Poor, Lazy and Loving It

When all of Bengal celebrates Lakshmi Puja, Bengali hypocrisy would be complete

Durga Puja may be Bengal’s biggest festival, but Lakshmi Puja is the most widespread. On the first full moon evening after Durga Puja, the deity is worshipped in almost every household in the state. Herein lies a paradox, one put succinctly by a member of India’s premier business family, the Birlas. “It baffles me,” BM Birla said in the mid-1970s, when Bengal was witnessing a flight of capital, “how a community that worships the Goddess of Wealth so fervently can be so anti-capital.”

Time, liberalisation and the free market haven’t corrected this contradiction. Save urban middle and upper middle class folk who anyway migrate to other parts of India and the world, a majority of Bengalis think wealth is a dirty word. To be wealthy is not honourable, to pursue material gains is not respectable, and striving to increase one’s earnings is socially looked down upon.

This attitude is reflected in the Bengali tendency to shirk work and his lack of entrepreneurial spirit. Kolkata is perhaps the only megapolis where shops and markets (owned and operated by Bengalis) shut down every afternoon for owners and employees to take a siesta. Taxis, autorickshaws and rickshaws are hard to find after 10 pm. Only the ones driven by migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh ply.

The Bengali justifies his laziness by invoking the ‘simple living, high thinking’ credo. High thinking, however, has long ceased to be, thanks to the brain drain that started many decades ago. Aversion to wealth and the wealthy is also legitimised by works of prominent Bengali litterateurs, filmmakers and stage personas, who inevitably portray the rich as villains. There is no sense of regret in Bengal even today at the manner in which private capital was driven out of the state in the 1960s and 1970s. There is no lament over the closure of industrial units that rendered millions jobless. Few mourn the derailment of recent attempts to attract capital; in fact, those who derailed it have reaped enormous political dividends.

The quintessential Bengali is happy with his limited income, his ramshackle house and his worn kurta-pyjama. So, what in the name of God is Goddess Lakshmi supposed to do when he seeks her blessings?

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