West Bengal Political Science Review | Vol. XXVIII, 2026 | ISSN: 2230-8296

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The immediate impetus for the book, or the long essay as the author would have it, is the unpleasant morass West Bengal of late appears to find itself in. Bengalis at present seem to be confronted with an ‘uncertain future’ rooted in multiple crises – demographic, economic, and cultural. A perception is gaining ground that Bengal has turned into an ‘unlivable’ place; some also view it as an ‘outlier’ within the overall canvas of India; and even a section of Bengalis, located both inside the state and beyond it, appear to have subscribed to this viewpoint. This induced the author to delve into the history of Bengal to identify the stable and recurring features of Bengali character, their struggles and compromises, their contributions to the larger Indian society and what they received in return. In this wider historical backdrop, he takes stock of the contemporary threats to the collective existence of the Bengali people, and suggests some way out.

At the outset, the author addresses the all-important question of who is a Bengali, and muddling through the historical, geographical, and linguistic complexities, he settles for a comprehensive definition which centres on language but goes beyond its confines. He defines a Bengali by one’s mother tongue; but, for him, the category also includes those who speak the language fluently, participate in Bengali cultural life, and have the good of Bengal at their heart. Again, the meaning of the term ‘Bengali’ is further complicated by the territorial divide (and yet a large degree of cultural congruence) between the ‘two Bengals’ – East and West, and here the author, understandably, focuses on West Bengal, leaving out the East which had evolved into today’s Bangladesh.

Back in ancient times, the author maintains, the tribal populations inhabiting the Bengal region developed some form of common culture, popular forms of worship, agricultural practices, etc. The Aryans somewhat contemptuously excluded this geography from the definition of Aryavarta, and a visit to these non-Aryan lands attracted punishment. Later, Brahmanism, in order to find acceptance in Bengal, had to compromise many of its fundamentals, such as vegetarianism, and also acquiesce in the continuation of the region’s traditional religious observances and festivals. Bengalis, however, were readily attracted to the beauty of the Sanskrit language and produced some of the finest specimens of Sanskrit writings which found appreciation throughout India. It implied that while Bengalis were keen to accept and absorb the best elements of outside culture, on the whole, they were not prepared to brook any unwarranted interference in their socio-cultural life.

The experience of the medieval times seemed no different as Abu’l Fazl of Ain-i-Akbarifame described Bengal as the land of turbulent and defiant people; and historian Jadunath Sarkar mentioned that the Mughals ultimately tamed the Bengalis through the ‘divide and rule’.

Tactic rather than military might. However, the Turko-Afghans, who even in the pre-Mughal period shifted from Delhi to Bengal to find their luck, also sought to bring the province under their political control, but their strategy was distinctly different. They gave ample freedom to the local chieftains, engaged in closer interaction with the local people, and largely accepted the local identity. They also promoted the growth of the Bengali language and introduced the Bengali style of art and architecture, mixing the foreign and local modes, which enabled them to win the trust of Bengalis.

If Bengal exhibited black sheep-like features from the very outset, then why were so many people from other parts of the country regularly attracted to come and settle here? The answer perhaps lay in its proverbial economic affluence, so vividly captured in Kautilya’s Arthashastra, as well as many travelogues. In a chapter titled ‘A Paradise of Plenty’, a phrase borrowed from the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, the author provides a detailed account of Bengal’s wealth and prosperity through the centuries, which allured the British colonisers as well – Clive was ‘mesmerised’ by the treasures of Murshidabad – though initially triggering a sharp economic downturn. However, the author makes two points: one, Bengal boasts of a rich pre-British history; and two, Bengalis turned a tragic situation into an opportunity and ushered in a ‘twin rebellion’ with all-India repercussions, for which he gives all credit to Bengalis alone.

At one level, exposure to the English language and European culture catalysed Bengal to revolt against its own ‘degraded’ state – obnoxious religious practices, an outdated system of education, atrocious treatment of women, lower castes, and labouring masses. This epochal transformation, imbued with a liberal, critical, and humane spirit, which gradually spread to other parts of India, is often depicted as a ‘Renaissance’ because it also took care to retain the best elements of past knowledge and wisdom. This in turn fanned a second, outward-looking rebellion and shaped an anti-colonial outlook which, in the course of time, fomented a national awakening stemming from two different variants of nationalism – one ethnic, another more universalist – that India was to experience in the future. The early nationalist fervour in Bengal found expression through Hindu symbolism centred on an idea of India that was essentially a land of the Hindus. Love for the land, its history, its mythology, and its religion was supposed to reinvigorate and unify the Hindus into a nation as opposed to the Muslims who held them in subjugation for a long time.

Alternatively, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, despite all the ‘Hindu talk’ to be found in his literary pieces, emphasised that the true goal of humanity was universalism; that religion, even Hindu religion, teaches us to feel love and affection not only for one’s own country but for everything that exists on Earth; and therefore patriotism need not be understood in the European sense of collective selfishness and hatred towards the other. In this light, the author maintains, it is incorrect to read Chattopadhyay as a mouthpiece of Hindu nationalism with a communal tinge; rather, he was the precursor of Rabindranath Tagore’s celebrated position that patriotism must be tempered with love and affection for the whole world. Indeed, per the author, the distinctive contribution of Chattopadhyay, Tagore, and Vivekananda, the three giants of 19th-century Bengal, was their assertion that nationalism in the sense of uniting people could divide them as much, and could act as a malevolent force against humanism and individualism.

In the four subsequent chapters which deal with the nationalist movement, the author summarises the pivotal role Bengali leaders played in the foundation of the Indian National Congress, which also involved an attempt to affirm Bengal’s connection with the rest of India. But two other significant points stand out: conflicts and differences between the central leadership of the Congress and its Bengal provincial counterpart remained perennial; and, the provincial voices often carried greater substance and foresight. The earliest confrontation happened during the first anti-Partition movement in Bengal in the early 20^th century, which brought about the Moderate-Extremist split. More importantly, all the major instruments of the subsequent Gandhian movements – Swadeshi, boycott, and noncooperation – were forged and deployed during this agitation.

Again, the author stresses that the tumultuous political career of Subhas Bose was a classic testimony to Bengali rebelliousness and the misunderstanding and marginalisation it entailed. Thus, it was Bose who eventually forced Gandhi’s hands to give up the demand for dominion status in favour of complete independence. Similarly, Gandhi initially rejected Bose’s plea made in 1928 for resumption of mass struggle post-Chauri Chaura, but finally he had to come round to Subhas’s viewpoint two years later. Indeed, within the top leadership of the Congress, Bose alone refused to bow to Gandhi’s unquestioned authority – despite his great personal respect for the Mahatma – and had to pay the price of being banned by the party on disciplinary grounds.

The ‘Communal Award’ was announced in 1932, which the Bengal Congress led by the Bose Brothers opposed tooth and nail. But it precipitated yet another collision with the central leadership, for the latter sided with the Bengali Hindu Bhadralok who looked upon the Award as an outrageous attack on the Hindu community and started regarding the Muslims in inimical terms. Factionalism was encouraged within the provincial body in order to sideline the Boses; and B. C. Roy, a Gandhi loyalist but with little popular following, was propped up as an alternative centre of power. This ‘unabashedly Hindu stand’ did restore the confidence of the Marwari financiers in Bengal Congress leadership, but the communal equations worsened fast. By this time, the author laments, C. R. Das’s visionary approach towards managing Hindu-Muslim relations through the Bengal Pact had become but a fading memory, and the Second Partition of Bengal on communal lines became inevitable.

The treatment of post-independence Bengal is more selective and covers largely three aspects: the province’s steady economic decline over the decades; the evolving dynamics of the relations between Bengali and non-Bengali populations; and the existential dilemmas encountered by Bengalis in the present millennium. The biggest tragedy of post-independence Bengal, arguably, was its industrial degeneration, which in popular parlance is often blamed on radical politics and militant unionism. The author, however, seeks to bust this myth and points towards other contributory factors such as the loss of jute-producing areas to East Pakistan in 1947; poor management practices and reluctance to invest fresh capital

on the part of the new Marwari owners of the formerly British-owned jute mills; the impact of the import substitution industrialisation strategy on Bengal’s export-oriented engineering industry and the freight equalisation policy on its coal and steel industry; and finally, the dwindling of public investment during the crisis-torn 1960s. Viewed in this perspective, the labour militancy of the late 1960s, the author contends, would appear more of a response to rather than a cause for industrial contraction and joblessness; and in any case, by the 1980s it was a thing of the past as the number of strikes came to be outnumbered by lockouts declared by the owners.

In this connection, the author takes on yet another popular aspersion, i.e. the Bengali habit of seeking economic security through office jobs and looking down on trade and business in which they excelled once. He argues that the first generation of Bengali businessmen and industrialists flourished during the colonial times through collaboration with the British. However, since the late 19^th century, a new breed of indigenous industrialists sought to provide a Swadeshi alternative to British industrial ventures; many of them patronised revolutionary activities, and as a result had to suffer jail terms. Interestingly, the Indian big bourgeoisie who were hand in glove with the British and with whom Congress leaders including Gandhi had maintained a cosy connection were rewarded in many ways before and after independence. But these Swadeshi entrepreneurs, despite their nationalist commitments, received little government support; in fact, many of them became targets of labour unrest post-independence and perished. ‘As a cost of their patriotism, the Bengalis came to be heaped with the infamy of being ignorant of doing business’.

The author also notes with alarm that Kolkata’s longstanding status as a cultural melting pot is under threat, a reputation that thrived on a win-win process: non-Bengalis who came here in the past to seek their fortunes invested in the state and created jobs for the locals. But present-day Bengal seems to witness one-way resource transfer to people from other states; and there are reasons to believe that West Bengal’s non-Bengali population is no longer contributing much to the industrial progress of the state. Again, the author feels that this economic downslide had its reverberations in the cultural arena as well. Bengalis once acted as the medium of modernisation for the rest of India and always took great pride in their rich cultural heritage. But presently their affinity to their own language, song and dance, socio-religious rituals, and cultural symbolism are visibly weakening, leading to mindless imitation of other regional practices such as explicit display of religious and caste marks on their bodies. The author wonders whether this points towards a ‘second modernisation’ or shifting of ground under their feet.

How should Bengalis negotiate these demographic, economic, and cultural challenges? The fertility rate, says the author, needs to increase; and fashionable trends such as not getting married or not having children within marriage should be corrected. Secondly, emigration, especially white-collar emigration, needs to be arrested: nobody contests the rationale of talented people moving elsewhere if they do not find jobs appropriate for their qualifications and interests; but more importantly, after earning as much as possible, they must return and invest in the state. ‘Rather than discussing among friends how Bengal is decaying, they need to think how they can be part of its revival’. The author simultaneously reminds the state government, irrespective of political complexion, of the major role it has to play in creating a propitious ecosystem to entice these people back home. Finally, the pretentious egoism of the Bengalis of the past seems to have given way to a no less problematic self-abnegation. Yet if historically the Bengalis have been liberal, self-assertive, believers in individual freedom and social equality, there is no reason to feel ashamed. After all, India is a land of diversity with no mainstream cultural or value system which can demand subordination of other cultural traits. Rather, it needs to be remembered that many non-Bengalis are still choosing this state for living, investing, buying property, and making profits. Then why should we accept the ‘non-livable’ tag for Bengal without a question?

While West Bengal at present is certainly gripped by an unfortunate impasse, the ‘popular’ impression that this rot is pathological and irreversible is highly exaggerated. But this has doubtless given a massive jolt to the self-esteem and confidence of the current generation of Bengalis, especially at a time when their all-India presence in politics, administration, law, literature, film, or cricket has become marginal, unlike even the recent past. This slim volume, which the author says is polemical – rather than academic – in nature and intention, goes a long way towards addressing these critical concerns. Without minimising the gravity of the issues at hand, the author, on one hand, reminds Bengalis – especially those belonging to the upcoming generation – of the signal contributions their predecessors had made to the building of modern India; and asserts, on the other, that there is no valid reason to suffer pangs of remorse or emulate the culture and behavioural patterns of the ‘advanced’ states of India, giving up their own time-tested legacies. The need of the hour is rather to engage in a hard-headed inquiry into the roots of the crisis and devise appropriate ways (s) out. However, the book’s treatment of the pre-independence era has been more comprehensive and systematic – in fact, ten of the 14 substantive chapters are devoted to the history of ancient times till 1947 – compared to the post-independence decades, which appears a little incongruous with the objectives of an evidently future-oriented volume (as the title suggests). Readers cannot be faulted either for mildly complaining that political factors on the whole received a relatively short shrift, particularly when the book is penned by a very senior and erudite scholar who has played a ground-breaking role in the study of West Bengal politics. But these minor issues aside, the book, as already mentioned, is a very timely addition to the literature on Bengal, which is likely to do a world of good to the flagging morale of the Bengalis.