OPINION: A question of assimilation


It cannot be gainsaid that the role of the Bengalis has much to answer for as far as the persistent demand for separation from West Bengal being raised in the hilly terrain is concerned. But perhaps it cannot explain the whole separatism syndrome reigning in the hills, writes Romit Bagchi

INDIA boasts of a hoary legacy of assimilation. History bears witness to the fact that innumerable ethnic communities and tribes came from all corners of the world, settled and were integrated into the national mainstream in course of time. No one was rejected and the flexibility of what was known as “Varna Dharma”, which later degenerated into the rigid caste system, is supposed to have played a crucial role in the process of assimilation.

And this has been possible because of the spiritual ethos embedded deep in the body of India’s thinking. Since time immemorial, this country has been preaching the unity of humankind in spirit — the spiritual essence being the deepest core of all that exists. Diversity on the surface, whatever its kind, is nothing but a veneer for the essential unity in the One, which only exists. The Varna system, which was, in its original form, an immensely flexible instrument, helped all to get not just a place but a rightful position in the socio-political hierarchy according to the collective propensity of each community and tribe.

And this assimilation is no insignificant achievement, keeping in view the tumultuous upheavals that the incursions often brought about in their wake in India’s socio-political landscape. Now it is said, and probably with some truth, that the spirit of assimilation keeps waning and India as a whole has slipped into a rut of bigotry. The wide expanse of the mental horizon, once deemed to be the quintessence of Indian originality, no longer holds its pre-eminence in the country’s general mode of reflection.

This charge has been levelled particularly against Bengalis in regard to the non- assimilation of the Gorkha community based in the Darjeeling hills into the socio-cultural mainstream. The typical Bengali snobbery is being put down as the principal impediment to the natural process of assimilation.

It is said that the Bengalis, being the ruling race, have not taken sufficient pains to bridge the gaping chasm between themselves and their under-developed Gorkha brethren. Separatism in the mental landscape of the marginalised community would not have taken such an inveterate turn had the Bengalis displayed even a modicum of tolerance and warmth, it is believed.

It cannot be gainsaid that the role of the Bengalis has much to answer for as far as the persistent demand for separation from West Bengal being raised in the hilly terrain is concerned. But perhaps it cannot explain the whole separatism syndrome reigning in the hills.

English authors W Brook Northey and CJ Morris, in their famous book, The Gurkhas, while dwelling on the incompatibility of Gorkhas in general to the typical Indian temperament, said, “The Gurkha differs from the people of India as much in appearance as he does in character. His Mongolian origin is responsible for a vein of humour and bonhomie that is not found in the more solemn and austere races of Aryan descent. Coming from a strange country, which though bordering on India, is so far removed from it in matters of language, customs and even thought that the young Gurkha, naturally, feels himself to be a stranger in a strange land when first he sets foot in India. His ignorance of the language, which, though naturally lessening in course of time, serves to accentuate his awkwardness and seeming inability to understand what is required of him, occasionally gives people who are unfamiliar with him and his ways the impression that he is inclined to be somewhat surly and aloof. Many years’ service even often seems to fail to create any desire in the Gurkha to interest himself in people, European or otherwise, with whom he is not directly concerned, or who are unable to speak or understand his language. Once his confidence is gained, however, he reveals, little by little, his true character and proves himself a staunch and faithful friend.”

This peculiar characteristic that caught the discerning eyes of the European researchers seems to hold still, though the development of mind and its resultant individualism in the community, whether in Nepal or in other parts where they are concentrated, seems to transform their attitudinal perceptions on life as a whole.

It should be remembered that Nepal happened to be a land-locked country, apparently shut off from the world for a long time in its history. It is said that there was a time when the people chanced to get acquainted with the world beyond their own land only through the yarns spun by those members of the government who trudged once every five years to Peking to offer tribute to the Chinese government as per the terms of a treaty completed between China and Nepal in 1793.

This apart, the farthest point in other directions which the affluent and hardy in the community reached was Benares, the most eminent among the places of pilgrimage for the Hindus across the region.

The situation somehow changed with the ascendancy of Jung Bahadur Rana, doubtless the most remarkable ruler in the political arena of the nation, in 1845. Overruling the long held prejudices against the outside world, he voyaged to England in 1850. This was indeed an epoch-making event, which later played a momentous role in bringing Nepal nearer to British India. Another descendent to the line, Sir Chandra Shamsher Bahadur Rana, a remarkable ruler again, by all accounts, carried things further, bringing about sweeping reforms in a nation that had remained veiled into an age-old gloom of ignorance and prejudice regarding the march of civilisation in several parts of the world. He too visited England and strove thereafter to remodel the socio-political structure of his country on the lines of the occidental ethos.

This being the situation, it is natural that the process of the development of mind and its resultant individualism has taken a long time in assuming concrete shape among a people completely shut out, as they were for a considerably long time, from the momentum of subjective transformation in consequence of the advent of occidental civilisation.

It might be said again that the political uncertainty haunting the Himalayan nation for some time, resulting in the ouster of the century-long system of monarchial despotism and the consequent experiments with myriad political views, signals the advent of the age of reason and individualism with its concomitant challenge to all those canons associated with the era of the symbolic conventions which held Nepal enthralled for ages.

And reverting back to the Gorkhaland tangle, one might say that the homeland movement in the Darjeeling hills has a far deeper connotation that gets swamped in the shrill cry for identity and development. Perhaps the deeper yearning is for assimilation in the Indian mainstream through collective assertiveness. The “homeland” cry might be a manifestation of the subjective urge among a growing number of individuals to step out of the rut of separatism and to carve a role for themselves in the national domain.

Nepalese settlers in India have been assimilated on the physical plane as far as possible in the course of time. But they are aware that they are far from being integrated mentally in the country they have accepted as their native land. And the Gorkhaland movement, when shorn of its xenophobic baggage, manifested in self-determined stridency, might reveal a deeper poignancy associated with the subjective craving for a rightful place in the national discourse.

( source:The Statesman)