Alahabad
Prasasti; there
were only Samatat, Dabaak and Kamrup. Samatat could be identified as the
gangetic
plains, Kamrup
was on the edge of Samatat, but Dabak is still unidentified. It was again in the
seventh
century Chinese
description of Hu-en-sang the divisions of the region of Bengal reappeared. The
divisions were
presented by the following regions: Kajangal ( the forested area
associated with the
mountainous land
of Rajmahal), Pundrabardhan,Samatat,Tamralipta, Karnasubarna and Udda
(Udra).
Pundrabardhan,
Tamralipti and Karnasubarna are the names of three localities, not the
peoples' regions,
indicating
northeastern Bangabhumi, Sumbha, southern gangetic land. Bangal was said
to be contaguous
to Samatat and
producing huge quantity of cotton. From this term the future Baangala and
Baangali
came up. In the
royal statement (sasanpatta) of the king Debapal the destruction of
Sompur Bihar--the
educational
Buddhist monastery--by the Bangal troop is mentioned. More he says about the
historical
references of
Bangabhumi, more he finds the region expanding and shrinking in different
contexts. The
only thing Sen
(1999) wants to maintain that in spite of all the fluidities of the peoples,
their regions, their
cultures over
the years, the older terminological behavior of naming the regions corresponding
to the
name of the
people ( people's territory ) has only been retained in the term of Banga. In
other words, all
the other names
of such land-people correspondance are lost, except the Banga, and it was from
before
the term of
Arjabarta --the land of the Aryans.
None of the
scholars succeeds to give a complete closure to his 'true' discourse of
establishing Bengali
identity, even
does not venture to conclude that any such attempt and possibility may remain
suspended.
They assume the
closure in the name of so-far-available interpretation of texts (e.g. historical
documents,
archaeological
remains, scriptures, folklore, Bengali literature of huge magnitude, scholarly
works on the
above ones
etc.). All of them are cautious about not committing any gross deviation from
the
methodologies
adopted by the westerners for 'valid' research and 'complete' results. On
differentiating
and representing
the identity, they presuppose an obvious concurrence of certain
concepts--geographical
area, language,
population and other systems of signification. Actually they remain
data-intensive about
the above ones
separately that is supposed to fulfill the purpose, but they do not put up the
relationships
of the concepts
for empirical examinations. Worse is the result to make a more tight, 'holistic'
anthropological
account of the Bnegalees (Sur, 1994). Even, their cultural constructions of the
Bengalees
in different
periods intrude into the primordial premises of defining the identity. Imbued
with the spirit
of protest
against colonial modernity they follow a modern discourse of establishing a
'true' search for
origin and
history the Begalees/Baangaalis from the pre-Aryanic and / or Aryanic
past. The hierarchic
ordering/adjustment
of culture(s) under the (pre-)Aryanic hegemony seems to provide them a
resolution
of the debates
and discontinuities regarding the identities of the diverse communities in
India. They
derive a relief
in rendering a remote, almost mythically, pre-colonial unity of the origins of
both the
conformist
(like, 'other' Indian more aryanized community-type) and non-conformist (like,
marginally
aryanized 'own'
Bengali) Indian(?) identities.
11
For another
in(con)clusion:
According to
Sunitikumar Chattopadhyaya (1940, 1963, 1967, 1994), Sukumar Sen (1991, 1999),
Niharranjan Roy
( 1980) and Rakhal Das Bandopadhyaya (1923, finally published in 1974)--the
masters
on Bengalees--in
the period around 10
th
century A.D.,
during the Pala reign the inception of the language
of present
Bengali occurred at least at texual practices. Except Chattopadhyaya the rest
are not ready to
ensure the
detailed process of how the linguistic practices came to a very popular level
and how the
local, mixed
version of Indo-aryan dialect started dominating the previous Austric language,
whereas
other
neighbouring language group (like, the sino-tibetan) took less entry into this
language. Besides, one
thing is very
evident according to the old records that the concerned eastern India appeared
less as own
to the
colonizer(?)/contending Aryan culture. Their attitude towards the eastern
Brahmins also was not
respectful and
the land was as such tabooed by the surrounding Aryan hegemony. It was the
margin of
the Aryans.
Although the Austrics are assumed to be as flexible as the cane, Bengal was
recognised a
border of
resistance. Unlike the colonising Aryan it was non-vegetarian, less literate in
Vedic knowledge,
less evident in
the scriptures (e.g., the scriptures of Askoke).
Once again, such
whirlpool of the chronicled information, which are necessary to (re)construct
the
emergence of
Bengali (Banga), leads me to the enquiry about the resultant behaviour of
subjugation to
the outsiders of
the previous inhabitants of Bengal. It might closely resemble to the search of
any
stratigraphical
record about the reaction of some earliest subjects (for example,certain really
absent pre-
Austrics) to the
colonizers/in-migrants, as if it might be something unique in case of India or
Bengal at
large, so that
some new empirical groudwork may provide us with some new bent of post-colonial
present. In the
realm of signification I am not very decisive about any universal proposition of
the
outcome of the
historical phenomenon, for instance, coloniality. The word coloniality is such a
modern
usage that it
finds substitute in another modern "value-neutral, scientific" term, migration.
To the all-
embracing
modernity the pre-industrial phase is almost the socio-natural affair for the
communities to
migrate or the
cultures to diffuse. The exploration of the new area is not equal to the
conquest of the
explored. It
produces a lot of intersubjective space of signification to wedge war and secure
victory over
others. Power
went on adopting renewable signification. Bengal passed through the so-called
flexibility(?)
of the Austrics
in the encounter with the Dravidians, the resistance and the forms of
adjustment--of the
admixture of the
Dravidians and the Austrics--offered to the third flow of Indoaryans and the
relatively
less impressive
Sino-tibetans. In addition the subsequent influx of the Shaks, Huns and Islamic
force
merging into the
reckonable Aryan hegemony of the Buddhhist-Jainist-Vedic culture(s) might have
something to do
with the present postcolonial phase. It is not the search for any singularity in
postcolonial
dimension of signification, the Bengali identity is chosen as the entry point
which opens a
course of
undergoing a journey of Indian context of signification, to posit
Bengali/Bengalee in space of
Indianness, a
position in the hierarchy of the present globe. One of the most technologically
advanced
attempts of
placing each Indian community in pan-Indian spatio-temporal contexts may be
exemplified
with a view to
assessing how the Indians are said to be linked and differentiated.
I quote a recent
exposition and the associated narration of "The Peopling of India" done
majorly on the
pre-, proto-,
early historic linguistic-genetic population by Madhav, Gadgil and N. V.
Joshi, U. V.
Shambu Prasad,
S.Manoharan and Suresh Patil (1997) .
"There are then
many still unanswered questions
pertaining to
how our subcontinent was peopled. But the most plausible scenario is the one
[that]
depicted………….
the earliest migrants into India, [who] perhaps 50 kybp may have been the
Austric
speaking Homo
sapiens, with the advantage conferred by the mastery over a symbolic
language. Their
genetic
footprints may be discerned in the trends evident in the 2nd P.C of the
synthetic genetic map of
Asia. The next
major waves of migratio ns around 6 kybp may have been those of wheat
cultivators from
the Middle East
and the rice cultivators from China and Southeast Asia. The former is likely to
have been
Dravidian
speakers and contributed to the trend evident in the 1st P.C. of the synthetic
genetic map of
Asia. The latter
may have been Sino-Tibetan speakers who would have contributed further to the
trend
revealed by 2nd
P.C. The latest major migration around 4 kybp may have included several waves of
Indo-
European
speakers equipped with horses and iron technology. These might have been the
most massive
12
migrations
peopling India. Others have followed, largely from the west, through the Khyber
Pass on the
northwestern
frontiers of the subcontinent. These seem to have been propelled by superior
weaponry,
increasingly
better control over horses and finally seagoing ships. Such significant
innovations may include
some of the
following. An important early development in weaponry was the composite angular
bow which
appeared in west
Asia around 5 kybp. Bending through the length of the limb, releasing this bow
string
produced no kick
leading to a smooth and accurate shot. The extremely long draw length of over 1
m led
to a greatly
enhanced cast. A crucial piece of equipment associated with control over horse
is stirrup, which
helps in
balancing the rider and permits him to stand up to threw the lance. The earliest
form of the stirrup
was a string
with two loops on either side for the rider's foot. The first known instance of
iron stirrups
comes from China
in sixth century A.D. reaching Iran by 7th century, and arriving in India with
Turkish
warriors in 11th
century. Another significant invention was the iron horse shoe first known from
Siberia in
9th Century
A.D., reaching India with Turkish warriors in 13th Century A.D. The gunpowder
was invented
in China around
100 A.D. and slowly reached Iran, Arabia and finally Europe with Mongols around
1400
A.D. It reached
India with the arrival of the first Mughal emperor Babur who used it in the
first battle of
Panipat in 1526
A.D.(Fig. 24)." …………...
"A segmented
society
What the Indian
population is remarkable for is the segmentation of this large population into
thousands of
endogamous
groups. The People of India data recognizes 4635 such ethnic communities. Many
of these are
however clusters
of endogamous groups with similar traditional occupations and social status. The
actual
number of
endogamous groups is decidedly much larger, of the order of 50 to 60 thousand
(Joshi, Gadgil
and Patil 1993;
Gadgil and Malhotra 1983). This persistence of tribe like endogamous groups,
characteristic
of
hunter-gatherer-shifting cultivation stage all over the world, in a complex
agrarian, and now industrial
society of India
is a unique phenomenon. It seems to be a result of a peculiarly Indian tradition
of
subjugation and
isolation, rather than the worldwide practice of elimination or assimilation of
subordinated
communities by
the dominant groups. Our mitochondrial DNA studies provide some notable insights
into
the structure of
this social mosaic. population stationarity or bottlenecks."
The above
inclusion intends to offer harder supportive evidence to its previous search for
the pan-Indian
scenario through
the ages. The advanced technological/cultural capabilities (re)explore the
footprints of
the past in
order to represent more authentic, somewhat positivist details of the genealogy
of the peoples
of India. Now,
the Indians may reconstruct their genetic/linguistic/cultural relationships to
the other
populations of
the World. They can also support their traditions of ever-expanding segmentation
/
differentiation
and diversifying dynamics in its limited space like own language. They have a
hierarchical
society; they
maintain some sort of democracy for holding balance of so many units in process
of
subjugation and
proliferation. The five scholars have come to design such a nice-looking
macro-narrative
of cultural
dynamics so that any one may be allured to use it for fashioning a down-stream
model of
explaining any
Indian population. For attaining equilibrium such prolonged and popular
homogenizing
hegemony,
however, can not deny, and rather suggest some other implicit possibilities as
well. Both
cultural
differentiation and merging had to undergo repression and its abolition. The
individual and
collective
Indian identities--one in relation to others--might not escape strategic process
of
(un)conditional
exchange of elements in the symbolic format of hierarchy. As a result Indian
cultural
format is said
to have assimilated and accommodated all the [pre-colonial] in-migrant
communities. The
coexistence of
orthodoxy (like, Vedic culture), heterodoxy (like, Buddhism, Jainism, Lokayats
etc) and
even fluidity of
an amazing measure, especially on the marginal front at Bengal, (Sanyal, 1999)
might
always keep on
(dis)stabilizing the identity boundaries (and why not), even under the present
globalizing
crosscurrents.
I started an
examination of the urban Bengalis, a prevailing signifier of a linguistic
community
(?)/individuals
(?) or anything which it might mean. I restore my indecisiveness regarding
identity in
being recognized
as an urban Bengalee in the 'rational' sense that I can not find out the
boundary of my
subjective or
felt experience of any pure identity construct in relation to others. I started
to question the
very basis of
the language itself--how the language Bengali is an adequate ground to
contribute to a
system of
completeness; how Bengali is something permanent in its relation to the others.
Even as a
system of
signifiers it always remains in the form of becoming/changing. Like any other
language it has
its capacity to
signify, a singular among the plural or the same among the similars, one among
the
13
comparable many,
one in the genealogy of some ones. Presently, a globe format drawing so many
different
systems so close to each other every system is supposed to shift, always on
becoming somewhat
different in
relation to the others. Bengalee, the signifier in relation to contextualized
Bengal, Baangla,
Bengali,
Baangaali, urban, India, Indian(s), modernity etc. would render several
meanings, whose
consecutive
accumulation and play--not only serial negations--frequently signify a rational
(what else!)
indecisiveness
of my Bengali/Bengalee identity. On memorizing the culturally discontinuous past
I have
to remain
sketchy about whether my indecisiveness has a direct ancestry from the
pre-colonial contexts.
Believing myself
as a subject of discontinuous tradition(s) I may only conclude that the present
globe is a
text. The
signifiers go on relating one to the other in the play of becoming severally
meaningful. There
are different
such texts, produced by different subjects, sometimes about the same globe and
on certain
occasions about
different globes. What would be the relations among the globes? The globes may
multiply, or
become the newer one(s).
REFERENCES:
Bandyopadhyaya,
Haricharan. 1966. Bangio Sabdokosh. New Delhi: Sahitya Academy.
Bandyopadhyaya,
Rakhaldash. 1974. Baangaalar Itihas. Vol, 1. Calcutta: Nababharat.
Chattopadhyaya,
Sunutikumar. 1940. Baangaalir Itibritya: Jati Gathane. Calcutta: Year 22,
Vol,16, Betar
Jagat.
-------------------.
1963. Jati, Sanskriti o Sahitya., Pp. 244-265.Reprinted In :
Bangadarpan: A look at
Bengal and
Bengalis Across a Millennium. 2001 Vol,1. Ed. Pabitra Sarkar. Kolkata. Third
Millennium
Committee for Social Transition.
-------------------.
1967. Gourbanga, pp. 8-13. Gourdesh. Year 1, Vol,2. Calcutta.
-------------------.
1994. Baangaalir Sanskriti, Kolkata: Paschimbanga Baangla Academy.
Gadgil,M.,
Joshi, N.V., Shambu Prasad,U.V., Manoharan,S. and Suresh Patil 1997. The
Peopling of India
pp.100-129. In:
The Indian Human Heritage, Eds. D. Balasubramanian and N. Appaji
Rao.
Universities Press, Hyderabad, India
Roy,
Niharranjan. 1980. Baangalir Itihas, Adi Parba, Vol, 2. Kolkata:
Sakhyarata Prakasan
Sanyal,
abantikumar. 1999. Baanglar Adi-Madyajug: Bhasa, Sahitya, Samaj o
Sanskriti. Kolkata: Center for
Archaeological
Studies and Training, Eastern India.
Sen, Sukumar.
1991. Baangla Sahityer Itihas, Kolkata: Ananda Publishers Pvt. Limited.
-------------------.1999.
Banga Bhumika. Kolkata : Paschimbanga Baangla Academy.
Sur, Atul. 1994.
Baangla o Baangalir Bibartan, Kolkata: Sahityalok.
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