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Historians have an inbuilt defence mechanism. Since they know that every history has history, they are surprise-proof. The West Bengal election results which have gone hugely in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have upset many of them temporarily, but on reflection they have found themselves firmly footed. For them, Bengal has traditionally been an enigma, which has just once again been reconfirmed.

It was Bengal, from where the East India Company had started its Indian journey. The Mughals before them too had found the province interesting. Initially they encountered some difficulty to control it because of its wet cartography but in due course they took full advantage of the situation to build a prosperous rain-fed agricultural economy which helped them raise a massive standing army that was able to browbeat all contemporary Indian rulers. That the changing course of the Ganga in the previous hundred years came handy to them to take advantage of the situation is a long story.

During the hundred years of the East India Company rule (1757-1857) it was this province alone which was chosen for two important Hindu social reforms, one, the abolition of the Sati ritual, and two, the validation of widow remarriages. These reforms, however progressive, angered the Hindu conservatives, who had traditionally dominated the Bengali Hindu social order. This fact did not escape the notice of the politically suave British. They realised that since their business was business, they should scrupulously avoid interfering with the Hindu social norms.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Soon after the 1857 revolt when the British Crown supplanted the East India Company rule, their........

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