WHAT A "SONAR PATHAR BATI" INDEED!
KAJAL CHATTERJEE
"Sonar Pathar Bati"! Gold Stone Bowl ! What an impossible proposition! How can a bowl be both of stone as well as gold! This is impossible!
NO THIS IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE WHEN BENGALIS OF WEST (GHOTIS) AND EAST (BANGALS) COME FACE TO FACE WITH SLOGAN OF "BANGALI BROTHERHOOD"!
But Bengalis are a much older race with distinct identity since several centuries! But why such an "unity" didn't make its appearance earlier, why the terminology of "Bangali brotherhood" didn't get heard perhaps right from the advent of this race!
When Bengali Afrazul Khan was burnt to death by the inventors of mythical "love jihad" in Rajasthan 2017 or two Bengali migrant labourers were beaten to death in Gujarat in October 2023, why didn't we hear any united protest by the Bengalis in West Bengal! When Bengali migrant labourers of Islamic vintage were being tortured in Odisha just a few weeks ago (repercussion of alleged torture upon Bengali Hindus in Bangladesh) and many of them had to escape to West Bengal (as if these states are "separate countries"); did "Bangali brotherhood" went for a toss!
When Bengali Arup Bhandari and Rishabh Chatterjee were murdered right in the soil of Bengal (Howrah and Chandannagar respectively) by the criminals of migrant vintage, were the Bangali "brothers" immersed in "slumber" (by remaining wide awake) or "enjoying" Bollywood obscenities!
When fellow members of the community get victimised, why not a single slogan of "Bangali brotherhood" crop up protesting against the atrocities!
However, how can such a slogan arise when the brotherhood among the Bengalis itself is an utopian concept ie "Sonar Pathar Bati"!
And this sudden invention of "Bangali brotherhood" for the first time itself prove that Bengalis were simply a much divided lot spanning several centuries!
And this is the very reason why members of the fellow community, displaced from erstwhile East Bengal following the Partition of the country, were (and still are) subjected to choicest of abuses - - "Bangal" "refugee" "German" "Taar Kaata" (fence cutter) when minimum humanity demanded a warm embrace of the unfortunate lot by the "GHOTIS"!
No problem when millions and millions of people from Bihar Uttar Pradesh Jharkhand Odisha Rajasthan Gujarat Punjab Haryana Andhra Pradesh settle in Kolkata and other parts of West Bengal in droves for centuries marginalising the indigenous Bengalis in their own soil of origin right from land jobs business and livelihood! But when fellow Bengalis from the Eastern part of erstwhile Bengal get compelled to settle in West Bengal, the "GHOTIS" expose their fangs nails tooth and claws and hurl choicest of abuses towards them and which seems to have no end! Apart from such "anger" towards the "Bangals" (treated as "infiltrators"), they are also taunted in terms of their "Bangal" accent and even culinary habits! Perhaps due to repercussion, the "Bangals" in general also compete in having bad words about "GHOTIS"!
In such a suicidal self-hating perspective how can the Bengali community afford to "unite" as a cohesive whole!
But when political interests need to be fulfilled, surely do they "unite" as being currently heard in West Bengal and social media and the "excuse" is nothing but the gruesome rape and murder of the young Doctor in Kolkata!
When minimum sanity demanded peaceful protest directed towards the culprits only with demand of exemplary punishment, the self-hating Bengalis have started to character assassinate their own race and state itself as if for the very first time a social crime named rape-murder has happened in the history of human civilization across the world!
And surely the "greatest culprit" is Mamata Banerjee and her party/government who have ensured Kolkata to be the safest city of the country for many years, that too corroborated by the statistics of the Centre's National Crime Records Bureau!
May I ask where was such "Bangali brotherhood" when Rakhi Bhadra, the domestic maid from Dumdum, West Bengal was found murdered in the New Delhi house of a former BSP MP of Uttar Pradesh in 2013! Why didn't the Bengali "brothers" of Bhadra utter a single protest against the heinous murder! Was it because the unfortunate lady was a "mere" domestic maid and not a Doctor! Was it because the perpetrator of the crime was surely not Bengali!
So it is very natural questions must be raised why "suddenly united" Bengalis are "fuming in rage" today!
And hats off to the "pain" of the Bengalis! They are so "pained" that the "Bangals" and "GHOTIS" were licking their lips in delight over the Mohun Bagan - East Bengal Derby in Kolkata on 18th day of August! How could they afford to "enjoy" football match despite immersed in such a "gloom", blocking roads and lighting candles in the dead of the night! What a hypocrite "pain" indeed!
And now that the match got cancelled due to law and order issues, the "Bangals" and "GHOTIS", always at each other's throat since the stroke of independence, suddenly got "united"! The actual "anger" behind the "unity" has got blatantly exposed! Yes, just because the Government of the day has robbed the football lunatics their dose of Sunday afternoon "entertainment", they have got so agitated and "united" to take "revenge" upon the West Bengal authorities! And it goes without saying that all such football fanatics, in the guise of "pained protesters", are pursuing their "unity" to take political revenge as they are simply failing to dislodge Mamata Banerjee government through front door of free and fair democratic election!
On the one hand "liberal nationalist" Bengalis always assert that "WE ARE ONLY INDIANS" whenever any "parochial" person demand entitled rights of Bangla and sons of the soil in the state; but when all sorts of crime happen in rest of the country, they prefer to act blind deaf dumb and character assassinate one and only Bengal if any untoward development happens here! That means when it comes to sharing of land jobs business resource cricket/football team, Bengal is of "WHOLE INDIA"; but if any unfortunate development happens here, the "stigma" of it rests upon Bengal and Bengalis only! What a gem of hypocrisy by the "united Bengalis"!
Sexual atrocities form an universal crime since the "Dawn" of "Civilization". So instead of pinpointing the regime of any state wherever the sexual crime has occurred, be it in Kolkata or Badlapur(Maharashtra); sanity demands that the protests be lodged only against the real culprits so as to ensure highest punishment possible.
Instead of trying to take political "Badla" (revenge) by exploiting a tragedy, the Opposition parties and their Bhakts in guise of "United Bengalis cum football lovers" may try to "capture" power in West Bengal through democratic path in 2026.
But please please don't invoke the "Sonar Pathar Bati" of "Bangali brotherhood"!