Na kisee kee aankh ka noor hoon
Na kisee key dil ka quaraar hoon
Jo kisee key kaam na aa sakey
Main v eek musht-e-ghubaar hoo
–—–Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862)
By Abu Siddik siyasat.net
Today Muslims of Bengal may be saved. But what waits next? One of my professor friends has opined that we salute the people of Bengal for defeating a brazen communal force like B J P. Let’s not debate about who are we—Hindu or Muslim. This defeat has given us a fresh lease of life. Today we will not debate if T M C is good or bad. Today we will not argue if Marxists have done wrong by holding hand of Abbas Siddiqui’s newly formed Indian Secular Front (I S F). Let’s us celebrate this defeat of the fascists. Now we get enough time to stop and think about the political future of Bengal. B J P has lost. Communalism has lost. This is our greatest reward. A silver lining appears in the darkening sky. Let’s bury our discontents, angers, frustrations. Let’s live in harmony and peace for more days.
I have exactly shared the said words of my friend not in 2021. In 2018 my book Banglar Musolman carried this wonderful, pleasing, life enhancing message. In West Bengal, it is popularly claimed; Muslims are living in a heaven. Bengal is a land of milk and honey to Muslims. Yes, it is a land of uninterrupted light, peace and prosperity. Here is no communal violence (partly true). So Muslims live in security and peace. Like others states of India they don’t suffer from a sense of insecurity and annihilation. But the reality is quite different. Yes they are over 27 percent and in some districts and blocks they are majority. But they are poor, uneducated, rural and hence powerless folks. They have no self-respect. They are imbeciles. And they are happy to live under the cloudless canopy of peace. They are the migratory labouerers. Hungry, poor, ill-clad, unfed Bengali Muslim millions are yawning and taking now and then morsels of peace as and when offered by political peace dealers. Yes, no lynching, no riot, no mob violence. So peace they buy. Peace is the only item the leaders sell year round. And they are selling it from the day of independence. And the Muslims are happy to live in the periphery buying the quilts of sustained peace.
Theme of peaceful earthly existence for Muslims of Bengal is the sole lullaby played time and time again by bhadralok politicians and intellectuals. Another friend has adroitly said that Muslims of Bengal don’t vote for grasping power. They don’t seek self-dependence. They have not that option in 2021 Assembly election only. From the day of independence power remained elusive to them. It is even so. They will cast vote only to temporarily stop riot or death. Vote is a coin they need to judiciously spend as life saving drugs. This game of not killing them; this game of keeping them somehow alive is age-old. And its expert players include liberals and conservatives, ultra lefts, ultra rights. The seeds of Hundutva were long planted in the fertile soil of Bengal. They have just sprouted forth with favourable rain and sun.
One should not judge political parties by the labels they wear on their lapels or by the highsounding manifestoes issued by them, but by their actions. I will concede that Muslims have never had it as bad as now, when the BJP is in power. But they were never allowed to flourish under Congress rule either. Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv used the Muslim community as a vote bank. They were not interested in their future as Indian citizens. They ensured that like the Dalits, Indian Muslims remained poor and insecure, so they could be fooled into seeing the Congress as their only saviour….By encouraging regressive mullahs and orthodox leaders and treating Indian Muslims as a homogeneous mass, the Congress consigned the whole community to an intellectual and social ghetto. The Muslim closed his mind, he withdrew into himself as a tortoise withdraws into its shell. This helped the BJP demonize the community.
Leave the game played by the Congress. Leave the game being played by T M C. Let’s concentrate on the game played by liberals. To them Muslims and Adivasis were just footballs. They kicked, won the election for consecutive 34 years, reigned and just forgot the community. The party was run by a coterie of Brahmin babus. It was the party of the bhadroloks where Muslims and Dalits were treated if not as untouchables, but almost close to it. Eminent Naxalite leader Santosh Rana has truly opined that Bengali bhadroloks unlike upper caste Biharis don’t apparently believe in untouchability. They don’t strictly follow four barnas during their son’s or daughter’s marriage. They have no hired gunmen or they don’t set fire to the house of the lower castes as such cases are quite normal in the villages of Bihar. But when the question of division of labour comes, they always side with the interests of the upper castes. More than 90 percent white collar jobs are in their possession. Presence of bhadroloks is minuscule in such jobs as cultivation, fishery, digging soil, making bricks in kilns, masonry, carpentry, tailoring, etc. Fields of hard manual labour is fixed for Muslims, Shudras, Dalits, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes only.
Here comes the role of Bengali intelligentsia. What have they done to bridge the gap between upper caste bhadroloks and their lowly brothers and sisters? Have their cinemas, serials, poetry, fictions, dramas, dances, musics given a voice to the voiceless. Not at all. and if yes, it is outrightly negligible. Their sterility and sordidness has been recently highlighted by Shaikh Mujibur Rehman in an article, ‘The Secular narrative of Bengali intelligentsia will continue, no doubt. But it is also time to introspect and ask why it failed to be adequately organic, and failed to stop the obituary of secular Bengal from being written under its nose.’ My answer is simple. They have failed to feel pulses of the masses of Bengal. I mean their narrative is one-sided story. There are ample stories needed to be told. Bengali intellectuals happen to belong to bhadrolok class who are not hostile to Muslim or Dalit causes. But for their rights they will not speak or write. Exceptions, however, are doing miracles, as they have been doing down the decades,. But hope keeps us alive. For, if hope dies, life is a barren field. But I also know sometimes hopes turn into ashes.
Today people are celebrating T M C’s landslide victory against B J P and I also beat their drums. I have no hesitation in doing so as Mamata Bandopadhyay has stopped the victory chariot of Modi-Shah. I also agrre with you that Didi is the only face across India who has guts and prowess to teach B J P a punitive lesson. And I want to draw your attention to what Khushbant Singh has repeatedly warned, A movement built on hate can only sustain itself by continually creating fear and strife. Those of us today who feel secure because we are not Muslims or Christians are living in fool’s paradise. The Sangh is already targeting Leftist historians and ‘Westernized’ youth. Tomorrow it will turn its hate on women who wear skirts, people who eat meat, drink liquor, watch foreign films, don’t go on annual pilgrimages to temples, use toothpaste instead of dant manjan, prefer allopathic doctors to vaids, kiss or shake hands in greeting instead of shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram…’ No one is safe. We must realize this if we hope to keep India alive. (The End of India, p. 73).
Hope the liberal, highly cultural, the educated Hindu B J P voters of Berhampore, Murshidabad as well as of different 76 assembly constituencies of Bengal have well understood Sing’s concerns. Those liberal voters should remember that usurping houses of Muslims will automatically lead to setting fire to their own houses. And their damaged houses can never be repaired because of the unavailability of Muslim masons. You have to live under leaked roofs forever. Muslim haters must ruminate over it.
B J P leaders are openly claiming that their ideology of hate will be propagated in each nook and corner of Bengal. More and more Bengali youths will be inducted and indoctrinated in R S S—run shakhas. They have been already working on this line for decades. And the virus is not a novel one. Years ago Nirad C Chaudhuri opined that Hinduism to a Bengali Hindu is not something that is born out of love and respect of her own religion. It is basically born out of hatred against her Muslim brothers and sisters . Bengali Hindus in general and bhadrloks in particular are notorious to stigmatise their Muslim neighbours and brothers. Visit a chai stall, a bus stop shade or a railway station or travell in a local bus or train the scene is same— dry, refined lfaces abusing Muslims for yesterday’s cloud burst. They will never tell the stories of Titumir, Tipu Sultan, Sher Ali, Asfakulla. They are die hard to erase the contributions of Muslims from the pages of history. Guru Golwalkar and Savarkar have already made substantial inroads into the arteries of Bengali Hindus. Lumannaries like Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose no longer attract the younger generation. Unemployed youths are being recruited as party workers or flag bearers. The boys of our neighbourhood look alien when they chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and make rallies around the town. Passersby are amazed and appalled by the display of their body language. Today it has won merely 77 seats. It is true. But tomorrow It can win more than 200 seats. Who will take the blame then? In this scheme of things Muslims have a limited role to play. If the Hindus are mobilised along religious line, the liberal space will speedily shrink day by day. What will Muslims do? If they plunge into water the crocodiles will tear them apart. If they land on lands, they will be burnt to ashes.
Down the ages the situation of Muslims of Bengal was worse. In present decade it is worst. Of course there is a upward mobility among them especially in education. But Government has no credit to the claim. Liberal Left paid a lip service to the cause of Muslims or Adivasis. The populist T M C is doing the same. I think what B J P is openly saying in the name of Muslims, T M C or Left Or Congress are doing the same in secret.
While B J P is a known enemy, others are not. Killers are one in varied garbs I think.
The Sangh’s activities have multiplied in Bengal during the reign of Mamata Bandopadhyay who is popularly thought to be the saviour of the minority. The RSS’ work in Bengal can be divided into three phases. The first between 1939 and 1953, offered them a mix of favourable and unfavourable conditions. The second, and the longest, from 1953 to 2008, was mostly about working in difficult conditions with little hope of the situation turning favourable. The third beginning in 2009 Lok Sabha election, when the Left front suffered a massive setback, winning only 15 seats out of 42.
Meantime more than two dozen organizations affiliated with RSS had built up their networks in different parts of the state. And from 2011 when T M C came to power and 2020 number of social work project conducted by these organizations were more than double (less than 200 in 2011 to 450 in 2020). As each RSS outfit grew, the cumulative strength of the Sangh Parivar—showcased in massive rallies on the occasion of Ram Navami in 2017—announced the arrival of the RSS in Bengal even before the BJP marked its arrival. Now in Bengal 1600 shakhas are functioning with regular activities.
If the election result went in favour of B J P what would happen? Who would suffer immediately? Of course not the ‘No Vote to B JP’ wallahas. Whose houses would be burnt? Who would feel insecure? Whose life would be lost? Whose property would be damaged? It is the Muslims. Because, in the end of the day, we must be singled out by our religious identity. It would automatically lead to the destruction of the Muslims. Yes, liberal Hindus will shed crocodile’s tears watching the catastrophe over the Bengal sky. But they would not lose life and property. It is guaranteed.
Thus, let us bury the debate on ifs and buts. Let us celebrate T M C’s victory by bursting crackers and beating drums. Muslims have been guarded from the arrows of B J P. They are not immediately dictated to go Pakistan. They may not be lynched for eating beef. Muslim girls may not be raped for falling in love with Hindu boys. Endless rewards! Who cares for equal rights? Who cares for proportionate representation of Muslims in state assembly house? Who cares for infrastructural development in Muslim or adivasi dominated areas? Poet said, ‘Morite chahina ami sundor vubhone/ Manober majhe ami bachibare chai” (I don’t want to die/ among the people I want to live). Muslims have the benefit of the saying of poet Laureate. What else can they expect? Living and living in the blind lanes and dark alleys and dusty roads and crooked sheds.( Views are personal)( Abu Siddik is Assistant Professor in English at Plassey College,West Bengal, India. He is a bilingual author, poet, storyteller, reviewer, and has been widely published in India and abroad)
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