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Trinamool Congress headed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has made Bengal Asmita, Bengal’s self-respect, a huge poll issue during the 2026 assembly election campaign because, among other things, of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) assault on Bengali identity. In 2025, BJP leader Amit Malviya made scornful remarks that there was no language called “Bengali”.

A Delhi Police communication then described Bengali as “Bangladeshi language”. Multiple incidents across the country of targeted violence, torture, detention and deportation of migrants from Bengal on alleged suspicion of being Bangladeshis precipitated the issue and so self-esteem became a genuine issue for voters in the state.

Also read: An Eyewitness’s Account of the Exodus of Bengali Muslim Migrant Workers in Gurugram

Rightly incensed by the calculated assaults against Bengalis, their language and sense of pride by BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Banerjee described them as “bahiragat,” “outsiders” who have not even a modicum of understanding of West Bengal’s ethos, history and culture.

It is in this context that it is worthwhile to recall first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s admission on September 22, 1928 that he, being “a dweller from the colder and sometimes much hotter regions of the north”, and carrying with him “something of the coldness and hardness of that mountain climate”, was not in a position to fully fathom, “the warm-hearted eloquence and love of art and beauty and passionate emotionalism” of Bengal.

Nehru said so candidly in 1928 while delivering the Presidential Address at the All-Bengal Students Conference, remembering the legendary leader of Bengal, C.R. Das, who had made the charge against him that he was cold-blooded. Nehru pleaded guilty.

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