This document discusses the connections between East and West Bengal before and after Partition in 1947. It notes that many famous Bengalis came from what is now Bangladesh, and that the author finds Bengalis in Assam still speak a form of Bengali similar to what was spoken in pre-Partition Bangladesh. It shares memories from nonagenarian survivors of Partition, who recall a time of communal harmony in Bengal and the difficulties they faced after being displaced. The author argues that many displaced Bengalis still contributed greatly to India despite the hardships of Partition.

1. East or West: The Twain Shall Meet
Shantanu Basu
Working presently in Assam, I hear migrants from Mymensingh district in
Bangladesh being talked about with an alarming degree of rancour, even ill-will.
However, no one remembers the fact that this Bangladeshi district contributed a whole
generation to the Bengal renaissance of the late 19th and 20th century in the form of the
Ray family - Upendra Kishore, Sukumar and Satyajit, author Nirad C Chaudhuri,
Anandamohan Bose, India's first Wrangler and President of the Indian National
Congress, magician PC Sorcar, children’s writer Leela Majumdar, academic Dr. Nihar
Ranjan Ray, Rabindra sangeet exponent Debabrata Biswas, West Bengal's former
Advocate General Snehangshu Acharya, apart from Syed Nazrul Islam, painter Zainul
Abedin and latterly Taslima Nasreen.
Sixty seven years after Partition, posted to Guwahati, I find the pristine Bengali
spoken in the heart of what is now Bangladesh is being liberally used by my Bengali
office personnel, mostly way beyond my low level of understanding as I speak to them in
English. Born and bred in Delhi with Hindi for my second language, I have always found
it difficult to follow even the Kolkata colloquial, which my wife or Secretary translated to
me. However, in Guwahati I have had to come face-to-face with Baangaal that I have
seldom heard, spoken only by the remnants of the Partition-affected generation and a
decade back in Delhi's CR Park. This Bengali is also pristine in that it distinguishes
between 'baari' (permanent home) and 'baasa' (a temporary bird's nest), Delhi being my
'baari', my Guwahati bungalow being my 'baasa'. Although sometimes delivered in
vocally violent intonations, the Baangaal taan is a piece of human creativity. It meanders
its way through with seemingly needless add-ons to the Kolkata colloquial – korchhen
replaced by kortasen and koro naa by karosh naa and so on. Nonetheless, it makes its
point more vociferously and aggressively than does its Kolkata colloquial cousin which is
perhaps more urban. Baangaal’s cousin, Sylheti, however, sounds like an overspeeding
train – a trait that is more a genetic hand-me-down than acquired. For me it’s as good as
Latin or Greek. Yet the Guwahati office staff writes English extraordinarily well, that too
in proper Central Secretariat style, even Assistants and Section Officers, are able to carry
forward a conversation in near-perfect English for as long as two hours, something many
of my own civil service brethren often find difficult, before lapsing into Hindi! These
Bengalis have lived through, and continue, to live through trying times, many in penury,
deprived of their home land, despised by the local population, yet preserving their own
language, its dialects, their religion and social practice but speaking Ahomiya quite
fluently, some even marrying into their families. Indeed adversity has bred in them the
will to survive with dignity and create a new world!!
In a similar vein, Baangaal and memories of pre-1947 Bengal similarly play out
at our New Delhi home as my nonagenarian father hosts fellow nonagenarian survivors
of Partition, many of whom are domiciled in Delhi since 1948-49. I am astounded by
their vivid recollection of events stretching as far back as the early 1930s. What emerges
was a life of honor and plenty in a society where best friends often belonged to other

2. communities - the evergreen Padma river hilsa and the rajbhog from Rajshahi – cooked
by Hindus in Muslim homes and vice-versa and had in each other’s company off banana
leaves on the floor. I heard tales of how Muslim families sheltered their now
nonagenarian friends and their children and spirited them away to the relatively safe
confines of Calcutta. Names like Shahjahan seamlessly merged with Nirmal and Barun.
Indeed Bengal of the 1920s and 1930s was a role model of communal harmony at least at
the local community level. Priests of any community did not demand nor received their
upkeep from public coffers then.
Yet it was not as if a difficult life had just passed the nonagenarians by without
some hilarity. They remembered how a witty Dhaka garwan asked a customer paying his
fare in the horse carriage by stamps (since coins were melted for munitions during the
war) if his horse would now have to write letters on which the hapless passenger’s stamps
could be affixed! These garwans were singers of some repute with their pithy lyrics
delivered in earthy tones. Fond memories of the boat ride to Goalando Ghat, the Sylheti-
cooked chicken curry and rice on board, train rides across now human-created
boundaries, post-1947 visits to see their ancestral properties and cross-border connections
such as those with Oxford University Professor Salahuddin Ahmed, Vice Chancellor Late
Prof. Ali Ahsan of Dhaka University, my father’s recent visit to Dhaka’s Armenitola
Govt. High School (where he was received warmly as their oldest student by the
Principal, faculty and students in a public show of love and affection) et al. These get-
togethers are not just a visual and audio treat but also speak volumes of the trying times
this generation went through, a generation virtually forgotten in their own land, reduced
to penury and not exactly welcome in their ‘adopted land’- a land they never dreamt
could be whimsically partitioned by a felt pen drawn by a British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe.
Incidentally, Radcliffe did not claim his then princely 5000 pound fee when he saw the
misery of people in the biggest migration in human history. Yet Radcliffe achieved with a
pen what Viceroy Curzon was not able to do with his imperial military, police and
political might.
Legends like PC Mahalanobis, Sushobhan Sarkar, Amartya Sen, JC Bose,
Somnath Hore, Bimal Roy, Satyajit Ray and his cousin Nitin Bose, Barun Sengupta,
General JN Chaudhuri, Anandamayi Ma and Goshto Pal not only adopted the newly
formed India, indeed embraced and brought it laurels that perhaps few migrant
communities have done globally. I wish my 22-year old son, who was ever busy on his
iPad, listened to even a part of these conversations as these nonagenarian survivors of
Partition relived their idyllic childhood, turbulent student life and the post-Partition
struggle to survive, without any ill-will or rancor toward any community, caste or
religion, secularly accepting, as a matter of fate, the will of the Divine Hand! Like the
Holocaust that never dimmed the will of the Jewish people, Partition did not dim the will
to survive of the Partition generation as they brought laurels to the land that was already
their own, but turned by history and a pen, into their adopted land.
The author is Principal Accountant General (A&E), Assam. His views are personal.