Should we make a Petition to change the Devanagari script of Bangla!?

[Joe Shearer]

Your question and statement simply means that you have wrong impressions.

@kalu_miah

Thus the span of a century from the death of Jalal al-Din Muhammad (d. 1432) to that of Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah (d. 1532) witnessed a wholesale transformation of Bengal’s political fabric. In the reign of the former sultan, descendants of old Turkish families had still formed the kingdom’s dominant ruling group. But in the following century the scope of Bengali participation at all levels of government continually widened,

Your question and statement simply means that you have wrong impressions.

@kalu_miah

The court also lent vigorous support to Bengali language and literature. Already in the early fifteenth century, the Chinese traveler Ma Huan observed that Bengali was “the language in universal use.”[99] By the second half of the same century, the court was patronizing Bengali literary works as well as Persian romance literature. Sultan Rukn al-Din Barbak (r. 1459–74) patronized the writing of the śrī Kṛṣṇa-Vijaya by Maladhara Basu, and under ‘Ala al-Din Husain Shah (1493–1519) and Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah (1519–32), the court patronized the writing of the Manasā-Vijaya by Vipra Das, the Padma-Purāṇa by Vijaya Gupta, the Kṛṣṇa-Maṅgala by Yasoraj Khan, and translations (from Sanskrit) of portions of the great epic Mahābhārata by Vijaya Pandita and Kavindra Parameśvara.[100] Sultan Mahmud Shah (1532–38) even dedicated a bridge using a Sanskrit inscription written in Bengali characters, and dated according to the Hindu calendar.

Your question and statement simply means that you have wrong impressions.

@kalu_miah

In short, apart from the Persianized political ritual that survived within the court itself, from the early fifteenth century on, the sultanate articulated its authority through Bengali media. This resulted partly from reassessments made in the wake of the upheavals of the Raja Ganesh period and partly from sustained isolation from North India, which compelled rulers to base their claims of political legitimacy in terms that would attract local support. But royal patronage of Bengali culture was selective in nature. With the apparent aim of broadening the roots of its authority, the court patronized folk architecture as opposed to classical Indian styles, popular literature written in Bengali rather than Sanskrit texts, and Vaishnava Bengali officials instead of śākta Brahmans. At the same time, Islamic symbolism assumed a measurably lower posture in the projection of state authority. Political pragmatism seems to have dictated the most public of all royal deeds, the minting of coins. Sultan Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah described himself as “the sultan, son of the sultan, Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah, the sultan, son of Husain Shah, the sultan.”[102] Gone was the bombast of earlier periods, and gone too were references to Greek conquerors or Arab caliphs. Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah was sultan simply because his father had been; no further justification was deemed necessary. Secure in power, these kings now presented themselves to all Bengalis as indigenous rulers.

It seems, moreover, that this was how contemporary Hindu poets perceived them. In a 1494 work glorifying the goddess Manasa, the poet Vijaya Gupta wove into his opening stanzas praises of the sultan of Bengal that would have flattered any classical Indian raja:

Sultan Husain Raja, nurturer of the world:
In war he is invincible; for his opponents he is Yama [god of death].
In his charity he is like Kalpataru [a fabled wish-yielding tree].
In his beauty he is like Kama [god of love].
His subjects enjoy happiness under his rule.[103]
Similarly, in his śrī Caitanya Bhāgavat composed in the 1540s, Vrindavan Das refers to the Bengal king as rāja, never using the Arabo-Persian terms shāh or sulṭān. And in the early 1550s another Vaishnava poet, Jayananda, refers in hisCaitanya-Maṅgala to the Muslim ruler not only as rāja but as iśvara (“god”), and even as Indra, the Vedic king of the gods.[104] The use of such titles signals a distinctly Bengali validation of the sultan’s authority.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Your question and statement simply means that you have wrong impressions.

I really don't know, @kalu_miah.

In 1629, shortly after the Mughal conquest of Bengal, and still within living memory of the sultanate, the Augustinian friar Sebastião Manrique visited Bengal and remarked that some of its Muslim kings had been in the habit of sending for water from Ganga Sagar, the ancient holy site where the old Ganges (the modern Hooghly) emptied into the Bay of Bengal. Like Hindu sovereigns of the region, he wrote, these kings would wash themselves in that holy water during ceremonies connected with their installation.

balancing the Persian symbols that pervaded their private audiences, the later sultans observed explicitly Indian rites during their coronations, events that were very public and symbolically charged. Contemporary poetic references to these kings as rāja or iśvara should not, then, be dismissed as mere hyperbole. They had become Bengali kings.

Summary
Having dislodged a Hindu dynasty in Bengal, the earliest Muslim rulers made no attempt on their coins to assert legitimate authority over their conquered subjects, displaying instead a show of coercive power. Their earliest architecture reveals an immigrant people still looking over their shoulders to distant Delhi. In the course of the thirteenth century, however, political rivalry with Delhi compelled Bengal’s rulers to adopt a posture of strenuous religious orthodoxy vis-à-vis their former overlords. This they did by associating themselves with the font of all Islamic legitimacy, the office of the caliph in Baghdad. After gaining independence from Delhi in the mid fourteenth century, the sultans of Bengal added to this posture a projection of Persian imperial ideology, reflected in the “Second Alexander” numismatic formula and in Sikandar’s grandiose and majestic Adina mosque.

By the early fifteenth century, however, too much emphasis upon either foreign basis of legitimacy—Islamic or imperial Persian—provoked a crisis of confidence among those powerful Bengali nobles upon whose continued political support the minority Muslim ruling class ultimately depended. That crisis, manifested in Raja Ganesh’s rise to all but legal sovereignty, in turn provoked a crisis of confidence among the chief Muslim literati, the Sufi elite of the time. These tensions were partially resolved by the conversion of Raja Ganesh’s son, Sultan Jalal al-Din, and the latter’s attempt to patronize each of the kingdom’s principal constituencies—pious Muslims, Sufis of the Chishti order, and devotees of the Goddess—on a separate, piecemeal basis.

But a comprehensive political ideology appealing to all Bengalis only appeared with the restored Ilyas Shahi dynasty and its successors. By evolving a stable, mainly secular modus vivendi with Bengali society and culture, in which mutually satisfactory patron-client relations became politically institutionalized, and in which the state systematically patronized the culture of the subject population, the later Bengal sultanate approximated what Marshall Hodgson has called a “military patronage state.”[106] Dropping all references to external sources of authority, the coins of the later sultans relied instead on a secular dynastic formula of legitimate succession: so-and-so was sultan because his father had been one. And in their public architecture, these kings yielded so much to Bengali conceptions of form and medium that, as the art historian Percy Brown observes, “the country, originally possessed by the invaders, now possessed them.”[107]

 

[toxic_pus]

@Joe Shearer

Seriously?

No, I mean seriously?

You just had to pour that freezing water?

Don't you have a kind bone in your body?

*sigh*

 

[jarves]

Why the hell you are so stupid!?

Shit queen,The only stupid and dumb here is you.As expected your IQ is way below average llike a typical Bangladeshi.So let me spoonfeed you.THis is the post you quoted-
"No, this is not off topic, although a diversion. We, Bengalee Muslims, feel that we need to retrieve our original sovereign entity that was lost on 23 June 1757 through conspiracy."

This post is talking about annexing Assam,To which you replied this-

Yes, that's what I was trying to say but no one understands! They all so stupid and idiots! Humph!

Which means you agreed with his post and now you are telling me that you were not talking about India,liar.

 

[Dillinger]

I really don't know, @kalu_miah.





Summary
Having dislodged a Hindu dynasty in Bengal, the earliest Muslim rulers made no attempt on their coins to assert legitimate authority over their conquered subjects, displaying instead a show of coercive power. Their earliest architecture reveals an immigrant people still looking over their shoulders to distant Delhi. In the course of the thirteenth century, however, political rivalry with Delhi compelled Bengal’s rulers to adopt a posture of strenuous religious orthodoxy vis-à-vis their former overlords. This they did by associating themselves with the font of all Islamic legitimacy, the office of the caliph in Baghdad. After gaining independence from Delhi in the mid fourteenth century, the sultans of Bengal added to this posture a projection of Persian imperial ideology, reflected in the “Second Alexander” numismatic formula and in Sikandar’s grandiose and majestic Adina mosque.

By the early fifteenth century, however, too much emphasis upon either foreign basis of legitimacy—Islamic or imperial Persian—provoked a crisis of confidence among those powerful Bengali nobles upon whose continued political support the minority Muslim ruling class ultimately depended. That crisis, manifested in Raja Ganesh’s rise to all but legal sovereignty, in turn provoked a crisis of confidence among the chief Muslim literati, the Sufi elite of the time. These tensions were partially resolved by the conversion of Raja Ganesh’s son, Sultan Jalal al-Din, and the latter’s attempt to patronize each of the kingdom’s principal constituencies—pious Muslims, Sufis of the Chishti order, and devotees of the Goddess—on a separate, piecemeal basis.

But a comprehensive political ideology appealing to all Bengalis only appeared with the restored Ilyas Shahi dynasty and its successors. By evolving a stable, mainly secular modus vivendi with Bengali society and culture, in which mutually satisfactory patron-client relations became politically institutionalized, and in which the state systematically patronized the culture of the subject population, the later Bengal sultanate approximated what Marshall Hodgson has called a “military patronage state.”[106] Dropping all references to external sources of authority, the coins of the later sultans relied instead on a secular dynastic formula of legitimate succession: so-and-so was sultan because his father had been one. And in their public architecture, these kings yielded so much to Bengali conceptions of form and medium that, as the art historian Percy Brown observes, “the country, originally possessed by the invaders, now possessed them.”[107]

A scholar's bane is the myopic mind. I wonder, perhaps they are right, they cannot be linked by blood to us Joe. A mass, rubbing the itch of its impotent soul, knowing only the kind fictions it spins for itself.

 

[Shadow_Hunter]

A scholar's bane is the myopic mind. I wonder, perhaps they are right, they cannot be linked by blood to us Joe. A mass, rubbing the itch of its impotent soul, knowing only the kind fictions it spins for itself.

The problem with them again is facing the truth. They cannot face who their true ancestors were, so they must invent their own history. Same is the behavior of Pakistanis, which is why they have desperately attempted to link themselves with the Persians/Arabians. Only if these people would accept their history as it is, they would have no identity crisis. But then again, that history has to be grand for making it worth accepting.

 

[khair_ctg]

Muslims who converted did have the right to use their own names(Bengali names....since they were bengalis).....Muslims who came here from Central Asia did not have the right to change the names.

When the Dutch(and the British) went to the New World(America) they eliminated the indigenous population......and then changed everything.....That is not our case......Most of us(Bengalis) are the indigenous people of this region......Unlike America where most of them are immigrants(and they admit it too)....American-Indians did not convert to "Dutch" or "English or "Irish".........you see where your example is messed up....you are comparing religion with race and nationality.......Since this country is majority Bengali....this place should have Bengali names and not Arabic names.....since you are not a Bengali(you don't even understand the freakin language)....and you don't live here I think your opinion hardly counts!

Nobody has the right to establish empires on other people's land......that's why we moved on and left feudal imperialism behind.....Islam in this region was spread by Awlias(from Shah Jalal to Bayezid Bostami)........not by Muslim emperors......Muslim emperors hardly cared about Islam!

the Muslim community as whole in South Asia is as much a racial community as it is a religious community. religion/faith is not the only thing that separates the Muslims from the non-Muslims of South Asia. the converts and the settlers (who converted at another place) have mixed up in the melting pot called the South Asian Muslims. and so whether you are talking about the nastaliq-Punjabi, or subcontinental Farsi, or even a nastaliq-Bangla, they would all contain the influences that culminated into the South Asian Muslim community. an Urdu language for example would not exist if it was not for the Sanskrit heritage and the organic fusion of the cultures of the settlers and the converts (so i'm not saying it was only settlers who formed the Muslim community like it happened with European settlers in the New World).

what has also happened, as it has happened throughout world history, a high culture is more inclusive and takes the place of more fragmented or underdeveloped ones. this was seen when a lot of the Mughals and Pathans practised the more sophisticated Farsi in more formal contexts over their various Turkic languages and dialects from Central Asia.

in Bengal, after colonialism started, Farsi was politically displaced. and it existed rather informally within the Muslims. if you are discussing about Bengali Muslims, you cannot attempt to exterminate the Farsi and Urdu and Arabic languages. if you are, you are just isolating and ignoring the Bengali Muslim heritage. just like the Hindu-Brahmin intelligentsia was when they gained sole power to develop the current Bengali script and to call what is official Bengali language

 

[INDIC]

the Muslim community as whole in South Asia is as much a racial community as it is a religious community. religion/faith is not the only thing that separates the Muslims from the non-Muslims of South Asia. the converts and the settlers (who converted at another place) have mixed up in the melting pot called the South Asian Muslims. and so whether you are talking about the nastaliq-Punjabi, or subcontinental Farsi, or even a nastaliq-Bangla, they would all contain the influences that culminated into the South Asian Muslim community. an Urdu language for example would not exist if it was not for the Sanskrit heritage and the organic fusion of the cultures of the settlers and the converts (so i'm not saying it was only settlers who formed the Muslim community like it happened with European settlers in the New World).

what has also happened, as it has happened throughout world history, a high culture is more inclusive and takes the place of more fragmented or underdeveloped ones. this was seen when a lot of the Mughals and Pathans practised the more sophisticated Farsi in more formal contexts over their various Turkic languages and dialects from Central Asia.

in Bengal, after colonialism started, Farsi was politically displaced. and it existed rather informally within the Muslims. if you are discussing about Bengali Muslims, you cannot attempt to exterminate the Farsi and Urdu and Arabic languages. if you are, you are just isolating and ignoring the Bengali Muslim heritage. just like the Hindu-Brahmin intelligentsia was when they gained sole power to develop the current Bengali script and to call what is official Bengali language

Genetic studies shows all South Asian Muslims mainly have native ancestry identical to Hindus, the Turkish, Afghan and Persian ancestry is rarest.

As for Urdu, it was mainly a British plot to divide the language into Hindi and Urdu in 1837 by inciting religious tensions, Urdu never had any historical royal patronage, it was Persian which enjoyed that status. I am extremely baffled why you want to associate yourself with Urdu instead of your own Bengali language.

 

[khair_ctg]

Genetic studies shows all South Asian Muslims mainly have native ancestry identical to Hindus, the Turkish, Afghan and Persian is ancestry is rarest.

As for Urdu, it was mainly a British plot to divide the language into Hindi and Urdu in 1837 by inciting religious tensions, Urdu never had any historical royal patronage to Urdu, it was Persian which enjoyed that status. I am extremely baffled why you want to associate yourself with Urdu instead of your own Bengali language.

any large scale genetic study have not yet been carried out to answer you. what has been carried out are individual DNA assessments. there has been individuals who are Bengali Bangladeshi Muslims who found out lineage from places like Iran-Iraq via Northern India. and besides such lineage is well known in many families.

what makes you think only Bengali is my only language, or even if it is *a* language of mine? is it just because i have a Bangladeshi flag? Chatgaia *happens* to be my first language. but two generation ago, there was a prevalence of Urdu and Farsi. what is definitely not mine is the Calcutta Tagore Bengali, that you ignorantly think is the *only* Bengali that ever exists

 

[INDIC]

what makes you think only Bengali is my only language, or even if it is *a* language of mine? is it just because i have a Bangladeshi flag? Chatgaia *happens* to be my first language. but two generation ago, there was a prevalence of Urdu and Farsi. what is definitely not mine is the Calcutta Tagore Bengali, that you ignorantly think is the *only* Bengali that ever exists

I know that a myth, you guys can't speak even a single sentence in Urdu properly and trying to claim it as your own. As for genetic studies, tests are more authentic than than your wannabe Arab-Persian nature.

 

[khair_ctg]

I know that a myth, you guys can't speak even a single sentence in Urdu properly and trying to claim it as your own. As for genetic studies, tests are more authentic than than your wannabe Arab-Persian nature.

that is a ridiculous attitude from you. what exists is not a myth. one of my late grandparents educated in British era had written a book in Urdu. my parents speak thorough Urdu and have some rusty writing skills. my proficiency is about intermediate. and there are many Urdu-speaking Bengalis and non-Bengalis in BD. who you referred to as "you guys" is messed up

 

[INDIC]

that is a ridiculous attitude from you. what exists is not a myth. one of my late grandparents educated in British era had written a book in Urdu. my parents speak thorough Urdu and have some rusty writing skills. my proficiency is about intermediate. and there are many Urdu-speaking Bengalis and non-Bengalis in BD. who you referred to as "you guys" is messed up

Urdu never had any base in East Bengal because unlike Punjab, British never promoted Urdu in Bengal after securing the Hindi-Urdu divide. That was the main reason your language conflict between East and West Pakistan came in open conflict after the creation of Pakistan.

 

[khair_ctg]

The court also lent vigorous support to Bengali language and literature. Already in the early fifteenth century, the Chinese traveler Ma Huan observed that Bengali was “the language in universal use
[/USER]

bengali was the language of the majority. but this Bengali means many accents and dialects and heavy Arbi-Farsi use. the ensuing Sanskritization of Bangla during colonial period even caused this Musalman Bangla to be considered as a dialect of Urdu, rather than a dialect of Bangla. and whether a standardized and written form of nastaliq-Bangla was developed or not in pre-colonial times, a standardized and written form apparently did not survive the colonial and Brahmin zamindari era.

Urdu never had any base in East Bengal because unlike Punjab, British never promoted Urdu in Bengal after securing the Hindi-Urdu divide. That was the main reason your language conflict between East and West Pakistan came in open conflict after the creation of Pakistan.

there was an agitation to elevate the status of Bangla above it's rightful place, i.e. as a provincial language to a national language. if you want to argue Urdu had a base in East Bengal/Entire Bengal, it is pointless to compare the region with another. in any case, refer to my comments at the bottom here:

Tribute to Language movement | Page 12

 

[The Snow Queen]

Shit queen,The only stupid and dumb here is you.As expected your IQ is way below average llike a typical Bangladeshi.So let me spoonfeed you.THis is the post you quoted-
"No, this is not off topic, although a diversion. We, Bengalee Muslims, feel that we need to retrieve our original sovereign entity that was lost on 23 June 1757 through conspiracy."
This post is talking about annexing Assam,To which you replied this-

Assam is not even in Bangladesh or part of Bengal! So where does that come from!? Okay listen, shit iron. I don't care, so stop bothering me now! And I don't give a damn about Assam!

Which means you agreed with his post and now you are telling me that you were not talking about India,liar.

No, you interpreted me wrong. And you think you are always right. You are so narcissistic!

 

[Saiful Islam]

I know that a myth, you guys can't speak even a single sentence in Urdu properly and trying to claim it as your own. As for genetic studies, tests are more authentic than than your wannabe Arab-Persian nature.

Sahih Bukhari,Kitab ut tawhid were first translated in urdu by deobandi scholars of bengal i, do you know how big of a role these books play today in South Asia? Yes I can't speak urdu but i can understand it, but like i've mentioned before I like how my language (Sylheti) is very distinct from spoken Hindi and Urdu and that not everyone can understand it.

Put aside Urdu. During the Bengal Sultanate it was only Persian and Arabic that was used more