When singing Tagore is made out to be treason
Forcing the Bengali to sever links with an oeuvre of more than 2,500 songs, or even one particular song is tantamount to snatching its cultural right
Over the past few years, the Bengali-speaking community has been subject to conscious “othering” and the harsh hand of the State in Assam, be it the D-voters issue, or National Register of Citizens exclusions or the labelling of anyone and everyone speaking Bengali as Bangladeshi. The latest such instance is the row over singing Rabindra Sangeet, songs written and set to music by Rabindranath Tagore. In joy and grief, hope and despair, love and hate, Bengalis, including those living in Assam’s Barak Valley, find emotional resonance in Tagore’s songs. Forcing the Bengali to sever links with an oeuvre of more than 2,500 songs, or even one particular song is tantamount to snatching its cultural right.
On October 27, an octogenarian Bengali Congress leader hummed two lines from Tagore’s “Amaar sonar Bangla, aami tomay bhalobasi” (My golden Bengal, thee I love) at a party meeting in Karimganj of Barak Valley in south Assam. This innocuous act in a close-door meeting quickly assumed a political dimension. The reason cited was that the song was adopted by Bangladesh as its national anthem. So, the BJP’s Karimganj unit claimed singing even a line from the song amounts to treason against the Indian State. A local unit’s reaction was amplified by chief minister (CM) Himanta Biswa Sarma.
First, a bit of history. Tagore composed the song in 1905, at a crucial juncture of the freedom struggle. Lord Curzon had decreed division of Bengal into East and West along communal lines to weaken Hindu-Muslim unity in British colonial interest. Curzon’s malicious act sparked off a huge protest across Bengal, which Tagore also joined. This was the first and the last time that Tagore directly participated in a public upsurge that was political in character. He composed the song to send out a clear message of brotherhood and camaraderie to both the Hindu and Muslim Bengalis.
There is no credible evidence to suggest the exact date on which the song was composed, but there exists scholarly reference to the date and location of the maiden rendering of the song. According to noted Tagore biographer Prasanta Kumar Paul, “Amaar sonar Bangla” was sung first on August 25, 1905, in the Town Hall of Kolkata where Tagore himself was reported to be present. Interestingly, this song was classified under the Swadesh category in the Tagore oeuvre, implying embedded patriotism.
The song is arranged in five stanzas, each of which has five lines. The people and the government of Bangladesh picked the first two stanzas as their national anthem — officially decreed so on January 13, 1972. The same year, iconic Rabindra Sangeet exponent Suchitra Mitra recorded the song with HMV. This rendition, cleared by the Music Board of the Viswa Bharati, is still available on YouTube. Tagore left this world in 1941 without even an inkling of an India divided at Independence, much less of a Bangladesh born just under a quarter-century after.
Now to the politics of the issue. Within the 48 hours of the video of the Congress meeting surfacing, a BJP sympathiser lodged a two-page complaint with the local police station, demanding registration of offences under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita against the “perpetrators”. As per local media reports, the Karimganj district police is yet to proceed even as the CM said he had “instructed the State DGP to take stern action against the accused members and leaders of the Congress”. One of the sections of the BNS the complainant wants invoked is Section 152 which is activated for endangering “the sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India, such as inciting secession, armed rebellion, or subversive activities”.
Meanwhile, a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi reciting “Amaar sonar Bangla” at a public rally in West Bengal during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections has gone viral, putting Sarma and the others in a spot. Consider also that India has granted political asylum to Sheikh Hasina, the deposed Bangladesh PM; “Amaar sonar Bangla” was chosen as the national anthem of Bangladesh with the full approval and express interest of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of both Bangladesh and Hasina. A political oxymoron then, to grant asylum to Hasina while holding the singing of Rabindra Sangeet that much later became her country’s anthem as treason against India.
Joydeep Biswas is head of economics at Cachar College, Silchar, under Assam (Central) University. The views expressed are personal
