A character in Titash Ekti Nodir Naam is possessed
by the ghost of Mahesh Bardhan of “Gutaura”, the colloquial
for Gautampara — Utpal Dutt’s ancestral village and mine —
two miles out of Brahmanbaria. He was much in my mind this past week as
I walked with the ghosts of other Bardhans, as well as of pioneers from
the old Tipperah, Sylhet, Mymensingh, Chittagong and Dacca districts,
when the clans mustered by the Straits of Malacca for the Malaysian Bengalee
Association’s annual jamboree.
The devout had imported a priest from Calcutta to worship Kali all through
the night. Others argued spiritedly for four hours at the MBA’s
50th Annual General Meeting. But beyond such absorptions, this annual
gathering in Port Dickson was yet another affirmation of tribal loyalty
by a small community that, according to the academic, Dipika Mukherjee,
who has married into it, “is still searching for an individual identity
in the larger Malaysian context”.
Perhaps the overarching framework does present a challenge since the Malaysian
prime minister’s Diwali message bemoaned the weakening of inter-racial
ties. But the unaffectedly friendly people who made me so welcome betrayed
few traces of the complexes that mark Indian life elsewhere. Exiles are
frequently fanatically patriotic, but Dilip Kumar Dutt, a Malaysian-born
veteran, laughed off an Indian’s theory that nearby Seremban town
was really “Sri Ram Bon”. The fancy reminded me of another
uninformed Hindu fantasy that the sea by which we had gathered was the
Straits of Malacca.
I pondered, too, the difference between Malaysian
and Singaporean Bengalis, the former generally much more in harmony with
themselves and their surroundings. Dissonance in the Singapore community
is probably explained by imported West Bengal wives from a simpler social
level that the men have left behind. Most of the Port Dickson women had
been born and brought up in the same milieu as their spouses and strode
two worlds with casual confidence. So much so that I failed to recognize
in the bou’s bejeweled disguise one evening the woman in a trouser
suit with whom I had chatted on the beach that morning. Anyone can change
attire; here, style and idiom had undergone total transformation without
the least trace of self-consciousness or even, perhaps, awareness.
Nor are Malaysian Bengalis crippled by that sense of insecurity that underlies
the bristling bombast of so many non-resident Indians in America. Speech
highlights the contrast. A contrived and uneven coating of American sits
uneasily on the NRI’s heavily Bengali English. But though Malaysian
Bengalis still preserve the “Bangal” tones of East Bengal,
they slip smoothly into a fluent idiomatic English that once prompted
an Australian to remark that he did not think he would live to hear an
Indian speak with a Chinese accent. It is not so much Chinese as Singaporean
and Malaysian with overtones of the colourful regional dialect called
Singlish.
Yet, South East Asian Bengalis also face a problem of definition, as I
discovered when Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper illustrated
a report of a clash in London’s East End between Cockneys and Bengalis
(actually Bangladeshis) with the sketch of a bearded and turbaned Sikh.
When a reader pro tested, the Tamil Singaporean sub-editor declared artlessly,
“I did not know that Sikhs aren’t Bengalis.”
Some attribute confusion to Punjabi immigrants setting sail from Calcutta
port. Others say that since Singapore was governed from Calcutta, all
Indians other than Tamils were lumped with the capital. Whatever the reason,
the MBA has not simplified problems. Every AGM, and this was no exception,
grapples with the question of whether its keyword should be spelt with
two e’s or an i. The Young Turks urge every AGM, as they did this
time too, not to restrict full membership to only Hindu Bengali Malaysian
citizens.
Defending orthodoxy’s last stand, Dilip Kumar Bardhan, president
for the 14th (though not consecutive) term, insisted that it was in the
fitness of things that his own son-in-law, a Chinese from Vietnam with
American citizenship, should not be entitled to full membership. No one
murmured that strict application of patriarchal laws would strip Nomita
Balasingham, the vice-president, of her Bengali label.
But the argument rumbles on from year to year, pushed by young Bengali
males with spouses from other communities. And that is a healthy sign,
for it would have been so much simpler for these well-placed families
to turn their backs on the MBA’s puja, amateur dramatics and general
provincialism to seek new cosmopolitan roots.
People migrate to better themselves, and there is no reason, beyond the
call of cultural loyalty, for third generation immigrants to stand by
an institution that commemorates the early concentration of Bengalis in
the sultanate of Negeri Sembilan — darul khusus, the happy state,
as it calls itself. Seremban is the capital. Bengalis found supervisory
jobs on the rubber plantations there. They celebrated Durga puja in Seremban
in 1928 but turned to Kali from 1939 because Diwali was a public holiday.
They also exchanged the Seremban club house for the bigger property in
Port Dickson where we gathered.
Thereby hangs another tale that highlights everything that is regarded
as typical of the Bengali condition everywhere, especially in Calcutta.
Port Dickson is now a shabby mofussil (ulu in Malay) town that has abandoned
(temporarily?) aspirations of blossoming into a smart resort. Appropriately
enough, Bengal House, the MBA’s sprawling wooden bungalow set in
more than three acres of scrub and bush, was built in the heyday of the
rubber raj by a tuan called Gray. Appropriately, too, it’s in a
tumbledown condition.
The MBA has been discussing developing the neglected estate for 35 —
“Forty-five”, muttered Dutt beside me — years without
making any headway. Another committee has been set up now to explore prospects.
Gujarati’s and Punjabi’s would probably have made a fortune
from it by now, but MBA members are all the more lovable for focussing
instead on the homely conviviality of children’s song and dance
that might have been in Kasba but for the heavy Malayan night outside,
or a walkathon on the beach when a sprightly 59-year-old muscled into
the over-60’s group and walked off with a prize. A marathon AGM
might also be Bengali, but the utter absence of acrimony was not.
Numbers are a moot point. The MBA has about 150 members. Most estimates
suggest 70 Malaysian families or around 400 people. The figure of 2,000
mentioned in one report is regarded as wildly optimistic.
The bonds among them go back to Sarojini Bardhan, a doctor who arrived
in the Straits Settlements in 1908 and whose samadhi can still be seen
in Malacca. Lee Kuan Yew, who takes great pride in Chinese networking
(guanxi), would be green with envy at the web of connections that Bardhan
and his three wives left behind.
The name has intrigued me ever since childhood when I first saw the gaunt
ruins of Bardhan Bari, Gautampara’s only pukka house, with cows
tethered to its pillars. It was already dilapidated when my mother went
to the village as a bride. Knowing nothing about the family, I wove romantic
tales in my imagination until I bumped into Dilip Bardhan at a wedding
in Singapore some years ago. It still did not explain why the property
was abandoned, but at least it established that the Bardhans were flesh
and blood. There are even Bardhan trophies for football and golf.
Bengal House represents the sweat of these and other pioneers who each
contributed half a month’s wages. It should not be allowed to crumble
into another Bardhan Bari. But at what cost can it be saved? Efficiency
is needed but not efficiency that ousts last week’s happy disarray.
Malaysia will probably see to that. It is a nation on the march but a
march that always finds time for a chat and a snooze.
The Bengali genius has been transplanted in
congenial soil …
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