HYPOCRISY AND PSEUDO-NATIONALISM
KAJAL CHATTERJEE
Sourav Ganguly dances down to the crease and despatches the ball for a huge six. The group of people, assembled in front of the TV set, maintain stunned silence!
In the very next delivery, Sourav sweeps the ball for a boundary. "Fluke shot" - - comes a murmur under the breath!
In the subsequent ball, Sourav gets dismissed and the TV audience burst in applause heaving a sigh of much relief at last!
No the people who had assembled in front of the TV were seated neither in Multan nor Melbourne ; they were neither Pakistanis nor Aussies!
Rather they were full-fledged Indians, actually Bengalis, seated right in Kolkata and West Bengal!
People of other communities throughout the country and the world might term it as "absurd"; but it was a very very hard fact which I used to witness regularly between 1996 to 2008 in larger family ambience and office/neighborhood clubs, even when Sourav was at his peak both as batsman and captain!
Yes Bengalis are so "nationalist" that they can't afford to clap on the success of a fellow Bengali even though he is donning the jersey of India! So as to show that the Bengalis and parochialism reside at opposite poles, the self-hating "unique" community used to even rejoice the dismissal of Sourav Ganguly!
However there lied no such "problem" in respect of the Tendulkars and Dravids! So those very Bengali "cricket admirers" used to celebrate the tons of the Marathis and Kannadigas and felt sad on their failures as well!
However there lied another double standard in this respect also! If Sourav used to get dismissed in an innings between a duck or 40s, the Bengalis promptly demanded his exclusion from the team (even if his earlier innings consisted of series of half centuries/centuries) ; but when the non-Bengali cricketers used to fail in successive innings, Bengalis either used to remain dumb/blind or come up with "liberal" statements of "Form is Temporary, Class Permanent"! Yes, "nationalism" of suicidal Bengalis start and end with Bengal/Bengali-bashing, that too very very cleverly desisting from any comment criticising any antics of a non-Bengali or scandal in any state outside West Bengal!
So even if Sourav took any wrong decision as captain or got dismissed by playing an unnecessary atrocious shot; I used to criticise it in only in the privacy of the "rarest of rare" neutral Bengalis; but never never in front of the "mainstream" Bengalis who are supremely biased/prejudiced enough never to utter a single word of praise for Sourav or a statement of criticism against the Tendulkars Dravids Yuvrajs Dhonis!
So it is natural that on any issue under the Indian sun, the "liberal nationalist" community would act likewise.
On the one hand Bengalis proudly claim that "Our only identity remains we are Indians" and "Our only home is India" and so can't tolerate any sort of "parochial" talks demanding the entitled rights and honour of the Bengali language and sons of the soil Bengalis in their very own backyard West Bengal; but when comes even a faint chance of belittling own state and community, Bengalis promptly jump up to character-assassinate Bengal and Bengalis! But again not a single word of protest or criticism when much larger crimes and scandals happen in rest of India!
The community which identify itself as one and only "Indians" close their eyes tongues and pens (in case of Bengali journalists) absolutely shut in case of Himalayan scandals named Vyapam, Ventilator, Covid Care Fund, Stock market, NEET, NET and what not rocking Madhya Pradesh to Gujarat to New Delhi ; but what a zealous reaction in case of Narada/ Sarada or examination scams hitting West Bengal! Ask Bengalis why their stand is so hypocritical; the community will say that since Bengal is their "home", they are speaking up! Now where does their "Indian home" go for a toss in case of Vyapam to NEET-NET scandals! Vanishes in thin air!
In this supremely coward pseudo-nationalist self-hating state of affairs, it is natural that when it comes to spine-chilling sexual atrocities gangrape cum murder, hitting Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka to Delhi, Madhya Pradesh to Manipur at regular intervals, the "nationalist" Bengalis will not utter a single word of criticism; but a stray horrific incident of rape and murder in West Bengal is enough for the "Indian" Bengalis to wake up from "slumber" and denigrate the whole state and entire Bengali community through choicest of abuses!
Now an interesting contrast in a single Bengali individual (applicable for almost the whole community). Whenever I used to talk of any discrimination against Sourav Ganguly during his playing days (as during the controversial tenure of Greg Chapell as coach), a certain "nationalist" MM used to "tremble" and tried to "enlighten" me to look beyond the "narrow cesspool" of Bengal-Bengalis! But that very MM has snapped personal relationship with me when I requested him to look beyond RG Kar Kolkata Bengal with a reminder that incidents of gangrape and murder happen throughout the country with spine-chilling incidents regularly coming from Gujarat Uttar Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Uttarakhand Bihar or Manipur!
Thus it gets proved that the community which love to beat the trumpet of India and Indians so zealously without caring for the interest and rights of their own race language and state promptly shed their "nationalist" credential and turn "100% Bengali" in an "Independent country" named West Bengal whenever opportunity arises to belittle their own!
So it is natural that Bengali journalists and "pundits", though claiming themselves as "Indians", relentlessly mock one and only West Bengal in front of national and international media through reports and articles though the fact remains that innumerable more atrocious things relentlessly happen in several states of India and yet they hardly write about it!
Yes Bengal is one of such handful of unique states which is yet to get scandalised by fatal antics of Cow-vigilantes specially targeting the Muslims
(unlike Uttar Pradesh Haryana Rajasthan Jharkhand), casteist atrocities against Dalits (unlike Gujarat and almost all states of the North), murder of secular rationalists (unlike Maharashtra Karnataka), demolition of mosques (Uttar Pradesh) or fatal attacks upon Christian missionaries and assault upon Churches (unlike Odisha Karnataka)! The inhumanity of "honour killings" or murders/assaults through invocation of the myth of "Love Jihad", so natural and common in North/West India, is almost an alien concept in Bengal!
Yet by awarding almost "clean chit" to the state of affairs in rest of the country , the "proud Indians" within the Bengali journalists concentrate in projecting the "ills" of one and only Bengal in front of all! That too in front of the anti-Bengal forces all around the country who crudely give Bengal a "bad name" by terming it as "Waste" by crudely playing with the prefix of the state "West" and yes, without pointing out the much worse state of affairs in their own backyard!
So even if the Bengali journalists choose to capture any bad incident or development in Bengal, then at least they must also simultaneously point out the worse and worst pictures of rest of India. For example, criticise the incident of sexual atrocity in the Kolkata hospital ; but also point out the barbarism as happened in 2002 Gujarat, Kathua, Uttarakhand, New Delhi and regular such happenings in Uttar Pradesh Manipur Rajasthan or Bihar!
If India is your "only home" or it is one of the homes like Kolkata and Bengal, then point out the evils in the states all across the country too! Else, wouldn't it be a hypocrisy in the name of journalism which is supposed to be sane true and neutral!