In the Mahabharata, there is reference to the king of Bengal (Vangarája) who participated in the Battle of Kuruskhetra, siding with the Kurus. In high school history I read that the region was part of Ashoka’s realm, and that the Mauryan Empire of the third century included Bengal. Then it was part of the Gupta Empire. The region became an independent state by the seventh century with the ascendancy of King Shashanka of Gaur. Then followed several dynasties: the Palas who were Buddhists, the Mallas, and the Senas.
As within Europe, there used to be invasions and conquests by kingdoms in the Indian subcontinent also. Just as the Huns and the Saracens suddenly attacked European kingdoms from elsewhere, India too was invaded by bands of ruthless conquerors from beyond. As Attila the Hun defeated Siegfried the Frank and Gunnar of Burgandy, Khijli the Turk ransacked Nabadweep and vanquished King Laxmana Sena of Bengal. This was the beginning of a series of invasions which brought Bengal step by step and more and more under Muslim rule, until (as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee reminded us in Ananda Math) the people of Bengal, like the rest of India, were salvaged from Islamic potentates by British occupation. It is hard to argue that it would have been better for the people of Bengal to have continued under Siraj-ud-dawla and his heirs rather than to have been taken over by the British for an unfortunate historical interlude, only to be redeemed from Mogul rule and transformed into a modern enlightened nation. The unenviable alternatives—at least for Hindu Bengalis as for much of Hindu India—was between the devil (of Mogul domination) and the deep blue sea (of British colonialism). To use another metaphor, coming under the British was like jumping from the fire into the frying pan. From the pan there was a possibility of eventual escape.
Among the ironies in India’s history, what is called the Country of Bengal (Bangladesh) today is not in India. As if to rub this in, that country is an Islamic nation. It is as if Tamil Nadu (the word-equivalent of Bangla-Desh) were a separate Muslim nation. It is small consolation that similar things have happened elsewhere also: from Albania and Turkey to Indonesia and Malaysia where other religious traditions have been supplanted from the original. There is no telling what twists and turns the course of history will take in the future.
I must say in fairness that this is only my (Hindu-colored) view. Syed Asraf Ali, a Muslim scholar in Bangladesh and great lover of Bangla language, has a very different perspective on this. He wrote: “After the Pals, came the Sens who ruled over Bengal for nearly one hundred years. To them also Bangla was the language of the untouchables. It was the conquest of Bengal by the Muslims in 1201 AD that ushered in a new era for Bangla, providing it a congenial environment and proper facilities to thrive into a major language. When the Muslims first conquered Bengal there was hardly any Bengali Literature worth the name. Nor was the language cultivated by the educated class”
In any event, the Tamil world recalls with pride its ancient literature, spirituality, and philosophy. The weight of Bengal’s cultural richness emerged in more recent centuries. No Agastiyar brought Bangla to the people. The lyricist Joydeb (Jayadeva), reckoned as the first poet of the Bengali people, belonged to the twelfth century. He is said to have graced the court of Laxmanasena, a victim of Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji’s plundering intrusion. Then followed a few more poets in the medieval period. However, the wave of Bengali literature began to swell by leaps and bounds from the nineteenth century on, after contact with European thought and literature.
The nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth were Bengal’s glory period in heroes, secular and religious, political and scientific. During this time Bengal was extraordinarily productive in writers, poets, philosophers, spiritual leaders, scientists, and more. Other regions too had their share of these. But more of them from Bengal gained pan-Indian and worldwide recognition than from other parts of India.
Spurts of Thought 