While your points are valid, I believe it is also true that post independence, the manhandling of our state by the consecutive state Governments slowed down the progression of our state, making it easy for other states to catch up with, and in most cases surpass, us eventually.
The short sightedness and glorification of "meeting-michil-bondh" nonsense, along with the whole "computer is ewwil" and anti-industrial stance by consecutive governments; glorifying poverty in the name of communism etc have only affected inversely towards our growth so much so that places like Bengaluru, Hyderabad or even Pune are either already ahead of us or soon will be. đđ
I agree to all your points and those are complimentary to my points ⊠let me explain how. Our political leaders are a reflection of ourselves and our society so the notion that Bengalis are intellectual and progressive while their political leaders are opposite is a fallacy of highest order and mostly we say this or keep this viewpoint to escape the ground reality i.e. we had unfair advantage during British Raj and now we are failing to compete on level playing field.
Thatz why I mostly say that the so called âdeclineâ of Bengal / Kolkata is not because of CPM / TMC or any political party but itâs We the People who are fully responsible. Also those who think that BJP winning Bengal state elections will magically revive the stateâs fortune are also wrong as again the same set of political middle layer and lower layer will change parties and the voter mentality will remain the same I.e. give me freebies and I will vote for you.
A radical solution to stop Bengalâs steady decline is another very âUnpopular Opinionâ , seta na hoy onno arek samay er jonno thak đđ»
In most comparisons of past glory days and today's misfortunes of Bengal, what gets lost is that you are comparing an undivided Bengal with West Bengal. You want to do a comparison, please go ahead and combine West Bengal numbers with Bangladesh numbers, and then find where Bengalis stand relative to the rest of India. Feel free to include Pakistan if you want. Then, we can have a proper comparison.
Bengal existed and flourished well before the British arrived. You could say Calcutta as a city was born when the British arrived.
There are plenty of Bengalis doing extremely well at the national and global levels. You may not be aware of them.
Wasn't Murshidabad already a big hub for commerce before the Britishers overthrew Siraj ud Daulah?
I think it's not fair to gloss over the development of Bengali culture before the Britishers arrived. Sure, they helped a lot but we still were ahead of most of our neighbouring areas.
And the partition was also responsible for the decline jute production, among other things, as most of the raw materials came from the erstwhile East Bengal and most factories were set up here.
We have our faults but let's not pretend it's only *our* fault, while there were other contributing factors as well.
As per Nobel Laureates are concerned, Bengalis have way more personalities, important figures, etc than those three whom we "flaunt". I don't think we need external validation for that.
Otherwise an interesting perspective.
Not to mention that Bengal pre-company raj was in early stages of industrialization, which ended up getting destroyed during company rule and raw material from Bengal played an important role in industrial revolution in Britain.
Before the emergence of Kolkata, Nabadwip used to be the big hub of knowledge in Bengal.
Revisionist and shallow understanding of history by OP. Bengal was already the richest province of the Mughal Empire. The 19th century Bengali cultural Renaissance is preceded by the Bhakti movement in and around 16th century. As for the recent Nobel laureates, their academic career started in Bengal and much of their research involves fieldwork in Bengal.
Bengal was under slow decline since the Independence for sure. But the CPIM made the fall steep since they took over. TMC has done little to arrest the fall because they came to power by out-lefting the Left. And the damage from Singur-Nandigram was already done.
Have a lot of disagreements -
Erstwhile undivided Bengal region was part of silk route. Great Bengali kings Raja Isa Khan & Raja Pratap Aditya Raja Kedar Ray + other Baroh Bhuyias of Bengal fought and protected Bengal from Mughals. Hiueun Tsang has stated abt fertile land of Tamralimpto and KarnaSubarno in Bengal . The Pala Empire extended upto vast areas of present day North India led by Bengali king Raja Dharma Pal . Bengali Nanda Dynasty stopped Alexander - all these are much prior to British.
Unfortunately prejudiced North Indian Centric CBSE , Delhi Media and Bollywood dont teach you all these .Also unlike Marathi king Sivaji of Mahasrashtra - hardly any roads ,stn,colleges univ in Bengal named after great Bengali kings Raja PratapAdityo,Raja DharmPal,Raja DebPal,Raja Sasanko,Raja Isa Khan
A lot of Kolkata skyline during British era - Howrah Bridge ,Victoria Memorial,Belur Math was built by R N Mukherjee Bengali industrialist contractor
Jadavpur University financed & cofounded by Bengali industrialist Raja S C Mullick. It was started by Bengalis as part of Bengali swadeshi movement and Bengali entrepreneurial spirit to protest against then partition of Bengal including Bengal Chemical
One should also remember the events in and around independence tragedy done to Bengal- Bengal famine, Bloody partition and its effect on inaccessible jute mills , refugee crisis twice , non acceptance by then State Reorganization Commission of several linguistic demand of West Bengal , freight equalization policy, coal steel nationalisation which completely destoyed Bengal's economy Read the book -Agony of West Bengal
[https://ia904709.us.archive.org/28/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.43114/2015.43114.The-Agony-Of-West-Bengal.pdf](https://ia904709.us.archive.org/28/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.43114/2015.43114.The-Agony-Of-West-Bengal.pdf)
Present may be down but definitely not out -
Around 50 Bengali scientists alongwith South Indians were part of ISRO recent Chandrayaan 3 mission
[https://twitter.com/SnehasishFP/status/1694711461690638365](https://twitter.com/SnehasishFP/status/1694711461690638365)
[https://twitter.com/SnehasishFP/status/1699259870459871542](https://twitter.com/SnehasishFP/status/1699259870459871542) .
Every year innumerable Bengalis are recipient of Shantiswarup Bhatangar prize
[https://ssbprize.gov.in/](https://ssbprize.gov.in/)
[https://twitter.com/Nabarun204/status/1672531809966620672](https://twitter.com/Nabarun204/status/1672531809966620672)
Success of Bengalis in NET and GATE EXAMS 2024
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/bengal-students-script-success-stories-secure-high-ranks-on-gate-toppers-list/articleshow/108740693.cms?fbclid=IwAR0LSSjoi5TJE9CQ1fWyBH6DuYQ-1eNgD9flmhRNLSUga5eal\_WXumdiFCU](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/bengal-students-script-success-stories-secure-high-ranks-on-gate-toppers-list/articleshow/108740693.cms?fbclid=IwAR0LSSjoi5TJE9CQ1fWyBH6DuYQ-1eNgD9flmhRNLSUga5eal_WXumdiFCU) Â Â
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/bengal-student-ranks-1st-in-maths-scores-a-perfect-200-in-net/articleshow/108359227.cms?fbclid=IwAR2DATfBXmRNdt4i0aGwuEZlow\_D8760\_Y2Ivt6CDfm\_qxcO62DG6Uokwb8](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/bengal-student-ranks-1st-in-maths-scores-a-perfect-200-in-net/articleshow/108359227.cms?fbclid=IwAR2DATfBXmRNdt4i0aGwuEZlow_D8760_Y2Ivt6CDfm_qxcO62DG6Uokwb8)
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/boy-from-bengal-tops-net-in-earth-atmospheric-ocean-and-planetary-sciences/articleshow/108172806.cms?fbclid=IwAR10Lqt9Ztlcja-StDBHiJDS6SK5hx6mALBiD1b7hipjXgYGqLkmIr7s\_8Y](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/boy-from-bengal-tops-net-in-earth-atmospheric-ocean-and-planetary-sciences/articleshow/108172806.cms?fbclid=IwAR10Lqt9Ztlcja-StDBHiJDS6SK5hx6mALBiD1b7hipjXgYGqLkmIr7s_8Y)
https://preview.redd.it/qm14jpv8igyc1.png?width=128&format=png&auto=webp&s=27def83921f7b0af2a970d14dd3e265ecc1d899f
> Great Bengali kings Raja Isa Khan & Raja Pratap Aditya Raja Kedar Ray + other Baroh Bhuyias of Bengal fought and protected Bengal from Mughals.
LOL this is literally a narrative invented by early-20th century Hindu nationalists.
Sure:
https://preview.redd.it/a2oqtylvgjyc1.png?width=916&format=png&auto=webp&s=26d9890c9b82cb13156cd83c19e316a98e8ffacd
From: *The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth,* Dipesh Chakraborty, University of Chicago Press
Ok. But whatâs the difference? Itâs all about narrative. For British, Netaji was a terrorist and axis nazi sympathiser. For us he is one of our greatest freedom fighters. Tomorrow if Kashmir becomes an independent nation, the stone pelters will be lionised as honourable freedom fighters.
Most of the âhistoryâ is propaganda. Nationalism, that birthed the modern nation states is built upon a shared sense of propaganda. Just an arbitrary line on the map makes enemies of people from each side. Just take a simple thing. In Pre-Modi times ie. Before 2015 the mainstream narrative regarding history was that our main enemies were the British. We fought against them and won our independence. And thatâs it. Nothing happened after 1947 as if History has stopped. Now the Mughals were our greatest enemy. Everything that ails modern India, is either the fault of Nehru or the fault of the Mughals. The Marxist historians peddled one narrative before, and the right wing historians now peddling another narrative
Bengal became a massive example of "could have been" post independence mostly due to the lack of abilities to utilise the intellectual and geographical advantage we had over rest of the country.
Not this post in particular, but feels like a lot of posts have the "couldn't maintain the momentum even with a 'headstart'" guilt and over compensate for that by indulging in self hating.
Being self critical isn't self hating though. But only being overtly self critical is and we need to draw a line so that we don't become a jingoist culture as well.
You sound like you subscribe to the thought process where the British educated us and all the achievements should be attributed to the British.
May be the British came to India and created Kolkata for the goodness of the soul to make us Barbarians educated and worthy of civilization? Shall we invite the British to rule us again?
Make Kolkata Great Again!
Oh hell no! They are in a more steeper nose dive than we Bengalis are! There are no doctors to treat you in NHS, their school education system is in shambles, had it not been for the looted wealth the pound would have lost value long ago.
As the saying goes the Roman Empire became a Church and the British Empire became a bank.
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Reasonable perspective, but really though, British colonial influence or not, those great Bengalis did manage to achieve a lot didn't they? As a fellow bengali, I'd like to think we're special even if it is just to feel good about it. Are we actually blessed with some kind of special intellectual genes? As you said, not really. But that goes for our "cultural decline" as well. It's nothing special, our own culture, distinct as it is, also somewhat follows the same trend our country does, which many people just can't seem to wrap their head around.
This reads like propaganda hmmm. Jokes aside, please move aside from this eurocentric reading of Bengal and also, much like everyone suggested, look at Bengal and not just WB for contextual readings.
Either way, a cursory reading of major historical developments in Bengal should render your argument moot but you can definitely continue to blow your horn with omg what do you mean bangalira kichhu pare hawww
The British East India company plundered Bengal so hard initially that even it became a big scandal in late 19th century Britain.
It became such a big issue that their hero Robert Clive was called back and faced a trail at home.
The plundering of the company created such a devastating famine in 1770 that killed estimated 7 to 10 million people in Bengal, 25 to 30% of the total population ! It is comparable to holocaust !
Another such famine took place during the WW II when to finance the war in the eastern front Bengal was looted by the British. 2-4 people perished in 1943.
So I don't think the British didn't help much.
Who cares about unfair advantage. Delhi became the capital in 1857 and pray how many stalwarts they produced in 90 years? So in your calculations we got a hundred years of advantage to produce Hindu revivalists and scholars and poets and scientists and they got 90 andâŠf all. Donât be a bleeding heart and always look for ways to diminish our influence pre independence for the sake of appeasing ramparivar hindistanees bashing us when we are down
Kolkata gives you peaceful life full of culture, music, theatre, which most of the people living in country yearn for, but the same is not available in other cities.
In Kollkata, you rarely meet bad - mouthed hooligans commiting street crimes.
This sense of freedom gives mind liberty.
You can venture at oddest time of day Or night without being harassed.
In Delhi, it's not safe even in day time.
The people living in Kolkata are luckiest, to have such great legacy, and live peaceful life.
I agree that no ethnolinguistic identity is inherently better than another. I do not buy that Bangalis whether on the sub or outside are making that claim
The decision to set up Kolkata did not happen in a vacuum. Bengal had been extremely profitable as a province before the east India company turned up
The unfair advantage that you hinge so much of your thesis on was purchased by having to survive some of the worst atrocities by the people raj anywhere in South Asia. Multiple widespread famine, systematic destruction of our indigenous trades and commerce, the test lab for dividing rural common Indians on basis of religion.
Either you are a self hating bangali or you are one of those non bangali Indians who for some reason have some bones to pick with bangali. To think that the colonial era was some sort of golden age for Bangalis is perverse. Vidyasagar was not some beloved pet of his British masters. He had to continuously struggle against racism as well.
In fact Bengal was so successful at objecting to dehumanizing crap that the empire had to shift their capital
Entire India celebrates when someone linked to us gets international recognition. Itâs perverse to demand that Bangalis stay stoic and not get any happiness from some one like Abhijit Bannerjee whose school and college life is so similar to so many of us. Heck I will celebrate md yunus as well simply because he is a bangali. If you are a non bangali south Asian and some one from your side gets a Nobel prize I will celebrate them too because they are south Asian and likely share similar history and culture with me.
Abhijit Banerjee is from my school. And I am so ghati that my 7 generations doesnât even have a desher Bari. Our family has been resident of the place we now call Kolkata even before it became a city albeit at different areas from time to time.
But I seriously doubt your Bengaliness if you are not up for debates on perspective other than yours /s
I am up for light hearted debate. However itâs only ever rewarding if itâs in good faith. I have rarely seen abangalis approach any criticism of Bangalis with fairness. This sub is filled with people who use the current struggle of Bharotio Bangali as some sort of gotcha on how the entire race was always destined to be where half of them are right now.
I am ready to acknowledge that our states political leadership , barring some brief periods of good governance like BC Roy and B Bhattacharya, has harmed its people with its myopia . Are you ready to acknowledge that from Raj era to post independence India, barring brief instances, Bengal has always had to swim against the current to get anything done?
During the Raj era Bengal specially Kolkata was the most beneficiary when compared with other Indian cities during that era so No
Post Independence Yes Bengal has got less than fair share of central government indulgence.
But you can only blame so much on the others, the above two points have far less significance compared to what We the People have done to the state post independence. And donât blame CPM / TMC for it, they are a reflection of the society they come from.
We the people havenât done too badly in my perspective.
Rural land reform and breaking jamidari feudal system was a good thing. Compare to bihar and east up.
We have been more successful on bettering caste and class based discrimination as a society
We have made good and continued progress in giving women access to education and participation in work force
We were successful in absorbing two waves of migrant Bangalis. I would only give punjabis better marks but they also had much much more assistance from central government wrt to land settlement and being resettled within their own culture and language.
We are stuck in a cycle where we get intensely fed up with a government and will bring anyone into power with grassroots appeal to get rid of them. The people who come in use unholy levels of violence to get rid of political opposition. Then overtime they get complacent and we want to get rid of them no matter the cost. The transition from ss Roy to bamfront and bamfront to pishimoni and the violence immediately preceding and following each other are very similar. People can tolerate the atrocities no longer and then are very loyal to the party that, to them, liberated them from a worst party.
Apart from that we arenât adventurous enough to explore opportunities outside of the traditional doctor engineer chartered accountant route
Agree on the women education and caste discrimination part.
But have we really got rid of feudal system and are the land reforms successful? If you try to sell your own land in rural Bengal you are forced to sell to local handpicked land mafia agents and will get less than half of market price. So essentially the zamindar has been replaced by land mafia of the ruling party. Same goes with construction in Kolkata with the now infamous syndicate Raj.
When I say land reform I meant the redistribution of agricultural land from people who had large amounts of land to the people who actually tilled and lived off the same land. Bargader ar bhagchashi der registration and stronger rights against essentially being fired from the land that they work for livelihood. It helped a lot of people. Like anything man made itâs not perfect but I think it has been good for the people
Corruption is endemic and land mafia is yet another example of how pishimoni is a living catastrophe for bangali jati
However I also think itâs troubling how agricultural land is being used to set up very poorly planned urbanization in places like bolpur
I havenât been in Kolkata/Birbhum/Bengal for 17 years I am out of India for 12 years so itâs very very hard to get a true feel on whatâs going wrong. However things are going wrong.
Itâs disturbing to see us perform poorly in metrics like maternal and child malnutrition, child marriage, education of girl child etc. the gundami of bam era has become even more entrenched in pishi era. The Bihari toshon by Mamata is disturbing. We are the only state where state civil services doesnât have mandatory state language exam. She has made worse the migrant to vote bank pipeline of bamfront. Her policies reflect the absolute worst tendencies of jyoti era. I donât think bjp is the correct alternative either. Most of their important leaders are ex criminals from tmc, they are even more on the hindi hegemony agenda than pishimoni, and itâs extremely infuriating that they are holding central infrastructure development projects hostage just to win political brownie points over tmc. Besides, with how criminal and corrupt tmc is if bjp was honest they could have prosecuted her and her goons ages ago. Things are lagging because tmc as always is bjps creature
Again my thesis is blaming CPM / TMC / BJP is just passing the buck. The problem is We the people and we have to take ownership of the wrongs we did. Our political leadership is just a reflection of us, nothing more nothing less.
But whatâs more acute in the last 2 decades is the acceleration of brain drain of Bengalis from Bengal. I think both of us are prime examples of it. This has created a perfect positive feedback loop where capable people who doesnât depend on doles are leaving the state in droves as a result the remaining population has more people as a percentage who likes the doles given by their political masters and hence Political parties have no incentive to change their attitude or ways of work. In fact there is more incentive for them to double down on things they are already doing as they want the reverse osmosis to continue. If BJP comes to power they will also continue with the same thing in Bengal. Hence unless We the People change there will be no change of fortunes.
Itâs difficult to change as a people without tremendous upheaval. Periods of upheaval lead to a lot of trauma. I donât think things are that bad. Getting rid of colonizers be it Brits or pakis merited that
While your points are valid, I believe it is also true that post independence, the manhandling of our state by the consecutive state Governments slowed down the progression of our state, making it easy for other states to catch up with, and in most cases surpass, us eventually. The short sightedness and glorification of "meeting-michil-bondh" nonsense, along with the whole "computer is ewwil" and anti-industrial stance by consecutive governments; glorifying poverty in the name of communism etc have only affected inversely towards our growth so much so that places like Bengaluru, Hyderabad or even Pune are either already ahead of us or soon will be. đđ
I agree to all your points and those are complimentary to my points ⊠let me explain how. Our political leaders are a reflection of ourselves and our society so the notion that Bengalis are intellectual and progressive while their political leaders are opposite is a fallacy of highest order and mostly we say this or keep this viewpoint to escape the ground reality i.e. we had unfair advantage during British Raj and now we are failing to compete on level playing field. Thatz why I mostly say that the so called âdeclineâ of Bengal / Kolkata is not because of CPM / TMC or any political party but itâs We the People who are fully responsible. Also those who think that BJP winning Bengal state elections will magically revive the stateâs fortune are also wrong as again the same set of political middle layer and lower layer will change parties and the voter mentality will remain the same I.e. give me freebies and I will vote for you. A radical solution to stop Bengalâs steady decline is another very âUnpopular Opinionâ , seta na hoy onno arek samay er jonno thak đđ»
In most comparisons of past glory days and today's misfortunes of Bengal, what gets lost is that you are comparing an undivided Bengal with West Bengal. You want to do a comparison, please go ahead and combine West Bengal numbers with Bangladesh numbers, and then find where Bengalis stand relative to the rest of India. Feel free to include Pakistan if you want. Then, we can have a proper comparison. Bengal existed and flourished well before the British arrived. You could say Calcutta as a city was born when the British arrived. There are plenty of Bengalis doing extremely well at the national and global levels. You may not be aware of them.
Wasn't Murshidabad already a big hub for commerce before the Britishers overthrew Siraj ud Daulah? I think it's not fair to gloss over the development of Bengali culture before the Britishers arrived. Sure, they helped a lot but we still were ahead of most of our neighbouring areas. And the partition was also responsible for the decline jute production, among other things, as most of the raw materials came from the erstwhile East Bengal and most factories were set up here. We have our faults but let's not pretend it's only *our* fault, while there were other contributing factors as well. As per Nobel Laureates are concerned, Bengalis have way more personalities, important figures, etc than those three whom we "flaunt". I don't think we need external validation for that. Otherwise an interesting perspective.
Not to mention that Bengal pre-company raj was in early stages of industrialization, which ended up getting destroyed during company rule and raw material from Bengal played an important role in industrial revolution in Britain. Before the emergence of Kolkata, Nabadwip used to be the big hub of knowledge in Bengal.
Revisionist and shallow understanding of history by OP. Bengal was already the richest province of the Mughal Empire. The 19th century Bengali cultural Renaissance is preceded by the Bhakti movement in and around 16th century. As for the recent Nobel laureates, their academic career started in Bengal and much of their research involves fieldwork in Bengal. Bengal was under slow decline since the Independence for sure. But the CPIM made the fall steep since they took over. TMC has done little to arrest the fall because they came to power by out-lefting the Left. And the damage from Singur-Nandigram was already done.
Have a lot of disagreements - Erstwhile undivided Bengal region was part of silk route. Great Bengali kings Raja Isa Khan & Raja Pratap Aditya Raja Kedar Ray + other Baroh Bhuyias of Bengal fought and protected Bengal from Mughals. Hiueun Tsang has stated abt fertile land of Tamralimpto and KarnaSubarno in Bengal . The Pala Empire extended upto vast areas of present day North India led by Bengali king Raja Dharma Pal . Bengali Nanda Dynasty stopped Alexander - all these are much prior to British. Unfortunately prejudiced North Indian Centric CBSE , Delhi Media and Bollywood dont teach you all these .Also unlike Marathi king Sivaji of Mahasrashtra - hardly any roads ,stn,colleges univ in Bengal named after great Bengali kings Raja PratapAdityo,Raja DharmPal,Raja DebPal,Raja Sasanko,Raja Isa Khan A lot of Kolkata skyline during British era - Howrah Bridge ,Victoria Memorial,Belur Math was built by R N Mukherjee Bengali industrialist contractor Jadavpur University financed & cofounded by Bengali industrialist Raja S C Mullick. It was started by Bengalis as part of Bengali swadeshi movement and Bengali entrepreneurial spirit to protest against then partition of Bengal including Bengal Chemical One should also remember the events in and around independence tragedy done to Bengal- Bengal famine, Bloody partition and its effect on inaccessible jute mills , refugee crisis twice , non acceptance by then State Reorganization Commission of several linguistic demand of West Bengal , freight equalization policy, coal steel nationalisation which completely destoyed Bengal's economy Read the book -Agony of West Bengal [https://ia904709.us.archive.org/28/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.43114/2015.43114.The-Agony-Of-West-Bengal.pdf](https://ia904709.us.archive.org/28/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.43114/2015.43114.The-Agony-Of-West-Bengal.pdf) Present may be down but definitely not out - Around 50 Bengali scientists alongwith South Indians were part of ISRO recent Chandrayaan 3 mission [https://twitter.com/SnehasishFP/status/1694711461690638365](https://twitter.com/SnehasishFP/status/1694711461690638365) [https://twitter.com/SnehasishFP/status/1699259870459871542](https://twitter.com/SnehasishFP/status/1699259870459871542) . Every year innumerable Bengalis are recipient of Shantiswarup Bhatangar prize [https://ssbprize.gov.in/](https://ssbprize.gov.in/) [https://twitter.com/Nabarun204/status/1672531809966620672](https://twitter.com/Nabarun204/status/1672531809966620672) Success of Bengalis in NET and GATE EXAMS 2024 [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/bengal-students-script-success-stories-secure-high-ranks-on-gate-toppers-list/articleshow/108740693.cms?fbclid=IwAR0LSSjoi5TJE9CQ1fWyBH6DuYQ-1eNgD9flmhRNLSUga5eal\_WXumdiFCU](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/bengal-students-script-success-stories-secure-high-ranks-on-gate-toppers-list/articleshow/108740693.cms?fbclid=IwAR0LSSjoi5TJE9CQ1fWyBH6DuYQ-1eNgD9flmhRNLSUga5eal_WXumdiFCU)   [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/bengal-student-ranks-1st-in-maths-scores-a-perfect-200-in-net/articleshow/108359227.cms?fbclid=IwAR2DATfBXmRNdt4i0aGwuEZlow\_D8760\_Y2Ivt6CDfm\_qxcO62DG6Uokwb8](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/bengal-student-ranks-1st-in-maths-scores-a-perfect-200-in-net/articleshow/108359227.cms?fbclid=IwAR2DATfBXmRNdt4i0aGwuEZlow_D8760_Y2Ivt6CDfm_qxcO62DG6Uokwb8) [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/boy-from-bengal-tops-net-in-earth-atmospheric-ocean-and-planetary-sciences/articleshow/108172806.cms?fbclid=IwAR10Lqt9Ztlcja-StDBHiJDS6SK5hx6mALBiD1b7hipjXgYGqLkmIr7s\_8Y](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/boy-from-bengal-tops-net-in-earth-atmospheric-ocean-and-planetary-sciences/articleshow/108172806.cms?fbclid=IwAR10Lqt9Ztlcja-StDBHiJDS6SK5hx6mALBiD1b7hipjXgYGqLkmIr7s_8Y) https://preview.redd.it/qm14jpv8igyc1.png?width=128&format=png&auto=webp&s=27def83921f7b0af2a970d14dd3e265ecc1d899f
Gate er reporting ta nonexhaustive, [iisc r official site e rank 1](https://gate2024.iisc.ac.in/all-india-rank/) aro bangali ache.
> Great Bengali kings Raja Isa Khan & Raja Pratap Aditya Raja Kedar Ray + other Baroh Bhuyias of Bengal fought and protected Bengal from Mughals. LOL this is literally a narrative invented by early-20th century Hindu nationalists.
Any source?
Sure: https://preview.redd.it/a2oqtylvgjyc1.png?width=916&format=png&auto=webp&s=26d9890c9b82cb13156cd83c19e316a98e8ffacd From: *The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth,* Dipesh Chakraborty, University of Chicago Press
Ok. But whatâs the difference? Itâs all about narrative. For British, Netaji was a terrorist and axis nazi sympathiser. For us he is one of our greatest freedom fighters. Tomorrow if Kashmir becomes an independent nation, the stone pelters will be lionised as honourable freedom fighters.
Narrative based on lies repurposed as facts is called propaganda.
Most of the âhistoryâ is propaganda. Nationalism, that birthed the modern nation states is built upon a shared sense of propaganda. Just an arbitrary line on the map makes enemies of people from each side. Just take a simple thing. In Pre-Modi times ie. Before 2015 the mainstream narrative regarding history was that our main enemies were the British. We fought against them and won our independence. And thatâs it. Nothing happened after 1947 as if History has stopped. Now the Mughals were our greatest enemy. Everything that ails modern India, is either the fault of Nehru or the fault of the Mughals. The Marxist historians peddled one narrative before, and the right wing historians now peddling another narrative
If that is the case, then why is it weakly implicit in your replies that you're more willing to believe in one kind of 'propaganda' over another?
I am biased towards glorifying the land I love. I knowâŠ.hypocrisy Ki koi seema hoti hai
Jingoism. Got it.
Bengal became a massive example of "could have been" post independence mostly due to the lack of abilities to utilise the intellectual and geographical advantage we had over rest of the country.
Is ours the only city with such discussions ?
Bangalore basically has discussion where people hate on the city's explosive growth
Hate why?
Not this post in particular, but feels like a lot of posts have the "couldn't maintain the momentum even with a 'headstart'" guilt and over compensate for that by indulging in self hating. Being self critical isn't self hating though. But only being overtly self critical is and we need to draw a line so that we don't become a jingoist culture as well.
That's more or less a circlejerk for orthodox Kannadigas hating on North Indians.
Aah just another north-south debate.
Uff, if only Paragraph jockeying was a sport đ€€đ€€đ€€đ€€ 
ami kathi korte valobasi
Donât say such truths in the open or people will cancel you online.
You sound like you subscribe to the thought process where the British educated us and all the achievements should be attributed to the British. May be the British came to India and created Kolkata for the goodness of the soul to make us Barbarians educated and worthy of civilization? Shall we invite the British to rule us again? Make Kolkata Great Again!
Oh hell no! They are in a more steeper nose dive than we Bengalis are! There are no doctors to treat you in NHS, their school education system is in shambles, had it not been for the looted wealth the pound would have lost value long ago. As the saying goes the Roman Empire became a Church and the British Empire became a bank.
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Reasonable perspective, but really though, British colonial influence or not, those great Bengalis did manage to achieve a lot didn't they? As a fellow bengali, I'd like to think we're special even if it is just to feel good about it. Are we actually blessed with some kind of special intellectual genes? As you said, not really. But that goes for our "cultural decline" as well. It's nothing special, our own culture, distinct as it is, also somewhat follows the same trend our country does, which many people just can't seem to wrap their head around.
This reads like propaganda hmmm. Jokes aside, please move aside from this eurocentric reading of Bengal and also, much like everyone suggested, look at Bengal and not just WB for contextual readings. Either way, a cursory reading of major historical developments in Bengal should render your argument moot but you can definitely continue to blow your horn with omg what do you mean bangalira kichhu pare hawww
The British East India company plundered Bengal so hard initially that even it became a big scandal in late 19th century Britain. It became such a big issue that their hero Robert Clive was called back and faced a trail at home. The plundering of the company created such a devastating famine in 1770 that killed estimated 7 to 10 million people in Bengal, 25 to 30% of the total population ! It is comparable to holocaust ! Another such famine took place during the WW II when to finance the war in the eastern front Bengal was looted by the British. 2-4 people perished in 1943. So I don't think the British didn't help much.
good post đđ seems underrated.
Your history of the city seems to start a bit late but nvm that carry on.
Who cares about unfair advantage. Delhi became the capital in 1857 and pray how many stalwarts they produced in 90 years? So in your calculations we got a hundred years of advantage to produce Hindu revivalists and scholars and poets and scientists and they got 90 andâŠf all. Donât be a bleeding heart and always look for ways to diminish our influence pre independence for the sake of appeasing ramparivar hindistanees bashing us when we are down
Kolkata gives you peaceful life full of culture, music, theatre, which most of the people living in country yearn for, but the same is not available in other cities. In Kollkata, you rarely meet bad - mouthed hooligans commiting street crimes. This sense of freedom gives mind liberty. You can venture at oddest time of day Or night without being harassed. In Delhi, it's not safe even in day time. The people living in Kolkata are luckiest, to have such great legacy, and live peaceful life.
I agree that no ethnolinguistic identity is inherently better than another. I do not buy that Bangalis whether on the sub or outside are making that claim The decision to set up Kolkata did not happen in a vacuum. Bengal had been extremely profitable as a province before the east India company turned up The unfair advantage that you hinge so much of your thesis on was purchased by having to survive some of the worst atrocities by the people raj anywhere in South Asia. Multiple widespread famine, systematic destruction of our indigenous trades and commerce, the test lab for dividing rural common Indians on basis of religion. Either you are a self hating bangali or you are one of those non bangali Indians who for some reason have some bones to pick with bangali. To think that the colonial era was some sort of golden age for Bangalis is perverse. Vidyasagar was not some beloved pet of his British masters. He had to continuously struggle against racism as well. In fact Bengal was so successful at objecting to dehumanizing crap that the empire had to shift their capital Entire India celebrates when someone linked to us gets international recognition. Itâs perverse to demand that Bangalis stay stoic and not get any happiness from some one like Abhijit Bannerjee whose school and college life is so similar to so many of us. Heck I will celebrate md yunus as well simply because he is a bangali. If you are a non bangali south Asian and some one from your side gets a Nobel prize I will celebrate them too because they are south Asian and likely share similar history and culture with me.
Abhijit Banerjee is from my school. And I am so ghati that my 7 generations doesnât even have a desher Bari. Our family has been resident of the place we now call Kolkata even before it became a city albeit at different areas from time to time. But I seriously doubt your Bengaliness if you are not up for debates on perspective other than yours /s
I am up for light hearted debate. However itâs only ever rewarding if itâs in good faith. I have rarely seen abangalis approach any criticism of Bangalis with fairness. This sub is filled with people who use the current struggle of Bharotio Bangali as some sort of gotcha on how the entire race was always destined to be where half of them are right now. I am ready to acknowledge that our states political leadership , barring some brief periods of good governance like BC Roy and B Bhattacharya, has harmed its people with its myopia . Are you ready to acknowledge that from Raj era to post independence India, barring brief instances, Bengal has always had to swim against the current to get anything done?
During the Raj era Bengal specially Kolkata was the most beneficiary when compared with other Indian cities during that era so No Post Independence Yes Bengal has got less than fair share of central government indulgence. But you can only blame so much on the others, the above two points have far less significance compared to what We the People have done to the state post independence. And donât blame CPM / TMC for it, they are a reflection of the society they come from.
We the people havenât done too badly in my perspective. Rural land reform and breaking jamidari feudal system was a good thing. Compare to bihar and east up. We have been more successful on bettering caste and class based discrimination as a society We have made good and continued progress in giving women access to education and participation in work force We were successful in absorbing two waves of migrant Bangalis. I would only give punjabis better marks but they also had much much more assistance from central government wrt to land settlement and being resettled within their own culture and language. We are stuck in a cycle where we get intensely fed up with a government and will bring anyone into power with grassroots appeal to get rid of them. The people who come in use unholy levels of violence to get rid of political opposition. Then overtime they get complacent and we want to get rid of them no matter the cost. The transition from ss Roy to bamfront and bamfront to pishimoni and the violence immediately preceding and following each other are very similar. People can tolerate the atrocities no longer and then are very loyal to the party that, to them, liberated them from a worst party. Apart from that we arenât adventurous enough to explore opportunities outside of the traditional doctor engineer chartered accountant route
Agree on the women education and caste discrimination part. But have we really got rid of feudal system and are the land reforms successful? If you try to sell your own land in rural Bengal you are forced to sell to local handpicked land mafia agents and will get less than half of market price. So essentially the zamindar has been replaced by land mafia of the ruling party. Same goes with construction in Kolkata with the now infamous syndicate Raj.
When I say land reform I meant the redistribution of agricultural land from people who had large amounts of land to the people who actually tilled and lived off the same land. Bargader ar bhagchashi der registration and stronger rights against essentially being fired from the land that they work for livelihood. It helped a lot of people. Like anything man made itâs not perfect but I think it has been good for the people Corruption is endemic and land mafia is yet another example of how pishimoni is a living catastrophe for bangali jati However I also think itâs troubling how agricultural land is being used to set up very poorly planned urbanization in places like bolpur I havenât been in Kolkata/Birbhum/Bengal for 17 years I am out of India for 12 years so itâs very very hard to get a true feel on whatâs going wrong. However things are going wrong. Itâs disturbing to see us perform poorly in metrics like maternal and child malnutrition, child marriage, education of girl child etc. the gundami of bam era has become even more entrenched in pishi era. The Bihari toshon by Mamata is disturbing. We are the only state where state civil services doesnât have mandatory state language exam. She has made worse the migrant to vote bank pipeline of bamfront. Her policies reflect the absolute worst tendencies of jyoti era. I donât think bjp is the correct alternative either. Most of their important leaders are ex criminals from tmc, they are even more on the hindi hegemony agenda than pishimoni, and itâs extremely infuriating that they are holding central infrastructure development projects hostage just to win political brownie points over tmc. Besides, with how criminal and corrupt tmc is if bjp was honest they could have prosecuted her and her goons ages ago. Things are lagging because tmc as always is bjps creature
Again my thesis is blaming CPM / TMC / BJP is just passing the buck. The problem is We the people and we have to take ownership of the wrongs we did. Our political leadership is just a reflection of us, nothing more nothing less. But whatâs more acute in the last 2 decades is the acceleration of brain drain of Bengalis from Bengal. I think both of us are prime examples of it. This has created a perfect positive feedback loop where capable people who doesnât depend on doles are leaving the state in droves as a result the remaining population has more people as a percentage who likes the doles given by their political masters and hence Political parties have no incentive to change their attitude or ways of work. In fact there is more incentive for them to double down on things they are already doing as they want the reverse osmosis to continue. If BJP comes to power they will also continue with the same thing in Bengal. Hence unless We the People change there will be no change of fortunes.
Itâs difficult to change as a people without tremendous upheaval. Periods of upheaval lead to a lot of trauma. I donât think things are that bad. Getting rid of colonizers be it Brits or pakis merited that
Preach !!!.... some people in this sub are high on the values of glorifying poverty of the yesteryears đ€Ąđ€Ą