Mamata Banerjee can wear bermudas if she wants to show her legs.
‘Which bhadralok talks like that?’ Kolkata’s gentry fumed about the Bengal BJP chief’s crude jibe at his State’s chief minister and her bandaged foot. Oddly, not long ago, Banerjee herself struggled to pass the ‘class’ test from the same bhadralok brigade. Didi’s predecessor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, they had pointed out, was a pucca bhadralok who translated Russian poetry while she wrote “ epang opang jhopang ” nonsense rhymes. The Left Front’s bhadralok babus called her ugly names then, sexist and classist. Ironically, as a class, it is Kolkata’s famous bhadralok who are now in danger of irrelevance.
In a recent electoral survey of Bengal for ‘Peoples Pulse’, Dr. Sajjan Kumar found that Kolkata seemed to be the last bastion of the bhadralok who still buy into a “logic of Bengali exceptionalism”. The non-Kolkata bhadralok, he says, have already jumped to the BJP in significant numbers. Polarisation is so acute, says Kumar, that Dalits, tribals and backward castes are the BJP’s most ardent supporters even while being beneficiaries of Banerjee’s many welfare schemes.
In an election buzzing with the identity politics of groups like Matuas, Rajbanshis and Namasudras, the bhadraloks — upper caste yet claiming to be beyond caste — are discovering they are paper tigers. They might dominate the media but their writ does not go too far beyond columns (this one included).
Exclusive club
Bhadralok was always a problematic term, assuming as its counterpart the ones who were not bhadra or civil, the chhotolok, with no breeding. It came into its own in the 19th century as a Bengali equivalent to ‘gentlemen’, merchants and pen-pushers for the Raj. A bhadralok had caste privilege, college education and culture, and prided himself on liberal values, intellectualism and modernity. It was an exclusive genteel club whose membership was fiercely guarded. Scientists like Meghnad Saha, C.V. Raman and Satyen Bose were admired not just as scientists but as ‘bhadralok physicists’. Even many firebrand leaders of the Naxalite movement came from the bhadralok.
The bhadralok still looms large over Bengal’s cultural life but their stranglehold on its political future is eroding fast. Jyoti Basu, the State’s long-serving chief minister, and a bhadralok to his starched core, once said there were only two castes in Bengal — rich and poor. His regime brutally uprooted and killed Dalit migrants from Bangladesh who had settled on the island of Marichjhapi in the Sundarbans, a horror the bhadralok intelligentsia of Kolkata largely ignored.
Last laugh
The bhadralok Bengali’s achievements are undeniable but so is his disdainful sense of superiority. “Yet another Bengali wins the Nobel,” bragged a television channel after economist Abhijit Banerjee won the prize. But the award-winning writer Manoranjan Byapari once said that his books “were never read by the bhadralok because I am a chhotolok (the subaltern). They see me with a gamchha (cotton towel) wrapped around my neck and wonder how I can write books!” It’s true, people like Byapari were largely invisible to the bhadralok elite. But no longer. In this election, Byapari is a candidate.
That casual condescension of the bhadralok has had its own comeuppance. Writer Sambit Pal, in his book, The Bengal Conundrum , quotes CPI(M) politburo member Mohammed Salim saying that they had thought “like bhadralok, that people would understand the mistake they were making by supporting Mamata Banerjee.” She often drops the ‘r’ in words like Trinamool and problem, a tell-tale sign of a lack of class, according to the bhadralok language police.
In 2016, the CPI(M) leader Surjya Kanta Mishra scoffed, “gobment, poblem, theat, poposal, popaganda... If you want the ‘R’ back, vote judiciously!!” I must sheepishly admit I probably chuckled too, but Didi had the last laugh. Her party romped home. Mishra lost his seat. Now the CPI(M) babus have read the writing on the wall and embraced a parody of a raunchy subaltern hit, ‘Tumpa Sona’ (Tumpa darling), as an election theme song, one that would have given Jyoti Basu instant acid reflux. Mishra shared it on Facebook.
The subaltern understands today that they matter more to political parties as voting blocs than the wishy-washy bhadralok with their ephemeral loyalties. But what must be most galling is that those the bhadralok assiduously kept outside their exclusive club show little interest in gaining access any more. Banerjee tried to be accepted with her poetry and paintings. The blunt-spoken Dilip Ghosh, unapologetic about his bermuda comment, doesn’t seem to care. That must sting.
No matter who wins the Bengal elections, the bhadralok’s sun seems to be setting. But they might be too busy to notice that on May 2, when the results come out, because that day also marks the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray — the Holy Grail for the Montu Pythons of bhadralok-dom. The universe clearly has its own sense of irony.
Sandip Roy, the author of Don’t Let Him Know, likes to let everyone know about his opinions whether asked or not.
