Intellectuals are lonely warriors
Parvez Alam explores the journey of the mind
The people of Bangladesh have a rare heritage behind them of the golden history of the language movement and struggling in the face of colonial cultural oppression. The very idea of linguistic identity has shaped the politics of the post-British era of East Bengal, resulting in the birth of the country called Bangladesh. However, Fayaz Alam, in his latest book Buddhijibi, Tar Dai O Bangalir Buddhibrittik Dashotto successfully grabs our attention with some factual information about the fact that the colonialist cultural aggression and religious sectarianism had not just started in the Pakistan era. It was rather a continuation of a trend which started at least a hundred and fifty years earlier, at the beginning of British colonial rule in Bengal and through a so-called modernization of the Bengali language and Bengali people. Alam, a well known writer and pioneering Bangladeshi post-colonialist theorist, has been working for a decade on the issue of colonial oppression and its long term effects on the mind and life of the Bangladeshi people. His previous two books, Uttar Upanibeshee Mon (Post-Colonial Mind; 2006) and Bhasha, Khomota O Amader Lorai Proshonge (On Language, Power and Our Struggle; 2008) focused on the deep rooted colonial impact on our language, culture and politics, and the process of de-colonization. He draws our attention to the fact that modernization on the European model in colonized societies inevitably became a long and painful process of self denunciation, a forgetting of one's own past, language, culture and thus one's own identity in the process and yet struggling to cope with the ever-changing scenario of values, ethics and lifestyle in which a man or his nation is automatically alienated and dehumanized. The poor and unstable political and economic structures of most post-colonial societies and its status as a third world nation go hand in hand with its self denouncing inferiority complex, which makes it an easy victim of neo-colonization. This book is a continuation of such an effort. In Bangla Bhasha Bishoye (On Bengali Language), one of the most important articles in the book, Fayaz Alam draws a brief picture of such oppression in the colonial period from 1801 to 1870. A Sanskrit pundit named Mrittunjoy Biddalangkar, who even despised the word 'Bangla', became one of the most instrumental of figures in the process of a modernization of the Bengali language --- in his sectarian point of view, 'the process of cleansing the language of the pollution of infidel vocabulary and barbarism of common folk and developing it with more and more Sangskrit vocabulary and purifying it by using Sanskrit grammar'. At Fort William College, Mrittunjoy Biddalangkar and his fellow pundits successfully completed the task of refining modern Bengali prose, a task entrusted upon them by the British colonial rulers. Mrittunjoy had no experience of writing Bengali prose before that. In a period of half a century or so the whole face of the Bengali language was changed by a class which previously would take glory in writing faulty Bengali and historically denounce the language as anti-religious and barbaric. No wonder, Mrittunjoy and the later pioneer writers of modern Bengali literature were hugely Sanskrit dependent and their vocabulary and linguistic style clearly alien and obscure to common folks of their time and even today. As a matter of fact, the continuation of such elitist and colonial language might be the main reason why modern Bengali literature is still the literature of a portion of the educated middle class of town dwellers, not a sovereign literature of the Bengali people. Such degradation of a language has harmful consequences, so claims Fayaz Alam, and asks for a different perspective and query on the issue. With such a discovery in hand, should we fight against it, as we did in our glorious language movement? That is for us to decide. The title article, Buddhijibi, Tar Dai o Bangalir Buddhibrittik Dashotto, focuses on the importance of an intellectual as an architect of de-colonization, a warrior against power with language as his weapon, and a representative of the common people against oppression. With quotations from intellectuals like Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci and Noam Chomsky on the subject matter and his own rationalization, Fayaz Alam tells us that an intellectual must not take side of a group or party over people. Although an intellectual might be a valiant defender of the interest of the common people, people might not come easily on to his side. At the end of the day, an intellectual is a lonely warrior, so says Fayaz Alam. Another important article, Antonio Gramsci: On civil society, Alam, elaborating on the subject matter of the book in the light of the perspectives of the Italian Marxist intellectual Gramsci, labels the idea of recently developed Bangladeshi civil society and its position in the neo-colonial power structure. The article, Itihasher Dorshon uponibsher bashona, draws our attention to the fact that the colonial legacy behind the study of history has made history a tool to show sectarian and partisan supremacy in Bangladesh, which needs serious revaluation. Most people find petty cultural emotion, radical and aggressive nationalist fervor in post colonial literature, in the politics of praxis. However, the politics of praxis, or the point of view of people against colonialism does not itself represent oppression or petty nationalism. On the contrary, it speaks for the rights of the common people, of humanity. Fayaz Alam proves the point in the first article in the work, searching for the relationship of language and culture in the life and minds of the aboriginal people of Bengal, whose right to their own language is not recognized in a country which owes its freedom and sovereignty to a linguistic cultural revolution. Writing less, telling more, is Fayaz Alam's style. The same thing goes with this book. As always, Fayaz Alam has given us some tools of de-colonization and it is we who must use them carefully.
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