Though many writers, poets and monks had already regularised the name of lord Ram in West Bengal long before, the new saffron surge was still a big shock saddled with heavy disapproval from the community of ‘intellectuals’
The unprecedented saffron surge in West Bengal on the occasion of Ram Navami has admittedly unnerved many. The State Government, that recently replaced the word Ramdhanu (the Bengali word for rainbow) with Rongdhanu (Rong means colour) in school textbooks to appease the Islamic lobby, was shell shocked. There is no gainsaying that there was grave provocation for such consolidation. The communal situation has rapidly deteriorated in the State over the last few years. Changing religious demography of the State laid the groundwork for it. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) Government has bent backwards to please the Muslims even though it did not come to power on their votes (the party actually lost in Muslim majority districts). A Hindu assertion was happening for sometime. But that Ram should become the focal point of such a consolidation was surprising. Even I had felt that lord Ram could not be part of Bengal’s Hindu narrative. But it shows that researchers are mere students of history, not its makers.
Epoch makers necessarily do not abide by history. Before lal Krishna Advani’s ‘Somnath to Ayodhya’ Rath Yatra, Ram was never an icon of Hindu nationalism anywhere; rather it was Krishna. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, in his Krishna Charitra, established His character based on evidences of Mahabharat, clearing the cobwebs of Puranas that portray him as a playboy. Chattopadhyay was not the only person of his era to present Krishna as the ideal human being. lala lajpat Rai wroteYogiraj Shri Krishna, Bipin Chandra Pal pennedEurope Asks: Who is Shree KrishnaIJ: letters written to a Christian friend, and Dhirendranath Pal wrote Sri Krishna in three volumes. Their implicit aim was to present lord Krishna as a model nation-builder for modern times.
Krishna was never adopted as model nation builder in practice. But the late 1980s and 90s lord Ram clicked the masses as the symbol of Hindu reassertion. Jai Shri Ram became a byword of nationalism. It is entirely speculative whether Ram would have emerged in the forefront, if the disputed religious site at the centre of contention was not Ram Janmabhoomi. Interestingly, Krishna Janmabhoomi temple at Mathura, upon which Shahi Eidgah Mosque was built, and Kashi Vishwanath temple at Varanasi saddled with Gyanvapi Mosque are equally disputed sites. But no recognisable movement crystallised for their recovery. Had movements crystallised around those temples as well, it is speculative whether lord Shiva or Krishna could have become symbols of Hindu assertion.
The Bengali intelligentsia is obviously not happy at this Hindu consolidation on Ram Navami. To its members, it was not typical Bhadralokish. It has broken their ‘Calcutta Consensus’ on what elements constitute Bengali. They are now trying to dismiss lord Rama as intrusion from northern India. lord Rama, to those Bengali intellectuals, is an icon of Hindi belt. This only betrays their ignorance. Thousands of Bengali youth from small towns and villages of West Bengal had participated in all three Kar Sevas at Ayodhya in 1989, 1990 and 1992.
‘Non-Bengalis constituted’, estimates Tapan Ghosh, President, Hindu Samhati (estd.2008), ‘10 to 15 per cent of Kar Sevaks who went from West Bengal. They were mostly from Kolkata and surrounding areas. But the rest were Bengalis mostly from mofussils and villages’. A Bengali pamphlet written by Ghosh around the time, Bharatiya Musalmaner sharirer kaar rakta boichhe — Ramer na BaburerIJ (Whose blood flows in the veins of Indian Muslims- Rama’s or Babur’sIJ) became popular in West Bengal but also landed him in a police case.
The popularisation of Ram’s culture in the Hindi belt could be attributed to Goswami Tulsidas, the 16th century devotional poet. He wrote theRamcharitmanas in Awadhi, thus freeing Ramayan from the grip of a Sanskrit-knowing few. But there were considerable oppositions from the Pundits of Kashi when Tulsidas began to preach Ramcharitmanas. They accused him of denigrating the Ramayan by composing it non-Sanskrit language. At this juncture opinion was solicited from Madhusudana Saraswati, an erudite Bengali monk residing in Varanasi. He is one of three leading authorities on Advaita Vedanta. Madhusudana Saraswati was originally from Kotalipara (Gopalganj district, Dhaka division) in present-day Bangladesh. This phenomenal Bengali pundit was the first to put his seal of approval on Ramcharitmanas. He eulogised Tulsidas in a Sanskrit verse.
Madhusudana Saraswati was incidentally the one to arm monks with weapons at a time when they were coming under attack from the Muslim fanatics. It’s Madhusudana Saraswati’s message that is being practiced in Ram Navami processions in West Bengal.
The armed procession might have angered Mamata Banerjee. But in my native town Chandernagore (Hooghly district), it has received support from her party and its leaders. This Ram Navami, history was made in West Bengal.
(The writer is a socio-political commentator)