Man cannot live with bread alone. After meeting his physical requirements, which for many poor people are usually partial, he craves to read a piece of literature or watch a movie or listen to a song. Nature has created him like this. First appetite and then taste for these immaterial objects are thus normal propensity for many human beings.
This tendency has cut through economic, educational and social classes since time immemorial. History and archeology together vouch for this concept. That is why discoverers have unearthed paintings of anonymous artistes in caves which are believed to have been inhabited by our ancestors living a few million years back.
Marxist critics have usually fostered a notion which explains human beings as basically economic animals. Accordingly art and culture created just for aesthetic purpose are considered anti-people as these creations consumes a lot of resources taken out of the poor men’s coffer by way of exploitation by the capitalist rulers. This notion was held in doubt by many for decades during the last century. These dissenters were not only ordinary people but many exceptionally gifted people. After the fall of communism and socialism this skepticism has proved itself to be correct. So art and culture has been accepted as something not poised toward economic emancipation but as pure intellectual and aesthetic pleasure.
With much ado and many arguments, human civilization has accepted art as works of creative imagination. These are the products of human cerebral activity of those who are naturally gifted than the common men and the output being visual arts, drawing, painting and sculpture. It also includes music, literature, oratory, photography, dancing and acting. Accordingly, life of men or of particular classes of men of on age is reflected in these activities.
Members of societies lead a particular way of life in the ages of history. Their dreams, realities, problems, pleasures, pains, food habit, social interaction, racial relation, class structure, war, flood, nuptials, festivals, celebrations, defeat, union, architecture and types of habitation and apparel, professions, vocations, entertainment, ethos, transportation sports, ethics, judicial system etc. have places in the art of the population. Livelihood and religion are the other two important elements which find place in the art(s) of a nation. Bangla art and culture, thus reflect images of rivers, cultivation, mosques and temples. The vast majority of the population of Bangladesh is Muslim in faith. Accordingly mosques carry marks of art and architecture of the age during which these where built. These are usually Turkish and Mogul. Satgambuj Masjid at Bagerhat, Khulna is such an evidence of age.
Culture is entwined with art. It denotes the result of civilization which means man’s achievement in refining his conduct and taste. The results of civilization are expressed in the art(s) of a nation. Thus posterity, many centuries after the lifetime of Picasso, comes to know the renaissance art and culture and realizes what type of refinement and fine-tuning men had achieved in contemporary life during the 16th century. Mentioning a strict and classical definition of culture may not be out of place here. One of the best thinkers of Europe defined culture as “man’s victory over his primitive instincts.”
Bengal and Bangla
The land and water masses now forming political Bangladesh were part and parcel of Bangla during 300 BC. The Aryans entered the subcontinent from the west about 1,500 BC. They found Austro-Asiatic eastern part of Bengal in 400 BC. In spite of its being an undivided locality, people used to speak different dialects in different areas of Bengal. We require to put special attention to the eastern part as it finally came out as a sovereign state in 1971. Having said that the connection between Indian Bengal (West) and Bangladesh also needs to be remembered for important reasons.
The British started English education, centering Calcutta. The benefits of education, art and culture disseminated primarily from that center. In spite of common language, people’s lukewarm attitude toward accepting English kept the eastern part of Bengal (present Bangladesh) backward compared to inhabitants of West Bengal. The enlightening began a century later when they realized the benefits. Nazrul, Tagore and most other great geniuses of art and culture hailed from Calcutta and West Bengal. As a result the relation became inseparable between the two populations in spite of Bengal being divided in 1947 between India and Pakistan. It stood true in 1971 as well. Muhammad Shahidullah and Muhammad Hai have shown that traces of Munda (kol) influence on the language of East Bengal is most prominent among others. The next one is Tibeto-Burmese which is marked on their pronunciation of the Aryan gh, dh, bh, as stressed g, d and b and the palato-dental pronunciation of the Aryan pure palatals.
Professor Przyluski of Sorbonne University has shown that Bangla words of peacock, platinum, betel-leaf and gourd are of Austo-Asiatic origin. Likewise are rice, paddy husker and canoe.
East Bengal as a whole was conquered by the Muslims about 1,300 AD. By 1,600 the area came under Mogul rule. Sometime before this, Portuguese, English, Dutch and French trading companies had spread their activities in the area. After the battle of Plassy in 1857 AD, the East India company became the real ruler of the whole of Bengal which included present Bangladesh and Indian West Bengal. As a result of this mingling of foreign dialects Bangla had to metabolize quite a long list of foreign vocabulary within its fabric which were Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, French, Urdu and English.
Literature
Bangla literature flourished during the Muslim reign. The 14th century ruler Sikandar Shah of Gaur (capital city of Bengal) was the chief patron of Chandidash, the earliest known poet of medieval Bangla literature. The next great writer Shah Mohammad Sagir flourished under the tenure of the next ruler Giasuddin Azam Shah — poet kirtibash composed the epic Ramayana in Bangla during the rule of Jalaluddin Mahmood Shah. Maladhar Bashu composed Srikrishna Vijaya. Poet Kavindra Paramesvara rendered the Bangla version of Mahabarata (the greatest epic of the Indian subcontinent) at the instance of Paragal Khan a lieutenant of King Husain Shah of Gaur. It has been estimated that nearly 2,000 words from Muslim sources got inducted into Bangla during these periods which are still used commonly by Muslims and Hindus. It is undeniably established that the landslide majority of the population of Bengal was Hindu when Bakhtiar Khilji overpowered Laksman Sen in 1,211 AD. Only some splinters were Muslims in the Chittagong area. Muslim rule influenced and changed the culture of this population to a great extent.
The job of literature is to assimilate all these elements of the life of a populace in any form of its structured expression (i.e. prose, poetry, novel or drama). In undivided Bangla (until 1947), the earliest known type was folk literature. These include ballads, Nath (praising the creator), Jatra (a rural drama in coarse language), Punthi (love or war story in rhymed recitation by one or two performers), riddles, proverbs and folk tales.
Ballads are stories of high romance, thrills and adventures of village life. The writers are hardly identifiable but Dinesh Chandra Sen has marked a glossy place as one of the discoverers of this branch of literature in Bengal. Mansoor Uddin Boyati is another person who is worthy of mention in this respect. Some most popular ballads have been “Alal and Dulal” “Derwan-e-Madina.”
Besides, Jatra, the most attractive entertainment in rural areas were ‘Punthis, which are long narrative poems on, subjects like myths, legends, classical and historical epics. These were usually read in the court or in an important man’s house after a day’s work was over in the presence of villagers.
Folk Tales
Folk tales were mainly collected by Reverend Lal Bihari Dey and Daksina Ranjam Mitra Majumdar. Later ‘Thakur Dadar Jhulie’ (the bag of the paternal grandfather) of 1908 has remained a source of satisfying curiosity and food for thought of children in Bengal.
Short Story, Poetry and Songs
Since time immemorial writers both anonymous and named have been producing and enriching these items of human imagination. Kalidas, Alawol, D.L. Roy, Mir Mosharrof Hossain and others have produced excellent pieces of literature of permanence. Then there happened a giant’s leap by poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. He surpassed his predecessors by his fiery, speedy and rhythmic verses during the first decades of the 20th century. His verses and song became extremely popular. But Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) towered over all by his immeasurably superior intellect, deep drive into human suffering and pleasures and his total integration with and submission before the Almighty. His short stories and songs have hardly any parallel with any other writer on this globe. However these are not popular with the common people as they deal with deepest philosophy of human life and nature. Actually it would require a hundred years time to mention the versatility of his genius even briefly. He has been the actual founder of Bangla language. Syed Mujtaba Ali has been rated by many next to him in intellectual and creativity. After him Tarashankar Banerjee and others enriched literature of West Bengal. Since 1947 until recently poet Jashim Uddin, Gulam Mustafa, Hassan Azizul Haque, Syed Shamsul Haque, Shamsur Rahman, Enamul Haque, Imdadul Haque Milon, Humayun Azad, Serajul Islam Chowdhury, Belal Chowdhury, Al-Mahmood, Mahadev Saha, Rabeya Khatoon, Anisuzzaman and Zillur Rahman Siddiqur have done excellent works in creative and critical fields of Bangla literature. Jibananda Dash deserves special mention as the super poet on Nature. The liberation of 1971 produced literature of exceptional high quality in Bangla. “Payer awaj paoa jae’ (sounds of footsteps are audible) is one such creation by Syed Shamsul Haque.
Starting from 1972, a superstar has attracted hundreds of thousands of readers to his magical novelettes and dramas. His name needs to be mentioned specially. He is Humayun Ahmed. Though dealing with passing and mostly superficial realities of life, he is the pivot of the middle and the upper classes readers of Bangladesh.
Songs
Deeply influenced by Tagore and Nazrul, Salil Chowdhury, Gauriprasanna Majumdar, Pabitra Mitra, Himangsu Biswas and others produced high quality lyrics in West Bengal from 1943 to 1990. Commensurate with that, composers like Nachiketa Ghosh, Shudhin, Subal and Kamal Dasgupta produced inimitable sweet tunes for Bangla songs.
In Bangladesh the listeners have got meritorious lyricists like Moniruzzaman, and brilliant composers like Khan Ataur Rahman, A. Ahad, Satya Saha, Subal Dash, Anwar Parvez, and Sheikh Sadi Khan. Singers like A Jabbar, Subir Nandi, Mahmudunnab’ Sabina Yasmin, Runa Laila, Ferdousi Rahman have established a permanent place in the minds of listeners of modern songs. Feroza Begum and Rezwana Chowdhury Banya have been shining as two superstars in Nazrul and Tagore songs respectively. In folk music Abbasuddin and Abdul Alim are legendary figures in the minds of rural Bangladeshis.
— Masud Ahmed is a novelist, short story writer, singer and additional secretary to the government of Bangladesh.
