Opinion
How can we revive the spirit of anti-Banga bhanga agitation?
By Anirvan Ganguly
The first anti-partition movement in Bengal energized the whole somnolent race. It awakened in the people, the thirst for unity and freedom. The mantra-diksha imparted then to the youth, spoke of sacrifice, of God in the nation and of self-purification by the fire of revolution. It awakened the race and nation-consciousness in a jati that had long lost the deeper raison d?etre of its existence. It brought forth nationalism as a religion which had to be believed, lived, upheld, preached, spread and for which one would have to be ready to give up position, pelf, power and life? It generated the vision of the country as the ?Mother? ? Bhavani Bharati ? shackled, tortured, humiliated and trampled upon but who was to be liberated and restored to her pristine glory and supreme position. All of these could only be achieved by a strong and united Bengal which would be ready to cleanse with her life-blood the sanctum-sanctorum of the temple where ?Mother-Bhavani? was to be restored and installed, hence the need for the first anti-partition movement. If Bengal lived and breathed united then there was hope for the greater freedom of India. The movement was against a foreign ideology, foreign way of life and was an attempt to re-discover the race'sessential swabhava and swadharma which was long lost and diluted.
Today the spirit of the anti-partition movement has to be roused once more. It has to be more lethal and devastating in nature, but because of the heavy blanket of tamas over us we do not perceive them or having perceived, we do not wish to disturb our small, comfortable, utilitarian and aimless existence issues.
If Bengal has to rediscover her ?self?, if Bengal has to fulfill what the seers had expected and envisioned for her, if she has to recover her image of the ?Mother? of Bankim'sAnandamath she has to violently shake off the heavy and life-sucking yoke of an ideology thought of and conceived by an alien mind in an alien land. She has to forcefully reject a system implemented by utmost dexterity by traitors to this nation. A system which in the last nearly three decades has bled her white, has ruined her assiduously built institutions, has poisoned her education, has ravaged her industries, has scorched her villages, has introduced famine, closure, intolerance, fear, arrogance and neglect into her structures. All that was good, noble, measured and sublime is gradually disappearing and is being replaced by mediocrity.
If Bengal has to rediscover her ?self?, if Bengal has to fulfil what the seers had expected and envisioned for her, if she has to recover her image of the ?Mother? of Bankim'sAnandamath, she has to violently shake off the heavy and life-sucking yoke of an ideology: thought of and conceived by an alien mind in an alien land.
If Bengal is to survive as Bengal and as nothing else, then she has to vocally and actively oppose the sustained infiltration into her that is being aided and abetted from across the border. Past deliberate and selfish neglect by the traitors have allowed the informal extension of the boundaries of a foreign land twenty kilometers into her body. If she allows this to go on soon she shall have to confront the demand for a second partition thus the need is imperative for a second movement against the partition of Bengal. Time is pressing but we are sitting with blinkers on and refusing to see the reality.
The need of the hour for Bengal is first, to vehemently overthrow a system that has desecrated her soul and then to save herself from a second breaking. For this she has to imbue herself with the spirit that inundated her being a hundred years ago during the ?Bang-Bhang movement?. This today seems to be the only way for Bengal ? for there is no other ? nanya pantha ? if she is to carry out the tasks for which the gods created her.
It is in this context that one cannot but deeply agree with respected Sarsangchalakji when he stated the other day in Kolkata that the ?Bang-Bhang Movement? was relevant even today. We agree that the forces, thoughts, visions and energies unleashed by that movement remain of eternal ? sanatan value and can indeed be effectuated at this hour.
