In “The tales of Bhola grandpa”, a short story by Manoj Das, Bhola grandpa tells everyone that he has seen a group of pirates hiding precious diamonds under the sand. Having heard Bhola Grandpa’s tale, the villagers started digging the sand in search of the precious diamonds.
They spend several days and nights in the search, only to be later told by Bhola that he had seen the pirates in a dream during his afternoon nap.
At present, people in India are digging out what’s under every mosque – from Gyanvapi to Sambhal –and no Bhola Grandpa is in sight anytime soon to acknowledge his mistake so that the religious fanatics stop digging the mosques.
Meanwhile, the prices of essential day-to-day goods are increasing, the unemployment rate is skyrocketing. Public healthcare facilities and government-funded education are all in ruins.
Some people allegedly desecrated the Indian flag in Bangladesh. Of course, it is a heinous, condemnable act, but following their course of action, we need not chart the same path.
No conscious effort to heal wounds of partition
The rising demands of not giving medical visas to Bangladeshi nationals and not selling them onions are the naivety of the hyper-nationalists. Bangladeshi tourists visit the hilly areas of the northern part of Bengal in large numbers. The rising tension between both the countries have resulted in affecting the lives of the people whose bread and butter depends on travel and tourism, incurring heavy losses.
In 1947, when India was partitioned, two states suffered the most – Bengal and Punjab. But even after so many years of Independence, there was never any conscious effort to heal the wounds of Partition.
Instead, the politicians in the Indian subcontinent always kept the wounds and the enmity alive. Most importantly, after partition, no political establishment tried to heal the wounds of the refugees. This is in sharp contrast to what we saw in Europe, where different governments attempted to heal the wounds of the holocaust survivors after the Second World War. Despite the fact that the Partition is often compared to the Holocaust, there was no similar initiative in India.
Instead, every political party tried to gain political mileage from the religious fault lines. How many partition museums do we have? The efforts of collective healing are never in place.
On the contrary, the failed politicians in all three nations portray their neighbours as enemies in elections to consolidate public opinion in favour of them. So, we hear the word “Pakistan” more than inflation during elections.
The political parties need enemies to survive and they create enemies. As a result, when Pakistan or Bangladesh loses in a cricket match, some people become so happy. The India-Pakistan cricket match grabs headlines as Indo-Pak War and becomes the litmus test of patriotism for the minorities.
Every now and then, Hindutva fundamentalism calls for the “rectification of the historical mistakes.” The shameful revisionism of history is creating undue hatred among the majority community against Muslims.
Easier to feed hatred and fake news to poverty-ridden masses
We often see that those who were lynched and the people lynching them are both from the oppressed class. It’s easier to feed hatred, and fake news to the poverty-ridden masses who don’t have access to alternative media, don’t have resources to fact-check, and don’t have cultural capital to go against the dominant narrative.
According to experts surveyed for the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Risk Report, India was ranked highest for the risk of misinformation and disinformation. Minorities are an oppressed class. They can be anything – Baloch, Hindu, Muslim, Sikhs, Ahmadiyya – depending on the place they live in.
The rising hatred against Bangladeshis in West Bengal is nothing but RSS-backed BJP’s fuelling of the Hindutva narrative of hatred. Their blatant call to not serve food to the Bangladeshis who have to come to India for medical purposes is the extension of Yogi Adityanath’s call for economically boycotting the Muslims in India.
West Bengal and Bangladesh are two pieces of land sharing the same language, same culture, same ethnicity. In both countries, the economically backward classes are the victims. If the Teesta River dries up, the farmers of both lands will suffer. In both countries, it’s the failure of the political leaders who have failed to eradicate hunger and poverty even after so many years of Independence.
Also Read: India Is Hardly in a Position to Lecture Bangladesh on Minority Protection
When political leaders fail, they create fake enemies to consolidate the majority and push the narrative of hyper-nationalism. Samuel Johnson rightly says,
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
When political leaders fail to solve the issues that bother people, they turn the faces of the masses to patriotism and hyper-nationalism. It’s high time to know the right history. If one wants to dig up Ajmer Sharif, which is a symbol of harmony, diversity, and religious synchronisation, then he should also know about the role Ajmer Sharif Dargah played in the freedom movement.
After the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, the freedom fighters planned for an uprising which was discussed in the Urs of Ajmer Sharif Dargah. During the Indo-China war in 1962, when India was apparently in economic distress, Ajmer Dargah donated 2 kg of gold to the Indian defence ministry, and they bought a defence certificate, too. The man who handed over the gold on behalf of the Dargah administration to the ministry was Aley Mohammad Shah, the father of Nasiruddin Shah.
Bengal and the absence of social engineering
Bengal suffered the wounds of partition twice in 1947 and 1971. Many people lost their lives, livelihoods and became refugees.
Unfortunately, in 34 years of left rule and then 13 years of non-BJP government in power, Bengal has never done the social engineering needed for a secular state. It’s true that during the left rule, the CPIM-led West Bengal government didn’t let any communal riots happen in Bengal. But Mamata Banerjee’s government can’t claim the same.
In her 13 years as the Chief Minister, there sporadic communal tensions have been recorded in the state. Communal tensions in Basirhat, Asansol and Murshidabad are glaring examples. The RSS shakhas in the West Bengal are on the rise. The RSS-backed BJP, along with the propagandist media have been spewing venom, eying the 2026 assembly election in the state. It’s to be seen that whether the fault lines, which have never been healed but managed somehow by pushing under the carpet, erupt or not.
Holocaust survivor Susan Pollack warns us about the hate-mongering and propagandist media, saying, “The Germans were well-advanced, educated, progressive. Maybe civilisation is just veneer-thin. We all need to be very careful about any hate propaganda. This is very important. It starts as a small stream, but then it has the potential to erupt – and when it does, it’s too late to stop it.”
West Bengal and Bangladesh can’t be enemies. They are two natural allies sharing the same rivers, the same geographical locations, and the same climate along with the same past.
Instead of any particular religion, it’s the marginalised class that is caught in the vortex of hatred in these two countries. We should not forget the swinging body of Felani Khatun from the barbed wires and the bullet wound of Swarna Das. West Bengal and Bangladesh are natural allies; they can’t be enemies, and they can’t have any other emotions except love and nostalgia to a shared past.
Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. She has two published collections of poetry. Her works have been translated in Telugu and Tamil.
