For some both these two words would be synonymous... To an extent this would be true. Intellectually 90 per cent of Bongs are socialists and politically at least 47 per cent of them are Communists of different hues. Even the formidable Congress leader Subrata Mukherjee was branded by his own partyman as a melon.... Green outside but actually Red inside... Such is the influence of Marxist thought in Bengal...
But I think that is only on the surface.... Bongs are certainly not defined by their left thinking but by great intellectual confusion at best and blatant hypocrisy at worst. To give two example: Bengal has ove rthe last 100 years sent most widows to Vrindavan [how these young women were taken to Vrindavan and abanadoned is the subject of many a Nengali classic]. Nearer my time, in a place where my grandfather settled down after partition [a small town in 24 Parganas about 40 Kms from Calcutta], since 1972 every one in the mohalla has voted for CPI or CPM, but I have seen with my own eyes a "guru" visiting each house in winter and some of the housewives washing the feet of the guru and drinking that water....
But I guess there was a time when Bengalis called themselves rational and did not accept anything that did not pass the test of dry rationality... One of the biggest literary figures and proponents to cut and dried rationality was Syed Mujtaba Ali, a true renaissance man. His stories could make you cry and his anti-Nazin and anit-Communist jokes which he claimed to have collected as a student in Germany are real gems of Bengali rational thinking and humourous writing.
Here is a sample: A Russian Citizen was punished for 50 years for publicly calling a Cabinet Minister "Insane".... The judge although a communist was liberal and took the pain to explain to the "offender" the quantum of punishment: 10 years for insulting a government servant and 40 years for leaking out a state secret.....
If you are interested, you can read one of Mujtaba Ali's classic collection of hilarious stories "HasyaMadhur"
Sadly, rationality and laughter are almost dead in Bengal, little wonder that most Bengali look either bloated with self-importance or shrunken with constipation
But I think that is only on the surface.... Bongs are certainly not defined by their left thinking but by great intellectual confusion at best and blatant hypocrisy at worst. To give two example: Bengal has ove rthe last 100 years sent most widows to Vrindavan [how these young women were taken to Vrindavan and abanadoned is the subject of many a Nengali classic]. Nearer my time, in a place where my grandfather settled down after partition [a small town in 24 Parganas about 40 Kms from Calcutta], since 1972 every one in the mohalla has voted for CPI or CPM, but I have seen with my own eyes a "guru" visiting each house in winter and some of the housewives washing the feet of the guru and drinking that water....
But I guess there was a time when Bengalis called themselves rational and did not accept anything that did not pass the test of dry rationality... One of the biggest literary figures and proponents to cut and dried rationality was Syed Mujtaba Ali, a true renaissance man. His stories could make you cry and his anti-Nazin and anit-Communist jokes which he claimed to have collected as a student in Germany are real gems of Bengali rational thinking and humourous writing.
Here is a sample: A Russian Citizen was punished for 50 years for publicly calling a Cabinet Minister "Insane".... The judge although a communist was liberal and took the pain to explain to the "offender" the quantum of punishment: 10 years for insulting a government servant and 40 years for leaking out a state secret.....
If you are interested, you can read one of Mujtaba Ali's classic collection of hilarious stories "HasyaMadhur"
Sadly, rationality and laughter are almost dead in Bengal, little wonder that most Bengali look either bloated with self-importance or shrunken with constipation
