Home is where the heart isn't

Bhaskar Ghose
Hindustan Times
November 11, 2005

 

In the last century, the British moved the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi. That meant the physical transportation of mountains of files and office infrastructure — cupboards, tables, chairs and so on. And, of course, the movement of armies of people — clerks, junior officers and their families. Having been the capital of British India for over a century and a half, the Government of India's offices were staffed, at the lower levels, largely by Bengalis. They were transported from their native Calcutta — or Bengal, if they belonged to one of the many districts of that large province — to the strangeness that was Delhi.

But it took them only a little time to establish themselves. Evidence of this can be traced to the oldest Durga Puja Samiti in Delhi, which still organises an elaborate puja every year: the Kashmere Gate puja, started in 1905. As time went by and more Bengalis came to the capital — teachers, lawyers and doctors — the number of pujas grew and today, we have a very large number of them in virtually every part of the city.

I mention this because events like these are good indicators of the spread of a community in other parts of the country. For example, Mumbai now has almost as many pujas as Delhi. And there are Durga pujas also being organised in Chennai, Bangalore and almost every other state capital. Evidence that a fair number of Bengalis have moved from their state — one can't say how many, since it is said (rather rudely but, sadly, correctly) that if there are two Bengalis in a place, there will be three Durga pujas.

The migration of Bengalis from their state, or province as it was then, was, for one thing, induced by circumstances. The Bengali is a great tourist. He is to be found in the remote Himalayas, swathed in his grandfather's maflar (or muffler, as lesser mortals call it) and monkey cap, trudging along with his wife, mother, father, mother-in-law and children to Gangotri or Gaumukh. But he isn't one to settle elsewhere unless he is made to — and he was made to, partly by the British when they moved the capital to Delhi, and partly because of the need for teachers and doctors. Calcutta had institutions producing these, so they were picked up and sent off to different parts of the country.

But this is not about Bengalis, really, or their spread across the country. That happened quite some time ago, and now such Bengalis as do move to other cities and settle there are no more or no less than members of other migrant communities.

The point is, you can trace, very generally, the movement of communities from the incidence of festivals of a particular kind. One of the most revealing is the increase in recent years of the celebration of Chhath puja in the country.

This is a religious festival unique to Bihar and a few areas of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Its name is taken from the word for 'six', and is held on the sixth day of the new moon day in the month of Kartik. Offerings are carried to the banks of rivers and water bodies to worship the Sun and Shashthi Mata.

In years past, it was observed with great eagerness and devotion in Bihar as well as other places where traditionally there have been large concentrations of people from that state, like Kolkata. This year, too, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation made special arrangements: ghats were cleaned as soon as Durga puja and Kali puja were over, and special arrangements were made for the safety and convenience of the devotees.

What was very much in evidence, however, was the efforts that were made in other cities to make special arrangements for those who were going to observe Chhath Puja — in Mumbai and Delhi, for example. Clearly, there are many people from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh now in these cities, and indeed elsewhere, as in Bangalore — an indication that large numbers have moved in recent years from these states and continue to do so. This is a development that must give us some cause for anxiety.

That anxiety is not because of a large movement away from that part of the country, but because of the reasons for such large numbers of people moving from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to other states. No one likes to leave his own home, his community of relatives and friends. But home seems to have become, to many, a place of misery, of deprivation and hopelessness.

And it isn't only labourers and peasants who are migrating to cities across the country. Delhi has seen, for the last two decades at least, an influx of students from Bihar, many of them very bright and eager to learn. This is not because Delhi has vastly superior educational facilities, but because it has colleges that actually teach, unlike many in Bihar. Examinations are held in Delhi and results declared. One hears that these are a bit of a farce in Bihar. And while this may well enrich academic discourse in, say, Jawaharlal Nehru University, it impoverishes Bihar.

But no one in that state, or in Uttar Pradesh, seems greatly worried by all this. The fact that workers are beginning to see their state as a place where there is no hope of any change for the better, and that bright young students are moving out because they find the academic system diseased does not appear to make them lose a night's sleep. And the fact is that they ought to be worried, as should the authorities at the Centre.

After almost six decades of efforts to improve the quality of life in the country, Bihar and the eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh appear to have slipped further down and now see levels of deprivation, poverty and destitution that are even worse than before. And all the while, in these regions, the population continues to grow at a rate that seems out of control.

Compared to these regions, other states are relatively better off, and of course there is the prospect of good money, comparatively speaking, in the cities.

It is inevitable that, as the country moves forward in time, the levels at which prosperity comes to different states will vary; it will vary within states as well. But these differences cannot be allowed to become too great, because that means a rise in tensions predicated on those differences. It will mean shifts in the population as people migrate in search of work, and that will mean, inevitably, the growth of resentment and parochial hostility. This may evolve into something that destroys the basis of all the development sought to be started and established.

A primary aim must be a relative uniformity in development. And the special problems of some states like Bihar need to be addressed urgently. Recently, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a raft of projects for the terribly neglected North-eastern states. This is more than welcome. But a similar set of measures is desperately needed for Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Enduring improvements in the quality of life can only come if the population is stable, not restless, and if there is, in the midst of poverty, an element of hope. That hope can bring stability, can reduce the urge among so many to move elsewhere in search of a means of livelihood. How that stability can be brought about is something that needs to be addressed immediately.