TO RABINDRA NATH’S EYES, THE RACIAL NATURE AND CHARACTER OF BENGALEES 1. Of all a sudden, a piece of write-up on the aforesaid subject authored by Rabindranath in Bengali, came onto the table. Very small one but unputdownable. I was moved, very moved. As such, I would like to share it with all of you as follows: 01. We start, but not end it off. 02. We start, but don’t work. 03. We can’t follow what we believe. 04. We can write statement after statement in volume, but not scintilla of sacrifice we do ever. 05. We feel complacent to display pride and one-upmanship, but not essay to merit the worth and achievement. 06. We expect anybody’s help and support for all our work but we are hell-bent on rending the sky for one’s laches, fault and lapse. 07. We feel proud to imitate and mimic. 08. We feel honoured and respected at anybody’s favour and grace. 09. We through dust in one’s eyes in politics. 2. Rabindranath had embodied himself in “We” to denote that as a Bengali he also pertained to all the aforesaid culpable demerits and improprieties of nature and characters of Bengali-race. But he was not within four walls of this ambit. 3. Rabindranath was born and brought up in edifice of Jorasanko in Calcutta, wherein a neo-society laced with all the then excellent qualities and proprieties of highly conservatives British society and new genre of art and literature was created under Prince Dwarakanath Thakur and his son Maharshi Debendranath Thakur whose second son Satyendranath Thakur became first I.C.S in British India. 4. There is a story how they were known with Family name of Thakur. In Jessore District, there was a villege named ‘Piralya’. At the end of the 15th Century, a Brahmin youth fell in love with a Muslim Girl. And had to proselytize to Islam to marry her. Mahmud Tahir became his new name. But people called him ‘Piraylaee’, to wit, ‘of Piralya’. 5. This Tahir also cunningly converted to his Brahmin friends – two brothers – to Islam. The stigma of apostasy now fail upon their other two brothers – Ratidev and Sukdev – who ware consequently ostracized and ignominiously branded as ‘‘Pirali Brahmins”. Sukdev paid a hefty dowry and somehow managed to get his daughter married to Jagannath Kushari, the Zamindar of Pithavog. 6. The said Jagannath’s descendants, Sukdev and Panchanan, in the fullness of time, crossed ‘Adi Ganga’ and reached ‘Gobindapur’ which alongwith ‘Sutanati’ and Calcutta was been transformed into a port city by the British. 7. The illiterate Fisher Folk Community apotheosized them. For they worshiped their (folk’s) idols – calling them Thakurs meaning ‘GODS’. But this Family name of Thakur was in no time, distorted in the British tongue into ‘Tagore’. 8. Being great fortune-hunters this Kushari’s turned Tagore, collaborated with the British in the construction-business to make money and built a sprawling Mansion at ‘Pathuriaghata’. 9. At the end of the 18th Century, Nilmoni, a scion of the Tagore’s fell at loggerheads with his sibling Darponarayan, over property. And worked out with one lakh rupees and the idols of Lakshmi and the Salagramshila, the sacred black geode. Nilmoni established a Mansion on a gifted land at ‘Mechuabazaar’ which later came to be known a ‘Jorasanko’. Prince Dwarokanath Thakur was Nilmoni’s grandson, who became eventually a big ship-merchant in British India.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 07:20:48 +0000
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