Every time I utter the word Bengal, something strange happens.
Somewhere, somehow, in the quiet corners of the internet, a conch shell blows. A secret signal goes out. And within minutes, people materialise in my comments section to ask, “Why are you maligning Bengalis?”
It’s magic, really. I say Bengal, and suddenly, everyone from Ballygunge to Berlin feels personally attacked.
As if the word itself were a drone strike on Tagore’s piano.
Let me clarify.
When I used the word Bengal in my previous post, I wasn’t talking about your fish, your fashion, or your PhD.
I wasn’t attacking your rasgullas, your Rabindrasangeet, or your righteous rage.
I was talking about Plassey.
About the greed, betrayal, and general jugadu cowardice that led to a nation being sold for silver.
You’re offended?
That’s like taking personal offence every time someone says Mir Jafar.
He was one man. One moment.
Not your distant uncle.
Unless, of course, he was.
But that would make you the first President of Pakistan.
Or one of his six children.
Are you?
Jokes aside, the more interesting bit isn’t the reaction.
It’s the pattern.
Because this isn’t just about Bengal.
Say Hindi, and suddenly a Tamilian or Kannadiga will appear to declare you a linguistic imperialist. Bonus points if it’s before breakfast.
Say Bengal, and a Bengali will show up to defend everything from Tagore to terracotta temples, as if you insulted their grandmother’s sari.
Say Babur, and someone in Uttar Pradesh will start typing furiously like it’s 1526 and you just spotted him crossing the Yamuna.
Say Bihari, and you’ll be told you’re either unfairly stereotyping or failing to recognise their intellectual superiority. Sometimes both in the same sentence.
Say Chhatrapati Shivaji, and eighteen Maharashtrians will materialise demanding a public apology, a history lesson, and a book ban.
Say Umar Khalid or Ram Mandir, and it feels like D. Y. Chandrachud himself will resurface from retirement to say, in flawlessly complex English,
The denial of bail, in this context, must be construed not as a punitive aberration but as a calibrated manifestation of jurisprudential restraint, consonant with the evolving contours of constitutional proportionality; whereas the adjudicatory transference of a disputed religious structure to one stakeholder represents not majoritarian appeasement but the harmonious reconstitution of secular equilibrium through historically contextualised adjudicative equipoise. Of course, the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere…
It’s as if we’ve all developed sentiment surveillance software.
Sniffing out keywords, not meaning.
Forget context. Forget intent.
Just say a name, and summon the algorithmic outrage brigade.
There is, it seems, an entire population that wakes up every morning, pours itself a hot cup of outrage, and types words like Bengal, Hindi, Mughals, Aurangzeb into the search bar like it’s a treasure hunt for emotional indigestion.
Do you people have Google Alerts set for your insecurities?
Is this your cardio?
We’re not talking about real slurs.
We’re not talking about hate speech.
We’re talking about historically accurate words being used in thoughtful, nuanced contexts.
And still getting dunked on by people who clearly haven’t read past the title.
Or the last line.
Some folks treat their identity like it’s bubble wrap.
You can’t even mention it without being accused of attempted murder.
But here’s the real tragedy.
These aren’t fringe behaviours anymore.
They’ve become… contagious.
What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow, they say.
Well, congratulations.
We are now a nation of search bar patriots.
People who don’t read. Don’t reflect. Don’t ask.
They just sniff for keywords, yank context out by the roots, and slap a label on the speaker: anti-national, anti-Bengal, anti-language, anti-history, anti-sentiment.
And to my Bengali friends in particular:
You have given us some of the greatest literature, art, music, cinema, and political thought this country has ever seen.
Your language is beautiful. Your culture is deep. Your cuisine is worshipped. Your minds are admired.
You have nothing to prove.
So why the insecurity?
Why waste all that richness on routine outrage?
It’s puzzling. And honestly, a little ugly.
You’re better than this.
Act like it.
So here’s a modest proposal.
The next time you feel like weaponising a word, maybe… read the entire article first?
Understand the point?
And if you still feel offended after that, by all means, light the torches.
But at least do it with the grace of someone who knows why they’re angry.
Because right now, this isn’t pride.
It’s performance anxiety.
P.S.: For those who will now come to this post and start defending their fragility, you are only proving the point. Please don’t.
