Bengal against the tide

In his long career as an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, Nitish Sengupta held several important positions in the central government. One of them was the now-defunct office of the Controller of Capital Issues. His stint as a powerful officer deciding at what price companies could issue their new shares coincided with the rise of equity cult in India as also of the then Dhirubhai Ambani-led Reliance group.

Later, he became revenue secretary, a post he had to leave after the V P Singh government came to power at the Centre. He made a comeback during the P V Narasimha Rao government and became member-secretary in the Planning Commission during the early days of economic reforms.

Some years later, he joined the Trinamool Congress, but after Manmohan Singh became prime minister jumped ship to accept the government’s offer to chair the Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises. In retrospect, this may well have been an ill-advised move; who knows, if Sengupta had agreed to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections on a Trinamool Congress ticket without bothering about the niceties of informing Manmohan Singh about his plan, he could well have been a minister in the Union government today.

Given his vast experience in governance, Sengupta had predictably churned out his memoirs as a civil servant and later produced a book on economic liberalisation. His autobiographical account of his days as an IAS officer was largely factual. Sengupta is not a great storyteller. That book, therefore, remained only a reference point for economic historians to ascertain how the government functioned during the infamous licence-permit raj and how reforms changed the economic policy environment.

If Sengupta had stuck to writing about business, economy and management (in which he obtained a PhD from Delhi University), he would have probably faded away like many of his civil servant colleagues. The fact that he has not is because he chose to return to his first love — history.

Sengupta took a Master’s degree in history from Presidency College, Calcutta and had a short teaching stint before joining the government. His biography of Bidhan Chandra Roy remains the most authentic and balanced account of West Bengal’s second chief minister with a stint of 14 years — a record tenure that only the formidable Jyoti Basu later eclipsed by a long margin. His book on the partition of Bengal was further proof that Sengupta was on home ground as a historian — particularly when the subject matter pertained to Bengal.

In that book, Sengupta had raised an interesting question: why did the people of Bengal who had fought tooth and nail against its partition in 1905, which forced its revocation in 1911, agree rather meekly to an almost similar partition less than four decades later in 1947? His analysis in response to that pivotal question made Bengal Divided a fascinating read. He argued that Mahatma Gandhi’s repudiation of the Bengal Pact, proposing adequate representation for Muslims in legislative bodies led to the rise of Muslim League and indeed hardened the stance of Hindu Bengalis, resulting in the acceptance of a partition that was anathema in 1905.

This book draws its inspiration from Bengal Divided and expands the scope considerably. Instead of focusing on the causes of Bengal’s partition, it traces the cultural, linguistic and of course the political history of the Bengalis over the past several centuries. This is a unique attempt and Sengupta’s contribution in this field is unquestionably notable.

The title, Land of Two Rivers, is a masterstroke. It provides a compelling geographical rationale of why and how the region with two large rivers, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, bound together people belonging to different religions – with Muslims enjoying a majority – under a single linguistic identity. Yet, the book does not fail to note the irony of East Pakistan’s disintegration and eventual emergence as a new country because Pakistan’s rulers refused to preserve its cultural and linguistic identity.

Sengupta has been meticulous in his narration of the many conquests and defeats of rulers in Bengal during the pre-British era. Equally riveting is his account of Siraj-ud-Daula’s meteoric rise and precipitous fall, thanks largely to his treacherous lieutenants who let his vastly superior armed forces succumb to the tactics of Robert Clive, who was then the commander of East India Company’s land forces.

The book’s shortcoming is its treatment of the Bengal Renaissance. Sengupta touches upon a few of the stalwarts of the Bengal Renaissance, but their role and influence on the rise of Bengal fail to get due recognition.

In sharp contrast, Sengupta does full justice to the role of Bengal’s political leaders in the national struggle for independence. He does not allow any false sentiments to overpower him while he narrates how Bengal’s leaders like Subhash Chandra Bose and Chitta Ranjan Das had strained relations with Gandhi. For a change, Sengupta does not even romanticise Bose and presents him with all his flaws and foibles.

The political message of the book is unmistakable. Politically, Bengal’s leaders always had a difficult time gaining acceptance at the national level and building a vibrant relationship with the national leadership. What was true before Independence is true even now. That unstated message from Sengupta’s book is its biggest takeaway.

LAND OF TWO RIVERS
A History of Bengal from the Mahabharata to Mujib
Nitish Sengupta
Penguin Books
640+XVI pages; Rs 650