It is said that the Bengalis have never been a practical race. They have not thrived much in the domains of commerce and politics. Rather, they have flourished most in the realms that give precedence to radical idealism over the severity of practical worldliness. The poets are dearer to the race than the politicians and industry tycoons. While dwelling on the peculiar propensity in the Bengali psyche–which he termed ‘suicidal’ in some sense- writer Nirad C Chaudhury wrote that those, who are intellectually alive, ready to sacrifice material interests, are the true Bengalis. He stressed that mind and its development through relentless intellectual pursuits marks the manifestation of humanity in man. According to him, one bereft of this belongs to the sub-human genre. The aspiration for the light from the mind forgetting the material imperative to survive physically places man in a class by himself, apart from the animal race which lives in its physical/vital self with mind remaining un-manifested. The bovine genre lives on grass while the common run of men does the same indirectly and thrives in their professions. Remaining tethered to the physical/vital round of life is how they live. They are materially successful as they perpetuate the life-cycle by procreation. But things end here. Those who have their minds awakened can hardly be satisfied with this mechanical round of life. The Bengalis who survive in time years after they die are those who leave the beaten tracks and opt for ventures fusing mind with heart, forgetful of the material returns from life, Chaudhury wrote.
What is generally found is that the revolt of the mentally awake Bengalis against materialistic obsession takes the form of ideological radicalism-a non-conformism to the existing order and a dream for better things. Chaudhury said this was what had led to a section of the Bengali intellectuals turning to Marxism.
Bengali radicalism is an interesting subject to study — the evolution of the radical propensity in course of time and through the travails of history leading to the present phase when it seems to have been wallowing in a swamp of idle rhetoric, a kind of an ineffectual beating of the wings while looking up to the sky to find the glory of the past.
The typical Bengali mind has remained free down the ages from the grip of cut and dried convention stereotyped as traditions. This freedom from the conventional clichés, nurtured as an open space in the subjective domain, accounts for the race’s ceaseless experimentations with the myriad forces moulding life- a certain measure of unshackled intellectual restlessness that moves the race to tread the least travelled road, signifying non-conformism that sometimes proves ‘suicidal’.
The race is known as a fine instance of a hybrid race. Numerous races-Aryan, Dravidian, Mongoloid, Semitic, and Negroid- came here with their peculiarities- both physical and temperamental-, mixed in blood and contributed to the complexity of the race. Many Anthropologists are of the view that such an enormous measure of blood-mixing has happened to a very few among the races that inhabit what is known as the Indian sub-continent.
There is another factor cited to explain its extra-ordinary intellectual suppleness or mobility. It is related to its peculiar geography. Bengal is a land of rivers. These along with their innumerable tributaries, changing courses frequently, kept eroding lands and building new ones depositing silts along the banks. Things on the geographical plane were thus in a flux and the race grew up subjectively in line with the ceaseless and inexorable breaking and renewing of lands.
The Aryan civilization seems to have left little influence on the Bengali culture except on the surface of its superstructure. This might be partly because of the superciliousness that made the custodians of the former to steer clear of Bengal perched on the eastern fringe of the Aryan-dominated region. There is no mention of any warrior from Bengal fighting on any of the two warring sides in the epic battle of Kuruksetra. Bengalis reciprocated in equal measure by refusing to emulate the Aryan civilisational tenets for long. Buddhism and Jainism aside from the numerous cults like Tantra, Bajrajan, Mantrajan, and Sahajjan emerged in this part of the world. Buddhism flourished in Bengal and continued for ages withstanding the reconversion drive launched by legendary Adi Shankaracharya on behalf of the orthodox school of Brahminical Hinduism. Sri Chaitanya refused to conform to the conservative tenets of hierarchical socio-religious structure reigning in north and south India. He stressed on the Bhakti cult that encompasses all the strata of the Hindu society with particular emphasis on the subaltern. This was long before the English rule was established in Bengal-signifying the advent of the Renaissance. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore moulded the philosophy of Hinduism in their own ways, while taking the Upanishadic soul and rejecting most of the elements which formed the crust. They left their majestic imprint on Hinduism which has helped in forming the present body of the religion.
Prabhat Patnaik, the renowned Leftist intellectual and former professor, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, wrote in an article- “As a child in Odisha, I looked up to Bengal like most other Odiyas. It was a terribly mixed attitude: we resented any hint of the superciliousness among the Bengali elite towards the Odiyas, but at the same time, we took a vicarious pride in Bengal’s achievements when compared to other parts of the country…When I came to college and studied economics in Delhi, most of my teachers, both in BA and MA, were from Bengal. They were brilliant: among my BA teachers were Naresh Chandra Ray and Sukhamoy Ganguly; and my MA teachers included such outstanding names as Amartya Sen, Sukhamoy Chakravarty and Tapan Ray chaudhury. Every single one of them, in varying degrees, inspired students with progressive thinking. In fact, the general belief in my student days was that of the main centers of economics in the country, Bombay and Calcutta, one produced economists of the Right-of-Centre, while the other produced economists of the Left-of-Centre.”
Nolini Kanta Gupta, one of the leading figures of the Swadeshi movement who later turned to spiritualism under the influence of Sri Aurobindo, wrote that the Bengali’s subjective world is interesting. “Impulses move Bengal’s actions, emotions sway Bengal’s thinking. Bengalis do not work for the sake of work. Nor do they think for the sake of thinking. Pursuing something steadfastly with a definite goal kept in view and taking pains to succeed in the mission does not suit the typical Bengali temperament. They are prone more to artistry than to utilitarian obsession. The fount of his action is a peculiar sense of delight that cannot be explained in terms of taut practicality. Bengalis craved for freedom not because they would be better fed and better clad after the country became free but because the country would turn more beautiful after it was free,” he wrote.
