Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, 77. London; New York: Routledge, 2014. xvii, 236 pp. US$155.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-62588-3.
If Bengal has long been “one of the key centers of civilisation and culture in the Indian subcontinent,”, what does it mean to be Bengali, especially now that Bengal is divided between India and Bangladesh, and a large part of the Bengali diaspora does not live in either of those two countries? This is the inspiring question this edited volume sets out to answer. This book stems out of two workshops, one of which took place in Dhaka and the other in Sydney, and one would assume, therefore, that it would have a greater representation of chapters on Bangladesh; that, however, is unfortunately not the case.
“Using ‘Bengalis’ as a case study, this volume seeks to understand what constitutes Bengaliness, imagined or otherwise, as a way of entering the debate from a linguistic angle,” because, as aptly argued by Chakraborty, “being Bengali is built around the idea of a common language” (1). Unfortunately, we do not have enough articles taking up this debate. Next, there are some inaccuracies such as “(T)he Bengaliness that started consolidating itself around the fifteenth century and reached its peak during the nineteenth century Bengal Renaissance, underwent religious divisions under Mughal and British rule” (1). Can one, now, after Richard Eaton’s historiography, still use certain rehashed tropes to understand “Bengaliness”?
This said, there are some thought-provoking chapters which manage to take the book forward. Ranabir Samaddar’s “Eternal Bengal,” Sekhar Bandyopadhyay’s “Does Caste Matter in Bengal Examining the myth of Bengali exceptionalism,” and Ali Riaz’s “Being Bengali abroad: identity politics among the Bengali community in Britain” come closest to looking at issues of caste and religion when reflecting upon “Bengaliness.” Samaddar does this by pointing out how being “a Bengali is a product of modern time” and he goes on to seek the beginnings of this ‘modern time’by looking at the issue of death and of race and religion. Within the history of the ‘becoming’ or ‘being Bengali’, he adds another necessary faultline between the stereotypical identities of the “enthusiastic Hindu Bengali teenager and youth” versus that of the “fanatic Bengali Muslim,” and this becomes the marker of a divided nation (194). But, as he himself asks, “where does enthusiasm end and fanaticism begin?” (195). And so, Samaddar concludes, “It is as if Bengal is the subject that eternally encounters the division of its own subjectivity” as well as eternally remaining “an object of study to itself” (195).
In his chapter “Does caste matter in Bengal?” Sekhar Bandyopadhyay addresses the heart of the bhadralok myth that caste has never really mattered in Bengal. Bandyopadhyay reminds us that while there were attempts to ensure social justice for the untouchables or Dalits, caste maintained, and has maintained, its cultural hegemony by going against certain fundamental reformist endeavours, co-opting social challenges and marginalizing ideological dissidence. Indeed, he argues, “caste still survives, because of the ambivalence of Bengali modernity. It is still an important marker of social identity for many Bengali Hindus—an important cultural accoutrement to assert their distinctive self in the midst of the levelling impacts of modernization and globalization” (33). This rich chapter, which really addresses the heart of the issue of Bengali Hindu modernity, immensely contributes to the book, but the book would have gained by providing a similar study of its Bengali Muslim counterpart.
Ali Riaz’s “Being Bengali abroad: identity politics among the Bengali community in Britain” explores the reasons for the salience of “Muslim identity” (as opposed to, or at the expense of, say “Bengali/Bangladeshi identity”) amongst the younger generation of British-Bangladeshis. Riaz argues that this change occurred alongside the strengthening of religious groups and institutions such as the East London Mosque and has three main characteristics: Islam being a “global religion” allows one to transcend ethnic identity, be part of a global community, and to challenge traditional religious authorities (163). Riaz, agreeing with Stuart Hall, argues that this process allows the young to constantly reinvent an identity which is seen as coherent but which remains a fantasy.
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay’s “Producing and reproducing the New Woman: a note on the prefix ‘re’” and Paulomi Chakraborty’s “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)” talk about the figure of the woman (albeit a Bengali Hindu one) in the making of the Bengali soul. In “The University of Dhaka and National Identity formation in Bangladesh,” Fakrul Alam discusses the importance of Dhaka University as a site for the production of the national imaginary and how it remains to this day a kind of “secular pilgrimage.” Sadia Toor’s “Bengal(is) in the house: the politics of national culture in Pakistan, 1947–71” problematizes the idea of nation-making in relation to the issue of the Bengali language. In her historical piece, Toor looks at the Urdu-Bangla controversy to highlight the west Pakistani elites’ justification for disqualifying Bengali from being a “national” language. Toor looks at how the basis for Pakistan was Islamic culture and Bengali was considered not “Muslim” enough. Nayanika Mookherjee’s “In pursuit of the ‘authentic’ Bengali: impressions and observations of a contested diaspora” adds a very interesting layer of insight to what it means to be Bengali, from either side, in the context of multi-ethnic Britain, past and present. In her personal piece, Mookherjee appraises the fears and limits one is forced to deal with when confronting the “other” Bengali.
The book on the whole is a welcome new study of an old question and one wishes academics such as Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Meghna Guhathakurta, Vivek Bald, Reece Jones, Jason Cons, Willem Van Schendel, Hans Harder, Joya Chatterji, Andrew Sartori, and Muntassir Mamoon, all of whom have dwelled upon Bengali identity at some point in the recent past, had made more of an appearance in it—at least in the reference and footnotes section.
Annu Jalais
National University of Singapore, Singapore
pp. 930-932