Anyone being raised in Kolkata would be familiar with the rhetoric about Durgapuja bringing the greatest festivity among the ‘Bengali’ clan. Now here it is important to note that Bengali is a ‘construct’ and like any construct it is somewhat of a fabrication, as it desires to represent a whole milieu through a single face. To understand a construct is to understand the face lying beneath its announced universalism. For example, when Americanism is described as the rugged individualism, it is crucial to note that the individual in question is neither a woman nor a person of colour, rather it is a persona. A persona most represented and celebrated through actors like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, a remorseless white man, willing to go any length for survival, always in odds with his surroundings, ready to draw his gun against enemies confronting him over the background of a ruthless arid small town. The western genre somehow makes the entire American story glorified and palatable. Instead of the history of the nation built upon mass genocide of native inhabitants and slave labours, when the newly arrived ‘individual’ is represented as a man with no history and ancestry, just trying to survive the odds, the story becomes canonised.

Is Uttam Kumara similar persona in Bengalihood as Calcuttans projected for themselves? The answer is yes. The Bengaliness that is quintessentially defined by Calcuttans is defined implicitly or explicitly as Hindu upper-caste. Sometimes in the films he might have to struggle through economic battles, but that makes him more relatable to a city laden with upper-caste refugees feeling disenfranchised. True, there are instances when he endeavoured to undo himself; true, he played characters not resembling his well-maintained image (Banpalasheerpadabali comes to mind), but as exceptions often reinforces the rule, his departure from the norm defined his home.

Noticeably, a white dhoti-clad or suited up suave Bengali ‘bhadralok’ speaking a clear Calcuttan accent had not just carried the mantle for city of joy, but ended up representing even the hinterlands of the entire province. The cultural hegemony, often perpetrated by the centre takes no time to percolate into the margins and that is what happened throughout the province of West Bengal. The Hindu Bengaliness has been defined as the norm and Durga puja ended up becoming the biggest festival in spite of its colonial past, in spite of the fact that the festival became most famous during the initial years of British colonial period when the local Hindu landlords decided to take the occasion of Durga puja to show their strength as well as their servitude to British Raj.

While the recent Eidul-Fitr again raised the question which one is the biggest Bengali festival, there is no denying that at least in the numbers game of world-wide Bengali population Muslims outnumber Hindu and hence perhaps make Eid a larger festival. A nation might try to define itself beyond its religious division, a nation might try to forge a unifying voice (through a secular festival like Poila Bioshakh) and identity that transcends the geographical barrier as well as the historical and religious one; but in order to do that what is required is to admit the division exists on the first place, that a rift between two Bengals are wide and agape! One cannot confront the demon one does not see exist. That is perhaps the lesson we have to learn here and now from the susurrus of history. (IPA Service)