Letter from Kolkata: Decadence of Bengali Intelligentsia

As the general election campaign is coming to a close, there are increasing signs that the Bengali intellectual life is at a crossroad, often exhibiting signs of terrible decay and partisanship, a direct result of penetration of Left ideas in the Bengali social life after independence.

Every election since 1967 has brought to fore the bankruptcy of the Bengali middle class. Remember the 1967 general elections when the two Communist Parties, dominated by middle class intellectuals, started slander campaigns against the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Prafulla Chandra Sen, an honest Gandhian, as he had advised the people of the State to use green plantains as an item of food because there was a crisis of rice in the market. Prafulla Chandra Sen might have been undiplomatic but he was an honest man. The Communists deliberately chose not to see the better side of the man and instead started a low-grade slander campaign against him. More reprehensible was the allegation from a certain middle class quarter that Sen had purchased the Stephen House, a palatial building in the heart of Calcutta. But when he died Prafulla Chandra Sen left nothing behind and had in fact spent his last days on whatever his friends and associates, notably Ashok Krishna Dutta, a veteran Congressman, gave him voluntarily. The Communists gave a pathetic exhibition of their poor taste as they marched on the streets of Calcutta after Prafulla Chandra Sen’s defeat in the election with green plantains. The Bengali middle class also rejoiced at this cheap show. That was really the beginning of the destruction of the intellectual life of Bengal.

Servility and mediocrity are tantamount to infectious diseases and the first seeds of these, planted in 1967, saw the flowering of the poisonous tree after the Indira Congress captured power in West Bengal in 1972. The corrupt and mediocre Bengali intelligentsia remained quiet, with a handful of exceptions, as hoodlums donning jerseys of political parties let loose an atmosphere of terror on the streets of West Bengal. The Bengali bhadralok again chose to turn a blind eye and instead decided to pay obeisance to Sanjay Gandhi when her mother clamped Emergency on the country. Who can forget the pathetic scene in Calcutta when a renowned historian from the Calcutta University was seen jostling with others to occupy a front-row seat at a meeting which was addressed by Sanjay Gandhi at the height of the Emergency? Or try to recollect the uncouth attempts of violent Youth Congress workers led by a present Union Minister to prevent Jaya Prakash Narayan from entering the University Institute in Calcutta where JP was scheduled to address a meeting. At that time also the Bengali intellectuals had not raised their voice.

¨

However, after the Left Front’s coming to power things have definitely taken a qualitative turn. Under Congress rule there was no attempt to create any segment among the middle class which would always look towards the ruling party for approval before airing any view. The society was free and unshackled. Syncophancy was there but it remained largely at the individual level and there was really not much attempt to create any section which would play the role of his master’s voice.

Developments over Singur and Nandigram have exposed this trend in the most unabashed manner, no doubt. But the process had started much earlier immediately after 1977 when the Left Front Government started doling out favours to sections of the middle class, mostly journalists, writers, singers and other cultural personalities. Many of them were favoured with lands and flats on out- of-turn basis. Side by side regimentation of the society was carried out with professional perfection through appointments of hangers-on in various government and academic jobs.

It was not, therefore, surprising that the Bengali society on the whole remained quiet even after gruesome killings of refugees from Eastern Bengal on the Marichjhanpi island or the Anand Margis on the streets of Calcutta. To a great extent Bengalis remained quiet when the palms of several persons were chopped off in the Howrah district for their sin of being Congress workers. Numerous persons have lost their lives in police custody. But the Bengali society, except some civil rights organisations, have remained quiet. The Left Front parties have dishonoured their promise of bringing to book these police officers who were guilty of excesses during Congress rule, and instead gave them promotions. Even that was not enough to stir up the society.

Happenings in Singur and Nandigram form a very painful chapter of not only West Bengal’s history of ‘development’ but its intellectual life as well. People of the State saw a veteran filmmaker like Mrinal Sen joining the unprecedented precession of common men protesting against State terrorism in Nandigram on one day and participating in the State Government sponsored procession in support of the State action on another day. What does Sen’s action signify? Why have Sunil Gangopadhyay, the litterateur, and Saumitra Chattopadhyay, the film personality, become controversial by their reticence to speak out against the powers that be over the events in Singur and Nandigram?

Highly controversial too is the case of another person, named Amartya Sen; he has, over long years of painstaking work, acquired considerable international reputation. He at first supported the West Bengal Government’s decision to invite the Tatas for their motor car factory in Singur and even spoke in favour of the land acquisition measures, and then made a volte face and conceded that loss of profession of the displaced farmers is too serious an issue to gloss over after volleys of protests had come from different quarters over his earlier remark; but thereafter, in a quite amusing manner, he tried to justify himself by saying that he too was a supporter of Left ideas from his student days.

It is now time for the Bengali society, mostly its middle class, to introspect about its values, about is contributions during the freedom struggle and also about the abysmal depth to which it has sunk during the last thirty years. Bengalis must stop deceiving themselves if they really want to play a laudable role in future.