Rabindranath’s 141st birthday came and went by without a hiss!
By A.H. Jaffor Ullah
On May 8 (Baishakh 25) Bengal’s greatest poet Rabindranath Thakur’s 141st birth anniversary came. However, there was no mention of it in any of the Internet newspapers published from Bangladesh or in any forum excepting Mukto-Mona. I was saddened by this negligence of our newspapers and forum moderators.
Rabindranath Thakur sketched by Narayan Gupta
Lately, we are so much wrapped up in our work that hardly there is any time for Rabindranath’s birthday celebration. The poet had departed this mortal world nearly 61 years ago when World War 2 was raging all over the world. So much had happened in the last six decades. The world has grown to be a more complex to live in. Mechanization, electrification, industrialization, automation, globalization, computerization, etc., have taken their tolls on our life. We became very busy with our life, unquestionably. However, strangely enough we forgot to remember the significance of Poet Rabindranath Thakur’s birthday. Yes indeed he was born exactly 141 years ago in Jorasanko, then a suburb of Kolkata in world much simpler than today. There was no electricity then for sure. No radio. No television, vcr, dvd, etc. Someone may even say that the world was primitive then. But, guess what? That primitive and backward society of Bengal was able to produce a poet, storywriters, song lyricist, etc., extraordinaire.
In the last 141 years, our primitive Bangalee society may have flourished to a new height of excellence. Our road system is now clogged up. Our automotive vehicles are producing tons of pollutants. The groundwater is contaminated as well. For recreation, we have now cinemas and idiot box. Most folks have given up reading a book or two. They yawn whenever one mentions to them about reading books. They are all hard pressed for time. However, if you would ask them to watch a new flick from Bollywood or watch a serial Hindi family drama in Z-TV or Star-TV, they will be very much eager to join you. Therefore, it hardly surprises me to know that poet Rabindranath’s birthday came very quietly this year and it went by also quietly. And no one made a big fuss about it.
This forgetfulness of poet Rabindranath’s birthday is a symptomatic of a sick society that is in place in Bangladesh. It took a long time to evolve into this dilapidated state. The downhill journey was started in 1947 barely six years after the poet went to the other world. The poet was very lucky not to experience firsthand the partition of Bengal. He could not have tolerated this inane surgery that took place in Bengal in the name of Jinnah’s Two-nation theory. Rabindranath would have taken the Desh Bivagh (Partition) exercise not lightly. In 1905 when Lord Curzon tried to divide Bengal into two parts with a glowing encomium from the Muslims of East Bengal, poet Rabindranath knew what that could do to our Bangalee Jati or cultural entity. In 1947 many of the protectorates of Bangalee cultures such as Chitta Ranjan (C.R.) Das, Subhas Chandra Bose, Sarat Chandra Cottopadhya, Rabindranath, etc., had departed from this mortal world. There was no sane voice left to stop this madness. Bengal was ripped apart. A lot of pain was inflicted on our people.
After 55 long years of the painful Desh Bivagh look what happened to two Bengals. The West Bengal has become a minority state that has no voice in India. Politicians from the Hindi belt still wield power in New Delhi. Culturally West Bengal has suffered the most. The onslaught of Bombay movie on Bengal’s culture was devastating. It is a shame that Kolkata used to make movies in the 1930s and 40s those that were emulated by other movie centers such as Bombay and Madras. Sarat Chandra’s masterpiece Devadas was filmed in other languages. But now it is a pathetic story. Bengal is no longer playing the role model. The film industry in Kolkata is withering very fast. In few decades, there won’t be any film industries over there. Everything will be gobbled up by Bombay’s ever growing studios.
In Bangladesh, we have a movie industry all right. However, the quality stinks. Mediocrity rules. This side Padma River had never produced anything close to Satyajit Roy, Mrinal Sen, and Ritthyk Ghotok. I just took the example of film industry’s pathetic state to exemplify the decadence that we are having in our cultural life in both of the Bengals. I am so very glad that our poet laureate Rabindranath is not alive anymore to see for himself the decay in our cultural values.
When Rabindranath was alive, our folks used to celebrate Chatra Sankranti, Pahela Baishakh, etc., in the villages by hosting Mela (exhibition). They would bring any number of handmade goods to the village fair. The small fairground used to come to life with the cacophonies of dhol, gaan, nagordola, and whatnot. Waz Mehfil, Bishwa Ijtema, or political meeting has replaced all of these. Now the city folks are busy with their Groove Tubes where they can view latest programs in color from Hong Kong, Bangkok, Bombay, etc. Who needs our old and dying Bangla Culture?
Culturally inclined activists are crying over a lost cause. They write articles in Sanskritized Bangla. However, no one pays hardly any attention to theirs lamentation. Globalization is in and native culture is out. With this grim outlook, I hope Bangladesh’s city slickers are not upset that Rabindranath 141st birthday made any splash in the newspaper or television media. Very soon we will find out that our cultural elite may say that Rabindranath songs, poem, short stories are outmoded. Let me hope that I should not be alive to hear this mild epitaph. To me Rabindranath is Bangla and Bangla is Rabindranath.