People enter the Ganabhaban, the Prime Minister’s residence in Dhaka, after the resignation of Sheikh Hasina. (Reuters)
When students in Dhaka brought down the Sheikh Hasina regime for riding roughshod over democracy, one song seemed to tug at their heartstrings. They collectively sang poet-lyricist Dwijendralal Roy’s song, Dhono dhanno pushpe bhora/ amader ei boshundhora/ Tahar majhe ache desh ek shokol desher shera/ O shey shopno diye toiri se desh smriti diye ghera… (Blessed is Mother Earth with its wealth and grains/ In its midst lies a land most beautiful/ it is created by dreams, bound by memories). It is a song written in the early 1900s by a litterateur from this side of the border to inspire the youth against the British Raj. They remembered a shared past.
On a day when a statue of the founding father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was vandalised and he was sought to be erased from a nation’s memory for transgressions by his descendants, there’s hope that a part of his legacy may last. One that has not been hammered down in a brutal rewrite of history. Will the new “dream” that students, technocrats and opposition parties envisage for themselves at least be “bound by memories” of the shared Bengali culture and identity that Mujibur advocated, becoming the “Bangabandhu”? “Banga” is the key word here, not the ancient kingdom but a civilisational construct. While he fought for the territorial sovereignty of Bangladesh, tied down by borders, he became the thought leader of a united Bengali consciousness, a borderless world of ideas and arts.
For many of us growing up in Kolkata, his bust figured alongside literary greats to remind us that he championed a movement around the language we were born into, its emotions and associations, its riverine flow of shared traditions that defied both politics and religion. It is true that the Bangladesh Bhasha Andolan or Language Movement, which turned into a political movement in East Pakistan, began primarily as an assertion of the right to reinstate Bengali culture and language as the official credo of a new nation. It was not just about the strategic comfort of geopolitics from India’s point of view, it was about the importance of linguistic diversity and preservation worldwide. That’s why February 21 — which is marked as the Language Movement Day in Bangladesh — continues to be celebrated in Kolkata as well and was recognised in 1999 by UNESCO as the International Mother Language Day.
Mujibur saw Subhash Chandra Bose, the other Bengali nationalist, as an inspirational figure but Bose was an anti-colonialist. Mujibur’s nationalism was more cultural, ethno-linguistic and about the right of people to live with their heritage. That’s why the appeal of the Language Movement extended much beyond its immediate political outcomes or sub-nationalism. When Mujibur Rehman chose Rabindranath Tagore’s composition ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’ for the new nation’s anthem — a song that was written to protest the British Partition of Bengal in 1905 — and invited Kazi Nazrul Islam to move to Bangladesh and become its poet laureate, he liberated cultural legacy from being a hostage to politics.
Protesters seen vandalising Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s statue
He embraced what they embodied, a love for their roots and a liberal, secular spirit. More importantly, he nurtured them as a founder-leader. Tagore was an internationalist, Nazrul a fiery rebel. Tagore, who spent his younger days at the family mansion of Shahzadpur in Bangladesh, created some of his finest compositions during those visits. He dominates the intellectual consciousness of Bangladeshi students, some of whom still enrol at Shantiniketan. Tagore’s birth and death anniversaries are observed with equal honour and Bangladesh has some of the topline Rabindra Sangeet singers.
Similarly, Nazrul with his “soul of the earth” compositions, has a hold on the mass mindset of all Bengalis and continues to be celebrated. Not many know that he studied Sanskrit literature and the Puranas as much as he did Persian literature and Rumi. He even wrote plays on episodes and characters from the Mahabharata.
Rivers and waterways have been the connective tissue of both nations. This has led to a riverine culture where customs, rituals, nature worship and even festivals like Durga Puja are shared by communities on both sides of the border, regardless of religion and geographies. If anything, the river is the binding force and has inculcated the accommodative spirit between people. Durga Puja, which emerged as a symbol of the Swadeshi Movement and Bengali identity, is as much a popular art and culture event in Bangladesh. Bonbibi, the guardian spirit of the forests in the Sundarban deltas, who is believed to protect fishermen from tiger attacks, is worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims. Her worship has become a sub-culture so strong that it featured in a song on Coke Studio.
In popular culture, actors like Jaya Ahsan and Arifin Shuvoo are now part of the Bengal film industry, writers and poets continue to be feted and people-to-people contact has only thrived in a safe space. But by beheading the statue of Bangabandhu, attacking an Indian cultural centre and claiming August 5 as their real Independence day, neo-patriots are snapping the umbilical cord of shared origins and “unseeing” history. Perhaps now people with radical opinions, like Mainul Ahsan Noble, who was a runner-up in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Bangla and questioned the continued use of Tagore’s composition as Bangladesh’s national anthem, will weigh in. Are the DNA strands untwining on their own or being forced apart?
rinku.ghosh@expressindia.com
