Being Bengali

At Home and in the World

Mridula Nath Chakraborty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780367254636
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317818892
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Bengal has long been one of the key centres of civilisation and culture in the Indian subcontinent. However, Bengali identity – "Bengaliness" – is complicated by its long history of evolution, the fact that Bengal is now divided between India and Bangladesh, and by virtue of a very large international diaspora from both parts of Bengal. This book explores a wide range of issues connected with Bengali identity. Amongst other subjects, it considers the special problems arising as a result of the division of Bengal, and concludes by demonstrating that there are many factors which make for the idea of a Bengali identity.

1 The University of Dhaka and national identity formation in Bangladesh

Fakrul Alam

This chapter originated as an exchange that took place at the concluding session of a conference held at Dhaka’s East West University in December 2009. Wrapping up the session, and no doubt (justifiably) feeling good about what was a very successful conference, one of its organisers contrasted the style with which they had pulled off their event with the comparative inertia of the English Department of the University of Dhaka, insinuating that DU (Dhaka University as it is called in conversation) itself had become moribund. The organiser, a favourite junior colleague of mine, since I also teach part-time at East West, got me going. I immediately stood up and pointed out how, far from being moribund, DU was still key to the soul of the nation and an active player in every major happening of the country, as evident in recent events such as the student protests that took place in August 2008, which signalled the beginning of the end of the military interregnum in contemporary Bangladesh history. My response must have struck at least a few of those present as remarkable. The next day when I attended the workshop on Being Bengali: at Home and in the World, organised by BRAC University, and conducted by Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty, she took me aside at one point and asked me if I could write a paper for a workshop she was organising. Why didn’t I write about what I felt DU had to do with being Bengali in Bangladesh?

As I started thinking about my presentation, I remembered something else that took place in that concluding session. The famous Indian professor of English who had earlier delivered the key-note address at the East West conference had decided to weigh in after my exchange with my East West University colleague with his impressions. He had earlier visited the DU campus at everybody’s prompting but evidently had been left totally unimpressed by what he had seen of its landmarks. For sure, he was not to be blamed for this attitude; what is obvious to any Bangladeshi with some sense of history about the central role DU had played in the formation of the identity of the nation will never be obvious to a casual visitor to the campus, no matter how many national landmarks are pointed out to him/her. How would the Indian professor, after all, know “the truth out there” that strikes someone like me as self-evident? Isn’t every bend of the university a reminder to a Bangladeshi with a sense of his/her country’s past of the key role played by it in the nation-building project, initiated unwittingly by the colonial governors of British Bengal when they decided to create this institution in 1911 to assuage the sentiments of the Muslims of East Bengal? Wasn’t a major road to the creation of Bangladesh as a geo-political entity laid out when the colonial governors decided to concede to the demand of the Muslims of East Bengal to compensate them somehow for the annulment of the first Partition of Bengal in 1905 by building a university in Dhaka 16 years later? Weren’t the many landmarks and the buildings of the university testimony to key phases in the evolution of the Bangladeshi national identity? But also, wasn’t the ideology that permeated the facades of the university after its inception barely concealing inherent antagonisms in the nation’s body politic? Wasn’t the university the site of a kind of psychomachia where a battle has been going on for the soul of Bangladesh for over five decades now? This chaper is an attempt to show how DU has contributed substantially to the evolution of the Bangladeshi national identity, from the time it opened its doors to the students of the region in 1921 to the present day and to illustrate how the university has been the site of intense ideological conflicts between competing forces that would have the nation move forward in the directions that they approved of.

Before I begin answering these questions, let me share my theoretical assumptions about national identity formation in general and the formation of the Bangladeshi identity in particular. It has been widely acknowledged by now that national identity formation is always in process and never complete and that there is danger in seeing a nation as the outcome of a path laid out by destiny. As Etienne Balibar observes, it is necessary to scrutinise the ‘prehistory of national formation’ and separate it from ‘the nationalist myth of a linear destiny’ (Balibar 2003: 8). National identities are imagined and a nation is formed over a period of time ‘within a field of social values, norms of behavior and collective symbols’ although the ‘reference points’ of national identity formation will ‘change over time and with the changing institutional environment’ (Balibar 2003: 94). Balibar observes that ‘national ideology involves ideal signifiers’ and the process of forming a community implies a strategy of differentiation (Balibar 2003: 94). He believes that national identity is produced by factors such as language and race, either in combination or separately. Also, both religion and schools play important roles in the process of national identity formation. Additionally, in a globalising world, Balibar points out, ‘every “people” produced by a national process of ethnicization is forced at a point of its national development to go beyond exclusivism or identitarian ideology in the face of increased activities in transnational communication and international relations’ (Balibar 2003: 94).

In other words, national identity may engage, among other things, educational institutions and follows a trajectory that begins with language and race but then also involves religion and ethnicity. National identity formation has a dynamic that takes it either beyond narrow and confining boundaries or involves a search for inclusiveness within them. It makes a community look for shared assumptions and identify differentiating traits. It eventually creates a sense of tradition and evolves distinctive rituals and festivals. It has to do with the creation of myths and symbols that can bring a community together and give it a sense of a unique past through rituals of recollection and celebration of specific historical events. In the process a national narrative is produced that involves cultural and educational institutions as well as politics. But there is an ongoing contest to control the turns in the plot of the narrative by players who might be acting according to scripts produced by their linguistic, religious or ethnic biases.

The university as the apex educational institution has an important role to perform in national identity formation since it is a key site of the production of the nationalist narrative. The forward-looking and enlightenment ideals of the modern university make it particularly suited to carry that narrative forward but for the same reason make it a contested terrain. While, on the one hand, the conservative tendency of its apparatuses make the state view the university as an indispensable tool for social engineering, on the other, the university’s liberalising and secular tendencies always threaten to take it away from the reifying and hegemonic tendencies of the state. Inevitably, the university becomes the site of an ongoing competition to determine the form national identity will assume and the path it will pursue to take the nation into the future. From this perspective one can say that the premier university of a country can become a major site for the production of the national imaginary. I believe that the rest of the chapter shows that this is not a generalisation but – at least in the case of DU – a very distinctive characteristic.

Turning now to national identity formation in Bangladesh, in arriving at a theoretical perspective on the parameters of the subject, one can do no better than look at Wilhelm van Schendel’s essay, “Who Speaks for the Nation? Nationalist Rhetoric and the Challenge of Cultural Pluralism in Bangladesh”. Van Schendel begins his essay by noting how the debate on national identity in Bangladesh has been a loud one in the country lately. He points out that until recently it had involved two sides, one of which privileged ‘ethnicity, religion and sovereignty’ and the other ‘equity, democracy and citizens’ rights’ (van Schendel 2001: 108). The more recent roots of Bangladeshi nationalism were in the Bengali language which developed ‘as a counter-ideology from the early 1950s’, beginning with the momentous events of 21 February 1952, when blood was shed by Bengalis protesting the imposition of Urdu as the state language of Pakistan, and culminating in the birth of an independent country after a nine-month Liberation War on 16 December 1971. The values of this strain of ‘establishment nationalism’ (van Schendel 2001: 128), that is to say, the nationalism of Bangladesh’s founders, were enshrined in the first constitution of Bangladesh which inscribed the words ‘nationalism, secularism, socialism and democracy’ as its core beliefs. But partly because of the failure of the first government and partly because of the machinations of authoritarian, military and atavistic regimes, the values of this ‘post-colonial, post-communalist’ strain of Bangladeshi nationalism (van Schendel 2001: 109), in other words, a strain that was against priotrising religion as a determiner of national identity formation, were displaced by another strain, given to emphasising the Islamic roots of Bangladesh. This strain had actually emerged early in the colonial period of the university’s history, immediately after “Bango-Bhango” (literally, the break-up of Bengal) occasioned by the partitioning-of-the-province to satisfy the ideals of leading East Bengali Muslims of the region. It resurfaced later in the nationalist movement that led to the creation of Pakistan. This movement envisaged an East Pakistan that would become a homeland for the Muslims of East Bengal, a space that was constitutionally different from, say, West Bengal, which was seen as the locus of Hindu Bengali nationalism.

The strain prioritising the dominant Bengali identity of the people of the region was revived by a coalition of ‘former freedom fighters, intellectuals and others’ in the mid-1970s and 1980s during the period of military or quasi-military regimes. Van Schendel chooses to call its adherents ‘renewal nationalists’. Opposing them, especially after the end of military-tinted regimes in 1991, is a coalition formed by ‘a fusion between “old communalism” and new pan-Islamist ideals’ (van Schendel 2001: 110). The contemporary battle for the soul of Bangladesh thus involves a contest between the renewal nationalists and the Islamists. Each coalition, van Schendel stresses, has its unique set of images. The former makes maximum use of symbols such as “Language Day” or “Ekushey February” (21 February), “Independence Day” (26 March) and “Victory Day” or Bijoy Dibosh” (16 December). The Islamist, in contrast, uses symbols emanating from the Qur’an and ‘highly gendered codes of dress, behavior and morality, and the celebration of Islamic festivals’ (van Schendel 2001: 109).

However, van Schendel identifies a third coalition that is attempting to make its presence felt in the ongoing debate over national identity in Bangladesh. Giving this emerging coalition the rubric of ‘cultural pluralists’, he argues that they are going beyond the confines of the dispute between the ‘revivalists’ and the ‘Islamists’ by taking ‘cognizance of a plurality of religio-political identities’ (van Schendel 2001: 111). The Bangladesh the adherents of this coalition would like to imagine into existence would be different from the other two coalitions in not only its ‘pluralist interpretation’ of Bangladeshi ‘nation and history’ but also its opposition to the ‘highly authoritarian and centralized state’ favoured by the adherents of the other two coalitions whenever they are in power (van Schendel 2001: 111). Adherents of this coalition emphasise the active part played by all Bangladeshis in the Liberation War, whether they are ethnic Bengalis/Muslims or not. They include indigenous populations and all Bangladeshis who reject the ‘religio-political (‘communal’) interpretations of the past’ (van Schendel 2001: 114).¹ These Bangladeshis emphasise the indigenous images and rituals and festivals of all Bangladeshi communities, claiming that they too are legitimate symbols of Bangladeshi identity. They are also internationalist in outlook in that they look beyond the border and towards the wider world. Van Schendel is ready to acknowledge that ‘the creation of post-national symbols by the followers of this group has largely gone unnoticed’ (van Schendel 2001: 114); nevertheless, he declares that they can be sighted by anyone looking to go beyond the traditional parameters of national identity formation in Bangladesh.

As far as my argument in this chapter, about the role of DU in the story of the nation, is concerned, it is not important to endorse or reject van Schendel’s views. What is necessary to keep in mind is his characterisation of the three strains of Bangladeshi nationalism and the myths, symbols and rituals associated with them. Van Schendel’s categorisations and identification of the images associated with each category are useful in locating the role DU has been playing in the debate over national identity and in tracking the evolution of the Bangladeshi nationalist narrative. They help us in coming to terms with the way in which DU has continued to be used as a site for displaying the images associated with the different strains of nationalism since its inception in 1921.

A fairly full record of the birth and growth of the university can be found in The Dhaka University Convocation Speeches, a volume compiled with an introduction by Serajul Islam Chaudhury in 1988. We read in it, for example, that DU was established by the British as a ‘splendid imperial compensation’ for the Muslims of East Bengal (Chaudhury 1988: 26). The East Bengal Muslims had wanted the colonial rulers of India to make up, by the establishment of a premier institution of education, for the loss they felt they had suffered because of the Partition of Bengal in 1905.² Delivering his inaugural speech as the Chancellor of DU in 1923, Lord Lytton had not only made this point but had also expressed the hope that it would soon become ‘the chief centre of Muhammadan learning’ in India and would ‘devote special attention to higher Islamic studies’ (Chaudhury 1988: 26). However, Lytton had ended his speech by urging the graduates to conceive of the institution ‘as an Alma Mater in whose service the Muhammadan and the Hindu can find a common bond of unity’ (Chaudhury 1988: 29). The subsequent history of the university reveals that while some of its future students would view it as a site for cultivating Islamic values and consolidating the Islamic heritage of the part of Bengal in which it was located, others would claim it as a space where a democratic and secular notion of being Bengalis could be circulated and cemented. But the university would ultimately become associated with Bengali linguistic nationalism, which would become the chief motor for transporting East Pakistan into the country to be called Bangladesh.

The 1942 convocation address, delivered by the distinguished Indian Muslim and Diwan of Mysore, Mirza M. Ismail, indicates that the founders of the university had also wanted it to ‘be synthesis of all that is good in the East and the West’ (Chaudhury 1988: 388). Noting that the university had been built in a beautiful natural setting, provided with distinctive edifices and given a unique residential character, Ismail suggests that its graduands see it as the site from which a modernising impulse would spread in the region. In other words, DU was from the beginning meant to service the Islamic part of the populace of East Bengalis but ended up being inspirational for proponents of a non-religiously inflected Bengali nationalism as well as those who wanted the province to open itself up to enlightenment and democratic principles, imbued by lessons learnt from eighteenth-century European and North American history.

It is, therefore, not surprising at all that DU developed in different, and sometimes, conflicting ways and that its complicated evolution led to contradictory strains in Bangladeshi national identity formation. In Vice Chancellor G.H. Langley’s speech delivered in 1926, for instance, we note pride in the establishment of the first Muslim hall of the university where ‘the religious feeling, the ideals and the aspirations of the community can be observed’ (Chaudhury 1988: 95). However, Langley also expressed satisfaction that the Salimullah Muslim Hall had been set alongside Jagannath Hall, ‘so that its students can come into contact with Hindu students and compete with them in healthy rivalry’ (Chaudhury 1988: 95) in ‘intellectual power … enabling it naturally to cooperate with the Hindu community in the public life of the Province’ (Chaudhury 1988: 96). In 1931, a new chancellor, Francis Stanley Johnson, echoed these sentiments, recalling how Salimullah Muslim Hall was set up at the insistence of the Muslim students, but noting also how it was meant to be a place where they would be able to pursue the path of ‘a liberal education’ as well as be set up for ‘free intercourse’ with the students of the neighbouring Hindu hall (Chaudhury 1988 183). Subsequent convocation speakers continued to stress that not only was the university growing to meet the demands of the Muslim community but also contributing to communal harmony in the region.

Indeed, it was not until the 1940s that the riots that marked the pre-Partition of the Indian subcontinent appeared to have adversely affected the cordial relationship between Muslim and Hindu students. It was thus that Professor Mahmood Hasan could say in the last of the pre-Partition speeches by a vice-chancellor of the university in 1946 that barring the ‘mean communal bickering’ that had led to the death of a Muslim student earlier that decade and marred DU’s atmosphere for a period, the university had been at the centre of ‘a remarkable re-awakening among the Muslims of Bengal’ which had been welcomed on the whole by ‘broad-minded Bengali Hindus’ (Chaudhury 1988: 454). The Hindus, it must be pointed out in passing, constituted by far the largest part of its teaching community (Chaudhury 1988: 454). We can note, too, that in these pre-Partition years, the number of Muslim students had grown steadily till they had come at par with the Hindu students at the close of the 1940s. The number of female students had also grown steadily, albeit unspectacularly, in this very conservative part of Bengal, further contributing to the liberalising atmosphere on the campus. Finally, the unique nature of the university – it was the first residential university of the region and was also based on the tutorial system – meant that students could learn in an congenial atmosphere from outstanding academics such as Professor S.N. Bose, the physicist, Pandit Haraprasad Shastri, the literary scholar, Dr Mohammad Shahidullah, the famous linguist, and Professor R.C. Majumder, the eminent historian. In other words, DU was developing in a manner that made it conducive to enlightenment impulses, except for the short period of communal disturbances prior to the independence of India. Two other points need to be made about DU as a site of national identity formation in the pre-Partition years. The first is that the convocation speeches allude directly or indirectly to occasions when at least a few students of the university had shown an inclination to be part of the anti-British political agitation that was increasing in virulence in the 1930s and during the “Quit India” movement. On quite a few occasions, convocation speakers exhorted students to stay away from politics and the ongoing agitation outside campus and to concentrate on their studies. In his 1936 convocation speech, Vice-Chancellor Sir A.F. Rahman became quite explicit about another form of politics that seemed to have attracted some students when he told them that they should not bandy words such as capital, labour, socialism and communalism. In the process, he revealed that at least some of the increasingly restive students had been exposed to leftist politics even as others had been swayed by either anti-British or anti-communal politics or a combination of the two.

The second point that needs to be made is that the cultural impact of the university was considerable on its students as well as the people of Dhaka. Crucial here was the opening of the Department of Bengali in 193...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Being Bengali: at home and in the world: some speculations
• 1 The University of Dhaka and national identity formation in Bangladesh
• 2 Does caste matter in Bengal? Examining the myth of Bengali exceptionalism
• 3 Producing and reproducing the New Woman: a note on the prefix ‘re’
• 4 The refugee woman and the new woman: (en)gendering middle-class Bengali modernity and the city in Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (The Big City 1963)
• 5 Revisioning the subject of intimacy: Rabindranath Tagore and postcolonial habitations
• 6 Ethical responsibility and the spectres of demonic sacralisation in Swami Vivekananda
• 7 In pursuit of the ‘authentic’ Bengali: impressions and observations of a contested diaspora
• 8 Being Bengali abroad: identity politics among the Bengali community in Britain
• 9 Eternal Bengal
• 10 Bengal(is) in the house: the politics of national culture in Pakistan, 1947–71
• Index