04-07-2013, 06:35 AM
brihaspati in Bharat-rakshak
What Bengalis should do is a different question altogether. My line has always been that they must, they should, think "nationally" rather than as Bengalis. Thy must grow connections, marital, biz, ideologcial - with the rest of India - bypassing the Delhi coteries and networks. They should become Indians first - without shining their armours of superior "culture", Rabindranath Thakur, "secularism", yadda yadda. There is a lot that the Bengali persona has to shed to come closer to the Indian heartland, the more "quaintly and orthodoxly religious" heartland of India. It is as a pan-Indian force -and not just peacocking the Bengali cultural panorama, that the Bengalis can ever hope to solve the contradiction they are in.
They may not like the "hanuman" puja, or other such stuff, or the absence of interest in Kafka or Derrida or Marx or Bunuel. But that India has to be sunk down to or climbed down to become part of the force that can overwhelm its enemies.
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He is a bengali, but his prescription is similar to mine of give up bengali Hindu culture and declare yourself Oriya
What Bengalis should do is a different question altogether. My line has always been that they must, they should, think "nationally" rather than as Bengalis. Thy must grow connections, marital, biz, ideologcial - with the rest of India - bypassing the Delhi coteries and networks. They should become Indians first - without shining their armours of superior "culture", Rabindranath Thakur, "secularism", yadda yadda. There is a lot that the Bengali persona has to shed to come closer to the Indian heartland, the more "quaintly and orthodoxly religious" heartland of India. It is as a pan-Indian force -and not just peacocking the Bengali cultural panorama, that the Bengalis can ever hope to solve the contradiction they are in.
They may not like the "hanuman" puja, or other such stuff, or the absence of interest in Kafka or Derrida or Marx or Bunuel. But that India has to be sunk down to or climbed down to become part of the force that can overwhelm its enemies.
--
He is a bengali, but his prescription is similar to mine of give up bengali Hindu culture and declare yourself Oriya