বাঙালির ভবিস্যত এবং বাঙালি জাতি

The Future of Bengali and the Bengali Race:

I am not a great thinker, nor do I have great learning; but what I have is concern for my land—you may call it love for motherland—which I think does not call for anything of special significance. What if I have great wealth and my body is rotting? It’s sure enough that neither my body nor my wealth would be any use.

Similarly what if I have great learning but the land under my feet is slipping away..or that my name doesn’t attribute to a place of my own... or that everywhere I am threatened overwhelmed by a majority that is hostile to my language, suspicious of my culture as if I were given to constant endeavour to sabotage to claim what is not mine or what is taken from me?

This is the life and the reality of a landless nation. And I am quite sure we, the Bengalis are coming to that... slowly but surely our destiny is being written much in the same way as that of the Jews centuries ago.

We all know to what they went through...what they lived...It was but for Hitler things took a turn and the Jews irrespective of place and standing  threw their arms to one another for universal Brotherhood. They were hated almost across the length and breadth of Europe, deprived of basic rights, exploited, prejudiced and discriminated and at the far end assaulted and nearly decimated.

With so many languages in a country that has no National Character, where the country is more of a concept than a nation, where people still reel under the subtle after-effect of colonial slavery in  culture, thoughts and actions, where Democracy is crumbling under a wicked  game of number, where people have no palpable alternative to injustice and exploitation, where there exist qualitative differences between the intellectual make-up of one region and that of the other in matters regard to culture and political outlook....Can we in any case survive with our Bangla language...can we survive as a linguistic race without making any compromise on the ethos that define our very existence? Do we have that economic capability to sustain ourselves as a race that has a distinct characteristic?

Today we need to ask ourselves only one question—‘Is there going to be anything as Bengali in the next 100 years should civilisation survive?’

Thus, you don’t need to be a pedant to foresee your survival on earth...

All you need is a little common sense, which I’m sure we are all amply bestowed with...!!!

Joy Bangadesh...!!!

Joy Matribhumi...!!!

অবনী বাড়ি আছো?

অবনী বাড়ি আছো?

দুয়ার এঁটে ঘুমিয়ে আছে পাড়া
কেবল শুনি রাতের কড়ানাড়া
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

বৃষ্টি পড়ে এখানে বারোমাস
এখানে মেঘ গাভীর মতো চরে
পরান্মুখ সবুজ নালিঘাস
দুয়ার চেপে ধরে--
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

আধেকলীন-- হৃদয়ে দূরগামী
ব্যথার মাঝে ঘুমিয় পড়ি আমি
সহসা শুনি রাতের কড়ানাড়া
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

Shakti Chattopadhyay

Remember this poem? Many of us might have read this. But how many lived through it? This was an iconic poem that is said to have influenced the entire school of modern Bengali Poetry as also life that followed in the wake of it.

...'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'.......

Over the years this one-liner has become as much of a haunting line as an understatement that celebrates the beginning of an end, i.e. the herald of a Dark Age in the History of modern Bengal, the cloud of which still overcast our mindscape, our ignominious life and things we do.

 An entire generation of gifted mind was liquidated almost under the great system of so called Democracy, about which we so proudly brag before the western world and forget that in return of Freedom it has claimed the very essence of our life, i.e. Freedom itself.

It has given us the freedom to cower, to turn a blind eye to our destruction, to live in complete segregation like a toothless lion whose roar is nothing but an artefact to its people and to the rest of the world. We win accolades and honour but actually starving to annihilation.

Day in and day out as we look on with the eyes of an impotent spectator, we find what we have lost, what price we have paid against this phony liberty and claims of development.

It is rightly said that India is a country of gods, beggars and snake charmers not because we find them in plenty but should one be here one is sure to repose faith in God. It is so because if I happen to close my eyes enough with the evils of today and wake up to that of another to trust to tomorrow again, it is a sheer Miracle.

From the massacre of Sai family through the orchestrated genocide of bright young minds in the wake of Naxalbari uprising to our very own Nandigram and Netai, what have we inherited? Complete destruction of Bengali progressive Bourgeoisie if not the deliberate sterilisation of the remaining progressive minds so much that today they make but a marginalised  group of yellers making encouraging noises so much necessary for a great Democracy as ours.

That I am alive and breathing is the greatest Miracle of my life and of our time and as such I can’t help believing God above me for a platter of rice on my table.

‘Are you home, Abani?’ may as well be ‘Are you still alive, Abani....? Are you still breathing?

21st February, 2002

A sting long struck us

the venom now runs slowly

with blood; and time bears fruit.

The poet, the lover, the rebel

talks computer, talks America.

The fruit has redeemed their tongue

and so for them

all whose roots lie across the fence

raise cacophony, ring alarm

are nostalgic, passionate fools

myopic petty bourgeois

crying glory to a language

crying hoarse

humbugs...

OUR TRIBUTE TO RAJEEV DAS...!!!

We firmly believe that Barasat resident, Rajeev Das, could have been saved had the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police, 24 North Parganas been BENGALIS.

We therefore Protest yet again against induction of Non-Bengalis into Administration.

We demand that the Officers concerned be immediately Show-caused and Removed from Office.

We ideologically maintain that Outsiders as Administrators cannot empathise  with the feelings and aspirations of people with whom they share little common touch because they as individuals are Career Bureaucrats, whose allegiance and loyalties rest with different interests, and who are far removed from the decorum of Public Service.

Political Harakiri....!!!!

 This is what we call political suicide...! At a time when we, the Bengalis, are trying our best to alleviate our      socio-economic and cultural position and trying to rope in like-minded Bengalis to be a part of a movement to further the cause of  our self determination and the right to protect our language and our traditional                progressive humane identity, such myopic acts by a section of our own community put us on back foot or from where  we had begun. they do not see the danger lurking in the guise of nationalism that tends to betray the very  concept on which it was built with many parts of India rising to assert their political identity. There was a time when people from Bengal settled and travelled across the length and breadth of India and spread the message of freedom and education and the value of modern thinking, they also spread the light of this beautiful language Bengali. However in recent times if we really spare a moment and cast a cursory look over the scenario, we will certainly find that Bengali is no longer a part of education anywhere in the rest of India All the Schools in  Bihar and Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, where once Bengali was taught as a subject have been  deliberately done away with or on the brink of closure due to lack of funds (?). It's a darn lie, which even a child can understand.                                                                                                                                

It's high time we understood that if we are to save ourselves we need to protect our language on our land and make all possible efforts to restore it to a height of glory which in turn would ensure for us a place in History and on the demographic Atlas of the earth...                                                                                                  

Remember a linguistic denomination is no Community if it has no land under its feet...!!!.                                A Community commands no respect if it taboos its own language and denigrates its ethos to another..!!                                                                                                                                                                

If Bengalis still prefer to sleep and afford to overlook...!!!

The Telegraph
Kolkata
Friday , January 21 , 2011

The City Diary

Held for assault on HC judge’s guard Ajit Kulkarni, a Pune resident, was arrested for allegedly beating up the guard of a Calcutta High Court judge when the latter protested Ajit’s spitting on the road. The incident occurred when the judge’s car was passing through Karaya on Thursday morning. When Kulkarni was confronted by Alok Kole, a constable of Calcutta police reserve force, he allegedly started abusing the cop and slapped him before trying to snatch his service revolver. Kulkarni was overpowered and later arrested. Kulkarni has come to Calcutta on an official trip, police said.  It is not just an incident but a manifestation of a mindset that is very much instinctive and may not be racially or any way motivated  for that matter. if an outsider just stepping into the state can show such aplomb, one can quite as well imagine what other non-Bengalis are capable of doing should there be a need at all. the question is 'WHITHER BENGALIS...? Do we yet learn to read the writing on the wall? Are we reading at all? One Kulkarni was arrested. What about the thousands of Kulkarnis,Todis, Shaus,Singhs,etc, etc swarming about like cockroaches ready to and even eating up our resources to the extent of denuding us to paupers.  We are on the verge of becoming a minority. Wake up before it is too late...!!!

Dialectic

How it feels like

to die for a cause

or something you believe is true?

Perhaps it is a death of a different kind

with more pain or less pain

or even no pain at all;

for the place we keep pain for record

is filled with thoughts

that I’m sure are too smug for crass.

so it’s safe to think this way

for when you’re a part of the same machine

you run out of scruples

quite free-hand and one

among the seven angels of apocalypse.

7^th February, 2011

Diptesh Augustine Sarkar