It is widely accepted now that society in the state of West Bengal has moved from bhadralok to the post-bhadralok phase in the third decade of the 21st century. And while this may raise eyebrows and evoke vigorous denials from the remnants of that aforementioned construct—mostly resident outside the state now if not India itself—it may not be as much a doomsayer’s prognostication as a timely pivot and refocus to a more realistic picture of today’s West Bengal.

Take the number of much beloved shibboleths that have been given the go-by in recent decades. The latest is the about-turn on the belief that Lord Ram is a regressive god of the uncultured “Hindi heartland" who never had a place in Bengal’s feminist Shakta motherland. As recently as 2021, UNESCO recognising Durga Puja as an intangible heritage of Bengal was posited as another assertion of that truism, stopping a resurgent ‘northern’ Ram at the state’s border.

Yet this year, the same state government and its proxy goons who had done their best to stop Ram Navami processions before and loudly assert those were the handiwork of “outsiders", not only did not set the police on the processionists, but took part in the celebrations! The ruling party, officials, police and the other arms of the state government finally acknowledged what the presence of countless Ram temples in the state proved: He has always been in Bengali hearts.

The question is, why was their argument of Ram being the lord of outsiders allowed to dominate the discourse for so long, ignoring the faith of millions who flock to those temples dedicated to him in nearly every village in the state? In a way, it is a bit like Tamil Nadu, whose current party in power officially peddles an anti-Hindu line while the grand temples in the state continue to attract devotees unabated. The answer lies in who had controlled the narrative thus far.

And to get to the bottom of that, it is necessary to go back to the era before independence, if not further. While the old aphorism of ‘divide and rule’ may beget sarcastic chuckles today, the fact that it was a tremendously successful project rings true with every such........

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