The Two Faces Of Bangla & Bengalis
nkdat...@my-deja.com
15 April, 2000
The two faces of Bangla & Bengalis
By Shikha Mukerjee
CALCUTTA: Calcutta launched its linguistic revolution on the auspicious
Bengali New Year on Friday as government offices and buildings dumped English
and adopted the vernacular.
Dhaka having started 25 years ago is way ahead and going by reports of the
enthusiastic celebrations of the new year, far less inhibited about its
Bengali identity.
To maintain a difference there was a minor but telling linguistic twist to
the tale. Here it was Poila Boishakh while in Bangladesh it was Pahela
Baisakh. It was a public holiday in Calcutta, but even newspapers shut down
for the Bengali New Year in Dhaka.
Celebrations on both sides of the border inevitably kick off with Tagore's
Esho hey Baishakh esho esho, though Bangladesh has gone a step further and
dug out another composition of the poet laureate: Aaj ranasaje bajiye bishan
esheche esheche baishakh.
As Bangladeshis feasted on panta bhaat (fermented rice) with onions and
chillies, Calcutta too went for authentic Nabo Barsha cuisine. It was only
the culturally confused who rushed off to restaurants and eateries to gorge
on freshly made rice and fish curry.
Far less self consciuous of their Bengali identity, the people across the
border start early with public celebrations at the Ramna maidan at the crack
of dawn. Concerned about maintaining a balancing act, Calcutta's official
celebrations are more restrained, though culture as in song and dance is top
priority.
For Bangladesh , the Nabo Barsha is a national festival with no hangups about
the fact that the calculation is according to a Hindu calendar.
With fewer hangups and greater exuberance, Bangladesh is unabashed about
celebrating the start of the year 1407, albeit according to the Hindu
calendar.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Artho-niti-bid
of the New Year is based on Bagabda, which is dated after
Prophet Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina, after a shift
from the old saka calender. Amartya Sen had written a famous
article on this : "Islamic Star over India" that I had posted
in this NG six months ago. Nkdatta knows about it well, since
he had kindly posted his comments on this.
-- Arthonitibid.
--
Amar Jiban-O Paatro Uchcholia
Maadhuri Korecho Daan,
Toomi Jaano nai, Toomi Jaano nai, Toomi Jaano nai,
tar mool-ler-o paariman
--- My Imaginary Pal Robi
while eating sandwich
at Jorashako.
Chowdhury Irad Ahmed Siddiky
-- Chowdhury Irad Ahmed Siddiky.
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Here is the Article :
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Islamic Star Over India
By Amartya Sen
When a Bengali Hindu performs his religious ceremonies according to the
local calendar, he
may not be fully aware that the dates invoked in his Hindu practice is
attuned to
commemorating Mohammad's flight from Mecca to Medina.
The absorption of Islamic influences within the body of Indian
civilisation is resented by some Hindu
activists who look to the pre-Muslim period as the era of purity of the
unalloyed Indian civilisation. This
raises the interesting question as to whether such a purity did, in
fact, exist in the pre-Muslim period. It
also raises the question: How best to view the integration of Islamic
rule and culture In India, and how
to
assess its impact on the identity of Indian civilisation itself.
What did the Islamic influence do to India? Did it, in fact, change
what is sometimes characterised,
by some
contemporary commentators, as a homogeneous culture - an allegedly
'pure' pre-Islamic culture - into
an
inescapably hybrid one? The sense of a loss of Indian pureness in the
early years of this millennium
seems
to have some hold in political discussions in contemporary India. How
sound is this way of seeing
what
happened in the last millennium?
It is worth recollecting that even pre-Muslim India was not just Hindu
India. Indeed, to begin with the
most
obvious, perhaps the greatest Indian emperor in the pre-Muslim period
was a Buddhist, to wit, Ashoka,
and there were other great non-Hindu emperors, including Harsha. Even
as the Sultan Mahmud of
Ghazni
raided India, the Buddhist dynasty of the Palas was firmly in command
over eastern India. In fact,
Bengal
moved rapidly from Buddhist rule to Muslim rule with only a very brief
period of Hindu monarchy in
between - in the form of the rather hapless Sena kings.
Nearly all the major world religions other than Islam were already well
represented in India well before
the last millennium. Indeed, when Christianity started gaining ground
in Britain in the seventh century,
India had had large and settled communities of Christians for at least
300 years - certainly from the
fourth
century. Jews too had been settled in India - in fact from immediately
after the fall of Jerusalem. And
of
course, Buddhism and Jainism had been quite well-entrenched in India
for a very long time. The
Muslim
arrival merely filled up the spectrum.
Unlike the British rule in India where the rulers remained separate
from the ruled, Muslim rulers in
India
were combined with the presence of a large proportion of Muslims in the
population itself. A great
many
people in the land embraced Islam, so much so that three of the four
largest Muslim national
populations
in the contemporary world are situated in this subcontinent: in India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Indeed, the
only non-subcontinental country among the top four Muslim populations
in the world, Indonesia, was
also
converted to Islam by Indian Muslims, mostly from Gujarat. Islam was by
then a native Indian religion.
Although Islam remained a separate religion from Hinduism, the roles of
the different communities in
the
cultural life of the country were largely integrated. Whether in music
or in painting or in poetry,
evidence
of integration is plentifully present. Indeed, it would be impossible
to understand the nature of Indian
culture today without seeing it in integrated terms.
While references to raids from Ghazni and other isolated elements of
divisive history remains tactically
potent and even flammable in the contemporary politics of India, the
nature of present-day Indian
civilization cannot be understood without seeing it as a joint product
of many influences of which the
Islamic component is very strong. The integrated nature of contemporary
Indian culture has been
illustrated by many commentators with reference particularly to the
arts, the literature and music. Let
me
choose a different field of illustration.
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--
Jani, Jani, toomi Eschecho A paathe Moon-er o bhule,
Tai hok, taabe tai hok.
Esho toomi, Daar dinu khule.
Eschecho toomi ta bina abhorone.
mukhor-o nupur-o baaje na chaaron-e
tai hok, O-Go tai hok,
daar dilem khule.
-- My Imaginary Pal Robi
while painting nude French women on canvas
and thinking of his Bengali-Hindu ones.