Bengal

“ The youth of Bengal have the greatest of all tasks that has ever been placed on the shoulders of young men. I have travelled for the last ten years or so over the whole of India, and my conviction is that from the youth of Bengal will come the power which will raise India once more to her proper spiritual place. Ay, from the youth of Bengal, with this immense amount of feeling and enthusiasm in the blood, will come those heroes who will march from one corner of the earth to the other, preaching and teaching the eternal spiritual truths of our forefathers. ”

“ When I am speaking of the Hindus of Bengal, I am at once reminded of the Mahomedans of Bengal. They have also lived in Bengal; they have lived with us, by our side and have been surrounded by the same environments and whatever our religious differences may be, there can hardly be any question that their interests and our interests, in point of education, in point of culture, and in point of nationality are the same. ”

“ Janghera, thus happily placed between the rugged scenery of the upper provinces, and the smiling landscapes of Bengal, partakes of the nature of both: the Ganges spreads itself like a sea at the foot of the rock, which on the land-side overlooks a wide expanse of fertile country, having for a back-ground the low ranges of hills which separate Behar from Bengal. ”

“ Then, that as we must live in the house and in the dark, it was good economy of Providence to make Bengal so hideous. If it were beautiful nobody could see it, and, as it is a frightful plain, it is perhaps advantageous to see so little of it. ”

“ But if Bengal were ever to realise this noble destiny, she must have a language strong enough for such a titanic mission and she must evolve a literature dynamic enough to enlighten and to inspire the imagination of the entire people of India. ”

“ This is the first time I am here, and never before knew Bengal was so beautiful. You ought to have seen the rivers here — regular rolling oceans of fresh water, and everything so green — continual production. The villages are the cleanest and prettiest in all India. ”

“ The great stream which fertilises the soil is, at the same time, the chief highway of Eastern commerce. On its banks, and on those of its tributary waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India. The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the Mussulman despot and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the garden of Eden, as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly. ”

“ I was no longer the lady of the Rajah's house, but the sole representative of Bengal's womanhood. And he was the champion of Bengal. As the sky had shed its light over him, so he must receive the consecration of a woman's benediction. ”

“ The inundation which overflows Bengal, especially in the districts of Nattore, Dacca, Jessore, the southern parts of Rungpore, and a part of Mahomed-Shi, is, perhaps, one of the most curious of nature’s phenomena! The wisdom of our Creator is most conspicuously shewn in the appropriation of sustenance, both for the human and for the brute species, suited to meet this annual visitation of the waters. ”

“ And well hath the Bengal Chief repaid the kindness he received, for he stole the fairest slave the palace ever had. And a Tartar girl too, though the Chief himself is a Hindu. But in Bengal these Hindus are strange creatures, my Queen; the women wear sarees instead of petticoats, and the men have not learnt to tie a headdress yet. But go thy way, Queen, this bracelet is not for thee, nor shalt thou get it unless thou hast twenty-five pieces in thy purse, which I doubt very much. ”

“ AMONG the famous men of Bengal in the nineteenth century no name deserves a more honoured place than that of Ram Mohan Roy. At once the pioneer of the great Renaissance that was slowly dawning in Bengal and the first representative of India to the British people, he opened up to his fellow countrymen new paths of progress and reform. ”

“ The kingdom of Bengal, reaching between the latitudes of 22° and 26° 30' N. is well watered and exceedingly fertile, producing abundance of fruit, with sugar and long pepper, great quantities of cotton, which the inhabitants manufacture with much skill, and has great abundance of cattle and poultry. The natives are heathens of a pusillanimous character, yet false and treacherous; for it ally the case that cowardice and treachery go together. ”

“ It is not only to the voyager fresh from home that the ascent of the Ganges is novel and interesting. These things are as new to the resident of Madras as are the scenes of Italy to the Englishman. The people of Bengal differ from those of Southern India in language, dress, and looks, as well as in other respects. In frame, they are more slightly built, and less manly; indeed, they have the reputation of being the most effeminate of the Hindu races. ”

“ Bengal, including the delta of the Ganges, was one of the most fertile regions in the world, whilst the inhabitants were most submissive and easily governed. For centuries the Bengalis had been oppressed by foreigners—Turk, Afghan, Abyssinian and Mogul. The revenues, however, had been collected by Hindu officials, as being at once more exacting in their demands, and more easily stripped of their ill-gotten gains. ”

“ Inspite of all these traditions, we are inclined to believe, that these sayings contain the accumulated wisdom of the Bengal peasantry,—they are the heritage of an agricultural race to which the unassuming rural folk of Bengal have unconsciously contributed through ages, and that no particular person or persons should be credited with their authorship. ”

“ But Bengal has other attractions to one who rides over it. This single province of India is five times as large as the State of New York. It is a vast alluvial plain, through which the Ganges pours by a hundred mouths to the sea, its overflow giving to the soil a richness and fertility like that of the valley of the Nile, so that it supports a population equal to that of the whole of the 281 United States. The cultivated fields that we pass show the natural wealth of the country, as the frequent towns show the density of the population. ”

“ In every branch of the public services open to Indians and in all the liberal professions, as well as in the civic and political life of their country, the Bengalees have played a leading part, not restricted even to their own province, and in the very distinguished person of Lord Sinha, Bengal has just provided for the first time an Indian to represent the King-Emperor as governor of a province—the neighbouring province of Behar and Orissa. Nor have the women of Bengal been left behind as in so many other parts of India. ”

“ They have been the recipients of the highest honors from the Government. Bengal is virtually the only province permanently settled where the Government cannot add to the Land tax fixed in 1793. The Bengalis are the people who spread over India, with every territorial extension of the British Raj. They have been the pampered and favored children of the Government and for very good reasons, too. They are the best educated and the most intelligent of all the Indian peoples. They know how to adapt themselves to all conditions and circumstances, they know how to enjoy and also how to suffer. ”

“ But Hinduism, understood even in this wide sense, represents only one of many creeds and races found within Bengal. The other great historical cultus, which during the last twelve centuries did for the Semitic peoples what Christianity accomplished among the European Aryans, has won to itself one-fifth of the population of Bengal. The Mahommedans number some 9,000,000 in Bengal, but the great bulk of their numbers was transferred to Eastern Bengal and Assam. ”

“ The Provinces of Bengal and Assam have a population more varied in character and more numerous than that of England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy put together. In three years I had to collect, without the help of a single paid local assistant, the information for this vast tract; and in four more years the compilation of the whole is to be finished, in addition to my work as Director-General of the whole operations throughout India. ”

“ Millions of men and women in Bengal found a profitable occupation in weaving and spinning, and the looms and spindles of Bengal sent out vast quantities of goods to the bazaars of Northern India and to the markets of Europe. ”

“ Even in India, the proposal to divide Bengal has suddenly discovered among the Bengalese, the most submissive part of the population, the part which has seemed most devoid of national spirit, the existence and the importance as a political factor of the idea of the Bengalese as a people and of sentiments centred upon that idea. ”

“ Several facts, easily verifiable, have to be first of all noticed:— (1) Manu in his many enumerations of Indian races, kingdoms and places, never once mentions Bengal; the Aryan Brahmans had not yet reached, in the days when his Code was compiled, the banks of the Ganges nor the plains of Bengal. It was Arjuna who went first to Banga (Bengal) with his sacrificial horse. [Yavanas are mentioned in Rajdharma Anasasanika Parva as part of the tribes peopling it.] (2) In the Ayun a list of the Hindu kings of Bengal is given. ”

“ Several districts belonging to Bengal lie interspersed within these mountains, but none beyond them; for to the westward they extend several degrees, and are in some parts impassable, as far as the province of Berar in the Decan; to the north they divide. Bengal from the southern division of BEHAR, and to the south, seem the natural separation of Bengal from ORIXA, which nevertheless has a tract of country within them extending 20 miles along the sea-coasts from Ballasore to the river of Pipley, which disembogues opposite to the Island of Sagore. ”

“ Cotton and silk weaving was the main industry of Bengal in the olden days, and merchants of all nations of the West competed to secure the trade of the Indian fabrics. The Portuguese, under the renowned Albuquerque, had established an Empire over the Eastern seas, and from the south of Africa to the eastern limits of China the vast coast-line of many thousand miles was studded with Portuguese seaports. Thousands of the Portuguese had settled in Bengal and taken Bengal women as their wives, and they have left descendants who form the greater portion of the present Eurasian community of India. ”

“ Of the Punjab, however, we will speak later on. For the present we are concerned with Bengal only. The amazing phenomenon mentioned by the committee on p. 20 and referred to by us before is easily explained by the facts hinted in the Directors’ report quoted above. And this notwithstanding the fact that in the matter of Government patronage Bengal has been the most favored province in India, throughout the period of British rule. To the Bengalis have gone all the first appointments to offices that were thrown open to the natives of the soil. ”

“ The history of Bengal during the next few months will furnish the answer to the question whether we have utilised the century and a half of British peace, British administrative example, English education, and the preaching and sacrifice of a succession of national leaders, and acquired the one indispensable basis of popular government, or whether we still retain the spirit of the Kartabhaja and Maharaja sects. Have we learnt that the nation is greater than the individual? ”

“ In Bengal, where the people are chiefly of the peasant class, these sayings are accepted as a guide by millions;—the wisdom they display is the result of acute observation of nature and has a special significance in regard to the soil and climate of Bengal. ”

“ Not only the Directors, but every man of consequence from Bengal, have been examined upon oath before the House of Lords; so that thousands of people are now well acquainted with the revenues, forces, and politics of India, and of Bengal in particular. Permit me here again, my friend, to remind you of the conspicuous situation you are placed in. Consider well the great expectations which this nation entertains of extricating itself out of its present difficulties, by the skill and conduct of the Governor of Bengal. You must therefore exert yourself to the utmost to fulfil its hopes ”

“ No special theory is required to account for the physical and mental qualities of the Mongolo-Dravidians of Bengal. No doubt the original population was Dravidian with a strong intermixture of Tibeto-Burmese blood, especially in the east and north-east. But the Hindu religion, developed in the sacred Midlands round Benares, spread to Bengal, bringing with it the Indo-European speech which in medieval times became the copious and supple Bengali tongue. From the west too came what we in Europe would call the gentry, the priestly and professional castes. ”

“ But since the advent of British administration the history of Bengal has substantially been a record of prosperity; the teeming population of its river valleys is one of the densest in the world, and the purely agricultural districts of Saran and Muzaffarpur in the Patna division support over 900 persons to the square mile, a number hardly surpassed elsewhere except in urban areas. ”

“ I note here a few old time Māgadhi names of women which are popular in Bengal; they are 'মুত্তা' (মুক্তা) পুট্টিমা (পুষ্টিমতি) ; সামা, সোনা, খেমা, and চাঁপা; the second name পুট্টিমা is current in Bengal alone in the shape of 'পুঁটি.' অভয়চন্দ্র, আদিনাথ, তারকনাথ, পরেশনাথ, (and not পারশ) , etc., are some special male names of Bengal. ”