Special Issue: Part 6

 (Un)Common Landscapes and Ruptured Memories: Auto-ethnographies of North Bengal

Talking of Colonial Narratives and Peoples Histories

 Aparajita De and Rajib Nandi

Aparajita: You know, whenever one talks of North Bengal, it is Darjeeling - the snow-capped mountains, beautiful forest bungalows, tea estates that comes to one’s mind. Next is Siliguri and NJP (New Jalpaiguri Station). So whenever I told someone that my husband is from Siliguri, who was born in Naxalbari …there was no apparent excitement… just the opposite a sudden dead silence. One obviously associates Naxalbari with Naxalbari movement and Naxalism. I always wondered what it was like to be born in Naxalbari… to live in a place that gave its name to a movement, movement of a particular type… radical and revolutionary. So how do you see the place Naxalbari and your life there…how long did you live there?

Rajib: Yes I was born in Naxalbari where I spent the first ten years of my life  before moving to Siliguri. When I was born, the movement had just started. It began sometime in May 1967, and I was born in October 1968. So obviously, I can’t remember the first few years of the movement…though heard much later from my mother on the earlier days of the movement. But definitely few scenes of early seventies still remain fresh in my memory.

We used to live on the ground floor of a two-storied building and our small sitting room used to open out to the main road through a large square verandah. Once, I remember I was playing there alone in the evening and suddenly I heard noises … loud slogans… Naxalbari Zindabad…Inqulaab Zindabad. I came running to the middle of the road and saw a large procession,  hundreds of people maybe, with torches in their hands, bows and arrows, spears, sickles… it seemed as if they were coming towards me. I was very scared that day, somehow I quickly ran back to the veranda. In another incident during the same period, one morning when I came out to the verandah, I saw the white walls of the verandah being written in black tar. I had just learnt to read but one line I still remember even today … “jotedarer matha kata jaabe…” [the jotedar’s (zamindar’s) head would be chopped off]. When we were growing up in Naxalbari we often heard that so and so person, mostly young men, who were in hiding … had fled to Nepal or Assam to save himself from police arrest.

Anyways, I really enjoyed my childhood in Naxalbari for many other reasons. It was a beautiful place surrounded by forests, tea gardens and paddy fields criss-crossed by several streams. I still cherish those days, our long walks with my father towards Panighata- east of Naxalbari.

I started my studies in the primary section of Nand Prasad School that was the only high school of Naxalbari at that time. Interestingly my classmates were Nepali speaking boys and girls, Adivasis like Oraon, Santhal, and of course Rajbanshis and Bengalis. I still remember Bene Oraon, one of my good friends in primary school. One more thing I remember from early seventies…refugees from east Bengal. Often we used to hear about families having just come from Pakistan.

If you look at the history of Terai region, the region where Naxalbari is situated… historically it was a contested land between Nepal and Sikkim. But it was always a land of many people and many communities…. This area ..the whole of Terai and Dooars, from River Mechi in west to River Sankosh in the east.

Aparajita: What strikes me is… what was it about Naxalbari that gave birth to a movement like this. How did it start, who were the people, were they really involved with this? Why this particular type of movement started here and not elsewhere?

Rajib: There is a history of peasant movements in North Bengal. Naxalbari was not the first rebellious movement. From mid- 40s a series of peasant uprisings had taken place. You might have heard about the Tebhaga movement. Apart from Tebhaga, there were a few other smaller movements here and there. However, among them Naxalbari definitely got a different kind of attention from media and scholars. Perhaps for many reasons, which I think we don’t have the scope to discuss here. A culture of peoples movement did exist much before Naxalbari happened. But I would like to mention here that the geographical and political location of Naxalbari was one of the key strategic reasons for Naxalbari uprisings. It is a bordering area with Nepal, Bihar, Bangladesh, Sikkim…strategically an ideal place for the revolutionaries to hide. The peasants who participated in the movement were mostly from various adivasi communities. Among them, the adivasis from Chhota Nagpur, who used to constitute a large part of the movement, were originally brought as tea coolies by the planters. Later the tea sector could not recruit all of them. The surplus labourers became the adhiars (share-croppers), and consequently became a large part of the peasant communities of North Bengal. There is plenty of literature on the agrarian structure of North Bengal, the conditions of peasants and share- croppers, vulnerable occupancy rights of the peasants and how the share-croppers used to be exploited by the jotedars…and how the peasant movements intensified in various parts of India including Bengal. Some argue, over a period of time, numerous struggles against such exploitation led to the emergence of Krishak Sabha, the organization that mobilized peasants on several occasions and then Naxalbari.

When I grew up, in early to mid-70s, not much was actually happening in Naxalbari, as far as peasant movement is concerned. Because, by that time the movement in West Bengal had already spread to urban centres including Calcutta. But police was active with many arrests taking place.

Aparajita: You know being born in Calcutta, I am an outsider to North Bengal, though my family came from East Bengal during partition, …. we visualized North Bengal, as Darjeeling and the tea gardens, Dooars and the Wildlife Sanctuaries like Jaldapara …all of which are made by the British. As if, there was nothing before the British came in. I mean there were no people, there was no local history… a wild kind of a place. When you talk about the indigenous people, we had no knowledge about them and often by indigenous; we assumed it to be the adivasis, but they too were settled there by the British. The only non-British thing we were aware of was the Cooch Behar Royal Family…and again they were highly colonized.  They shared good relations with the British. Even, a Cooch Prince was married to a daughter of Keshav Chandra Sen, a famous social reformer of Calcutta…just a royal family…as if beyond that nothing existed.

Rajib: Definitely, it’s a popular imagination of North Bengal, particularly of many Bengalis outside North Bengal. So when Kamatapur movement started in the late-90s, people started thinking from where did this movement come…Bengalis used to think that only Bengalis live there, people other than Bengalis were the Nepali speaking people in the hills and the adivasis from Chhota Nagpur in the tea estates, all from outside….

Aparajita: You are right. When you say Rajbanshis and Kamatapur movement, I distinctly remember a television show from that period when KPP (Kamatapur Peoples Party) and KLO (Kamatapur Liberation Organisation) were active.  It was a discussion with a few Rajbanshis who were demanding the separate state of Kamatapur on the basis of the language – the Kamatapuri language. They claimed that their language pre-dates Bengali and is different from Bengali and everybody at home almost exclaimed in utter horror…what is this person saying?...This is not a different language this is only a different Bengali dialect nothing more than that…and there was this utter disbelief that it could be a different language and that it was too older than Bengali… and even in the show this disbelief was rife amongst the other participants.…

Rajib: I think that’s a different debate, whether Kamatapur or Rajbanshi language is a part of Bengali or a different language altogether. The politics of formation of a language and claiming/reclaiming of a language is totally a sociological issue….nothing to do with linguistics or grammar. Languages are born first, grammars are written much later. Every language has strong links with other languages. The boundaries are often blurred. Two different languages may look very similar, their grammars might look similar, because two languages which are recognized as different languages today, might have been born from one common language. If you look at histories of languages, you will find this everywhere.

But I would like to highlight one thing very clearly. North Bengal is a part of an ancient culture of eastern India. It has a very strong pre-British history. Why it’s known or why it’s not studied in school or college text books.. that’s again a separate issue. But, yes the Bengali history in North Bengal largely began only during the colonial period, as far as top three districts of North Bengal are concerned. Once the British administration started development in the form of tea plantation, extension of railways, forest conservation, various other government offices, and also in the Cooch Behar native state, Bengalis started coming in search of white collar jobs, as office babus and for small business opportunities. Therefore, the Bengali history in North Bengal starts during the colonial period. However, there were already histories existing; if not in the form of scientifically documented histories; but in the form of folk traditions, in poetics, in the form of oral histories, and myths. But they may not be recognized as legitimate or formal form of histories…but these things were there. Interestingly, the histories written by the colonial ethnographers and surveyors or by the historians of colonial period became the official history of North Bengal. From late eighteenth century you know, there were a lot of surveys and ethnographic studies by the British ethnographers and surveyors. And these eventually became the authentic histories and ethnographies of North Bengal. 

Aparajita: I find one thing very amazing, whenever I go and talk to people here, whether in a seminar or any other gathering or social media sites, I am always astonished by the number of people quoting and referring to colonial literature…Hamilton, Dalton, Sunder, they always mention these surveys at some point of time or the other. And these people are not academics but are ordinary people from various occupations. And would then elaborate that such and such babu who helped that sahib for that survey, he himself wrote another book later…and they will come and say, do you want a photocopy of this? And he will happily give you a photocopy as well.  

Rajib: Yes, that’s an amazing feature of North Bengal. There are a lot of local authors in North Bengal. The tradition may have started by a very few pioneering people, one of them being Dr. Charu Chandra Sanyal. Several others followed suit. Strangely a ‘supposedly’ unknown past always haunts the people of North Bengal and to know this unknown past, they heavily rely on colonial literature. It comes back again and again in the local literature. They cannot write without referring to the colonial literature. Even if they do not believe in the colonial version, they love to mention it, they often contradict it by adding another small piece of history to it. An unknown history and the quest for it to mark North Bengal for its uniqueness.

Aparajita: An unknown history and an unknown past… hmmm and Bengalis, and here I may add more particularly that Kolkata based Bengalis see North Bengal as part of it and yet outside Bengal. It’s like a far away distant land which is exotic and its not only the scenic beauty that attracts Bengalis but it is that unknown exotic past that attracts them most…you fear it and at the same time you love it as well. Fear and Love both enmeshed into one another. This is something, which I see reflected in the people of North Bengal themselves. So when they discuss and write…they are in a way trying to rediscover themselves by rewriting the past. And while engaging and rewriting the past; the colonial archives play a central role.

The colonial literature, sort of establishes a kind of valid or perhaps official histories and archives. But apart from them, different kinds and forms of histories get enmeshed - the documented with the undocumented ones. There is a beautiful blending of these two when local people start writing their own histories. They bring something more to colonial ethnography along with local narratives. Whenever I talk to someone here, they say if you are so interested, I have published an article, and then they will happily pass on a photocopy of the article. Everybody has written something or other. No matter what he/she may be… an engineer, a doctor, a clerk, a shopkeeper, a school teacher…..

Rajib: Why do you think this particular culture developed there?

Aparajita: Its not just Bengalis, I find Rajbanshi, Rabha, Boro, Nepali everyone from various backgrounds, occupations writing their own histories… But I don’t have an answer as to why … no answer at all.

Rajib: Perhaps it’s an unending process of rediscovering one’s self and history. Possibly also because it’s a transitional zone, it’s got borders everywhere… multiple political and ethnic borders. It’s not just one political border but many overlapping borders … So many ethnic groups and so many ethnic borders that overlap. Historically, lots of people belonging to different communities and regions travelled through this land, from west to the east … from north to south and vise versa.

Aparajita: It’s almost like a gateway…that’s why this region I think is called the "Dooars…the Doorway" to Bhutan, Sikkim and doorway to the west from Bihar to UP, and a doorway to the south the larger Bengal plain…so it’s almost a region that opens out in all directions. It’s an interface an area of constant interactions …

Rajib: That’s why I call this place a cultural frontier…different people came here at different points of time…lived here…and moved to another place after a period of time…so the borders are very blurred. You won’t find distinct borders here…even the borders between the ethnic groups.. between the languages…are very blurred… that’s the reason it is difficult to distinguish Bengali from Kamatapuri.. Not only the language, but if you look at the communities…sometimes you cannot differentiate one from the other. In a recent facebook page started by some Kamatapur supporters, I saw the other day, they themselves initiated a new argument, why the Koch and Rajbanshi now; have become Koch-Rajbanshi. And they themselves started contradicting their own histories of the name ‘Rajbanshis’ that was brought into public debate one hundred years back by Rajbanshi Kshatriya Samity. One has commented in the page that the name ‘Rajbanshi’ was actually invented by the British ethnographers and census officials rather than the people themselves. He further argued that the original name of the people is ‘Koch’ instead. A Rabha man, in a rejoinder wrote, “I am a Rabha, but Rabhas are also known as Koch”. He further argued, “Are we, the Koch and the Rabha, same people?” All these prove that the ethnic boundaries are too blurred to differentiate. In another incident, during my field work in Dooars in early 2000, I heard a common legend from Rabha, Mech, Garo, Toto, Rai, Limbu that all of them were actually brothers once. They came from Tibet, lived in the Himalayan foothills and finally they chose different paths, got separated and eventually became known in different names.

North Bengal is an interesting place as far as its history is concerned. It’s even more interesting, when you look closely at the historical process of history making. The identity of this place, which is known as North Bengal today has always been challenged and contested...from Pragjyotisa to Kamatabehar to North Bengal, as is the identity of its people. Peoples' identities are often fragile and ever changing. Moreover, peoples' involvement in the writing, re-writing and re-interpreting of its history and identity is amazing. This uniqueness of this place gives birth to a particular type of political culture…you may say a kind of politics of resistance.

Aparajita: I think the political culture and the politics of resistance that you say, takes the shape of people, local commoners, writing their own histories. That’s why I think the auto-ethnography approach or methodology takes on a different meaning here. Because it’s not just a self narrative, a simple writing of one's own  history but it is the dissenting voice of self from the margins resisting outsiders…colonizers who are writing for them, be that the British in the colonial period or the Bengalees in the present context.

(The conversation is part of a larger book project on North Bengal and the making of its local history)

Authors' Bio- Note:

The author is an Assistant Professor in Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.She is also the Convenor of the Department's Media Lab and Digital Library. She is currently working on Mediaspace, Bollywood and Popular Culture.

Rajib Nandi is a Research Fellow at Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi and holds Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.  His areas of research interests include Social movements and Environment.