Fascinating ! Once again my heartfelt gratitude. Once again my sincere apologies for my ill informed bias. My ignorance and bias was so much embedded in my mind that unless we had this interaction I would have remained with a very narrow mindset.
With one sweep my perspective has changed though I have a lot to catchup on improving my knowledge of Muslim Bengali culture.
The
Islami Gaan written by Qazi Nazrul Islam in the link you sent me was enchantingly spiritual. What is more the songs were so easy for me to understand.
It is hard to say which of the songs are the best because they are all so beautiful. The first is what closely resembles what we call a
naat or
salaam in Urdu or a hymn in praise of the Prophet ( S.A.W ) .It is the most beautiful song in the collection:
"Aye re Shagor Akashey..."
The music and beat / rhythm is distinctly Persian or Middle Eastern.
The third song is what in Urdu would be termed as a
Hamd or praise of Allah :
"
Sukkhi Tumi Dukhi Tumi ...Chokhe tumi..."
This
hamd was beautiful and sung in the traditional style with no background music.The fourth song is a
salaam also.
But two other songs I particularly liked :
1.
Ei Sundar phul...mitha nodir paani.... Khuda Tomar Mehrbaani
2.
Masjide dere kabar amar pass delo bhai ...
The last song was heart rendering . It starts with a section of the
Fajr azaan
.. As salaat al khairum min noom. The singer is requesting to be buried near the mosque so that he can hear the azaan.
You were correct about the influence of Persian and inclusion of Persian words in the Musolmani Bengali vocabulary . The article from Daily Star was particularly illuminating.,
Your research on the Musolmani Bengali heritage is intense and extremely interesting. It is extremely heartening to know that the cultural heritage unique to Bangladesh and
distinct from West Bengal is being preserved and strengthened.
Being an Urdu speaker I share your pain. In essence I now realize that Musolmani Bengali is as different from the Kolkata Bengali as Urdu is from Sanskritized Hindi, except that the script is the same.,
The Indian Urdu speakers are in the same position as Musolmani Bengali speakers were about 100 years back about the time Kazi Nazrul Islam wrote his poems. Aggressive Sankritization of Bengali by the Brahmin dominated bhadralok was stifling their linguistic and religious identity. There was a resistance which led to the formation of East and West Bengal and ultimately the Musolmani Bengali culture found a home in a new independent nation. Congratulations to the Musolmani Bengalis and a salute to their heritage. They have fought and won a struggle for their identity.
Sankritisation is being forced not only on Bengali in India (like in the districts of Malda and Kolkata suburbs) but on all languages in the Indian subcontinent as part of a revisionist Hindutva agenda to turn the clock back to the "Vedic era " crushing centuries of a coalescing of cultures and languages . So Punjabi, Dogri, Haryanvi, Avadhi, Bhopali, Deccani, all of which have a rich collection of Persian words in their vocabulary are being purged of these words by a huge state coordinated effort., The aim is to purge the subcontinent of all "foreign" influences which essentially means Muslim. It is deliberate and well planned. In India the simple Hindustani has been replaced by an artificial sanskritized Hindi and Urdu/Persian and Arabic words have been officially banned. Urdu which was native to Northern and Central India and has been crushed completely and teaching or learning the language has been made impossible in all states with the ironic and notable exception of West Bengal. A few weeks back Urdu which had been a state language in Kashmir was banned and replaced with Sanskrit Hindi. Unlike Musolmani Bengali Urdu suffers from the disadvantage of having the Persian script. So killing the script by removing the means to learn it essentially kills the language .
But languages are resilient. Urdu is dead in India but it found a new home in Pakistan where even though only 18% identity the language as their mother tongue it has become a language for communication, basic education, administration and also a lingua franca across the country., It is also widely spoken in the Persian Gulf countries on account of the ex-pat labor population.
The Sankritization of India has reached such a level that the Indian Parliament uses interpreters over a communication system and you can see Indian lawmakers wearing headphones which they sometimes remove and hurl at each other because they can't understand what is being said.
The Bangladesh Jatiyo Sansad and Pakistan National Assemblies have no need for such an arrangement.
Please don't apologize. The apologies should come only from me as I have in my ignorance written extremely offensive and provocative posts. Please do forgive me. Yes, I would like to discuss Allama Iqbal with you. I am a greatly impressed by his writings. His Persian writings are particularly philosophical.