What do we say when a person speaks one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution? Definitely not an outsider. Bengali is an official language at the state level, particularly in West Bengal, Tripura, and the Barak Valley region of Assam. There have been certain instances that show how this discrimination has been spreading across the country.
The discrimination has evolved into trauma for many
Agniva Ray, a PhD scholar from CPS JNU, shares, “Being, staying in West Bengal, and then coming to Delhi came as a major event in many ways. Some of which were directly linked to how I would manoeuvre my daily life here. There is some sort of regional supremacy that excludes the acceptance of people from other regions, particularly Bengalis. I know the situation isn't that simple; they simply discriminate. There are deep-seated socio-cultural and historical constructions that contribute to this situation. But it is there. Speaking in Bengali in public spaces felt like a sort of terror working within me. And that was built upon by the selective exclusion and deportation of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in Delhi. I am more privileged than they. It is certainly unjust to compare myself to them. But it is something that's not very easy to deal with.”, Another resident of Sukhdev Vihar Okhla, Rituja De, MA Mass Communication student at Jamia Milia Islamia, mentioned, “In terms of racism, being in a city that is very different from Kolkata’s language, culture, and social settings, I have sometimes felt like people around me tend to trivialize the Bengali language, especially based on how it has been portrayed in popular media. They often pretend like the Bengali language adds the phonetic ‘o’ or ‘aww’ in every word we speak. It seems funny till a point, but after that it can get annoying and slightly insulting.”
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Is being Bengali just enough to be generalised?
Bengalis have historically identified as intellectual men. The latter part of the line describing the identity is the start of a major problem. The Bengali-speaking people being called Bangladeshi is the effect of propaganda that is being spread by certain political firms and organisations that try to change the course of history. It is noteworthy how the language has brought fame and pride to the citizens of the country. Rabindranath Tagore won the prestigious Nobel Prize for the English translation of the book ‘Gitanjali,’ which was originally written in Bengali. Legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray had won the ‘Honorary Academic Award (Oscar)’ for his lifetime contribution to cinema, whose language was Bengali. The world of academia in India has been dominated by the Bengalis. All of these but the identity reduced to just ‘Bangladeshi.’
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TMC MP Sagarika Ghose has raised a question in the Rajya Sabha, which pertains to issues of every Bengali staying across the country outside their home state. The language is not just an identity; it is a pride. The people who discriminate should understand that Bengali is a language that is spoken by Indians too, and the propaganda they spread is nothing but a straight violation of Article 15 of the Indian Constitution.
