It was 1905, more than a century ago when we were divided for the very first time... ever since like a cell arrested in some stage of cell cycle we have been dividing after every few decades....Post 15th August 1947 - we began to be called East Pakistanis, after 16th December 1971 now we were called Bangaldeshis, after the plebiscite of 1971 Sylhet was no more a part of Surma Valley and joined the Republic Of Bangaldesh, those who returned to India were called Refugees in what was once their motherland.....we have ever since been in a state of eternal change, in quest of an identity, altering our boundaries redrawing the political territory...morphing our religious identity....in that eternal quest.....but we fail to shed the identity of being a bengali... After so many divisions, it is but natural that a taxonomical classification have been introduced to locate ourselves, in the complex dynamics of geo-politics. In 1905 Lord Curzon assured the division of longitudes and divided Bengali into East Bengal and West Bengal, some rejoiced....some cried....the nobel laureate poet documented this event with a couplet that reflects the deep rooted pain in his heart.....
" Bongobhumir Rahstroshima hotay Nirbashita Tumi
Jononi Srihotto Bhumi..."
He appeals to Srihatta (the present province of Sylhet in Bangaldesh) as Srihatta Bhumi and sympathises with his motherland in her moment of grief.....It is the pain of separation which engulfs him...and forces him to abruptly end the couplet), easier said than done. His emotions and his writing has over the last century failed to percolate into the minds of many a bengali, who would otherwise wear a dhuti-panjabi or speak in chaste bengali in the streets of Kolkata or Kentucky; to retain their image as an quintessential Bangali Bhodrolok, with a rich knowledge of his tradition and his culture. And the very next moment, he would look down upon a fellow bengali whose ancestral village happens to be some 50-100 miles east of his own(perhaps in Nadia or 24 Paragannas), located somewhere in Dhaka, Mymensing, Comilla or Sylhet as a Bangaal. Bangaal: the word uttered with an intonation as if he were a socially unfathomable creature with lowly etiquettes, a coarse dialect, and a tongue that never knew how to appreciate the so called Royal-Bengal food(Chingri Maach). Bangaal is always the third class citizen in the so called Bengali society of West Bengal(of If I may have the liberty to call it the Hindu Bengal).
But the defiant Bangaal is not a soft nut to be cracked with the incisors.....he would make his predators feel his might while they try to crush him with their canines....and more often than not it is the tiny but mighty nut that wins in this battle by sheer perseverance and courage. Bangaals have in a way contributed to the development of West Bengal unmatched by any other race... Kolkata is Kolkata because of the Bangaals. A fact much to the displeasure of the indigenous diaspora of West Bengal.....and to satiate their soul they have resorted to the age old trick of conscious ignorance much like - Shak diye maach dhaka. But their ignorance has off late become inconsequential in the age of globalisation.
Don't misjudge my take on the issue as regional chauvinism rather look at it from a higher plane and the depth and expanse of it, will surely captivate your imagination. I can say with certainty only because I have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears of the struggle by the syhletis during each of the division and their never say die attitude which lead them to success, perhaps their numerical majority in India helped. It forced them to en-shoulder the captain's duty of marching ahead with the flag of East Bengal fluttering high. Every where a sylheti has migrated he has carried with him the seeds of his identity...his food, his language, his idioms and phrases which he uses every now and then, and his culture as it were in his own native village in erstwhile East Bengal or what today is a part of Bangaldesh. And wherever there has been a confluence of a few sylhetis, they have formed a Srihatta Sammilani. A geo-linguistic organisation that admits people who fulfill the criteria of hailing from a few adjacent provinces on the shores of the Bay of Bengal and speak a coarse version of bengali(Sylheti -an eastbengal dialect). That's it and u can be a member of a Srihatta Sammilani , which exists from Kolkata to Manchester to NewYork to Tokyo to every other place a sylheti has put his foot ....Perhaps it would we right to say that Sun never sets over the Sylheti domain . These people have clung on to their mental imagery of a land that never belonged to them, nor will ever belong to them - with only a coarse dialect not even a language that they can speak ; as their prized treasure. These people the Bangaals have in their own way shown the way to the indigenous populace of West Bengal that their's is the way to celebrate and rejoice life....Once a Bangaal, Forever a Bangaal.........
Ilish-Shoshshey.....cholbe toh? Kita re ba , Bhala Ni?
...to be continued(with individual posts highlighting distinguished People, Food, Festival, Culture, Customs, Rituals of East Bengal with special emphasis on Sylhet)
NB: The author a third generation Indian-Bengali(rather a Sylheti/Bangaal) is a medical undergraduate at Silchar Medical College. Both his parents were born in India but his Grandparents from the maternal side hail from Sylhet province of Erstwhile EastBengal [Grandfather from Nartan (a village under the Kulaura subdivision of Sylhet) and Grandmother from Karimpur Tea Estate(under Maulavibazar subdivision)]. A Bangaal in mind and spirit, he continues to fight for the rightful place of his language and culture, is prudent of his roots, proud of his hometown Silchar- The land of 11 language martyrs, loves being a part of the mixed East-Bengal diaspora and takes pride in being a Bangaal......
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