Hate Filled ‘Othering’ of RSS-BJP Will Have Diminishing Returns
Lord Curzon must be chuckling in his grave. Recently, in Karimganj district rechristened as Sribhumi in Barak valley, a local Congress leader sang Rabindranath Tagore’s iconic song “Amar Sonar Bangla, Ami tomay bhalobasi”. It immediately drew a sharp reaction from the Himanta Biswa Sarma government. The Chief Minister himself pounced on this seeing ‘an opportunity’ to demonise the opposition and question their loyalty. This song has been adopted as the national anthem of Bangladesh after the triumph of the national liberation movement and formation of the new republic in 1971. Insinuating extra-territorial loyalty, the RSS-BJP was blissfully forgetful of the fact that this song was part of the themes of linguistic and cultural expressions of rebellion of the Bengali speaking people of East Pakistan against the forced imposition of Urdu and other shenanigans of a religious identity driven nationhood of the Pakistani rulers.
However, contemporary history shows us that a one-dimensional definition of nationhood cannot sustain in the cultural diversity of the South Asian terrain. The evolution of the song itself is a testimony of the struggle of the Bengali speaking people underlining the inclusive vision of the struggle against the British colonial policy of division and partition. Creation of Bangladesh was the clinching proof that the glue of religious identity was wholly inadequate to hold together two regions culturally diverse and separated by a physical distance of two thousand miles.
The song was written in protest against the first Partition of Bengal by the British government. The decision to partition the undivided province of Bengal into two separate entities was announced by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, on July 19, 1905, and took effect on October 16, 1905. Tagore penned the lyrics and music as a vibrant protest against that first ‘partition’ for a protest meeting in Calcutta’s historic town hall on August,7, 1905. In a way it was truly a continuation of that legacy of resistance that the first ten lines of the song were adopted as the national anthem of Bangladesh by its provisional government on April 10, 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War. Today, the legacy of Curzon fires the BJP-RSS and their poster boy Himanta is alive and kicking, when the Assam government has announced the rendering of the song as anti-national. Singing of a song written 66 years before its adoption as Bangladesh’s national anthem is being used to suggest extraterritorial loyalty of the people of the Barak valley.
Actually, this crusade against the song is not just a continuation of the systematic assault on the Bengali language when Bengali tongue was sought to be delegitimised earlier by terming it as a Bangladeshi. The impulsive classification was only to reassert the linkage of the language with ‘infiltration’! How can we obfuscate that the same language can be spoken across two countries on either side of the border?
There is no doubt that BJP and Himanta are in a state of desperation in Assam, which is going to polls early next year. Eviction and bulldozers are being resisted by people at the receiving end of corporate land grab spearheaded by the Chief Minister himself. The anti-minority tirade can no longer be glossed over with cases of land alienation in tribal areas provoking widest possible resistance by each of the six major tribal groups of Assam -- Tai Ahom, Moran, Motok, Chutia, Tea Tribes or Adivasis and Koch-Rajbangsi -- who together constitute nearly 30 per cent of the total population of the state. A major chunk of BJP’s support base, they are now on the streets demanding Scheduled Tribe (ST) status. All the six communities, included in the state’s Other Backward Classes (OBCs) list, now want to be recognized as Scheduled Tribes, which would mainly ensure them more access to reservations in educational institutions and government employment than the limited opportunities provided by their present status.
Coupled with extreme unemployment, the young people of the state have spoken out cutting across divisions on ethnic and religious lines with a firm voice and steeled by a new vision fearlessly articulated by the illustrious son of the Assamese people, Zubeen Garg. That is the backdrop of Himanta’s outbursts.
But it is not just Assam; across the country it is such voices of hate which energise Hindutwa politics of othering. On the language question, some time back, voices were heard against the Marathi language for the imposition of Hindu. After continued diatribes against ‘infiltration’ and ‘infiltrators’, the Hindutwa top brass goaded the ECI to initiate the SIR process bringing back the citizenship question through the back door. But that has proved to be a damp squib! Out of 7 Crore 42 lakh voters, only 9,500 or 0.012 per cent of the total votes have been found to be foreigners. Amit Shah’s scare mongering ‘detect, delete, deport’ have proved to be without any substantial basis.
But how does truth matter! We are living in the ‘post truth’ world! This is the election season! The crores with the BJP will go to finance the fake news machine churning out fake and distorted news to fuel the campaign of hate and othering. The crying need is to stay united and speak with one voice for addressing the daily crisis of life and livelihood that threaten our very existence.
(November 05, 2025)
