Bengal

The alluvial soil of Bengal is said to be responsible for her poverty in architecture; the salubrious climate of Bengal is believed to have given her people an emotional character. The green corn-fields give them a feeling of reposeful self-sufficiency. The rivers which are many, particularly in the eastern districts, are a challenge to their daring; the western districts, heavily labouring under malaria, develop not unoften a calm determination. The lakes and marshes lie extensive; and what has been called the spiritual hankering of the Indian people mixes in Bengal easily into the poetry of Nature.

That is well reflected in her poetry, whether of the old Vaishnava poets such as Chandidas and Vidyapati or of moderns headed by Rabindranath. Human love merges on the ground of Nature into the love of God. Altogether they produce a spirit of utter self abandon. With the deep emotions thus generated, Bengal, in the course of her political history, felt the frustration of her life. The result was not only much pioneering work in the nationalist movement, but such in the face of threats to her integrity: much of violent effort that was, in its very impetuosity and impatience, largely sporadic if determined action. That was the Swadeshi movement and the revolutionary outburst that accompanied it. In the natural course, Bengal came into line with the freedom movement of the whole country–without, however, losing the urge that, derived of the emotional make-up of the people, led to the use of the bomb and the pistol. Emotional Bengal sent her children to the gallows, or to the Andamans.

But this emotional impetuosity of the Bengalee has a negative aspect too. It has militated against work that necessitated steady, gradual effort. Public work in Bengal has often been done on the initiative of one or two capable individuals; but, even in politics, it has succeeded only when attempted under the pressure of sudden emotion. Agriculture, which is yet the mainstay of the Indian people, being still in its primitive, non-collective form, results in individualism in our character, and this, with the emotional mind of the Bengalee takes a perverse direction, explaining much of the party-strifes that frustrate his effort whether in high politics or in small constructive spheres. It has therefore not been possible to build up any movement on scientific lines. Only those movements which could rest chiefly on emotions could flourish in Bengal; and Swami Vivekanand successfully canalised the emotional bent of the Bengalee mind to initiate a movement of service to the suffering and the distressed. Based on sentiment, this movement has assumed many permanent forms. The religious and reform movements of Rajah Rammohan Roy and Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, which have permanently left their mark on the life of India as a whole, were no doubt grounded in the profound intellectual approach of these pioneers; but they found their first foothold in the appeal they made to the emotions of the English-educated Bengalee against social inertia and social injustice. Similarly, Vaishnavism flourished in Bengal as it did because of the appeal it made to the emotional fervour of the Bengalee mind against the rigidity of institutional religion. A more recent political instance has been the emotion successfully roused by the movement for the abolition of the Black Hole Monument.

It is the nature of an emotional mind to adopt what appeals to it only to the extent that it does not become a pressure. Recent history has provided an illustration when the emotions of Bengal were led by provincialism to a conflict between a leader of the Province and the Congress leadership; but they did not tolerate the Fascist attempt of the same leader to muzzle the press and monopolize the platform. There is no denying that politics in such an emotional atmosphere tends to be vague and unstable; effort, howsoever great, fails to be concentrated, particularly when homogeneous politics is cut across by class and communal divisions.

Scientific orientation of politics in Bengal can be possible only through increasing contact with the masses, by first-hand perception of their day-to-day struggles and strivings. Politics can outgrow communal divisions only by developing an economic mass basis; and also, it can have reality only with that concrete ground. A beginning in that respect can be said to have been made in Bengal not only in the practical political field but in efforts to assimilate folk-songs and dances in the national arts and literature. Incidentally, the attempts have revealed the tremendous moral power latent in the people, and there is no gain-saying that contact with the soil will give not only a reality to our politics but a solid basis to our literature which already evinces an effort, imperfect as it is, to develop a ground of the lives of peasants and workers. The process can only be helped by the increasing association of Moslems and Hindus in both literature and politics, which gives them, by reason of the nature of economic alignments in Bengal, a mass character, and should, even through the problems arising from inter-communal maladjustment, bring every thing into accord with life. Bengal shares with the rest of the country a slowness in the tempo of life due to industrial wardness; and industrial development would wear down the futile cogitation that fills many moments in her yet feudal mode of life. Political evolution will doubtless help down the barriers that still divide the Provinces; and with the mobilization of the mass-forces latent within her, Bengal may well be expected to attain richer fullness of life and show greater fruition than have hitherto been possible. And it can be hoped of Bengal’s tradition and resources that it will be no insignificant part she will be entitled to play in a free India for which she, in common with her sister-Provinces, longs and strives.