Future of Bengalis as a Linguistic Denomination...

       

                         Akhanda Bangla Anushilon Samiti

                                                  

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 of 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...!!!

Are You Still Alive.....!!!!

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?