History of Bengal, and how Budhhism, Hindusim and Islam played their part in its evolution

JSTOR has been a wonderful source, but, nothing yet can take away proper books. One day, such proper books too will be available as E-Books, either free of charge for those whose royalty has expired, or for a price. Meanwhile, there remains a market for printed books, and among them, those that are hard to find, and yet, invaluable for some of us.

One such is the book “History of the Bengali Speaking People” by Nitish Sengupta. I have spoken about the book on a podcast, and written about it on the Khata web site. And yet, here I am, referring to this book all over again.

The thing is this - I have realized, late in life, that my knowledge of the history of Bengal is poor. Not only that, I have come to understand that this knowledge is poor for a whole strata of people that speak this language, or languages closely related to Bengali, such as Assamese, Oriya, Mithili, and some dialects of the adivasis.

Why so? Well, I do not know for certain, but can offer a few guesses. Two most plausible reasons come to mind, and someone please correct me if I am wrong. These are:

1. Bengal got divided in 1905 and completely separated into two different countries in 1947. Thus, the very idea of a “Bengali” entity, became vague, and somewhat contradictory, with half the people not to sure about the other half.
2. Religion must have played a very big role in the segregation. It was the basis of the partition of the province, as it was the basis of being on two different sides of an international border.

I did not have such views ten years ago. In fact, I did not know many people from Bangladesh, to have any idea on what the issues were across the border. This has changed since I came to Canada. So, I guess, Canada has provided a platform that neither India nor Bangladesh could do - offer an ambience of neutrality and civility, where language can trump other identification marks, and people can come together just to enjoy their linguistic heritage. This also opened the door to discussion of more sensitive issues - religion and religious differences.

The other thing that really sparked my curiosity was this book by Nitish Sengupta. I did not have to buy this book. It was presented to me in 2008 at Toronto. In fact, every attendee of the North India Bengali Conference of 2008 got a free copy of this 550 page book.

I remember a comment made by Farook, our friend and neighbor in Canada, and originally from Bangladesh. He too had attended the conference, and had been reading the book. He was marveling about it to me - stating that he realized how little he knew about the history of his land, till he started reading the book. This has been, more or less, my feeling too.

I write this blog because, I should be going back to chapters and references in this book, along with other articles and journals, to show my gradually improving understanding of how and why Bengal ended being so different than the rest of northern India. While the seat of power was firmed up around Delhi and the religion of power remained in the hands of Muslim rulers from different ethnicities and cultures, the population around northern India remained primarily a Hindu majority at peace with the rulers.

But that is not how things went in far away Bengal. In a course of about two or three centuries, the inaccessible water logged heartland of Bengal changed over from loosely practicing sects of Hindu, Saiva, Vaishnavs and other systems into almsot uniformly Islamic. The way the change happened, organically and with high input of local customs, practices and beliefs, was markedly different than elsewhere on the Indian subcontinent.

Thinking about it, and listening to my new friends from Bangladesh, I now realize that the issue has been a tortuous one for the people there for a very long time - a conflict of a kind - and an issue of identity. There is still debate if the people are to be Muslim first or Bengali first. This was likely not an issue at the time when the faith was expanding in Bengal - unquestionably, being Bengali and local was more important, and Islam was flexible enough to incorporate local strains.

It is my understanding that centralization of power within the Islamic block, and a wish to adhere to a uniform interpretation of the practices of the religion is a more recent phenomena, historically speaking. And this phenomena has released tectonic forces within Bangladesh, and the issue is far from settled.

On the other end of the border, the Bengali consciousness went through a recent two hundred year revival kick started by reformers like Ram Mohan Roy, on to a phase which is recognized by historians today as Bengals Renaissance, which peaked perhaps at the end of the nineteenth century, of which Rabindranath Tagore was perhaps the best product, albeit out of hundreds of others. It was from this movement, that the national consciousness of India emerged, along with the movement for Swaraj and independence. Both Pakistan and India owe the root of its independence movement to an undivided Bengal, although the message is more or less forgotten today. The catalyst for the Bengal renaissance was the very item that nationalism protested against - British involvement in Bengal for trade and commerce, along with spread of English education, revival of the sciences and eradication of age old bad practices of society and the caste bound Hindu religion.

From the next century, the 20th, started a long slide downward of the Bengali culture, for the twin reasons given above, and helped along in no uncertain terms in the desire for a growing clan of newly educated high cast hindu babu class to import a foreign vision of universal equality - communism. While a more accommodating version of socialism and social welfare system was already the guideline of the rest of the country and its ruling Congress party, West Bengal went further extreme left by influence it borrowed from the London college days of the affluent newly emerged babu clan. While that brand of communism died out in western Europe, it took root in a virulent fashion in Bengal, doing some good but an enormous amount of harm on a society already teetering on lack of self confidence and self belief. After Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Bose, the land stopped producing political leaders of national and international stature. After Rabindranath, it produced no other visionary of that calibre, though bengal continued to produce a diminishing number of writers of diminishing calibre for the next few generations.

Bengal on the Indian side literally ran out of steam, and started assimilating more into a hindi speaking (albeit badly speaking) followers of Delhi and Bombay.

But, one thing that my long life of introspection has taught me, is that things always change, and whatever appears to be the trend in the recent past, or today, is likely to also change very soon.
So, the long saga of Bengal, starting around the 12th century and continuing today, is perhaps worthy enough for me to write on, time to time. Starting with this one - saluting Nitish Sengupta.

A picture of Suren Tagore

Leena di, (Chatterjee, wife of Tan Lee da) badgers me that I should be doing this or that, and that I am capable to writing poems but do not write on the correct subject etc etc. She also badgers me for not writing on endless different topics. That her faith in my capability is blind and therefore irrational, I have no doubt. However, while discussing issues that could or should have been popularized by a few capable persons for the Indian and Bengali new generation, the topic kept returning to a few known names - Devi Choudhurani, her namesake Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, Indira Devi Chaudhurani, and Bankim Chatterjee’s novel of that name. But along with that, there were also others - of which Gandhi, Tagore, Tilak, Subhas Bose, Nehru (both father and son), Annie Bessant, Suren Bannerjee and sister Nivedita, Bipin Pal, Aurobiindo Ghosh, Bagha Jotin etc made their presence.

I remembered a few items from my mother’s tales of her school days, covering visits to Jora Sanko with Rabindranath Tagore. One of them was a wish to see Suren Tagore. He was supposed to be handsome, fiery and a freedom fighter - a biplobi. But Gurudev Rabindranath did not want young students from Santiniketan to have their heads unscrewed by Suren Tagore and others  engaged in a type of active and sometimes violent freedom struggle and politics that Tagore did not whole heartedly support, and definitely did not want it to the cause of the students to leave their learning and get into politics of violence. So, he did not allow such a meeting. And that was that.

But today, thinking back about it, I tried to find if there is any picture of Suren Tagore in his youth. I found none on internet. I tried to get any picture whatsoever - alas, I could not find any.

Information about Suren Tagore kept appearing tantalizingly as reference related to the life and time of other freedom fighters, and there are very many such references, including Japan’s Pan-Asia political doctrine being promoted in India about the time Bengal was being partitioned - 1905. I knew Rabindranath himself was at the time sort of a political activist himself, though perhaps not a radical like Aurobindo Ghosh or his brother, or Bagha Jatin, or even his nephew Suren Tagore.

Bagha Jatin

But, no direct information on Suren Tagore and is efforts at freedom struggle ? No picture at all ?

That did not sound right. We need to know a bit more about this nephew. There are records with his name cropping up many places, including his involvement in the Bangladesh Zamindary, and about all kinds of freedom movement events and institutions.

In search of some pictures and a better life story on Suren Tagore, I did some more reading on the fast moving scene in India and Bengal at the turn of the last century, twenty years before my mother was born. Bengal was being partitioned. The Jugantar group in Bengal had declared that complete independence was their goal - fully 25 years before Indian Naitonal Congress was to adopt it. Further, there was the emergence of the first possibly hard core extremism being considered as an acceptable alternative for achieving freedom, especially since negotiations do not work from a position of weakness - or so was the conventional thinking.

There were various factions, of which the Maniktala Secret Society, is briefly touched here because of the mention of fund raising by the revolutionary groups of a hundred years ago, that tried to learn from Europe the process of making home made explosives and employ the knowledge to forcibly push the British masters out of the Indian subcontinent, without the need for a lengthy negotiation. Fund raising was apparently a very important and difficult task for the people, which at the time included Aurobindo Ghosh, much before he became a holy man of Pondicherry.

A Sage Publication online carries an article of Peter Heehs in 1992 about the Maniktala secret society - an early Bengali Terrorist Group, as Heehs describes it. (Ref http://ier.sagepub.com/content/29/3/349.citation).

In that, Haas mentions that Jugantar the Bengali paper and its English counterpart, Bande Mataram, were bringing in some much needed funds. But that was not enough, and hence they also depended on generous donations from the rich and famous, and also, when pressed, a bit of dacoitry as well. The donor list in that article goes to include  Subodh and Nirodh Mullick of the Shipbuilder group, Rajendranath Mukherjee, of the Zamindar family of Uttarpara, and Surendranath Tagore, a scion of Bengal’s most prominent Zamindar family. The wording is not mine, but from the article itself. Then there were professionals such as Chittaranjan Das and P. Mitra, both lawyers, and even Aurobindo Ghosh, a professor before he retired from that profession, to take up freedom struggle, and later on Yoga and Hinduism.

The article included notation from from various memoirs and also from captured prisoners in Andaman jail (Upendranath Banneree, prisoner, Port Blair Jail - 1911) that NIrodh Mullick paid Rs 1,000 towards the movement only on condition that Sir Bampfylde Fuller of Shillong was assassinated. Mr. Fuller was reportedly assassinated, and the stated funds was transferred to Barin Ghosh (Aurobindo’s brother). There is also a metion that Suren Tagore was “induced” to pay up Rs 1,000 to Barindra if the Leut. Governor of Bengal, Andrew Fraser, or Mr. Kingsford could be assassinated.

I followed up on these two persons. Fraser, Lt. Governor of Bengal, boasted of ruling over 80 million people, and after retirement, gave a speech in the USA covering the topic of “Victorious Progress of Christianity in India”. The news was covered on New York times on March 29, 1909, which is where I read about it. There, the paper mentions that in Calcutta, once an assailant apparently walked up to him, pulled out a revolver and fired at him twice from close range. The gun misfired both times. Before the man could pull the trigger the third time, a “Raja” that was accompanying him, grabbed Mr. Fraser and swung him around so that the Raja’s own back came between the gunman and the Lt. Governor.

In the report from Heehs, there are mentions of at least four attempts on Frasers life, all unsuccessful. Some of them were direct assassination attempts, while others involve derailment of trains where he was presumed to be traveling.

What I could not find out, was the reason why he was a target. Was he involved in breaking Bengal into two and somehow was very cruel or harsh on the locals or was insulting to the people? His comments on the progress of Christianity in India was, in today’s light, not the politically correct thing to say, but that hardly deserved repeated assassination attempts.
The other person, Kingsford, was an easier to identify  figure for me. He was the chief magistrate in Calcutta and was known to be ruthless in handing down punishments to Bengali freedom fighters. A letter bomb was sent to him in an attempt to have him assassinated, but the effort failed. Then, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki were recruited to kill him by bombing his vehicle. A mistaken identity resulted in a different vehicle being bombed, and two innocent English women got killed. Bose and Chaki tried to escape, but got caught. Chaki took his own life. Khudiram Bose was hanged. Bengal at the time got the famous folks song - “Ekbar Biday De Ma, Phire Ashi”.

So, going back to the issue of Rs 1,000 for the assassination of Fraser or Kingsford - well, as far as I can trace now, more than a century later, neither of them were assassinated, though multiple attempts where made on both. So, was the Rs 1,000 eventually transferred to Aurobindo Ghosh’s brother Barin ? Who was trying to coax Suren Tagore ? I read enough to learn that at times the rich and the famous were “coaxed” by means that involved a direct or indirect threat - pay up or be killed yourself. Also - do not snitch to the police, or you and your family will be killed.
So, while I do not know the extent and nature of financial involvement of Suren Tagore with the famous Maniktala Secret Soceity, I can very well understand now, why Rabidnranath wanted my mother and other youngsters of Santiniketan to have nothing at all to do with Suren Tagore, not even to see him for five minutes.

But, he was reportedly a handsome man of fiery oratory.
There must be a picture or two of him surviving somewhere.

No ?

Gyanendra Mohan Tagore of Pathuriaghata

While reading up on the origin and practice of the caste system in Hinduism, I had read some material covering the distinction between the Brahminical against the Aryan practices, or rather, the distinction as made between those two systems by scholars about two centuries ago.

On a separate vein, I was also looking for information on the Pathuriaghata branch of the Tagore clan that had remained sort of hard core Hindu, as against the Jorasanko progressive group who kind of spear headed another branch of the Brahmo Samaj movement.

And then, about a month or so ago, as I returned from a long trip to the far east, I stumbled upon records of a few old court cases involving Hindu inheritance law of 1840s.  The plaintiff was a Prasanna Koomar Tagore. Tagore being a rather unusual surname at the time, the name stuck in my memory. ... and I found the story to sort of meander and continue. And I learned later, that Mr. Prasanna Kumar Tagore was from the Pathuriaghata clan.

Bagha Jatin

Later, while reading up on the British influence on India’s education system, I came across a bit of history involving the Hindu College. Apparently an Orthodox Bengali group involved with the college even kept Rammohan Roy away from it - presumably because he was considered way too much of a nonconformist reformist. But then, soon enough, the secular credentials of the college shone through, its name notwithstanding. As a result some newly educated Bengali students of the college rejected their caste based religion and embraced Christianity, which symbolized modernism. One such student, was Gyanendra Mohan Tagore, son of the same Prasanna Koomar Tagore.  This development, I knew, had a profound effect on Devendranath Tagore, who was on record donating huge sums those days as prize for brilliant students on various subjects. Devendranath was subsequently to start creating a Bengali version of science education, in order to promote modernism on India’s traditional institutions. This also influenced him, I think, to promote concepts of a monotheistic God and absence of castes into the Hindu society at large, while himself still adjusting to the continuing trouble with the Pirali Brahmin label.

Gyanendra Mohan Tagore, meanwhile, was not done yet. Convert to Christianity or not, he was to go on creating his own history down the line ...

Having earlier dabbled in studying medicine but given up, he married the daughter of his Christian mentor, one Mr. Bannerjee. These developments infuriated Gyanendra’s own father, who promptly disowned his son and passed all his considerable wealth to this nephew, who as a result got to be called a raja. Meanwhile, Gyanendra Mohan Tagore proceeded to England with his wife. I presume the expense was now being borne by his new father-in-law and mentor. In England, he managed to study law and pass the exam, and was then called to the bar. He was, thus, the first ever Asian to be practicing law in England, fully two generations ahead of M.K. Gandhi. Later, he was to also play host to the family of his distant still-sort-of-half-hindu cousins of the Jorasanko clan, Satyendranath Tagore, who on his part, became the first Indian to pass the ICS (Indian Civil Service) officer's exam.

Gyanendra Mohan reportedly regained part of his inheritance later through a court case, and ended up returning to India and joined Calcutta high court, about the time Rabindranath was a mere toddler, in 1865. In between he was also a professor at the University of London, teaching Hinduism and other things. He wrote a few books and articles, one of them as it happens, came to my hand. It dealt with - you guessed it - the origin of the caste system in Hinduism.
Small world, ehh ?

তনু

দেবী চৌধুরানী নবদ্বীপে ?

ওয়ারেন হেস্টিংস মশাই কুয়াসাতে হারিয়ে গেলেও, ওনার গলার অাওয়াজ কানে অাসছিল কিছুক্ষণ - ঘোষ বাবুর ওপর চোটপাট এবং নিজের দুর্ভাগ্য নিয়ে গজ গজ করতে করতে ওর গলার অাওয়াজটা কুওর ওপারে বড় জাম গাছটার পেছনে হারিয়ে গেল। অামি বোধ করলাম অাপদ গেল, এবার সেই অাপাতদৃশ্যের এক কাপ চা টা খেয়ে ফেলি, অার বাকি রাখলে ঠান্ডা হ’য়ে যাবে।

কিন্তু তার কি উপায় অাছে এই জৈষ্ঠ মাসের বৃষ্টি ভেজা বিকেলে ?  কুয়াশার ভেতর বাঁ দিক থেকে নদী পারের কাঁকর ঢালা মাটির রাস্তায় শোনা গেল যেন ঘোড়ার খুরের অাওয়াজ, এবং সঙ্গে কোচোয়ানের টুং টাং ঘন্টি । ছা খাওয়া ভুলে দেখতে লাগলাম এক সৌখিন বাঙালি বাবুর চৌঘুড়ি চেপে গঙ্গার হাওয়া খেতে বেরোনো। অঞ্চলটা অাজকের দিনে কলকাতার শোভাবাজার। তখনকার দিনে লোক ছিল কম, বাজার ছিল বড়, অার শোভাটা তখনও পুরোপুরি অাসেনি।

চলেছেন নবকৃষ্ণ দেব মহাশয় - তখনও রাজা বা মহারাজা উপাধি পাননি, তবে পয়সা অনেক করে ফেলেছেন। ঊর্দু, ফার্সি, ইংরাজি, বাংলা, সব ভাসাতে পারদর্শী, তিনি হেস্টিংস সাহেবের প্রথমে অনুবাদক, পরে মুনশি, এবং তারও পরে হেস্টিংস ও রবার্ট ক্লাইভের সঙ্গে দোস্তি করে তিনি অনেক ফন্দিতে যোগ দেন, মীর জাফর, রামচন্দ্র রায়, অামীর বেগ ইত্যাদির সঙ্গে হাত মিলিয়ে, সিরাজ উদ্দৌলা কে বিপাকে ফেলে ক্লাইভের কাছে যুদ্ধে হার ঘটিয়ে, সিরাজের মৃত্যুর পর এরা কজনে সিরাজের প্রায় অাট কোটি টাকার গুপ্তধন এই কজন তার ভাগ বাঁটোয়ারা করে রাজা বাদশা লাটসাহেব বনে যান। সুতরাং, হেঁটে বা এক্কা ঘোড়ায় চাপার বদলে ওনার এখন চার ঘোড়ার টাঙ্গা - যাকে বাবু সম্প্রদায় এখন চৌঘুড়ি নাম দিয়েছে। তাতে চড়ে, কোঁচা দেওয়া ধুতি ও হরিনের চামড়ার নরম মুখবন্ধ চটি পরে, ফিনফিনে সিল্কের পাঞ্জাবি গায়ে, অাতর লাগানো রুমাল হাতে, পাসে ইয়ার দোস্ত কে বসিয়ে তিনি একটু হাওয়া খেতে বেরিয়েছেন। তার পর সন্ধ্যে হলেপর বাইজীর গান শোনার এবং অধিক রাত ওবধি শূরা পানের একটা পরিকল্পনাও অাছে।

মুশকিল হ’ল, গত তিন বছর হেস্টিংস সাহেব নবকেষ্ট যেই তিন লাখ টাকা ধার দিয়েছিলেন ওনাকে, ঘুষ বলাটা হয়তো খুব ভুল হবেনা, তা তিনি ফেরত দেননি, এবং মনে হচ্ছে ফেরত দেবার ইচ্ছাও নেই। ৎোভাবাজারের দুর্গা পুজোতে সাহেব মেমদের এনে নাচগান করিয়ে, পুরাতনী পুরুতদের চোখতো কপালে অানেকদিন হল উঠেছে। সয়ং রবার্ট ক্লাইভ সাহেব যখন নবকেষ্টর শোভাবাজারের পুজোতে অাসেন, এবং ওয়ারেন হেস্টিংসের প্রতিপত্তি যখন দিনে দিনে কমছে মনে হয়, এবং বর্ধমানের কালেকটারির ব্যাপারটা যখন পুরোপুরি উসুল হলনা, তখন ঔ তিন লাখটা ফেরত পেলে খুব চাজে লাগতো, এবং হেস্টিংসও শিখতো বাঙালির কাছে  কত ধানে কত চাল। কিন্তু হেস্টিংসের বিরুদ্ধে ইমপীচমেন্টের চেষ্টাটা পুরোপুরি সফল হলনা - বেটা ইংরেজরা যতই হোক, একটা বাঙালির কথায় হেস্টিংসের মত উচ্চপদের ইংরেজের অতীত ভবিষ্যত নষ্ট করতে রাজি হ’ল না।

নবকেষ্ট তার ইয়ার কুমার বর্মনকে এসব বলছে, অার গালাগাল দিচ্ছে হেস্টিংসের পুর্বপুরুষদের উদ্দেশ্য করে। অারই মধ্যে জানা গেল, গত মাসে নবকেষ্টর কালেকটারীর খাজনার নিজের ভাগটা কিছুটা হারিয়েছে - নবদ্বীপে নদীতে দেবী চৌধুরানীর অাক্রমনে, এবং বয়রার জঙ্গলে ভবানী পাঠকের ডাকাতিতে। শাহ অালমকে এসব কথা বলাও যায়না, অাবার তার সঙ্গে বনিবনাটা ঠিক মত না হ’লে নবকেষ্টের রাজা মহারাজ উপাধিটাও হাত ছাড়া হ’য়ে যেতে পারে।

এই সব বলতে বলতে চৌঘুড়ি চালিয়ে শোভাবাজারের হবু রাজা নবকৃষ্ণ দেব তার ইয়ারের সঙ্গে চলে গেলেন কুয়াশার গর্ভে, এবং রেখে গেলেন নানান চিন্তার খোরাক,  not the least of which হ’ল সেই দেবী চৌধুরানীর একটা নৌকোয় বাটপারির গন্ধ।

নবদ্বীপে কিরকম নৌকো কার কাছ থেকে কিরকম খাজনার কি ভাগবাটওয়ারা করে কত টাকা বা সোনা গয়না অানছিল নবকেষ্ট বাবুর জন্য, তার কতটা দেবী চৌধুরাণী লুঠ করতে পেরেছিল, কতটা নিজের জন্য রাখলো, কতটাই বা অন্যদের দিয়ে দিল - এই সব ভাবছিলাম। গাঁয়ের লোকেদের সাহাজ্য ছিল বলেই দেবী চৌধুরানী জলে এরকম ডাকাতি করতে পারতো - সুতরাং, গ্রামের লোকেরা, যাদের সর্বস্য দিয়েই এইসব খাজনা প্রথমতঃ যোগাড় হচ্ছিল, তারাও বোধহয় তাদের পুঁজির কিছুটা ফেরত পেত। বিলেতে যেমন রবিন হুড ছিল এক কাল্পনিক গরুবদের দস্যু, দেবী চৌধুরানী কি তেমনিই বাংলা দেশের রবিন হুড ? তবে উনি কাল্পনিক নন, এবং পুরুষও নন।

এই সব ভাবছি, তার মধ্যে কম্পুটারে random গানের সিলেকশানে হঠাৎ দেখি রামকুমার চট্টোপাধ্যায়ের গলায় বাবু কালচারের গান শুরু করেছে - অামি চৌঘুড়ি চালিয়ে যাব, সঙ্গেতে ইয়ার।

রামকুমার বাবুর গলাটা খুব মিষ্টি ছিল।
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Ref: Nobkissen versus Hastings, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol 27, #2 (1964) page 382-396.
(তবে এলেখার বেশিটাই কাল্পনিক, যদিও নবকৃষ্ণের সঙ্গে হেষ্টিংসের মামলাটি ঐতিহাসিক)

Plague in Calcutta in 1898

Source : The British Medical Journal, Vol.1, # 2041 (Feb 10, 1900), P. 340

Stable URL :http://www.jstor.org/stable/20263414

PLAGUE IN CALCUTTA IN 1898

The report of Dr. Nield Cook, the Health Office of Calcutta, on the plague which prevailed in that city from April to July, 1898, is an interesting document. Beginning with the statement that it was emphatically asserted by some of the oldest inhabitants that plague has never been in Bengal, and that for some occult reason it could not take hold if it was imported, he proceeds to show that there are no records on the subject. In 1770 a very destructive epidemic occurred in Calcutta, which carried off 20 percent of the population in eight weeks, but there is no description of the disease, and as it followed on the wake of a famine Dr. Cook thinks that it might have been typhus fever, relapsing fever or small pox. Passing over without comment the earlier cases in 1896 and 1897, about which there was so much dispute, Dr. Cook deals with the outbreak which occurred during his tenure of office.

The first case reported to the Health Officer occurred  in the centre of the town in a man who had not left Calcutta for some time. He was seen when dead, and had a left femoral bubo presenting the characteristic appearance of a plague bubo. The necropsy showed large extravasation of blood extending from the infected gland upwards and downwards, also small extravasation of the heart, bowels, etc. One of the domes who assisted at the necrospsy, and who accidentally scratched his finger, was two days after found to have a temperature of 102o and a pulse of 105; later he was attacked with unmistakable plague, and died on the fourteenth day. Bacteriological examination of the first case gave cultures which, on being sent to Mr. Haffkine, were stated by him to be undoubted plague bacilli. Though this was the first case reported, there had been others treated previously in hospital whose clinical history showed that they were plague cases. From April 14th to July 31st, 190 cases with 155 deaths were reported.

One of the earliest phenomenon observed was a high mortality among rats. This occurred about the same time as the first case was reported, and probably was cause of attention being drawn to the subject. It could hardly be said to be the cause of the first cases, for, as stated, cases obviously of plague had been admitted into hospital before the alarm about rats was raised. Great difficulty appeared to have been experienced in the administration, owing to the panic which seized the inhabitants, and a very graphic account is given of the statement from the city of men and women, and of attack on ambulence parties and on the doctor.

In one case of these a medical man had to shoot two of his assailants in self-defence. Superstition leading to distrust and suspicion of all plague officers was at the foundation of these frenzies on the part of the populace. One of these superstitions is stated to be that the Viceroy had met a Yogi in some remote spot in the Himalayas, and made a compact with him to sacrifice 2 lakhs of lives to the goddess Kali, from whom the city of Calcutta takes its name, to save the British Government in India which she would otherwise overthrow. During the sixteen weeks, 2,490 persons were inoculated against plague. Dr. Cook and his assistants, European and native, are to be congratulated on the excellent services which they rendered to the Corporation at the time of great emergency.

দেবী চৌধুরাণীর খোঁজে

ব্যাপার টা সুরু হয়েছিল কোনো দেব দেবীর খোঁজে নয় - তবে বঙ্কিম চন্দ্রের অানন্দমঠ বইয়ের সঙ্গে সন্যাসী বিদ্রোহের যোগ বা যোগাভাব, এবং বাংলায় তখনকার সদ্যজাগরিত রাষ্ট্রচেতনা, এইসব নিয়ে কিছু অালাপ অালোচনা চলেছিল কিছুদিন হ’ল অান্তর্জালে (internet)। এই অান্তর্জাল হয়েছে অারেক ব্রহ্মান্ডব্যাপী চা-চক্র যেখানে পৃথিবীর সমস্ত সুবুদ্ধি ওর দুর্বুদ্ধি জীবি অাড্ডাবাজরা, বাঙালি-অবাঙালি-কাঙালি-মা কালী-মেহের অালি-বকখালি-মৌলালি-খাবার থালি-মিষ্টি গালি ইত্যাদি খঁাটি ও জালি মানুষ-অমানুষরা শূন্যে দোদুল্যমান অনাবাসীক এক অাড্ডাস্থলে তাদের অশরিরী উপস্থিতি জাহির করেন মাঝে মধ্যে। সেখানেই বাক্যালাপ হয় বঙ্কিমের অানন্দমঠ বিষয়ে - তবে তাকে যাথার্থ বাক্যালাপের বদলে বরং কম্পুটারে টাইপালাপ বললেও মন্দ হয় না।

যাই হোক, অানন্দমঠের সন্যাসী বিদ্রোহ থেকে এগিয়ে সত্যিকারের সন্যাসী বিদ্রোহের ঠিকানা অাজকের অান্তর্জালিক উচ্চপথগামী (cyber highway) অামাদের মত অশরিরী অাড্ডান্বেশিদের কাছে তেমন দূর্গম হয়তো নয়। সেই শূন্যপথে কিছুক্ষণ ঘোরাঘুরি করে দেখি নানা রকম লোকের কায়াহীন ছায়া সামনে দোদুল্যমান অবস্থায় নাচানাচি করছে - অনেকটা সত্যজিত রায়ের সিনেমার ভুতের রাজাদের মত।

সেই নাট্টঘরের দর্শকের দলে বসে, হাতে এক কাপ অাপাতদৃষ্ট (virtual) চা - সত্যদৃষ্টে যা ফলত নয়, তাতে চুমুক দিয়ে, পেছনের তাকিয়াতে হেলান দিয়ে দেখি - তখনকার দিনের চোস্ত পাতলুন পড়ে, উঁচু কলার-দেওয়া লাল কোট চাপিয়ে গরমে ঘেমে, মুখচোখ লাল করে ওয়ারেন হেস্টিংস মহাশয় হন্ত দন্ত হয়ে হঁাটাহাঁটি করছেন - কিন্তু কোথাও পৌছোচ্ছেনা ! একসময় ঘুরে দাঁড়িয়ে অন্ধকারে কোন এক মিস্টার ঘোষকে গালাগাল দিচ্ছেন। কি ব্যাপার?

তখন দেখি, এক নাদুস নুদুস বাঙালি, গায়ে মাড় দেওয়া কড়কড়ে ইস্তিরি করা হাতকাটা ডোরা কাটা বুশ সার্ট এবং তার তলায় মালকোঁচা মারা ধুতি, হাঁটু ওবধি তুলে, পায়ে মোজা ছাড়া কালো পাম্প সু পড়ে, কাঁচুমাচু মুখে এগিয়ে এলেন, দুহাত জোড় করে - চোর চোর ভঙ্গি। সুকুমার রায় হলে নাম দিত বাঙালিথেরিয়াম। অান্দাজ করলাম, ইনিই শ্রীযুক্ত ঘোষ, যদিও বর্তমানে ওঁকে শ্রীযুক্তের বদলে শ্রীহীন বললেও হয়তো অসঙ্গত হবেনা।

ওদের শূন্যস্থ অান্তর্জালিক কথোপকথন থেকে বোঝা গেল যে হেস্টিংস মশাই ঘোষ মশাইয়ের ওপর খাপ্পা কারণ উনি কিছু একটা লিখেছেন রিপোর্টে, সন্যাসী বিদ্রোহ নিয়ে, যা হেস্টিংস মশাইয়ের পছন্দ হয়নি। ঘোষ বাবুকে বলা হয়েছিল সন্যাসী বিদ্রোহের খবর এমন ভাবে লিখতে যাতে ফকির ও সন্যাসীদের বদমাস এবং ইংরেজদের ভাল মনে হয় - কিন্তু রিপোর্ট পড়ে ওসবের বদলে রিপোর্টারকে গোমূর্খ এবং ন্যাকা মনে হয়েছে সাহেবের।

ঘোষ বাবু কাঁচুমাচু হ’য়ে বলতে চেষ্টা করছেন যে উনি অাগে খেজুরি গুড়ের ব্যাপারী ছিলেন, এবং যদিও ওকে ইস্ট ইন্ডিয়া কোম্পানি হঠাৎ রায় বাহাদুর বানিয়ে দিয়েছেন - ইংরাজিতে রিপোর্ট লেখার অাদবটা ওনার এখনও পুরোপুরি রপ্ত হয়নি। অামি হো হো করে হেসে ওঠাতে দেখি অাওয়াজটা কানে গেছে সাহেবের - থেমে অামার দিকে ফিরে ভুরু কুঁচকে দেখতে গেলেন কে অাওযাজ করছে। অামি চুপ করে গেলাম এবং অামার নিরাকার অনুপস্থিতির মাপ না পেয়ে হেস্টিংস সাহেব অাবার ফিরলেন ওর তৎকালীন সমস্যাতে - সন্যাসী বিদ্রোহের কাহিনী লেখা নিয়ে।

অামি চিন্তা করলাম - পলাসীর যুদ্ধের পর সিরাজের কি হয়েছিল, বাংলার চাষীদের খাজনা নেবার যা চিরাচরিত পদ্ধতি ছিল তা বদলানো হল কি ভাবে, পুরোনো হিন্দু মুসলমান জমিদারদের ঝঁেটিয়ে বিদায় করে, নতুন কালেক্টারদের কেমনকরে অানা হ’ল জমিদারির খাজনা বাড়িয়ে এবং তা অাদায় করতে। বাংলাতে নতুন ধরণের  ইংরেজ ঘেঁষা অামলা তৈরি হ’ল শয়ে শয়ে - যাদের অাজকালের ভাষায় এক নতুন প্রকার সহযোগী বা collaborator বলা যায়।

এই সব ভাবছি, এমন সময় দেখি সামনের দৃশ্যটি হালকা হ’য়ে মুছে গেল। না রইল হেস্টিংস, না ঘোষ মহাশয়। এবং যার নাম দিয়ে এ গল্পের শিরোনামা, দেবী চৌধুরাণী, তাঁরও নামগন্ধ নেই।
বুঝলাম, গল্পটা ক্রমশঃ প্রকাশনের রুপ নিচ্ছে।
নেপচুনদা (Neptune Srimal) বলছিল যে কেউ নাকি উপনিষদ লিখতে পারে - তনুও লিখতে পারে “মিত্রোপনিষদ”।  নেপচুনদা যাই বলুন, এটা নেহাতই তনুর অান্তর্জালিক কল্পরাজ্যে অাসল দেবী চৌধুরাণীর সন্ধানের প্রথম খেপ।

How many Bengals ?

Was a time I used to consider myself primarily a Bengali. That was when I was a school boy, in Santiniketan. Thinking back and looking across decades of growing up, growing wiser, cockier, narrower and broader and with decades of interaction with other people inside and outside of Bengal, India, and Asia , not to mention having my genes analyzed to trace both my paternal and maternal ancestry - I have come to realize that my idea of a Bengali, an India, an Asian, and indeed a human - has undergone some subtle change.

Further, since I left USA and settled in Canada about ten years ago, my reading habits have changed for the better, and I got to acquire a lot more information about my ancestral root, the “home” button - Bengal. In 2008 I had attended the annual North American Bengali Conference in Toronto - and was pleasantly surprised with a book the organizers presented to all attendees - A book on the history of Bengali speaking people - by Nitish Sengupta. That book both enriched me, and wetted by appetite. Soon after, on Leena di’s insistence, I had written a 23 stanza kobigaan about Rabidnranath Tagore’s geneology - history of his ancestral lineage going back 12 generations, as best as I could find from Prasanta Pal and Bomkesh Mustaphys works. The ground work I had to do, to gather the necessary information, helped me acquire a better perspective of the shifting sands of Bengali society, culture, economics and politics going back a few centuries.

Nitish Sengupta’s book traced the history of the Bengali speaking people all the way till 1947, when India and Pakistan got their separate independence. He stopped his book at that stage because he claimed that the Bengali people got divided into two countries and stopped sharing a common history. From that point, his statement implied, the history would have to follow two independent branches - one from the Indian perspective, and the other from East Pakistan - Bangladesh.

I could understand Mr. Sengupta’s logic. Still, it felt kind of sad that the history of a people had to stop in 1947, after which the so called Bengali people - were not to have a common history any more. As if, the Bengali speaking people started on their own a process - End of History - a generation ahead of Francis Fukuyama writing about it in the late 1980s.

Then came another few sources of information thanks to technology. I ended up owning an iPod, and instead of using it primarily to listen to music - I discovered the world of audio books. Here, someone recites an entire book, records it, chapter by chapter. Then the recording is sold officially to listeners. The narrator is, at times, the same person that wrote the book. But often, the narrator is a professional, separate from the author. Besides, a lot of such audio books came to the market, whose authors have long since died. I have, thus, books written by Charles Darwin, Rabindranath Tagore, Karl Marx, William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy as well as recent publications from Madhusree Mukherjee and Joseph Stiglitz, in audio format. In the process I came to read, or rather listen to, books by people like Amitabha Ghosh, who, while writing a novel, obviously did his own research on the modern history of Bengal going back about a century or two, and the interaction those people had with the surrounding lands, all the way to China, the Malay peninsula or the jungles of Myanmar. Such stories, too, enriched by understanding of the people, and the land, and helped anchor it within its surroundings.

And then came the latest new twist - the iPad. Unlike a listening device such as an iPod, this was, for me, primarily a reading device. And this time I re-discovered the world of e-books, and Project Gutenberg. I found an enormous wealth of printed matter, available virtually free of cost, from a bewilderingly vast pool. And so, I ended up reading Annie Bessant’s presentation “A case for India”, as president of the Indian National Congress party in 1917, making a case for India’s independence. Also, I got hold of forgotten books such as “Three Frenchmen in Bengal”, the commercial ruin of French Settlements in 1756 and 1757, compiled by S.C. Hill centuries later in 1903 when he stumbled upon the records. The book was amazingly detailed, and from a neutral perspective of the rule of Aliverdi Khan and later events that lead to Robert Clive’s conflict with Siraj-Ud-Daula. But even more so, it contained minute records of the time, such as the European trade and commenrce interests in Murshidabad, Chandernagore, Chinsurah, Dacca, Cossimbazar etc. The records even had hand sketched maps and details of river bank development, dyke construction, garrison and fort construction - and the worry of marauders such as the “Maratha” bandits. The story of the three Frenchmen were an intoxicating glimpse at the not so distant past, from the point of view not of the Hindu, the Muslim, or the British, but from the point of view of the French, who were, like the Dutch, more concerned of establishing trade links and industry, rather than empire building. A small twist of the events could have possibly lead to a different history. All such books have helped the realization, that more we learn, more we realize how little we know, even about ourselves.

So, in the last ten years, I have read up a lot of information, and have had time to sit back and think things through, coming to realizations which people wiser than me must have known for long - that Bengal, while comprising an integral part of the Indian subcontinent, is geologically, topologically, demographically and hence even socially, and historically, quite distinct from the rest of the plains India. By the same token, the distinctness of Bengal extends a pretty large swath, from the Mythily and Oriya speaking regions east of Bengal all the way to the Burmese foothills.

Bengal was in general distinct because of the Gengetic delta, a very very vast swampland that was the end points of some of the greatest rivers of the area, and had over millennia, created an ecosystem to which its inhabitants had adopted to, quite different from the plains and the hills of the subcontinent. Bengal was both integral and yet different. It was the famous flood plains, a vast land of soft soil, mud, swamp, dense jungle, brackish water, absence of firm land, mosquito, snakes, crocodiles, monitor lizards, porcupines, tigers river dolphins, and a shifting landscape where rivers changed course, new silt deposits created new islands while washing away old ones, and the constant tug of war between the tidal current and the mangrove forests - the tide wanting to move the silt constantly around, and the mangrove roots attempting to anchor the silt to create new land formations. There wasn’t another place quite like the sunderbans, where the mightly rivers of the Himalayas met the Indian ocean.

And these days, living away from the “home” button, I am exposed to meeting people from Bengal - both sides of the border and some unique ethnic variations of them, and living on a neutral ground - has offered opportunities of exchange of views I might not have had while living in Kolkata, or Miami, or Hong Kong. Somehow, Vancouver, on the north-western corner of this continent, allowed me to once again rediscover the concept of Bengal and how it ties up with Indo-China and how the Gangetic delta it tied to and is yet different from the gangetic plains. It has help me understand a little bit more of the other part of Bengal, albeit the larger part - i.e. Bangladesh.

The Gangetic Delta itself has a plethora of rivers directly or indirectly connected to it. There is the Gangles and the Brahmaputra. Both of them were either created or greatly altered by the rising Himalayas. Brahmaputra is recognized as a pre-himalayan river that originated on the Asian mainland before India collided with it, and somehow survived the 40 million year rise of the Himalayas that totally transformed the geography of the place. But Ganga and Brahmaputra are not all. There is Teesta that joins Brahmaputra. There is also the renaming of rivers, where Ganga becomes Padma in Bangladesh, whereas Hoogly is often called the Ganga in West Bengal. Brahmaputra itself has a new name, Jamuna, not to confuse it with the other Jamuna that joins Ganges at Allahabad. And added to all this is Meghna.

The coast itself is less than 400 km long - but is supports a estuarine and flattish marshy landmass that holds a phenomenally dense biomass of flora and fauna, including humans.

The first attempt at writing on this topic, posted only as a note on Facebook, resulted in a handful of comments. Sandeep Sukla, Computer Scientist and professor at Virginiatech, a well read man whose interest ranges far afield from his profession, had made his comments - but that was more to do with the tone of my first post. Basically, he did not wish the article to appear cocky, or boastful, as if Bengali speaking folks were somehow better, more deserving of our attention.

That, of course, was not my angle. My angle was thinking about the long term future of the Bengali speaking people as well as the long term future of the language itself.

Predicting future is a hellishly difficult task - but difficult or not, there is nothing preventing you from making an effort.

To me, How Many Bengals is a way of asking, is any one of the parts going to survive independently, or is there a need for a collective effort at self preservation. Is self preservation in this case a genetically inherited trait, or social obsolescence is a natural outcome of the sprouting of societies, some of which, speaking from a Darwinian point of view, would invariably lead to evolutionary dead ends, while other branches carry the genes forward to another species, and another era.

This article’s scope was supposed to be wider than the circle drawn by the Bhadralok clan, like a Lakshman’s gondi. It is also supposed to be wider than the flip side of the Bhadralok coin - the Chhotolok clan. And outside all that were the adivasi groups, who were happily unaware of any gondi, though ignored by the chhotolok and looked down upon by the Das-Capital toting Che-Guevera worshipping leftist intellectual bhadraloks.

So how wide is the scope ? How wide can a person presume to think and see, while still attempting to talk of a people tied to a language ?

Well, my views on the future of the people is more gloomy than positive, I must admit. Firstly, Bengal is no more a single unit. So one would require to cover this in two branches, one for West Bengal and the other for Bangladesh.

For West Bengal, I believe that the Golden age has passed. The age created a lot of stalwarts, culminating perhaps in the genius of Rabindranath Tagore. But now that the age is behind us, new blood is not being infused into it in the three generations after Tagore’s death. Thats a long time. Most societies hold memory only a generation deep. So, todays youth, or even the seniors, do not have any memory of a time when the society was thriving with brilliant leaders. Social stagnation has been the norm for over one generation, and that is what the Bengali folks have left in their collective memory. This stagnation and sense of drifting in the current like flotsam, is multi-faceted - cultural, linguistic, political, commercial and spiritual.

And what about Bangladesh ? My understanding is that they have had a more eventful two generations, and these events have lead to different kind of issues than across the border to the west.

… to be continued. ...