A Book Analysis of The ‘Joy Bangla’ Deception: Bangladeshi Islamism under the Façade of Bengali Nationalism (Part - I)

    Although the entire nation strove to redeem freedom back from the colonial shackles, it was the brain of Bengal and the power of Punjab that conveyed the eschatological tidings to the imperialist British Raj. That is why, we see Radcliffe very cleverly bifurcated both of these two regions by channelizing communal hatred between the two populous groups, namely the Hindus and the Muslims. Now, the nature of our diplomatic disposition with Pakistan (or West Pakistan as it was previously termed) is no secret to anyone. But, the bond India shares with Bangladesh (previously, East Pakistan) is a precarious one. By no means can it be described as blatantly as it can be in respect to its Western counterpart for understanding India’s relationship with Bangladesh requires very nuanced and subtle insights— something Kausik Gangopadhyay and Devavrata have presented remarkably well in their latest book, The ‘Joy Bangla’ Deception. 

    Divided in four major sections, the authors have busted the myths surrounding the so-called language movement of Ekushe February, exposed the propaganda behind the ‘Joy Bangla’ sloganeering, called out the rampant Islamization under the veil of pseudo-secularism, and explained the overall regional monopoly on the representation of the Bengali language and culture in the global spectrum. This book would undoubtedly have secured a place in the bookshelves of history, politics, and culture enthusiasts— but, it becomes a must-read for every Indian now, especially after the escalating tensions in the South Asian geopolitics post the ousting of Sheikh Hasina and arrival of the caretaker interim government headed by Mohammad Yunus.

Yesterday’s History for Today’s Bangladesh

    For almost two decades, Bangladesh has been swelling as a ticking bomb where anti-India sentiments are on the upsurge and anti-Hindu propositions are lauded vehemently. The general public sentiment, radicalized by the inculcations of the madrasa and the provocative announcements of the mosque after Friday prayers, has grown direly vitriolic to India. Even a mere cricket match between India and Bangladesh is perceived by the majority of the local Bangladeshis in communal colour where, even if Bangladesh loses the tournament, Pakistan’s victory over India or India’s loss to anyone is celebrated joyously as victory of Islam over the infidels. Bangladesh has deteriorated to so much fanaticism that whether to replace Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’ as the national anthem by any Muslim music composer attracts widespread public attention. A country that has made Kazi Nazrul Islam their national poet, despite the fact that his birthplace being in modern-day India, merely because of his Islamic name, is now trying to obliterate its own past to get rid of all traces of Hindu identity.

    The introductory chapter of the book is very poignant in its kaleidoscopic surveillance on the entire roadmap of the upcoming journey of the reader. The authors make us traverse through the gory history of the pre-partition communal riots like the Direct Action Day of 1946, the writhing agony of the breaking of the undivided nation in 1947, and the post-partition genocides and pogroms instrumented by the Islamic fascism in 1970s— and as they do so, they keep debunking several popular misconceptions surrounding those events and their undercurrents. By charting out the data meticulously, the authors demonstrate to us the demographic asymmetry. While the Hindu population of 14.6% in West Pakistan declined to a whopping 1.6% in 1951 and the Hindu population in East Pakistan gradually went down from 28% to 22% in 1951, from 22% to 14% in 1971, and from 14% to 10% in 1991, there never was observed such a scenario in either of them in terms of the Muslim population.

    Comparing this humongous inhumanity to the Jewish Holocaust in the Nazi Germany, the authors lambast the historical amnesia of the left-liberals to the plight of the Hindus and their portrayal of Bangladesh as a pluralistic society pillared upon language-driven collective sentiments. The authors painfully assert: “In sum, Bangladesh has become the example of pluralism, tolerance, and dialogue to the world in the left-liberal narrative, without even an ounce of token denouncement of its own past full of genocide and atrocities on minorities” (p. xxxii). Here, one may be stuck wondering why the left-liberal ideologues unabashedly extol Bangladesh despite its Islamic outlooks since it is evident that leftist thinking has no ground to sprout in an Islamic land. The authors propose that one ideologically driven reason, in this case, might be the leftist fantasy of creating a world order where culture is a product of secular, linguistic phenomenon rather than a religious one: “If the population of Bangladesh love language over religion, then religion could not be considered as a salient identity anymore. Religion is an important part of a culture and is the source of ethics too. If that part of culture is neglected, the secular liberal culture finds a green pasture to conquer with particularly left-liberal ethics to replace the religious ethics. In fact, a language based secular nation by a Muslim majority people helps the left-liberals portray the notion that secularity is a culture-independent phenomenon, as secular Muslim-majority nations, globally, are or were scarce. Since the left-liberals generally believe in universality of their politics over cultural backgrounds, they consider Bangladesh a validation of their principles… If Bangladesh is considered a secular yet Muslim majority state, it portrays dominance of the linguistic identity over the religious identity. In this case, an active negation of Islamic identity takes place in a Muslim-majority country to become a secular one and embrace people of different religious identities” (pp. xxx-xxxi).

    But is this all? Or is it a mere tool to whitewash the radical ideas of Islam? The authors mark a clear distinction between the approach of the German people and that of the Bangladeshi Muslims: whereas the former has banned Hitlar’s Mein Kampf, distancing itself from the Nazi ideology considering it as a blot on their history and claiming no ownership of that part of the history to make reparations, Bangladesh has glorified the perpetrators of the massacres as their cultural icons. The authors note that “Bangladesh did not have to go through this process of repudiation of their past but still does not suffer from any infamy. In fact, the Muslim League Prime Minister (as the term ‘Chief Minister’ for states was not yet there), whose party’s actions and covert approval of whose government facilitated the massacre in Kolkata on 16 August 1946, is a revered figure in Dhaka with a garden (‘Suhrawardy Udyan’) named after him in the most prominent location of the capital city” (p. xxxii). Is this utter apathy a mere Freudian slip on the part of the community or a planned oversight to shrug off the onus? Can genocides like the Great Calcutta Killings (August, 1946) and the Noakhali Massacre (October, 1946) happen sans the societal support and state sponsorship?

    This Islamist nature has also played a pivotal role in the making of the nation we call Bangladesh today and its so-called ‘mother language’ movement. Therefore, a naïve appreciation of the movement as a secular credo must be relooked and that is what leads us to the first section of the book.

Busting the Myth around the Language Movement

    Before we delve into the language movement, a titbit of history needs to be discussed. The authors have previously warned us that Indians must realize that the “Bengali-speaking Muslims were no less separatist compared to their counterparts in other parts of India” when the All India Muslim League launched the Two-Nation Theory (p. xxxiii). Chronology may help one understand here: the Partition of Bengal by Curzon happened in 1905 and the Muslim League was established in Dhaka in 1906 under the leadership of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and his compatriots. This group was actively involved in solidifying the Bengal Pact of 1923 which demanded a staggering 80% reservation to Muslims in jobs, ban on musical procession in front of mosques, and free pass to slaughter cows. This bill was not only discriminatory to the Hindus, but it also paved the path for the Two-Nation Theory to grow.

    In the course of time, the undivided nation was trifurcated into East Pakistan, West Pakistan, and India. Whereas tensions had always been between India and Pakistan, the latter’s internal problem grew owing to several conflicts. Why? Because the West Pakistani (Punjabi) coterie imposed their decisions on the East Pakistani (Bengali) one, but shared very little political power and financial gains. This, the authors highlighted, is the seed of the creation of Bangladesh and not the apparent love for the mother tongue. The first section of the book brilliantly extrapolates this fact.

    Language had never been an issue since the Pakistani administration granted Urdu and Bengali the same status as official languages through their constitution in 1956, which was kept even during the crude 1960s while General Ayub Khan’s military dictatorship ransacked the region. Pakistani passports, banknotes, coins and postage stamps bore inscriptions in Bengali and Urdu both. To shed more light on it, the authors show us the graveyard of Nurul Amin, a prominent leader of Pakistan Democratic Party (PDP), whose ethnicity was Bengali but his loyalty was forever to (West) Pakistan. He died in 1974, after the establishment of Bangladesh, and yet the Pakistani government imprinted his graveyard with Bengali inscriptions as a token of gratitude. This goes on to demonstrate that West Pakistan had no problem with East Pakistan on the mere differences of language. What united the two coteries was the Islamic brotherhood. But, problems only emerged owing to the political ambitions of the leaders of East Pakistan (Bangladesh).

    The Krishak Praja Party (KPP) of Fazlul Huq, whom Prafulla Chandra Roy once ascribed as “a magnificent combination of genuine Muslimhood and genuine Bengaliness” was trusted by the Bangladeshi Hindus (although he had turned a blind eye to the victims of the anti-Hindu riots in Dhaka in 1941) as compared to Suhrawardy-Bhasani led Awami Muslim League (AML) which was abominably Hinduphobic. In 1954, the KPP and AML campaigned as the United Front and secured a landslide electoral mandate against West Pakistan’s Muslim League. Since this was the central election of West Pakistan and East Pakistan both, the verdict translated to the fact that the ministers from East Pakistan would rule both the regions. This irked the West Pakistan coterie which felt that the victory of the opposition resulted from three reasons: (a) the massive Hindu Bengali population voting for them; (b) the Bengali Muslim community was deemed diluted by living together with the Bengali Hindus; and (c) the Bengali language with its Sanskrit roots was detrimental to the Islamic unity. The language was deemed to be ‘un-Islamic’ and, therefore, was boosted by the call for imposing Urdu. As a result, West Pakistan defied the results of the democratic election and launched a brutal military dictatorship.

    However, one must remember here that the AML actually went on to impeach a no-confidence motion against the KPP when the latter’s candidate won the Chief Ministerial post, which the KPP successfully defended as 72 minority representatives (63 of them being Hindu) supported Huq’s party. The Awami Muslim League understood that if they wished to consolidate their base in East Pakistani politics, they must cater to the minority population. This resulted in the dropping of the word ‘Muslim’ from their party’s title and it came to be called the Awami League. This was no humanitarian effort to secularize the party, but a vicious political manoeuvre to allure the Hindu and minority voters. So, just by observing the scenario, one may understand that political ambition was the centre of the turmoil, not the language. Language was merely a tool that West Pakistan wanted to replace; the essence was to recapture the Islamic unity as against the kafirs.

Dhirendranath Datta: The Real Master of the Language Movement

    So, when Jinnah died and Liaquat Ali Khan sat on the throne of West Pakistan, he came to Dhaka and tried to persuade Bengali folks to adopt Urdu, but failed miserably. A few months later, the West Pakistan government proposed writing Bengali in the Arabic script in an attempt to Islamize the language. But lions like Dhirendranath Datta roared back and proposed that “Bengalee language is the lingua franca of the State” on 25th February, 1948, at the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in Karachi (p. 59). The East Bengali Language Committee (1949), which was formed under linguists like Dr. Shahidullah and leaders like Dhirendranath Datta, protested against the impractical demand of changing the alphabet and imposition of Urdu on the native people. Two amendment motions were moved on his proposal along with a heated debate in the Constituent Assembly. But, Liaquat Ali Khan perceived Dhirendranath Datta’s proposal to be a strategy to plant the seed of partitioning Pakistan and dividing its people. While opposing the proposal, Khan mocked the idea and the integrity of Datta by saying: “Pakistan is a Muslim State and it must have as its lingua franca the language of the Muslim nation [Urdu]...I find now that the object is not such an innocent one as I thought it was. The object of this amendment is to create a rift between the people of Pakistan. The object of this amendment is to take away from the Mussalmans that unifying force that brings them together” [1]. 

    Dhirendranath Datta, however, was raised to cult status after this fiery debate and he was received with flowers and garlands by the Dhaka University students when he returned. The West Pakistani government was highly triggered by him especially because he was a kafir (infidel) and he fanned the fumes of the public resentment against the incumbent government. So, when they launched Operation Searchlight (1971), they subjected Dhirendranath to inhuman tortures and executed him and his family in the darkness of the night. The authors lament that despite his pivotal contribution to the language movement, he got no recognition from the government post-establishment of Bangladesh. Local Muslims seized his ancestral property by the dint of the Enemy Property Act, and his name was erased from the liberation history. Kausik Gangopadhyay and Devavrata ask: “Today Salam-Barkat-Rafiq-Jabbar of 21st February fame are well-known and considered martyrs, but how many even know about Dhirendranath Datta?’ 

    So, what exactly took place on 21st February, 1952, for which we celebrate the International Mother Language Day? Well, the Basic Principles Committee (Pakistan) recognized Urdu as the sole state language by removing Bengali. Under the leadership of Maulana Bhasani and Golam Mahbub, several protest rallies were organized on 21st Feb, to demand Bengali as the national language. Most of these protestors were Dhaka University students which mostly comprised the liberal Bengali Hindus and some moderate Muslims. The ruling government had activated Section 144 which the protestors violated by going out in large gatherings. The police then lathi-charged and fired bullets on the rallies. Reportedly, 8 men were killed (although some reports suggest the number to be 26). Later, these ‘martyrs’ were commemorated in Bangladesh and the Ekushe February is celebrated as the national holiday called ‘Shohid Dibosh’ (martyrs’ day). But what was it that these young men were fighting for? More importantly, why were they protesting? Was it to protect the mother tongue merely or for other reasons? As the authors note: “A movement for mother language would like to celebrate every person’s mother tongue and promote its use. On the other hand, the movement for recognition of Bengali as a state (official) language means only securing employment and other benefits for Bengali-speaking people, no more no less. The language movement never uttered the demand for recognition of the mother tongue of any other people of Pakistan or Bangladesh…This attitude of Bangladesh that of the supposed inheritors of the mother language movement shows their lack of respect for any indigenous culture, especially for anyone's mother tongue as a repository of cultural values, including their own. Celebrating 21st February as Mother Language Day for a Chakma victim would be inappropriate unless we want to insult the victims of inhumane sufferings whose mother language and indigenous culture were systematically destroyed by the Bangladeshi state” (pp. 68-69).

Political Autonomy, Not Love for Mother Tongue

    So, if it was not about celebrating the pride of one’s mother tongue, let us now decode the real reason behind the movement through the concerns of Mansur Ahmad, one of the proponents of the ‘Islamised Bengali’ language, who expressed doubt about the economic future of Muslims of East Pakistan in his article ‘Bengali Shall Be Our State Language’. He argued that if Urdu had been designated as the sole state language of Pakistan, the educated Bengali-speaking Muslims of East Pakistan would be considered uneducated: “If Urdu becomes the state language, the educated class in East Pakistan will be deemed ‘illiterate’ and ‘unfit’ for government jobs overnight. By replacing Persian with English as the state language in the mid-19th century, British imperialism overnight made the Muslim educated class ‘uneducated’ and ‘unfit’ for government jobs” (p. 57) [2]. So, the fight was more for securing government jobs and political autonomy than for saving the mother tongue. It was a fight for fulfilling the ‘needs’ rather than the lofty idealism of protecting the mother tongue. That is why, even later, we see that the 1970 electoral victory of the Awami League resulted from a campaign called Six Point Movement—none of which focused on language, but rather on more economic freedom and political autonomy for East Pakistan. The public resentment in East Pakistan against the West Pakistani coterie was not at all for language, but for the military dictatorship and unevenly shared political powers. Besides these, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman also needed an issue to foster his electoral campaigns and stay relevant in politics. So, he utilized this language issue to his favour. Mujib’s victory was wholeheartedly supported by the minority, Hindus and Buddhists. This made the West Pakistani government suspect that India had been fuelling the tensions and the Hindus of East Pakistan had been aiding them. Since the Hindus were more educated, wealthier, and Hindu women had more voter turnout, the West Pakistani government deemed the victory of the East Pakistani political parties as being backed by the kafirs. As a result, when West Pakistan army defied the results and launched its pogrom mission, it targeted Hindus, resulting in the massive exodus of ten million Hindus to India along with innumerable acts of hostility. 

    The Indian government, then under Indira Gandhi, understood the problem that this mass migration would take a toll on the country’s economy and safety, and so felt an emergent need to mobilize the Pakistani army. Under the valiant leadership of Field Marshal Sam ‘Bahadur’ Manekshaw in the war of 1971, the Pakistani army collapsed with 93,000 of their troops being held hostage. Mujib surveyed the vantage and understood that he must offer an acceptable proposal to the Indian government if he was to mount the throne. So, he pitched a secular liberal idea of Bangladesh and successfully sold his visions. As the authors note, “Mujib did not hesitate to pursue the best idea under those circumstances, which was to call it a language-based nation friendly to India and inimical to Pakistan. He, however, understood the inner pulse of the country and knew that the Bengali language constituted a small part of the aspirations of the country. He subtly kept the Muslimhood of his nation alive while giving a lip service to secularism” (p. xxxvi).

Mujib, the Disciple of Suhrawardy

    Now, let us investigate the history of Mujib and his political outfit, the Awami (Muslim) League. Was this Mujib the stud of secularism and the messiah of the minority as the left-liberals try to paint him? Was this Mujib a friend of India as he is shown to be? If yes, was he a loyal friend in thick and thin or a mere partner in crime? The authors of the book have left no stone unturned to make it crystal clear to us that there has been a longstanding attempt to make Mujib shine as the beacon of hope for Hindu-Muslim unity in Bangladesh and a pillar of Indo-Bangladesh diplomatic friendship.

    But, in reality, it was Mujib who wrote in his memoir: “If Subhash Bose wins India back from the British, then Pakistan will not happen. Without Pakistan, what would happen to 100 million Muslims?” (p. 81) It was Mujib who called Suhrawardy, the infamous Butcher of Bengal, a “generous” man who won “people’s hearts with his saintliness, principle, energy, and ability” (p. 79). It was the same Suhrawardy, the then Prime Minister of Bengal, who circulated instigative pamphlets and delivered inflammatory speeches in Kolkata at the behest of Jinnah’s call for Direct Action Day on 16th August, 1947. Upon his instruction, the local Muslims paralyzed the administration, the hospitals, the ambulances, the police stations and launched a well-orchestrated massacre of the Hindus, unprecedented to the city. They slaughtered the Hindu men, raped and molested the Hindu women and girls before mutilating their bodies, looted their moveable properties and set their homes ablaze. The then Lalbazar police sub-inspector S. K. Bhattacharya expressed a statement on how the police were not allowed to take action. It was only on 17th of August, 1946, that the Hindus fought back under the fiery motivation of Gopal Mukhopadhyay, a Shakta devotee who ran a meat shop in the city. He consolidated the Hindus and treated the Muslim arsonists in their own language. But, see how Mujib in his memoir has portrayed the Hindus as the villains and Muslims as the innocent folks: “Mr. Suhrawardy was the then-Prime Minister of Bengal. He also said, ‘May the day be observed in a peaceful manner. If there is any disturbance, the Muslim League government will be discredited.’ He declared August 16 as a public holiday, which further enraged the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha. [...] We received information on that day about an attack on the mosque in Wellington Square (Calcutta) and a march of Hindus towards Islamia College. [...] I saw hundreds of Hindus attacking the mosque. The maulvi of that mosque was running away towards us, as a group of people with sticks and swords was chasing him. There were some Muslim shops nearby. A few people stood beside us with some sticks. A few of us started chanting slogans like ‘Pakistan Zindabad’. They fought back the aggression with pieces of bricks, stones, and whatever they could find. [...] Meanwhile a great procession arrived. [...] They joined us. In a few minutes, the Hindus went back, so did we. [...] The Muslims were not at all prepared to riot, I can say that” (pp. 77-78).

Mujib was a Muslim fanatic himself and he ensured that “Bangladesh is not an Islamic state but a Muslim state nonetheless” (p. 85). Anthony Mascarenhas, in his The Rape of Bangladesh (1971), records that Mujib identified himself as a true “Muslim Leaguer” when Khan Abdul Wali Khan asked him if he was loyal to the idea of Islamic brotherhood of Pakistan. Later, we very clearly see Mujib’s apathy towards the Hindus who voted him to power. When the Islamist fanatics destroyed Ma Anandamayi Ashram by shelling in 1971, not only he refused to take any action against the mob, rather he bulldozed the remains of the temple and built a park in its premise—only to name it after Suhrawardy to sprinkle salt on the wound. Hindus, for him, was mere electoral compulsion which he neither could discard nor could accept. That is why, it is the need of the hour to call out this religious bigotry as it is in bold letters, especially by the Bengali Hindus “who get carried away by political niceties than cold hard logic”, as said by Dr. Tathagata Roy, the former governor, in the foreword. His sharp-eyed observations may very well draw the conclusive lines of the first part of this book analysis: “First, Bengali-speakers who follow Islam, that is Bengali Muslims, now constitute more than seventy per cent of the total number; and secondly, they follow Islam with a devotion that is beyond the comprehension of the remaining thirty per cent, that is Bengali Hindus. To this general truth an exception exists; and that is that tiny fraction of Bengali Hindus who have studied this devotion of the majority in depth. This tiny fraction never ceases to be astounded by the ignorance and naïveté of their religious compatriots, the Bengali Hindus, nor to their ceaseless journey towards a collective and inevitable mass suicide” (pp. xiii-xiv).

[1] Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Debates: Official Repоrt, Volume II, No. 2, Manager of Publications, Government of Pakistan, 1948, p. 17.

[2] Abul Mansur Ahmad (1947). “Banglai Amader Rashtrabhasha Hoibe” (Bengali Shall Be Our State Language). Pakistaner Rashtra Bhasha Bangla na Urdu? (The State Language of Pakistan: Bengali or Urdu?), Tamaddun Majlis, September 1947.

If you are hooked by the first part of this book analysis, we highly recommend you to go the second part (click here).

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