Some Trouble with Cows. Beth Roy

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      …My son asked me, “Baba [father], why do you work so hard? It's so hard for you to afford my expenses at the university. It's hard for you, and it's hard for me.”

      I replied that I have a dream. “To satisfy it, let me work hard. As for you, please try to have some compassion for my desire.”

      [My sons] said, “You haven't passed matriculation. You could stop sending us to school after we matriculated. We could try to send our children to the next level of education. Maybe their children will then try for a university degree. Then their children can try for a master's.”

      Then I told them, “The plan you are proposing will take four generations. I'll take the trouble, you also take the trouble, and let's do it now. Finish your education. I won't stop until you get your M.A. But I will make you indebted to me.”

      Then they asked, “What is the debt?” And I said, “Being a poor peasant, a simple tiller, I could make you an M.A. So you think about what you want for your children. I want you to think that your poor father got us through an M.A. degree, so you should have even higher ambitions for your children.”

      Sunil projected his progeny's destinies in a straight line upward. No land-tillers appeared in his idealized future, no followers in his own footsteps. After Jinnah's death, Jogen Mandal was ousted from national power. Sunil explained:

      We were very disappointed, we local people. Still, we were not willing to go to India. This is our motherland. We are tillers. Cultivation is our only job. Our forefathers were krishak [tillers], we were krishak, we thought our children after us would be krishak. We didn't want to leave the land.

      Sunil constructed a conceptual tangle of identities. His ardent wish was that his children and their children not be krishak. And yet it was precisely on the basis of his cultivation of the land that he proclaimed his rights to citizenship in a Muslim-ruled country. In one sitting, he spoke eloquently of his ambitions for class transcendence-and equally eloquently of his connections with the land he tilled. From his articulate tongue flowed the dilemma of the peasant, defensive of his work and rights, land-proud, yet wishing nothing more than that his children take their clean hands far away from that land, to the cities where alone his ambitions for wealth and status could be satisfied.

      Most individuals can identify with any number of groups. Sunil is a krishak or peasant, and he is a landlord. He is both a Hindu and a Namasudra. He is a Bangladeshi. At what moment he chooses to see himself as part of one group or another is important, for it suggests the dynamics of identity. When hiring workers, Sunil's view of himself as a Hindu is of primary importance, dictating that he hire only Hindus. But when his community faced a choice of nationality, of opting for India or Pakistan, Sunil's interests as a peasant took clear precedence over his identity as a Hindu. As long as the Scheduled Caste alliance with the Muslims held firm, he and other Namasudras wholeheartedly supported the Muslim League and Pakistan. “Jogen Mandal,” he explained proudly, “was the leader in the Muslim League of the Scheduled Castes from before the Partition.” Even when that alliance broke down, he defended his roots in Pakistan, and now in Bangladesh, because of his relationship to the land. Presumably that relationship was not solely sentimental; to sell land in Pakistan and buy in India was beyond the limited means of a small owner like Sunil. Because of this crosshatching of identities and allegiances, this mix of consciousness and economics, the Namasudra community is a fertile source of understanding about group identities and their roles in social conflict.

      But when it came to the riot, Sunil's position was unconfused. I asked in general about conflicts in his village, and he promptly began to tell us about the riot. By this time, sensing unease on Sunil's part, I had cleared the room of spectators, and he now vented his anger at the local Muslim leadership:

      It started when a cow ate the crops in a field. The Muslims made the cows eat the crops of the Hindus. This fight was a result of the protest by the Hindus.

      We complained to the leaders, but the leaders, instead of solving the problem, rather they said, “What is it? The Hindus are trying to live as they did in the past. Why are they making such a fuss about it? It was only a little kolai [another variety of lentil]. The cows could have eaten much more.” The leaders used these kinds of inciting words, and said, “Teach the Hindus a lesson. Call our community together.” So they did, and there was this communal riot.

      So we too organized our community, in order to save ourselves. In actuality, they couldn't beat us into submission. If we had the strength of mind, we could have overwhelmed them. But because we didn't have enough strength of mind, we only stopped them and protected ourselves.

      The Muslims were entirely to blame. They “made” the cow eat the lentil. The Hindus did nothing but protest. They were forced to organize their community for defense. Sunil's riot devastated choice. For his people there were no decisions to be made. They were victims cast in poses of self-defense.

      The set of decisions made between the first round of the Panipur fight and its explosion into mass action was clearly delineated by many of my storytellers. First came the space in which the communities considered what to do. Despite Sunil's demurrals, he and his fellow Hindus participated in that process, too:

      [Sunil:] I stayed home, but I directed others to spread the word throughout the community. The first day there was no fighting. It was all news. The next day early people began to gather.

      [Mr. Ghosh:] People were sitting and talking about the fighting the day before. So I stopped to hear what they were saying.…I thought, “It will not stop; there will be another fight” So I hurried to my house.

      Both Sunil and Mr. Ghosh made personal decisions about how to behave (directing others to spread the word; hurrying home). But those decisions were deeply informed by agendas that transcended the personal, that were located instead in the community.

       ^{Our party included a young woman who assisted me in most of the interviews with interpretation and questions, and a staff member from the development organization hosting me, who happened to live in the village. Throughout my account I use “I” or “we” not quite indiscriminately; sometimes I mean to suggest the importance of the entourage (as in this scene in Basantibala's house) or some question that evolved from a discussion between my assistant and me. I use “I” when an exchange was truly between me and the respondent.}

       ^{A dhoti is the male equivalent of a saree; it is an unstitched piece of fabric worn draped as pants. Clothing signifies community; only Hindus, and upper-caste ones at that, wear dhotis.}

       ^{When India became independent from the British and was simultaneously divided to form Pakistan, of which this area was a part.}

       ^{The elected head of Panipur Union. A union is roughly equivalent to a city ward; a cluster of villages, it is the level at which effective rural electoral power is brokered.}

       ^{Zamindars are, roughly, big landlords or estate holders, and talukdars are intermediary landholders. For a thorough discussion of the zamindari system in Bengal I recommend Partha Chatterjee's book Bengal 1920-1947 (1984).}

       ^{The 1881 census showed only 12.8 percent of the Bengali Hindu population as belonging to the three highest castes: Brahmin, Baidya, and Kayashtha (Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims 1971–1906 [1981], p. 192 n. 9). In Faridpur district, which includes Panipur, there were about 150,000 Brahmins and Kayashthas in 1931 (Government of Bengal, Bengal District Gazetteer, B. Volume, Faridpur District, Statistics, 1921–1922 to 1930–1931 [1933], p. 6).}

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