I'm cross posting this from
Bangladesh protests Pakistan Parliament resolutions | Page 43
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it sort of comes as an enigma to me how did one generation of Bengali Muslims (besides earlier generations obviously) in many ways champion the cause of a separated Muslim homeland, only for the next generation to work to completely overturn that?
- since the defeat at Plassey (1757), the system that developed under British rule fuelled a Brahmin Bengali class to accumulate immense wealth and land, and dominate technical and literary development. what is called a ‘Bengali Renaissance’ was essentially a Brahmin affair. during this time, East Bengal, once a thriving Mughal economy, slowly decayed as did the Muslims. it was during then that education in science was relegated to a diminishing and relatively well off class of Muslims; illiteracy and poverty prevailed. education in Muslim high culture became part of an increasingly powerless Muslim educated class.
pathsalas became the places to study instead of
maktabs. ‘Bengali’ language and culture became overridden with Hindu culture. Muslims' inclination towards Arabi, Farsi, Urdu for literary purposes like olden times continued. i'm assuming here that a Musalman/Sultani Bengali could not get too strong a foothold amid all these factors combined.
- turn of 20th century provided a break for Bengali Muslims with advent of Muslim League and opening of a university in East Bengal.
- fastforward to post-1947: well-educated Hindus who used to administer East Bengal all this time mostly left for Calcutta (the same happened for Lahore but you are fortunate that the 'Calcutta' of Punjab went to the Muslims). the few who remained became influential parts of the academia, media and leftist politics of East Pakistan-East Bengal. the seeds of hatred against West Pakistan were being sowed – in the same parcel Bengali Muslim culture was turned into ‘foreign culture’ that ‘they’ were ‘imposing’ on ‘us’. what many newly educated Bengali Muslims adopted as their own were in fact gifts of the Brahmin Renaissance – from folklore to poetry to other social prose, from Nihan Ranjan to Madhusudan Dutta to Sarat Chandra to Tagore, and from literature like
Gopal Bhar to
Devdas to
Galpaguccha. and these tendencies were not even divided along socio-economic classes of Muslims, but along generations. for example in just one educated Bengali family, if pre-1947 generation was dominated by Urdu and Farsi scholars, the generation that matured post-1947 was more steeped in ‘Bengali’ education. as a result when earlier generation was into Allama Iqbal, latter more politically-charged generation was into Bankim Chandra. if older Bengalis tried to initiate a counter-narrative, they were essentially going against a political tide at that time and no match for the historically well-educated well-entrenched Hindus.
- these societal tendencies post-1947, although devastating, never really "washed away" the people and facts of the Pakistan Movement from the memories or psyches. and i don't think they have been washed away even today despite efforts against it, and a lot of blood spilled around 1970 and also after 1971 definitely did a lot of damage. you possibly already know about the violence pre-March 1971 and post-1971 suppression of Muslim League, Nizam-e-Islam, Democratic Party of Nurul Amin, other Muslim oriented parties (@@Md Akmal).
- in these events, former-West Pakistan comes in at phases and (maybe i'm being Bengal-centric here) i wish it had a more helpful role.
here is an interesting link. i don't agree with it completely but it is somewhat related
Bengali Muslims are new (?) | Brown Pundits
