New Delhi, May 15 -- What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow!

This was a proud, albeit, narcissistic slogan, of an enlightened and educated Bengal during pre-and post-colonial times. The Bengal Renaissance arrived like a storm, as depicted in Utpal Dutt's film 'Jhor' on the life and times of radical thinker and educator Derozio. With the revolutionary movement and political rebellion often moving in tandem with the social reforms movement, and non-conformist forms of poetry, literature, arts and culture, Bengal's time-present seemed always to be in perfect synthesis with its time-future. Between today and tomorrow, the inner lines and inner spaces seemed eternally blurred, like epical cinema moving in brilliant flashback.

Even d...