The Bangla Pokkho is a fast-growing nationalist movement in West Bengal organized along linguistic lines and aimed at protecting the ‘Bengali Jaati’. With the BJP’s active provocation along Nationalist Hindu ideas and its promotion of a Nationalist identity, many reactionary forces and groups have formed all over India, and in West Bengal. One such group is Bangla Pokkho, a group that frames its stance along linguistic lines, claiming to fight against “Hindi Imperialism”, the threat to the “bengali identity”, as well as the federal structure of power distribution.
5. Bangla Pokkho- The Organisation
Bangla Pokkho, formed in 2017, call themselves a “non-communal, apolitical and non-profit organisation”, working for the rights of “Bengali language and Bengalis”. Their demands include:
- 85% reservation for residents of West Bengal or people voting for the state in fields like job sectors, education, military, administration work
- Usage of Bengali language in all state and national level exams, forms, documents
- Reservation of 85% for students of the state board examination in state universities
- Hiring only candidates who cleared state level exams for state government administration positions instead of the national level examinations like IAS.
- The Bengali language getting equal status like that of Hindi constitutionally
- and many more.
Their demands are weaved around pushing the Bengali language for domination, as well as preserving a “Bangali Jaati”, an identity of which is formulated around the Bangla language itself. The kind of narrative that Bangla Pokkho prescribes is that Bangla, the Bengali people, and Bengali culture are at risk of being overrun by the imposition of Hindi and Hindustani culture. While they have been called a front of the Trinamool Party, and have definitely shown opposition towards the BJP Party in Bengal, one of their spokespersons states in an interview with The Telegraph, “We are not anti-BJP, it is the BJP that is being anti-Bengali by promoting Hindi Hindu Hindustan. We are against that ideology”. Hence, the emphasis is strongly put upon the Bengali Language and a certain claim to indigeneity by virtue of having spoken that language or prescribing to the cultural icons that are popularly marked as “Bengali Culture”.
In the same interview with the Telegraph, the spokesperson talks about how the language divide is a problem of “class”, and imposition of Hindi would mean people who can read only Bengali are deemed illiterate. Furthermore, he talks about how the organisation operates (by going village to village to make the people “aware” of their rights “as Bengalis”). He even states that they are very “liberal”, so much so that they were at that time thinking to open a front for the non-Bengali speakers. Another spokesperson further adds that “We want equal rights for Santhali, Rajbangshi, everyone” and that “We support any language which has roots in Bengal.
On the ground, they talk about promoting the “culture of Bengal” with festivals like Durga Puja, Kali Puja etc, or literature written by the likes of Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and more, or promoting foods thought to be part of the Bengali cuisine. On the side of the things they oppose happen to be Hindu festivals that are more popularly celebrated outside west Bengal, with a special hatred towards the “Biharis”. The things they do promote are what are loosely considered in popular culture as signifiers of a Bengali culture.
