At a time when politicians getting caught with stashes of cash and benami properties does not raise an eyebrow, a humble hut with a tin roof stands tall but forgotten in the nondescript village of Jitan in West Bengal’s Purulia district. The current resident of this old and dilapidated property, Dipak Mahato, a retired clerk from a local school, has been the sole breadwinner for a family of 50. But more astonishingly, he is the son of the man who was one of the spearheads of South Asia’s first-ever linguistic movement.
The pensioner inherited the mudhouse from his father, Bhajahari Mahato, who not only saved the predominantly Bengali-speaking Purulia district from being merged with the Hindi-speaking state of Bihar after Independence but was also the first parliamentarian to address the Lok Sabha in Bangla, the very language that he fought to save in his native Purulia district, then known as Manbhum.
A language movement against Raj
Dipak Mahato outside the tin-roof hut in the village of Jitan in West Bengal’s Purulia district
“Historically, the seed of the language movement was sown when Manbhum district in the erstwhile undivided Bengal was included in the then newly formed state of Bihar-Orissa. This was in 1912, following the withdrawal of the 1905 decision to bifurcate Bengal. The Bengali-speaking residents of Manbhum did not quite accept the separation. The resentment kept growing but was buried under the larger freedom struggle against the British rulers,” said Dr Pradip Mandal, an assistant professor of history at Manbhum Mahavidyalaya, a prominent college in the Purulia district.
“The first phase of the language movement was between 1912 and 1948. The movement started gaining momentum across Manbhum as a branch of the Indian National Congress (INC) was formed in 1921 with movement pioneers Rishi Nibaran Chandra Dasgupta as president and Atul Chandra Ghosh as secretary,” said Mandal.
Rajendra Prasad advocates for Hindi over Bengali
A decade later, in 1935, there was a twist as the then INC president, Rajendra Prasad, started an organisation called Manbhum Bihari Samiti to consolidate his community members in the district. However, a prominent local leader named Prafulla Ranjan Das countered the initiative by immediately forming Manbhum Bangali Samiti to fight for the cause of the Bengali speakers in the region. However, the language movement remained relatively low key until India gained Independence in 1947.
In 1935, in a twist, the then INC president, Rajendra Prasad, started an organisation called Manbhum Bihari Samiti to consolidate his community members in the district Wikimedia Commons
“The Manbhum district was ceded to Bihar and Hindi immediately replaced the Bengali language in primary schools. Moreover, the Bengali officers were transferred to other districts of Bihar and Hindi was made mandatory on signboards and hoardings in government offices and business establishments. Meanwhile, the proposal for making Bangla the language of the Manbhum district was defeated 43-55 at a Congress party meeting on May 30, 1948,” added Mandal, whose PhD thesis was on the century-old Manbhum language movement.
First breakaway party from the Congress
“This triggered the split in the Congress in Manbhum as the district president and secretary, along with 35 prominent members of the party, including Nibaran Chandra’s son Bibhuti Bhushan Dasgupta, Atul Chandra Ghosh and Labanya Prabha Devi, resigned and met at the Pakbirra village on June 14, 1948, to constitute a new political party called the Lok Sevak Sangha (LSS) with a mission to fight for their mother tongue through non-violent agitations or satyagraha andolan and to protest politically against the repression the Bihar government carried out by banning rallies, destroying properties and resorting to various violent means to bully the protesters,” said Mandal.
On January 29, 1948, just a day before he was assassinated, Mahatma Gandhi had drafted a constitution for his concept of Lok Sevak Sangh Getty Images
The name of the new political outfit was based on Mahatma Gandhi’s political principle of Lok Sevak Sangh, or association of servants of the people, into which he wanted the INC to dissolve itself. On January 29, 1948, just a day before he was assassinated, Gandhi had drafted a constitution for his concept of Lok Sevak Sangh.
An unprecedented electoral success
Riding on the sentiments of the Bengali-speaking residents, who were in the majority, the LSS contested for all four seats of Manbhum in the first general elections in 1952. Much to the surprise of the all-conquering INC, the small political entity bagged two Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. The seats of Manbhum South and Dhalbhum were won by LSS’s Mahato and Chaitan Manjhi, respectively.
Significantly, in the simultaneously held Bihar state Assembly elections, the LSS won seven seats from the region. The year 1952 also saw the birth of another language movement, when a group of students at Dhaka University in the capital of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) was killed by police firing on February 21 while demanding the reinstatement of Bangla in place of Urdu, which was being forced on the people by the Pakistan government.
Buoyed by their emphatic electoral success, the LSS took their movement to Parliament and the Bihar Assembly. Mahato became the first parliamentarian to deliver a speech in Bangla in the Lok Sabha in 1953, passionately advocating the cause of the Bengali speakers of his constituency. Meanwhile, the creation of Andhra Pradesh in 1953 following the death of Potti Sriramulu after nearly two months of fasting to demand the formation of a state for Telugu-speaking people gave a fillip to the LSS. Eventually, the Jawaharlal Nehru government budged on the matter: the State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was set up in December 1953, with Justice Fazal Ali, K.M. Panikkar and H.N. Kunzru as members.
Language movement through music
“On the ground, the second phase of the language agitation was started with Hal Joal Andolan involving the farmers. Subsequently, the LSS launched Tusu (traditional folk song genre of the region) Satyagraha in 1954. My parliamentarian father penned a song “Shun Bihari-bhai / Tora rakhte larbi/ dang dekhai… (O Bihari-brothers/ You cannot keep us in Bihar/ We are showing you stick…)” It became the de facto anthem of the non-violence movement that embraced patriotic songs and traditional music as its primary weapons,” Bhajahari’s son Dipak said.
However, with the state administration and police tightening the noose around the activists and protesters to trample on the linguistic crusade, the Communist Party, Bar Association and various other organisations lent their support to the cause of the Bengali speakers. After visiting Purulia town in 1955, the SRC team submitted its report in October 1955, proposing the creation of a new Purulia district, with 19 police stations, from the Manbhum district, keeping 12 other police stations in Bihar. “This triggered massive protests across Manbhum. In addition, to make things worse, the then Bengal chief minister, Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, and his Bihar counterpart, Krishna Sinha, decided to merge Bihar and Bengal in February 1956.”
Birth of Purulia amidst protests
Mandal, a conscientious chronicler of the non-violent language movement, said: “In protest, the LSS organised a peaceful march on foot from Pakbirra to Kolkata from April 20, 1956, with basically two demands: the repeal of the Bengal and Bihar merger bill and incorporation of all the police stations in the Manbhum district under the Purulia district.”
A pre-Independence provincial map of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa by TH Holland, with Manbhum right in the centre
Under sweltering heat, 1005 active rallyists, a large number of them women, marched to the Bengal capital on May 7, 1956, to turn their movement into a civil disobedience one. They were imprisoned by the police in Kolkata, but chief minister Dr Roy was compelled to withdraw the merger bill in no time. Subsequently, the “Bengal-Bihar Border Demarcation” Bill was passed in Parliament in August 1956 and the newly carved out Purulia district officially became a part of West Bengal with 16 police stations on November 1, 1956. Dr Roy acceded three police stations to Bihar following a special request by the Bihar government and the Tata Group. But what was clear was that the country’s first language movement against Hindi imposition had borne fruit.
A forgotten son of soil
Mahato never quite got his due in his home district and state Wikimedia Commons
The man who selflessly played a key role both as an activist and politician to make Purulia a part of West Bengal never quite got his due in his home district and state. “Barring a statue in Purulia’s Bandwan and the inclusion of the language movement in the history curriculum of Purulia’s Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University (SKBU), Mahato, who led an exemplary and extraordinarily spartan life dedicated to art and culture, and the pathbreaking language movement he led have mostly remained disremembered and disregarded,” rued Dr Sudip Bhui, an assistant professor at the SKBU.
Bhui, a Chhau studies expert and an anthropologist, added: “Interestingly, despite being a parliamentarian for 15 years, he breathed his last in his humble hut. The most valuable personal possession he had was his old, rusty and corroded bicycle.”
The monkish Mahato’s septuagenarian son, Dipak, lamented: “Many of my father’s close associates who fought alongside him during the Purulia language movement died in penury, and my father suffered their pain until his last day. My meagre pension somehow makes our ends meet, but we have not been able to convert our tin roof into a concrete one. Maybe my father’s lifelong reluctance to make personal profit contributed to our plight.”
(Suvam Pal is an independent media professional, author & documentary filmmaker. He tweets @suvvz. Views are personal.)