Bhakti in Bengal

A movement rooted in joyous celebration of the love for Krishna shaped Bengal's syncretic socio-religious ethos and identity. A special essay

- Alapan Bandyopadhyay

Bhakti is a central tenet of Bengal's social theology and cultural heritage. West Bengal now rediscovers this bhakti as an abiding principle of social cohesion, which continues to be relevant in our times.

Bhakti tries to define justice in terms of equality. It offers an inclusive credo of harmony, and avoids excessive stratification in the name of caste or gender. As agriculture expanded in Bengal in the last millennium, bhakti was particularly useful in accommodating multiple 'lower' castes and classes, as well as women, within the evolving polity. Bhakti gave solace and adhesion to the citizens in the making, while the state got legitimacy. Upwardly mobile groups (like merchants and artisans) often found honour in bhakti. Bhakti offered many things that the orthodox Brahminical mores did not. Historians and sociologists have written extensively on all these.

Bhakti has been a democratising ethos, generally everywhere in India, and particularly in Bengal. It is significant that amidst the neoliberal global regime of aggravating inequalities (as discussed recently by Thomas Piketty), a new abode for bhakti is erected in Bengal. The search for deep identity, and a fraternal thirst for equality, have produced and popularised the newest dwelling for Jagannath in Digha.