By Dinabandhu Maity
Central Committee Member
Amra Bangali
May 25, 2007

05/25/07 - "World Prout Assembly" - The Bengali Community has been proceeding towards an enlightened future for the last 3000 years and more. In India, occupying primarily the state of West Bengal in the eastern part of the country near Bangladesh, it is not at all an arbitrary social body arbitrarily having a political barrier. Bengal has its own calendar, language, scriptures, pronunciation, and ways of forming social ties that have developed over thousands of years. It has its own style of dress, the ladies having their own unique way to wear the traditional India sari as well. Even though Bengal's political structure has so many times been broken and reconstituted, it has also retained its old values. Due to this heritage, Bengal's progress has come into existence step by step. The region has also collected many attributes from other civilisations, and given many back in return. Nevertheless, it is badly in need of a renaissance.

The industrial position of Bengal is tremendously exploited. To eradicate this exploitation, agro-industry and agrico-industry are a must. These will help the region develop its agricultural base into related, more industrially developed enterprises. Further, the traditional values of the Bengali people are being eroded, money is being drained out of the region by outside capitalists, and the Bengali people are suffering from various forms of Hindi imposition and oppression.

The organisation "Amra Bengali" has gained special importance in east Indian politics because of its comprehensive program for reconstructing those areas in India where Bengali is spoken while simultaneously propagataing Prout's socio-economic-political ideology. The purpose of this reconstruction is to establish self-sufficient economic units in which development planning will be decentralised down to the block level of approximately 100,000 residents, and in which everyone will have guaranteed education, food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. The local people will control their own economy.

Many regions like Telegudesham, Assam, and Mizoram with their different ideas have been created. However, Amra Bengali does not believe in separatism or communalism as it is based on the cooperative structure "Prout Sarva Samaj Samiti," which consists of 44 "Samajas," or socio-economic regions. By the conception of Samaj we mean self-sufficient socio-economic regions formed according to the following critera:

1. Similar economic problems
2. Similar kinds of natural resources and wealth potential
3. Similar ethnicity
4. Similar topography
5. Similar sentimental legacy (language, culture, etc).

In order to materialize Samajas, Amra Bengali, following human values, has the following goals:

1) To guarantee the five fundamental necessities (food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and education) to all citizens.

2) To secure the right of all people to express themselves spontaneously in their mother tongue.

3) To encourage the inherent culture of every ethnic group.

4) To liberate all ethnic groups and human beings from the bondage of economic exploitation.

5) To establish universal brotherhood through regional self-sustaining community development.

Most recently, Amra Bengali launched a movement to protect the victimised people of Nandigram. On 14 March 2007 the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) government of West Bengal forcibly occupied the cultivable land of poor farmers and murdered many of them in order to establish their capitalist industries. Amra Bengali called for a total bandh on 16 March that was successfully observed with the spontaneous support of the masses. A demonstration, public meetings and press conference were also arranged to protest the ruthless murders. In some areas the Chief Minister of West Bengal was burned in effigy.

Amra Bengali was also the first to bring emergency relief supplies to the affected population in Nandigram. Clothing and food packets were distributed to patients of Nandigram Hospital. Medicines were supplied to Gokulnagare village continuously for three days. In Sonachura village, economic grants were provided to the families of the dead. The villagers were very much inspired. They have already organised meetings so as to learn about Amra Bengali's agricultural and industrial economic policies.

With the goal to serve in the time of need, Amra Bengali has been active in the past and will continue to be so in the future. While communists oppress, capitalists exploit, and Hindis impose their cheap pseudo-culture on the great people of Bengal, there is a crying need today for new leadership, a new movement and a new socio-economic, political ideology to free all Bengali speaking people from their present state of oppression and exploitation and restore this rich and ancient culture to its former heights of glory.