<!--QuoteBegin-k.ram+Feb 23 2006, 07:25 PM-->QUOTE(k.ram @ Feb 23 2006, 07:25 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><i>fwd.. relevant portions onleee..</i>
<b>Udayan Namboodri's "Bengal's Night without end". </b>
Published by India First Foundation, G-3,
Dhawandeep Building, #6, Jantar-mantar road,
New Delhi - 110 00. Phone: 011-2-334 8442, - 8443.Â
"The book is just out.
.....Udayan names ppl and politicians who have made W Bengal the terrorist state that it is and that makes the critical difference. The ugly face of communism and <b>the details of how they brought abt 'land reforms' is as brutal as the manner in which the soviet union delat with the kulaks</b>. as i said, a must read. the first definitive book abt the <b>secretive state of W Bengal</b>."
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gulag you mean, and not kulak.
and yes, cpim's record is as murderous as it is shadowy. its because they have such a vice like grip on rural bengal (thanks to terror tactics) that they keep winning election after election, desite losing all or most seats in Calcutta.
Discussing Chandraketugarh with Prof. Joachim K. Bautze
(from site mentioned in the original post of this thread)
Prof. Joachim Karl Bautze is the Chief of the Art History Section at the South Asia Institute of the Heidelberg Univeristy. He is a Professor of Indian Art History. From October 2002 he will become a professor at the Wako University, Tsurukawa, Japan. Dr. Bautze is the author of the book Early Indian Terracottas (E.J.Brill, 1995) which, with the help of 48 plates, describes northern Indian terracottas from 2nd Century BC to 1st Century AD. Many of the terracottas discussed in this book are from Chandraketugarh.
I met him during his recent visit to the USA and over a long lunch discussed several aspects of Chandraketugarh and its terracottas. Below, I present a transcript of this discussion, in a Q & A form.
AG: How did you get interested in Chandraketugarh terracottas?
JKB: There are two main reasons behind this. First, my Ph.D. advisor Prof.Dr. Herbert Härtel, former Director of the Museum of Indian Art, Berlin, considered the terracotta as major objects of archaeological interest. Terracotta often pre-dates stone sculptures, and are not necessarily influenced by the so called imperial art (e.g. Maurya, Shunga, Kshatrapa). Besides the Mauryan Ashokan capitals, pillars and rock edicts, what else do we have in stones in India? Terracottas are clues to zeitgeist, they have an immediate result, since it is easy to create them. Stone or bronze sculptures involve complex processes to create. Lower Bengal contains mainly alluvial soil and no major mountains and quarries which can be the source of stone. Thus, terracotta was the only medium until the Gupta period, and in South Asia nobody else mastered it to a better degree of quality than the Bengalees. Chandraketugarh terracottas are some of the most outstanding.
Second, I lived in the lower Bengal (Dankuni, Hooghly) for quite some time and was naturally interested in Chandraketugarh. I personally saw the uses of unbaked terracottas during different festivals and rituals.
AG: Please describe the ancient geography of Chandraketugarh and its association, if any, with the ancient port of Gange (Ptolemy).
JKB: What we know is that Chandraketugarh had international relationship and commerce. To the best of my knowledge, foreign (Roman, and other Mediterranean) coins were found near this site (similar to those found in other coastal port-cities of India such as Chennai).
Geography was much different in the days of Chandraketugarh. What is now 100km inside Bengal was coastal at that time. Alluvial soil pushed the coast southwards.
The wealth of terracotta found at Chandraketugarh attests to a very major production center. You do not find so much terracotta in a region unless people are actually buying or using them. Chandraketugarh was almost a dumping ground of terracotta. Many of the earlier terracotta pieces you find in Mahasthanagarh, now in Bangladesh, and other parts of Bengal are stylistically heavily indebted to Chandraketugarh if not actually produced there. However, those pieces are of inferior aesthetic quality. Chandraketugarh was a center and landmark in those days.
AG: What is known about the religious beliefs of the inhabitants of Chandraketugarh?
JKB: During the last centuries BC and first centuries AD, the entire South Asia used to be a melting pot, with so many things in common between various population centers. Very few iconographies we can clearly distinguish. We have Surya, the sun god and something like proto-Lakshmi.
AG: Ganesha? What about the elephant-headed images from Chandraketugarh?
JKB: We are talking about Mauryan and post-Mmauryan period and Ganesha hasn't appeared yet. We have something like Kubera, then the most important God. No Buddhism yet, positively not until 2nd-3rd century in Bengal. We have endless depictions of one deity of a goddess throwing coins from her right hand to people below busy collecting them. This is the Varada-Lakshmi, proto-Lakshmi. Her gesture is seen in the Lakshmi deity still worshipped in Bengal on the day of Lakshmi-Puja which precedes Kali Puja. Hinduism or Brahmanism developped as a response to Buddhism. There were the Ashokan pillars but they were not strictly "Buddhist". We also had the Naga cultures. Vasudeva (who later on becomes Krishna) and Balarama were worshipped. Vishnu as we know him today wasn't worshipped before the late Kushan or early Gupta period. It's different from the later deities. We didn't obtain inscriptions to decidedly validate these things...
AG:... there are some inscriptions...
JKB: There are even some Kharoshthi inscriptions, which is surprising, because one generally comes across Kharoshthi in the North-West of the subcontinent. Prof. B. N. Mukherjee has read them. We have small amount of other inscriptions such as the Tamralipti copperplate inscription of Govinda Pala, but that is from a much later period (8th century). There is nothing like long Ashokan edicts. So we don't know anything about the chieftains or monarchs of the Chandraketugarh region.
AG: How does Chandraketugarh rank in the quality and quantity of its terracotta in India? How does it compare with Tamluk, Kaushambi and Mathura?
JKB: Chandraketugarh terracottas provide the largest variety of topics. There are also a large number of very high quality pieces such as the one at the Metropolitan Museum (NY) or some shown at the exhibition at the State Archaeological Museum, Behala, Kolkata (Feb, 2001). We also find many carved pieces of bone/ivory (incidentally, these inspired many fakers to execute tortoise-shell carvings -- the shells are often 2000 years old but the carvings are done recently). We have very high quality terracotta from the same period from Bulandi-bagh near Patna, but their number is not very high. Chandraketugarh is almost unsurpassed in the quantity of terracottas. I have seen literally boxes and boxes of terracotta from Chandraketugarh.
Asutosh Musem (Calcutta University, in Kolkata, India) has several thousand pieces of Chandraketugarh terracotta. You can see some of them but can't take any photos, which is a pity. Incidentally, they were the first (and the only, except a small digging in 1998) official excavators of that site. Interestingly, I know a number of students who studied there but even they are not allowed to see the material.
Rating the terracotta in terms of their quality is more difficult because "quality" can be very subjective. Due to my personal links I am biased towards Bengal terracottas. There are also wonderful terracotta pieces from Mathura and Kaushambi, but fewer.
AG: What are the particular characteristics of Chandraketugarh terracottas -- technical, artistic, or material-wise? If you see a piece of terracotta how would you determine if it's from Chandraketugarh?
JKB: It's not so easy to answer this in such a short span. What separates Chandraketugarh terracottas is not some rendering styles, such as the eye having double outline, or nose is done in a particular way. In fact, I cannot easily describe to you these characteristics. But if you work for a period of times with these terracotta objects, you simply "know" where a given object comes from, without rationally knowing why. Because the production is so rich -- there are plaques - hand modeled, half hand-modeled, matrix modeled, mixed processed, softer burns, burned with less Oxygen etc., -- . It's difficult to make a general statement. Also no art offers more exceptions than Indian Art.
If you consider a narrow category such as the hollow terracotta pieces (also called rattles, tricycles and toy carts), I can easily tell the difference if you give me two pieces. But to describe it theoretically is different.
AG: So there aren't any describable difference in terracotta from these centers?
JKB: There is a clear stylistic difference. But first, you need to compare something to some other thing. You have to start your comparison from a fixed point, and if you don't establish this point you can't do any comparison. For terracottas it is not clear what should be this standard fixed point.
AG: How about differences based on the depicted contents?
JKB: Not much, since the content is all Indian. For example consider the story of the Jataka about a monkey crossing the river on the back of a crocodile. Depictions of this story have appeared in several Chandraketugarh and other terracottas in India. But the story is well-known all over India, and from this point, the terracottas can be from any part of India. Some plaques are difficult to determine geographically. But show me two terracotta pieces, and I'll tell you why one is from one place and the other is from a different place.
No general statement is possible to make, because the examples are different. So I will be cautious to say something like "Chandraketugarh terracotta are easily recognizable due to these features...".
AG: In your book you say "A useful frame for a more precise dating is provided by the excavation report on Sonkh near Mathura. The majority of the terracottas reproduced here (by here Bautze means the BOOK) , however, stems from the areas around Kaushambi and Chandraketugarh " - please explain.
JKB: The publisher didn't want to reproduce fragments but complete terracotta. There are reliable stratographical excavation reports e.g., in Sonkh (by my Ph.D. advisor) -- so the periods are datable. Not much was done in Kaushambi and Mathura which are reliable -- I wish there will be more. Nothing much is available. Complete pieces come from private collections, so unauthorized, clandestine and unofficial sources.
Prof. B. N. Mukherjee published a photo in one of his recent Bengali booklets not knowing that the photo was originally published in my book.
AG: Is it possible for an experienced researcher to do a synthetic work on the history, economy, society and culture of Chandraketugarh from the available art materials, inscriptions and the geographical data? I am thinking of a description of the people - their day to day lifestyles, beliefs, food habits etc.
JKB: In absence of more historical material it's hard... what is lacking in any period of Indian art is a newspaper or journalistic reporting such as the inauguration of a king or the visit of a dignitary, and information of this type. All we have are the art objects and a few inscriptions, other than the Stupas and Toranas. Books on social life have been written on some historical sites (such as Sanchi) but these are all based on conjectures, and therefore are not very scientific.
Indians were never great historians. What we know about the Buddhist and the early Buddhist periods are practically exclusively from Chinese descriptions. They supplied all the information. The importance of Nalanda and Bodhgaya are testified through Chinese or Burmese sources and not through genuine Indian sources. So the topic you suggest will be interesting but it will lead to nothing that will convince me.
Why don't we take the art objects as they are? Why do we always try to... it's like you find the skeleton of a dinosaur and trying to reconstruct how it looked like, what it ate, how it mated, how many eggs it hatched etc. It's not the job of an art historian to do that. It is somebody else's job. But that somebody else first needs to undergo training in art history in order to distinguish between all the deities and gods etc. and then...
During excavations we have found glass beads necklaces... gold jewelry, granulated gold -- they tell us that people had very good taste but not much about their social status. The pieces put them in the map of world art. Why do we need to do more? Everybody should be happy with that.
After having lived in the rural lower Bengal villages without the amenities, I would say that life probably didn't differ that much in those rural areas 2000 years ago.
AG:...Is this opinion confirmed by what you notice on the terracottas?
JKB: No, it's more wishful thinking.
AG: For example, women these days are not seen wearing the gigantic headdresses with 10 hairpins routinely seen depicted in Chandraketugarh.
JKB: Japaneese women used to do it until recently. Until the Sunga or Kushana period both men and women used to have huge headgears to maintain a huge quantity of hair. But that doesn't allow us to draw any conclusion.
AG:... Are the plaques then depictions of totally fictional people or the realistic depictions of a certain class of people?
JKB: Can't tell. Look at the prodigious amount of granulated gold in the Tamralipta plaque in Oxford, -- she wasn't the wife of a poor peasant with 1 sq. m of paddy field, but the idealized depiction of a wealthy person. Excavation has brought up many similar objects, but whether they were actually used by the majority or the minority of people, you just can't tell.
For example, if you go by the Ajanta paintings, you would think that dark complexion was the ideal of beauty. Today it is the other way around and people want to have fair complexion rather than dark complexion.
AG: What are the European museums where one can find Chandraketugarh terracottas on display?
JKB:
Musee Guimet, Paris, France
Linden Museum, Stuttgart, Germany
Museum of Indian Art, Berlin, Germany
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK
probably also the Victoria and Albert and the British Museum, London
I know collections even in Japan. Not in museums yet.
Chandraketugarh terracottas were not available 50 or 100 years ago. Even 15 years or so ago, the dealers used to freely give a few terracotta pieces accompanying a stone statue to the purchasing museums. This is how several of the museums obtained those pieces.
AG: I wanted to put pictures of Chandraketugarh teracottas from private collections on this website. I was told by researchers and museums that the private collectors wouldn't want that and they don't want their names to be known because of legal issues.
JKB: Not true. The private collectors would love their collection to be known. Scholars don't want to give access to their "stock" of collectors to other scholars. Perhaps this is a form of professional greed.
AG: You say in your book, "three plaques originate from different moulds which, however, are based on the same upper die" -- how does a upper die differ from a mould?
JKB: The first creation is a real clay figure perhaps sun-dried (they are normally not preserved). This is called the "paternal piece". The paternal piece is covered with a lump of clay to produce what is called the upper die. The upper die isn't ready for production yet and it's not sufficiently detailed. For further ornamenting it and bringing it to a production quality mould, an upper die (there can be several upper dies from the same original clay figure) is chiseled in or incised with a needle or a star-shaped piece of wood. Thus a mould is formed. I have seen several moulds, which can be traced back to the same paternal piece.
AG: What were the Chandraketugarh terracottas used for? Due to the presence of a hole at the top of many of the plaques, people think that they were hung on the wall.
JKB: You can't hang them on the wall because the terracottas are heavy and big, and there isn't enough material between the hole and the boundary to hold the weight of the clay.
There are some description of quotidien uses of certain Mauryan terracotta pieces. I have also observed a few rituals in lower bengal. For example, to build a new house, a "puja" is performed before the building actually starts -- they worship the soil, earth, because they are going to hurt it with the spade. The worshipping involves mud bricks on a row with a purna kalasha (the "vase of plenty", holy pitcher), and a quadrangle, and arati, ... before digging starts. It happens out in the open field and not for the existing house. This indicates a cult closer to the earth.
From excavation in Begram (ancient Kapishi) in Afghanistan -- ivory boxes were found and we have a fairly good idea how certain objects were used in the daily life. Terracotta objects were never hung on the wall. If they were ever hung on the neck, the pieces were very small.
Some fragments (of large terracottas) I have seen - the holes are so near the top that it would have been impossible to hang them.
For Mathura terracotta figurines, the lower part of the backs of the plaques are plain, so the pieces weren't supposed to be completely seen from behind.
This is one of the most fascinating questions -- what did they do with the toy carts?
Even now in houses in Bengal there are small temples with niches, where small images are placed. Perhaps 2000 years ago, some such practice was prevalent.
AG: What were the use of the large number of erotic plaques found from Chandraketugarh?
JKB: Another fascinating question! I couldn't include all the erotic plaques I wanted in my book, because I had to be cautious.
Taking the Chandraketugarh plaques aside, where else in India do you have erotic art? Other than the Chandella dynasty (Khajuraho) and Konarak and related sites which are all some 1000 years after Chandraketugarh -- you have practically no hard-core erotic art. These are unique, because if you didn't have them we would think that the patrons and the builders of Khajuraho and Konarak (9th-12th century) were the inventors of erotic art in India. I don't recall comparable erotic terracotta plaques from Mathura and Kaushambi.
There's one terracotta where one man enjoys sexual intercourse with five women at a time -- it is a very Indian theme -- because we have it 2000 years later in Indian painting e.g. in Kotah. Dr. Devangana Desai in her book on erotic art proposes a number of texts, but the general observer or an artist or a craftsman -- did he care for all the exotic texts -- a craftsman is craftsman and an artist is an artist and he cares but little for texts and prescriptions. When it comes to details...
If you go to a museum in Italy and Greek, you see these ancient vases with erotic depictions. It's not uncommon that the inhabitants of Chandraketugarh used to possess these terracottas. There's a certain typology of intercourse depicted here...and it's certainly very healthy.
Perhaps people were buying these erotic plaques because it was fun. The society was very different those days and we need to consider that as well. But the quantity of terracotta with this theme is prodigious and it wasn't a fluke.
AG: How did the Chinese traveller miss Chandraketugarh but were fully aware of Tamluk?
JKB: There were places the Chinese travellers should have seen but they didn't. For example, they didn't leave any description off the cave paintings of Ajanta, but they visited the nearby Ellora caves. There are also places they described which haven't been identified with certainty.
AG: What about the so-called Chandraketugarh Fakes?
JKB: I will tell you a story -- its about the plate#48 of my book. The photo was sent to me by a museum in Oxford (UK) asking my opinion. The plaque is about a lady ...(see the photo) -- it looked absolutely OK. So I reported that in my opinion it looked right. Then it was tested (thermo-luminescence) and was found that the clay was fired only 20 years ago. I was flabbergasted -- thought it was amazing that they were able to build such fine pieces in modern times. This meant that we could trust items only from old collections -- from 20-30 years ago -- when there wasn't any demand for Chandraketugarh pieces. I titled this piece in the book as a "master fake".
Subsequently a dealer called me from London and said that the piece wasn't fake and that his tests showed that it was found to be original. The investigation revealed that two fragments from two different pieces -- one new and one old -- were confounded in the laboratory.
We have to consider the following scenario: suppose that a bronze piece can be sold for $100K. How much does it cost to convince a person ("expert") in a laboratory that the piece is old? Suppose that the piece costs $5K, you add another $10K to get a seal of approval. The stakes are so high that this will be perfectly all right. I must say that the skills of modern Indian craftsmen are remarkable in making fakes.
I have seen actual fakes on display in museums, although I don't want to mention names. But then again, these are perhaps mixtures of genuine and authentic stuff. If the craftsmen are caught they should not be sent to jail but they should be rewarded, because the pieces are so good (joking).
I think most of the fakes are produced for the American market. They also know the market well. Therefore they avoid the hard-core erotic pieces. Not only Chandraketugarh terracottas are faked but also Kushana sculptures.
AG: In the Asad-Uj-Jaman collection, I have seen some wood-carvings from Chandraketugarh. They are dark black. How did wood survive the 2000 year-long subterranean life?
JKB: They are black because the wood has to be burned to have all the Oxygen out, because Oxygen causes the decay. These pieces are never very large.
With some prominent dealers I have seen some carved wood pieces with brown outlines and with no traces of charcoal. Apparently they went through treatment, but no pre-treatment photos are available -- I don't think they are old.
i doubt the authenticity of the dates claimed in the following website, but here goes still -
The potter's craft - burnt clay dates back to antiquity in Bangladesh, as excavations of pottery in Mainamati, Paharpur or Mohasthangarh in Bogra similarly as Mohenjodaro and Harappa of Pakistan (2500 B.C) show. The artistic work both in the delicate shapes and the fine coloured designs on these articles indicate that they are pieces of excellent craftsmanship. The pottery glazed and unglazed khumba matkas (water pots or clay) or the figurer of various animals and birds and many other excellent exhibits piled high around Shishu Academy, Mirpur Road, Dhaka Railway station or almost in all dist. H. Q. Upa-Zilla or even in the enumerable points and bazars of rural Bangladesh are made locally. According to a legend, the first pot was made to store amrita (the nectar of immortality). Thus the khumbas, or kumars the name also given to the potter's community, were hold in high esteem.
The craftsman in this creative work, whether the potter with his simple articles of unpolished earthenware in natural colours of terracotta, or the more skilled artisan with his glazed ceramics with intricate motifs, has played a vital role in every day life in the sub-continent including Bangladesh. He has been the enduring link between the individual and his household needs. The potter's jars, cooking pots, water pitchers, plates, incense, vases and bowls are all items of daily use. One can see the potter's at work, revolving their wheels beneath the shade of trees, whizzing the clay to turn it into miraculously symmetrical shapes.
The wheel is of the common kind, thick with shoats spokes, and terms on a pivot of hard wood on metal, provided with a large hub that acts as a revolving lable. The potter throws the kneaded clay into the center of the wheel rounding it off, and then spins the wheel. As the whirling gathers momentum, he begins to shape the clay. When it is over he severs the shaped bit flour the rest.
Bangladeshi potter has always laid stress on the basic form and texture of his articles. Harmonious colour blending, the perfect all-over effect of design with shade and tone, mark his unity of purpose.
To stress the historical background of pottery, one is to remember that the production of pottery is one of the most ancient acts. The oldest known body of pottery dates from the Jomon period (from about 10,500 to 400 BC) in Japan; and even the earliest Jomon ceramics exhibited a unique sophistication of technique and design. Excavation in the near East have revealed that primitive fired-clay vessels were made there more than 8,000 years ago. Potters were working in iron by about 5500 BC, and earthenware was probably being produced even earlier on the Iranian high plateau. Chinese potters had developed characteristic techniques by about 5000 BC. In the New world many pre-Columbian American cultures developed highly artistic pottery traditions. Development of Western pottery since the beginning of the renaissance was also very significant from various points of view.
As for the types of wares, pottery comprises true distinctive types of wears. The first type, earthenware, has been made following virtually the same techniques since ancient time; only in the modern era has mass production brought changes in materials and methods. Earthenware is basically composed of clay- often blended clays - and baked hard, the degree of hardness depending of the intensity of the heat. After the inventions of glazing, earthenwareâs were coated with glaze to render them waterproof; sometimes glazed was applied decoratively. It was found that, when fired at great heat, the clay body became nonporous. This second type of pottery, called stoneware, came to he preferred for domestic use. The third type of pottery is a Chinese invention that appeared when feldspathic material in a fusible state was incorporated in a stoneware composition.
The history of Bangladesh pottery art is also very old, as old as the Mohenjodaro and Harappa civilization. Some earthenware was found after the excavation of Mohasthangarh in Bogra (3 hundred BC). In addition to that the Paharpur and Moinamati excavation also brought in light some of the best possible pottery work for which the country can be proud of. However these are mostly terracotta arts and the terracotta's used in the Kantajee temple of Dinajpur are also excellent in its quality and texture. The 'Nilpadma' found in Lalmai of Comilla is unparalled and those are kept in most cases in the site Musings of various locations. The folk arts of these categories are being used in modern design and beautification in most of the tastefully decorated construction in Bangladesh.
Thanking you.
Tofazzal Hossain
from = http://www.colorsofbangladesh.com/heritage3.php
too bad that all these fall in Bangladesh now !!
hey where did the pics with Rommel go??
i had posted 16 picturs in all.
Where is Rommel pic?
Post again.
oh come on !!
you yourself said "wow they were part of rommel force". the very first pic showed Netaji with Rommel.
i can post again, no problems i have all the pics but i think about 3 posts have been deleted. check with other mods. (i undersand about the one without Netaji being removed)
ben_ami
Best way is to post the pics on a blog or some other place and link here. I think that photobucket thing might not be as permanent. Or send me a PM and I can help out with that.
Thanks.
<!--QuoteBegin-ben_ami+Nov 28 2005, 10:17 AM-->QUOTE(ben_ami @ Nov 28 2005, 10:17 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->the "wrong" bit is the last paragraph.
we hate bangladeshis. they are the reason that 2/3 of our land went out of our hands.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
.... and soon they will be the reason for loosing the remaining 1/3 we have (we rally don't have 1/3~for some districts of bengal are as good as gone). commie poll gimmics has reached new heights~azan mikes are placed in the city centers in areas which are predominantly hindu, as I was told from my house.
<!--QuoteBegin-ben_ami+-->QUOTE(ben_ami)<!--QuoteEBegin-->what marxists say should not be taken as the voice of a people. take prakash and brinda karat for example. is that how marathis's think? in a leftist way ??
what you are talking of, happens in another part of india, where they have joint sports events and other crap with a certain millitant religion.
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Ofcourse there is nothing specially wrong with bengal, the entire inidan secular (islamic) politics stinks like a old corpse~only the disease is much advanced in bengal, as can be expected. An average marathi is more like to feel about his country and hindu heritage than a average bengali. I think if nothing drastic happens within a decade, bengal will enter the terminal phase of it's disease and mohammadans will start to extend their grabbing hands. Ofcourse commies will be destroyed~by mohammadans when time comes.
India as whole is in the same course, but bengal as useal is the leader in this case as well <!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo-->
the only way bengal can be pulled out of ultra left is by becomming ultra right. we have proved repeatedly in the past that we can either take things lying down or not at all. waiting for muslims to do a bomb blast or a godhra style incineration of innocents.
anyway good to hear another sane voice from bengal. too bad that Mitra has stopped posting. he could have given us some valid lowdown about this election. i dont see the left being thrown out this time.
as for the azan mike thingie you spoke of, i would request you to immediately shoot off a letter to NDTV, AAj Tak and all news channels (including regional bengali ones) and if possible all news papers as well (again including bengali ones) and ask them to show/print about how the so called secular cpim resorts to all out appeasement and religion specific campain tactics.
bastards is all i can call the commies. damn, india is plagued by all 3 abrahamic diseases (judaism isnt one of them tho).
<!--QuoteBegin-ben_ami+Apr 21 2006, 08:46 PM-->QUOTE(ben_ami @ Apr 21 2006, 08:46 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->the only way bengal can be pulled out of ultra left is by becomming ultra right. we have proved repeatedly in the past that we can either take things lying down or not at all. waiting for muslims to do a bomb blast or a godhra style incineration of innocents.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(My first post in this forum)
The population in Bengal is never going to turn to right. Barring a small minority among us that feel disgusted, I've feeling rest all are comfortable with the commie created stink. Bengalis got butchered once in past and they'll get butchered once again.
And I see the districts of Northern Bengal going away to BD amid lots of bloodshed. Southern districts adjoining Kolkata maybe saved due their economic utility, access to port, sizeable Hindu percentage etc. A second Kashmir in making.
no district will go to bangladesh.
if it was up to the common hindu folk of bengal to take on the BD muslims, then i'd say it would be difficult. But this is a matter of sovreignity, and thats dealt by the indian army. Its a most difficult thing to keep millitants and jihadis out of hilly KAshmir. But not so in bengal which is all plains. I dont think even a square inch will be lost to bangladesh.
But as for the demogrphics changing into a predominantly muslim one - thats a phenomena thats occuring in many many districts in india, even those states whgich dont share a border with a muslim country.
as for the population of bengal - some day the commies will be thrown out - with the rate of development that BB is setting, and the way BJP is zeroing in on WB, maybe in the next elections itself. I think the day commies are out bengal will start moving right of centre again. The true identity of bengal is as a right of centre people. All thats good about bengal from nationalistic literature like Anandamath to a street long list of national leaders were identically far right or at least right of centre. Meanwhile in 30 years of commie crap, not one of the commie/left leaders has gained any currency outside bengal. Thats cos Bengalis lose their identity the moment they cease to be right-ist.
<!--QuoteBegin-sroy+Apr 25 2006, 04:24 PM-->QUOTE(sroy @ Apr 25 2006, 04:24 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-ben_ami+Apr 21 2006, 08:46 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ben_ami @ Apr 21 2006, 08:46 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->the only way bengal can be pulled out of ultra left is by becomming ultra right. we have proved repeatedly in the past that we can either take things lying down or not at all. waiting for muslims to do a bomb blast or a godhra style incineration of innocents.
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(My first post in this forum)
The population in Bengal is never going to turn to right. Barring a small minority among us that feel disgusted, I've feeling rest all are comfortable with the commie created stink. Bengalis got butchered once in past and they'll get butchered once again.
And I see the districts of Northern Bengal going away to BD amid lots of bloodshed. Southern districts adjoining Kolkata maybe saved due their economic utility, access to port, sizeable Hindu percentage etc. A second Kashmir in making.
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My feeling is same too. If we are not doing anything, no point in dreaming about future if bengal. Hindu's have only been loosing~the remaining bengal is soon to join the lost list.
Well if Bengalis don't do anything then they shouldn't expect the rest of India to do something, they keep voting for the same commies again and again and keep importing Muslims, already Bangladesh extends defacto 20 miles into West Bengal, we will be seeing another demand for partition soon, either way Bengalis are destined to live under Muslim Raj because even the Indian army can't push back or ethnic cleanse these millions of illegal infiltrators from Bengal since its hands will be tied by the politicians. The only way to stop it is bring in Hindu settlers from Bangladesh and places like Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Orissa and other states with plenty of Hindus and settle them in these border districts.
we already have a very sizeable north indian population in calcutta as well as bengal in general.
and for all the population of muslims have have crept in, we dont see appeasement POLICIES (like say ysr promising muslims reservations) in WB yet.
as an aside, andhras, tamils etc are NOT real hindus.
hinduism is entirely of north indian manufacture. everything from vedas, to puranas, to ayurveda, to yoga and other shastras to salbha sutras to ramayan and mahabharat to astronomical and mathematical treatises - everything thats hindu was written by north indians (ie. from ved vyas, puru tribe who wrote the rig veda, aryabhatta, bhramagupta, charaka - everyone) and in sanskrit. also we never ever called ourselves hindus, but "arya". hindu is just the iranian word for the arya (north indian) people living on this side of the sindhu river.
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+May 2 2006, 05:55 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ May 2 2006, 05:55 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Well if Bengalis don't do anything then they shouldn't expect the rest of India to do something, they keep voting for the same commies again and again and keep importing Muslims, already Bangladesh extends defacto 20 miles into West Bengal, we will be seeing another demand for partition soon, either way Bengalis are destined to live under Muslim Raj because even the Indian army can't push back or ethnic cleanse these millions of illegal infiltrators from Bengal since its hands will be tied by the politicians. The only way to stop it is bring in Hindu settlers from Bangladesh and places like Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Orissa and other states with plenty of Hindus and settle them in these border districts.
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Uninformed opinion to put it mildly (hmm...had a similar exchange with another gentleman on BRF months ago) <!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->. Let me try to refute few of your points.
1. "Well if Bengalis don't do anything then they shouldn't expect the rest of India to do something"
Agreed. But does the rule apply for Kashmiri Pandits, Assamese as well? Going by your logic I see no reason why the Army should be bled year after year in Kashmir and NE.
2. "they keep voting for the same commies again and again and keep importing Muslims"
Political immaturity of Bengalis apart (atleast they don't vote for dynastic persona or film stars)...were the commies the ones to demarcate (or party to such an agreement) boundary lines in 47? were the commies the ones to stop the Muslim cleansing riots? Does the commie police patrol the border or the commie state govt. decide whether the border should be fenced or not? Does a commie govt. decides whether or not to run train or buses to Dhaka?
3. "either way Bengalis are destined to live under Muslim Raj because even the Indian army can't push back or ethnic cleanse these <b>millions of illegal infiltrators from Bengal since its hands will be tied by the politicians</b>. The only way to stop it is bring in <b>Hindu settlers from Bangladesh and places like Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Orissa and other states with plenty of Hindus and settle them in these border districts</b>."
I guess you meant "infiltrators from Bangladesh" and "Hindu settlers from Bengal" or the wordings deliberate <!--emo& --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> ?
Since you are convinced with Bengalis under Muslim rule idea and affirmitive with the idea that rest of India should not have any business there, why not allow that god forsaken province to secede from the Indian Union (Western powers will be too willing to oblige)? All problems will be solved.
On a different note, it depends a lot whether someone feels that the province in question is a part of India or not. Is it so difficult to impose Presidents rule?
Without prolonging the discussion on political prolictivities of various people, it must suffice that common folks on the street don't vote for ideologies. Had it been the case India would have been a Hindu Rashtra by now.
One final word about infiltration, does someone has the data as what percentage are Hindus? This is important because of what I heard first hand is that Mamata B's infiltration bogey doesn't cut ice with villagers. The reason is anybody entering post 71 is infiltrator and they are Hindus. Muslim infiltration is post 90s phenomenon. The only way to deal is to cut the secularist crap and specifically target Muslim infiltrators.
Leave aside poor Mamata B, even RSS lacks the balls to do it.
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Since it is History thread, few facts... a common misconception is that commies alone are responsible for decline of Bengal.
The decline started with the famine of 42, it wiped out chunks of working class population with any their economic capital. The area was barely recovering when the partition occured.
It should be noted, unlike Punjab, Bengal was an industrial stronghold during Independence. And the partition was like a double edged sword.
The riots caused millions of refugees to flee to the Indian side putting a heavy burden on the economy. But this was not the only thing, a peculiar aspect of the partition was that the jute producing areas fell to the East Pakistan side while Indian side had the factories and the Calcutta port.
Things doesn't stop here, the 71 war brought another wave of refugees. And the icing on the cake, the wonderfull central policy of frieght rationalization of railways (beyond the scope of discussion, but google it if you like) that almost killed the economic viability of Calcutta port.
Commies must take the lions share of blame, but they are not the only one
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->as an aside, andhras, tamils etc are NOT real hindus.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
everybody let us take a deep breath and stop blaming other indics for the ills of india. remember thiis is how the brits stayed in India for 200 years with barelya 100,000 brits all told among 400 million . Bengal has done its share but so have the rest of india and what is this about south indians not being real hindus . and i thought our nationsl calendar was based on that of the satavahana andhra kingdom
lets cut the bickering and get back to weasel bashing
no one was speaking of doing or not doing their shares. my point was totally different. the answers to the following simple questions (i hope we are allowed to call a spade a spade in this forum, where more truth is spoken about india than any other real or virtual entity i know of) will elucidate my point -
1) in which language were the vedas, upanishads and all hindu mantras written?
2) in which language were the ramayan and mahabharat written?
3) in which language were treatises on astronomy, astrology, ayurveda, yoga, salbha sutras etc written?
4) in which part of india were they written??
5) druids, alans, lithwanians, hitties, mittanis, persians, and other vedic peoplle have a similarity in language, literature and religion with whom??
6) who always called themselves arya??
7) the arya in iran - the children of parasu - used to call which people as hindus??
8) just how were austro asiatic peoples described in ramayan and mahabharat?? (answer = vanaras, meaning not monkeys, but any living being that lives in forests)
9) from which script do all indian scripts come from??
10) who exactly are the namboodhris and when did malayalam come into existance as a language seperate from tamil??
11) avestan language and religion are cognate with which language and which religious treatise ??
12) according to the purans, which area was called as aryavarta??
13) finally can we have some examples of tamil luminaries who are NOT brahmin (swamynathan, cv raman, ramanujam, radha krishnan, etc - all i know of ARE brahmins)
see my point?? you could deny all of that, delete my post, even ban me from the forum, but remember the facts are out there. even if i didnt call a spade a spade - its out there for all to see.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Political immaturity of Bengalis apart (atleast they don't vote for dynastic persona or film stars)...were the commies the ones to demarcate (or party to such an agreement) boundary lines in 47? were the commies the ones to stop the Muslim cleansing riots? Does the commie police patrol the border or the commie state govt. decide whether the border should be fenced or not? Does a commie govt. decides whether or not to run train or buses to Dhaka?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No but they sure did brainwash a lot of refugees to not do revenge riots in the refugee camps and they openly admit it.
I meant illegal infiltrators from "Bangladesh" not Bengal.
Next what do you expect the RSS to do, RSS is not a political and if they don't have any support in Bengal what can they do?, especially when commie cadres routinely thrash them and sometimes murder them.
In 2001 West Bengal had 25.2% of Muslims, accounting for xtians (0.6%) Hindus must be around 74.2%.
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+May 3 2006, 05:01 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ May 3 2006, 05:01 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->No but they sure did brainwash a lot of refugees to not do revenge riots in the refugee camps and they openly admit it.
I meant illegal infiltrators from "Bangladesh" not Bengal.
Next what do you expect the RSS to do, RSS is not a political and if they don't have any support in Bengal what can they do?, especially when commie cadres routinely thrash them and sometimes murder them.
In 2001 West Bengal had 25.2% of Muslims, accounting for xtians (0.6%) Hindus must be around 74.2%.
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Could be, but it was the Gandhi's fast unto death blackmail that sealed the case. Is there any good reason why Gandhi did not try any such stunt in Delhi/Amritsar/Lahore?
On RSS part you've got me wrong.
I meant the Mamata B slogan against infiltrators do not amuse many because post 71 till early 90s infiltrators were Hindus.
<b>Muslim infiltration is a post 90s phenomenon</b> If infiltration was the only cause of demographic change then all districts would have shown similar percentage trends. You can compare the data for say North/South 24 paragans (southern region) with Malda/Mushirdabad to get the picture. The districts in North are getting more Muslim numbers.
Back to infiltration part...no sane Hindu will ever support Mamata B if she calls for repatritiation of all infiltration, because bulk of them are Hindus. Mamata B cannot go selective.
So is the case for RSS. Can RSS/BJP raise the slogan to send back only the Muslim Bnagaldeshis while retaining the Hindu Bangladeshis?
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