Bengali Muslims, one of the world's newest Muslim ethnic groups (emerging around the 16th century), have experienced systematic marginalization spanning over 150 years under British rule, documented through the Hunter Commission Report (1871) and 1921 Census, which revealed their exclusion from military commissions, revenue collection, and administrative positions, followed by continued economic and social decline under neoliberal policies, with contemporary issues including voter disenfranchisement, citizenship challenges, and exploitation in hazardous labor sectors like garbage collection, making them one of the most persecuted communities in India.
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Census, Hunter, Eaton: Essential reading on the Bengali Muslim | What's Your Ism EP 49Added:
Hello, I'm Sudepto Mandal and welcome to What's Your ISM. It's a show about political ideologies and theories of change in an increasingly volatile and everchanging world. Now, those of you who follow this show, I'm sure are aware that what we are focused on is what's vital and not what's viral. The activists, thinkers, authors, lawyers, journalists, and intellectuals we've featured on this show have left me more educated, and I hope that's been your experience, too. The show is also built on things I learned through several years as a field reporter. In all these years, I've traveled to different parts of the country and the world to understand people and their political motivations. If you think that my physical and mental labor brings value to your life, if you find yourself educated by this show, please consider compensating the news minute for the people and infrastructure they've invested in a show like this. You could also directly fund the production of what's yourism by paying whatever amount you think is appropriate directly by scanning this QR code.
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This is a very special episode not just because we are relaunching the show but also because we are taking a relook at what was once the Bengal presidency under the British or uh the Bengal suba under the Mughals and uh to have this discussion to do a set of readings together. Joining me today to have a deep discussion about the contemporary politics of Bengal minus its borders, its international borders and its state borders is Dr. Nadira Kun, the author of postcolonial Bollywood and the Muslim representation in that. Uh you might remember that Dr. Nadira Kun was with us once before. Nadra, welcome back to what's your >> thank you so much Sudto for inviting me once again and having me in your show.
Thank you so much.
>> You're the first guest who's come for the second time. So >> I I I feel absolutely honored and privileged. Thank you so much.
>> But uh I need to thank you actually Nad because uh I was struggling to find somebody to have a discussion about the topic that we have today. Um um which in in Bengali there's a term to describe what we are trying to discuss today.
It's called hakar. Right? the hakar of Bengal the the the real uh uh the struggle of the millions uh in Bengal which somehow has come to the four in the last few months whether you see Bangladesh whether you see the uh migrant Bengali population in Assam or West Bengal so that's the discussion uh we are having today um we want to get into the question of what is the source of this haha car where did it start what's the origin story but before that Nadira I think the two of us just to come up to speed should uh just like touch upon the highlights of what has happened so far I understand that you've just come back from voting in West Bengal what was what was the situation like what's happening in West Bengal from from a distance sitting out here things seemed pretty grim over there this is a special segment of what's your ISM focused on Bengal I'm calling it apar Arar hahakar. Apar opar means this side and that side. It's a reference to the two Bengals on either side of the international border. Apar opar hakar.
Hahakar means a great human tragedy in Bengali. A massive humanitarian disaster. To my mind, that's exactly what's happening to millions of Dalits and lowered cast Bengali Muslims on both sides of that murderous international border. Hahakar. This is a look at Bengal beyond the elections and beyond the borders. an investigation into the Bengali Dalits and Bengali Muslims whose lives today are scattered across the region that was once the larger Bengal presidency under the British or the Bangla Suba or province of the Moguls.
In this series, I'll be joined by three experts. The first is Nadira Kun the author of the critically acclaimed book postc colonial Bollywood and the Muslim representation. You might remember that she came on this show and we discussed her book. Nadra Kun has helped me curate this special series and I owe her a big thank you. After Nadira in the second episode I have a Khalimula a trade unionist and human rights activist based in Bangalore who has been extensively working with the persecuted Bengali migrant laborers in this city. This conversation will be in Dhani a south Indian language and in the final episode I have a very special guest from the other side of Bengal Dr. Naven Murid author of India's Bangladesh problem.
Her book is a critique of neoliberal capitalism and religious fundamentalism in both India and Bangladesh.
Now before we start for one final time tell me honestly you don't think all this effort is worth a little bit of your money not even 500 rupees. You could also directly fund the production of what's your paying whatever amount you think is appropriate directly by scanning this QR code.
Uh thanks. Yeah, I just went to cast my vote uh in the last week and uh it was wonderful to go back and of course anytime when you are visiting hometown but uh uh I uh it was a kind of this time I find the turnout of voters it's like high and uh whatever record it is more than 91% uh voters turn out but what I believe there are multiple reasons for it it's not that only because people are really interested and they are going and voting. Rather there is a kind of compulsion that people are uh feeling that we need to go and vote because there might be certain repercussions and one of them is primarily that probably their name would be removed from the voting list or from their um identity proof that they are the original inhabitants of this particular country.
So because just now as happened and after as this is the first vote happening. So therefore many of my friends also they are staying outside West Bengal for a long time and they thought that they even they have to travel all the way from other states uh and they they just came to cast their vote. Even I went there only to cast my vote. I was there only one day the day when uh my assembly uh election is happening. So that day I stayed and then I came back because I stay in Orisa and I traveled to West Bengal and I came back to Orisa again just within a within one or two days. So that is the situation but uh at my hometown where I belong to Bangura district and Kotalpur and uh there it was very peaceful at this moment. Uh that's what uh I I would like to highlight and uh yeah that's it.
I find that is one of the highlighted thing at this moment in election uh in West Bengal elections which is happening that it's good that there is huge amount of turnout uh but at the same time I think there is a there are good chunk of people whose names are not there even my brother's name is not there so he um so suddenly my parents' names are there but even my name is there my sister's name is there but only my brother's name is not there so they that kind of situations are also there. So um uh that that's what the whole discourse and the political uh dialogue which is happening and whose name is there and whose name is not there and most importantly out of 10 people even one person uh 10 one out of 10 uh their name is not there and that's a huge uh percentage if you look at even you might be knowing that at least one person you know or your surroundings or your family member their their name is not there um in the SR So that's the situation at this moment it's going on >> right no the s is one thing but the buildup towards it what has been happening in Bengal in that entire uh region you know which was once the Bengal presidency or uh the muggles used to call it the suba right the the Bengal suba which is the Bengal province now this includes parts of what is today Bangladesh uh parts of Oura parts of Bihar parts of Assam um parts of West Bengal. So all of this was once governed uh by the same entity and uh over time geopolitics has divided this into um national you know statewide bound boundaries and then there are linguistic boundaries and then there are international boundaries. um you know the partition is seen as this very uh u destructive time this apocalyptic time but since then one of the things that I often hear I'm also you know my origins story goes back to Bengal you know uh people who are who are still there the relatives talk about how the atmosphere today is almost as bad as it was in the 40s and the 50s if not in terms of the violence definitely in terms of the discourse in terms of the polarization things today in Bengal are are are as as bad as when partition was being discussed and when it was playing out. Do you do you believe that to be true? uh if we look at the historical perspective and what's happening at this moment and most importantly I would like to point out that what's happening when we talk about that whole haha card just now you pointed out and you started your discussion on that um and hahakar in the sense uh uh if I would like to uh frame it I will frame in the sense that the whole agenda of this particular 2026 election assembly election in West Bengal that is uh probably uh to some extent that uh based on the infiltration and Guspetia and all of it right so uh here and now this entire thing and the discourse of Guspetia or infiltrators it's just uh not limited to uh Bangladeshi Muslims and it is somewhere it is again not limit it's not limited to Bangladeshi Muslims rather it is again going beyond that limitation and somewhere it is again connected to uh any Bengali Muslim and uh so the demarcation is very difficult to uh make and uh here the situation of Bengali Muslims when I talk about um it's not uh that every Bengali Muslims we are pointing out of course it can be anyone but at the same time uh a particular Muslim uh uh Bengali Muslim segment or straighta who belong to a particular class and uh here uh that particular class again they are primarily they are belonging to marginal more marginalized class and uh to if we talk about the whole marginalization issue and you just pointed out that uh 50s and 40s I I would like to go a little beyond that because if we look at historical account of it we need to consider um probably uh the census report of 1921 and also if we need if we go and get the Hunter or commission report and those are there are multiple reasons behind that why that uh structural and systematic marginalization happened. The first one I would like to point out that the historical loss of power what hunter uh hunter commission report talks about. So >> Hunter Commission uh >> Nadra so I mean there is we of course uh for our audience once again what Nadra and I have tried to do over here is uh curate a reading list uh a reading list which which speaks to us which helps to helps us understand the condition of one of the most persecuted uh communities perhaps today in India the Bengali Muslim the Bengali Muslim who's being portrayed as an illegal infiltrator, as a Bangladeshi, uh you know, as an undocumented migrant, that's the most decent term used for them. Uh but this is the population that we are trying to uh discuss today because this is the population that has become the focus of the elections not just in West Bengal but also in Assam.
And uh it has become the focus of uh politics over there because of the question of religion and uh and and uh religion when you take religion into account suddenly you're looking at a much larger area beyond just Assam and West Bengal but you're also looking at Bangladesh and what has happened in Bangladesh in the just the last few months which included even a revolution.
Right now before we get into all of that I suppose Nadira one of the things we need to do is to establish really how bad the situation of the Bengali Muslim is in uh not just West Bengal but also in other parts of India. uh and I think that's where if you'll allow me I just want to take a couple of minutes to talk about what we are seeing in uh a city like Bangalore right which is my entry >> course yeah please go ahead >> yeah which is which is actually my entry point into this whole thing the question is okay fine I might have my origins in West Bengal but my family moved here um about a century more than a century ago so what is my in on this story the in is the fact that today uh Bengali migrants irrespective of religion we'll talk about religion later but Hindu and Muslim lower class lowered cast Hindus and Muslims today are are performing some of the most menial tasks in Bangalore city uh Bengali Hindu lowered lowerass people have it somewhat better because they are performing tasks in which uh the tasks are definitely menial you know daily wage tasks But they're somewhat better compar compared to what Bengali Muslims are doing in in Bengalur city.
The the the Hindus for example would work as domestic workers. They would they would be employed as security guards. Gig workers uh Bengali Muslims on the other hand have it far more difficult. They are almost entirely uh uh employed in the garbage sector of Bangalore city. they are into collection, segregation, recycling of garbage. Uh I I dare say the entire garbage sector today is is is uh um you know the workers are almost invariably Bengali Muslim. And this is just the story of Bangalore. But this is true.
This is not just the story of Bangalore but this is also true of many cities in India. Chennai, cities in Kerala, cities in the north. The garbage sector which is the most hazardous and I suppose one of those which is which is the most stigmatized is increasingly be becoming monopolized by Bengali Muslims right and more recently thanks to this rhetoric of of uh the right-wing hindutwa rhetoric of uh illegal immigrants and Bangladeshi infiltrators two things are happening to this population on one side they continue to work in this sector. There is no change in that to that extent. uh these migrant Bengali Muslim workers continue to work in this sector but because of this air that has been created this this air of hostility their wages are pushed down their working conditions are worse and they can the employers can get away by these horrible working conditions because the workers are not in a condition to demand better in any of these cities because immediately it means that they they face the risk of being uh reported as Bangladeshi as infiltrators. They have absolutely no rights in these cities and the worst uh sufferers of this are of course uh children and women. There's a there's rampant trafficking of uh women that's happening in these uh settlements that have come up across uh out in the outskirts of uh cities like Bangalore.
So there's all this exploitation happening uh at a time when people are talking about these people being infiltrators and and people who are somehow disrupting our our way of life.
So this is the context outside of Bengal of of people who are leaving Bengal in search of work in a very hazardous time.
So this is the context for this conversation and what we are trying to figure out Nadira and I over here through a selection of readings that both of us have uh put together is how did this population become so persecuted? How did they become so desperate for employment? What is it that pushes them to move away from West Bengal and in many cases also from Bangladesh. So that is the how do I put it the primer for this discussion the context for this discussion. Uh Nadra if I can hand it over to you now uh if you can run us through just as a kind of a catalog as to which which are the texts we are looking at to to trace the origin story of uh the marginalization of the Bengali Muslim or rather who is the Bengali Muslim. These questions uh are what we're trying to answer. What are the texts we have looked at? Can you please share that with our audience?
>> Uh yeah, of course. Primarily there are quite a few but uh the text primarily we are considering um the first one is uh of course uh Hunter commission report 1871 and the second one uh 1921 census report and also we are looking at definitely and the recent time and in the neoliberal economy what's the situation of uh Bengali Muslims at this moment to understand that we are also looking at India's Bangladesh problem uh the marginalization of Bengali Muslims in neoliberal times by Navin Murid. So these are the primarily uh basic uh text we are looking at and our entire dialogue and uh discussion should be based on but there would be of course here and there uh references what we are just going to talk about I I don't know uh Sugipto if you have considered some more you can just point out those >> well I you know consideration agency in terms of a of of setting the context for the marginalization of these millions in Bengal when we're looking at the Bengali Muslim obviously uh the co-marinal in that sense is the Dalith of Bengal and uh so I have done a little bit of uh extra reading in that area uh which I want to bring into this conversation at some point um and the the re the reason I think it assumes significance also consider is uh because of the fact that now close to 1 cr people have been deleted in the sir list who are the majority of the people who have been deleted Right? Not just Bengali Muslims but also Bengali Dalits, right? The Motua or the Nam Sudra population, the Rajbongshi, these are the people who have who who form the bulk of those people who have been deleted from the SI list. Um, so yeah, I mean I have done a little bit of extra reading over there.
I have uh I've brought this book with me as well. It's called uh cast and partition in Bengal. The story of Dalith refugees between 1946 and uh 1961. It is by Shaker Bondai and Anushia Basur Chowri. Uh this is uh another extra piece of reading that I've brought. I hope I get a chance to bring up what's in this book. But what we are going to start with is how did the condition of Bengali Muslims become so bad? That's the question we're trying to answer, right? And uh in doing that the the first and most authentic source that we found was the British census report. Uh the census of 1921 is what we both agreed upon. So what does the 1921 census say uh Nadira about the condition of Bengali Muslims?
I I will just list down certain aspects and probably I will refer some of them from Hunter report and some of them from 1921 report.
>> You want to go to Hunter afterwards? Can we first start with the the census report because Hunter in a sense gives us an explanation for what we see in the census report. The figures and the conditions that we see in the census.
What why it happened and why why it came to be that way is what Hunter talks about. So let's get into the census first and then we'll slowly go into what Hunter says right and who is this Hunter character and yeah anyway so the census >> okay census if we talk about primarily the demographic status we can we have to spoke speak about so um if we talk about 1921 and the demographic status of Muslims at that moment then we uh must uh need to understand that the uh rural and urban the division of rural and urban and uh 1921 census talks about that Muhammadans were the dominant religious group in West Bengal sorry Bengal at that moment comprising 53.55% of the population however the great mass was engaged in agriculture and lived in rural areas where Hindus remained more concentrated in urban and unindustrial centers like Kolkata or at that time it was Kolkata So therefore automatically from this report you get to know that uh Muslim population was always involved in agriculture not that intellectual work right on the other hand Hindus they actually they were concentrated in urban areas so automatically and industrial centers automatically so you are going towards the service oriented job so that is one particular point we need to highlight sure and the second thing uh what census report of 1921 talks about that is ed educational backwardness.
Definitely that is one of the important aspects we must talk about. Uh it says that despite their numbers the census report characterizes the community as backward in education compared to other religious groups. Uh that is a kind of fact of course as we are now talking about the facts primarily. We will go a little later why they were backward in education. we are going to discuss if we get the scope and the third one uh health and um segregation. So uh when we talk about health and segregation the for uh one uh one thing we need to uh talk about that is uh census suggests and accidental geographic segregation where um in malaria striken west western and central districts where um Muslims were superior in number in in the healthier north and east east part of West Bengal.
So um and the the fourth one it talks about that um no I think these are the three important factors when we talk about 1921 census report we need to uh speak about >> can I add to so these are the things that you noticed which were interesting um uh one of the things I found also interesting at this point is uh this is I think the you know I'm looking at page numbers for those who are interested I mean These are references you should check out on your own. These are these are great documents to read. So this this page number 363 of the of the uh census of 1921. Uh it talks about the various casts among Muslims. Right. So this is talking about the cast system among Hindus among uh Christians among Muslims. So this is a section which talks about the Muhammadan sections it is called.
And there's a very interesting phenomenon over here. Nadra in among Hindus we see this thing of Sanskritization right uh among Muslims over here we are seeing this uh trend of ashrafization if if there is a term like that >> right astraization which means what which means what that a few uh Muslims who have managed to gain some kind of economic mobility upward mobility are trying to pass themselves off as >> higher cast or highborn uh Muslims and I just want to read about uh this section over here there you know so the largest uh segment of uh Bengali Muslims according to various accounts is the uh uh the the chasha or the jolaha right which means the weaver or the cultivator it's so interesting the numbers returned for the jolaha community keep going down over the years right so in uh 1901 it is uh reported as 2 lakh 81 82,425 odd males. In 1911 it goes down to 2 lak 55,000 something. right now uh that the the census says that number has not gone lower due to the fact that some enumerators now here it gets really hilarious and exciting almost uh that some enumerators of the higher classes were jealous that those who were really jolah should not be returned as anything else and it is known that a number was so returned in spite of their protest.
So what do we see happening over here that people who are probably julaha are trying to move up the ladder and claiming that they are higher cast and many of these higher cast Muslims are administrators enumerators who are pushing back and saying that no no these people are not uh ashra they're not sad and things like that so this is I I felt an interesting phenomenon at this point in time uh which comes through in this uh >> in the senses yeah but you were saying something sorry Yeah, I would like to add to that of course the when we talk about Ashraf and the class differences but at the same time it's more of a local and non-local uh the origin local origin and non-local origin because again where we talk about that um Astra the elate and those astra class was always they were considered that they are non-local so uh they don't belong to the lower cast and lower class. So that distinction was also there. I I thought of highlighting that.
>> In fact, see here there talking about uh the Patans uh in the numbers keep going up from 2K 15,000 in 1901 to 2K 80,000 in uh 1911.
So there is there are people who are uh falsely perhaps reporting that they are Patan where whereas they are not. And in the same senses uh the same thing is happening among large sections of the the Hindu peasantry as well. Right? For example, you have a community called uh I can't I can't refer to I can't give you the reference for the page number but do check out this report. It's so interesting to see that uh there's a community of uh gualas. Gualas means uh shepherds or cow herds rather who uh want to say that they are sad gop and that they are not goala they are sad gop and that they are koulin or that they are saboro there are many communities which are emerging at this time who are also called who have names like saboro kyiborta I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right sauo kyorta means not the other kyorta but the sauna kya so there is a lot of this aspirational stuff that is happening where lowered communities are trying to pass themselves off as higher. So this is one uh thing that I noticed in this census.
Uh but apart from that I suppose a standout feature uh Nadira is this huge gap between the Sarna Hindus and um what what is back here I mean the 1921 they were still called the depressed classes.
uh today we understand them to be dulits. So there's a huge gap between Badlo Bengal and both Dalits and Bengali Muslims. Now this is something that we see as an overarching reality which means that uh even the aristocracy of the Muslim population is not matching up with the aristocracy or the nobility or the landed populations among the Bodhall. we are seeing uh the emergence of uh uh of this Muslim Bengali distress and this Hindu Bengali distress or this dalit Bengali distress at a time when there's a hell of a lot of education and upward mobility among the Saerna Bengalies or the Bhadraok Bengales I suppose that's these are the features of the 21 census >> if we feel like certain things we need to point out we can point out >> so now uh this census was discussed because just to establish that there is a real marginalization of the Bengali Muslim population. And now I think we need to get into this question of how this marginalization came about, why this population uh had this experience of economic and social marginalization. And here's when we get into uh WW Hunter, right, Nadra? Uh the Hunter report, what's your what's your sense of it and you know what he says?
>> Yeah. uh there are quite a few things as I was pointing out when we were talking about uh 1921 uh census report and uh there are certain things other facts we have talked about but we need to talk about also that why those things happened and so uh if we talk about the origin of soio economic uh decline of Indian Muslims uh then particularly in Bengal where they are the largest religious group if you look at the they are the largest ethnic religious group and um we need to also uh stress to a systematic loss of power, wealth and institutional support under British rule. So that was documented by WW Hunter and uh this particular historical documentation uh if we just break it down into different aspects to it. Then the first one what Hunter is pointing out that historical loss of power. So what he means by historical loss of power he's talking about that um uh race ruined under British rule explicitly stating that they were viewed as source of permanent danger. So when he talks about that they the Muslims were actually became a source of permanent danger what and how he's again breaking down that into different segments. The first one he talks about that exclusion from military comment.
What is it? It it's it says that historically the Muslim aristocracy held the commissioned rank ranks and ranks of the army. So they uh the Muslims aristocracy aristocracy actually uh they had because they were holding all the commissioned ranks in the army but British viewed them as the potential threat to their safety and completely excluded uh them from these high ranks posts. So that is one thing which happened. Then the next loss what happened was the loss of revenue collection drones. Even before uh the British rule a higher ranking Muslim officers managed fiscal systems. that after that what happened during British rule the permanent settlement of 1793 elevated Hindu subordinate collectors uh to the proprietary landlorders um effectively transferring land and wealth from the former Muslim ruling class to Hindus. So that is one thing which also happened during British rule. And the third thing what he has pointed out um that is administrative and judicial displacement and uh what does it mean this shift of the official court language from Persian to English and that eventually act and that that this whole phenomena of shifting from Persian to English that eventual abolition of the Kazi that is law officers in 1984 stripped Muslims of their historical dominance in the legal and political spheres. Uh that these are the factors when we talk about historical loss of power. One thing and the second point we need to highlight that is the economic and educational decay. So when we talk about economic and educational decay also we can break it down into two. The first one we need to talk about the and when these economic and educational decay. Uh here also the laws we are specifically pointing pointing out. The first one resumption laws that is the uh these laws reclaimed the rentfree land grants that had supported Muslim families and their educational system for generations. This process resulted in the ruin of hundreds of ancient families and gave a a death blow to the Muslim scholastic class. And the second one educational gap. The British scholars uh scholar education system was unswitted to Muslim uh requirements and utilized Hindu teachers while Hindus adopted to the new system to gain government jobs.
Muslim clung to traditional Arabic and person education which no longer provided a career path. So that was the economic and pol educational and economic decay. And the third point uh we need to highlight here and third aspect of the report it says that uh demographic status and demographic status uh we we have already talked about through 1921 census report and the fourth uh we that is also if we talk about in current regime and current after 1991 after liberalization whatever happened if we it's I'm not limiting at this moment And I'm not limiting only to Hunter report rather I'm going a little beyond that because if we talk about the uh Muslims and the situations of Muslims it's how they have reached to this particular state. Of course, historically the structural um uh marginalization happened but apart from that also in the neoliberal economy we have noticed that there is a huge amount of marginalization because of neoliberal economy that is actually pointed out by Navin Mushid's book. So um here should I I think we need I need to talk here very briefly what what are the marginalizations at this moment which is happening. one is uh the trope of illegal Bangladeshi and the second one is strategic subjugation. So uh we are going to talk about these uh two aspects in little details a little later.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
uh but right now we're talking about Hunter and uh you know for me I was reading the uh uh the report also from the point of or rather I was trying to imagine um the person behind the report this hunter what kind of a character he might have been because here you have a person who is a British official who uh in many ways is an Islamophobe I don't know if you read the first section of his book uh the Indian Musulman you know where he talks about the rise of Wahhabi influence and while of course it might it may be a matter of concern the way he raises concerns about it uh smacks of a little bit of Islamophobia you know a certain kind of colonial gaze uh you know that the the the the administrator's irritation with quote unquote disturbances you know so there's all of this stuff and you you you're thinking of uh a typical British officer who is uh very suspicious of Muslims because Muslims are the rulers who they've immediately replaced in India. The Mughals are the people who the uh British replaced. So therefore this suspicion, this uh antagonism and all of that. But then it is in the chapter where he gets into this question of what the British did to the Muslims where you begin to appreciate his journalism if you want to call it that you know because over here he spares he doesn't spare the British even an inch because he gets into every detail of how the British uh created a very very uh sophisticated system by which within a matter of 150 years they managed to complete uproot the Muslim aristocracy, the Muslim Zamindas, the Muslim ruling class. Uh and and that the manner in which they did it is something that I'm I was almost surprised by how well Hunter has documented it with the with the level of honesty that he has documented it. Um but in this report, you know, between us now that we're looking back, what is most striking about this sudden downfall is the downfall of a ruling elite of Muslims, right? I think that is what is most striking about this 1871 report which is about uh um 100 years 150 years after the company has taken over. More than 150 years after the company has taken over, this report emerges in which a British officer is talking about the fall of the Muslims.
And now because of the benefit of time and hindsight, you and I can appreciate the fact that there was a certain class of Muslims that experienced a downfall in that era. Right. Uh Nadira, what is this class? And that is to me uh a section that I want to read from u Hunter's book. It talks about uh the relationship uh between the Mughal rulers and and their uh Hindu uh collaborators. Right? Um here it says it can never be too often insisted upon however that in India the relationship of the conquerors to the native population was regulated rather by political necessity than by the Muhammadan code.
The hotty foreigners despised the details of collection and left it to their Hindu baiffs to deal directly with the peasantry. So universal was the system that Akbar successfully defended the selection of a Hindu for his minister of finance by referring to it.
On Toddar Mal's appointment as a chancellor of the empire, the Musulman princes sent a deputation to remmonstrate. Who manages your properties and grants of land? replied the emperor. Our Hindu agents, they answered. Very good, said Akbar. allow me also to appoint a Hindu to manage my estates.
Right? Now, what does this show? This shows that there was another layer between the Muslim peasantry and the Muslim aristocracy that there was this rent collecting uh landholding old order which was still in order of the final mile of revenue. um collection and through Hunter's book we get this initial understanding of how not only did this aristocracy collapse so did the peasantry. So the peasantry was already a marginal population but the aristocracy collapsed alongside the peasantry in these years of British rule. Is that something that comes through in your mind as well in terms of the different types of Muslims in Bengal?
>> Yeah. Yeah. uh but again if you look at just uh when I was reading out the uh report 1921 report of census uh the majority of the Muslims at that moment were also nonastra that is non- elite right and they belong to the rural population at the same time they were the uh they were engaged with agricultural activities primarily so therefore if you Look at the Astra uh or the elite class they were primarily the they were somewhere involved in the Mughal court and the their administration right. So um so therefore I I think if you look at after partition there is a good amount of that particular class has gone to the other part after partition because Pakistan so that elite class and rest yeah there were some uh astra or the elite class people of that elite uh uh group they belong to India but at the same time I think because of the systematic situation or systematic marginalization at this moment if you look at immediately post partition postindependence uh era there were a good amount of representation Muslim representation in the u administration and policies and ministries but gradually those faded away right so if you go beyond these reports and historical docu documents that we if we analyze then actually those if you are not representing uh uh yourself in the system primarily in the structural system then automatically that class is fading fading gradually fading away so I find and now at this moment if you look at cabinet there is not if I'm not wrong there is there is very minimal and marginal uh Muslim representation we have in the cabinet right so u that therefore I think it is a kind of systematically uh this uh uh this structurally and systematically u uh that class is gradually vanishing that's what I can point out >> right and that and that vanishing starts from immediately after the decline of the Mughal Mughal empire we see an entire class of people vanishing from uh the ruling class of Bengal and then you have a period of British rule both the company as well as uh the crown during which this population is looked upon with suspicion. So therefore the uh creamy layer of Muslims so to speak vanishes but um >> yeah during it started in the British era because just now I read out that's what but it gradually it's it's just fading and fading and more fading and it it is completely going extinct in the current context >> and in the current context when you say you mean in the Indian side of the border in West Bengal.
>> Yes. Yes. Yes.
>> Right. this this process has >> Bengal and even even nationwide I I think it's not only the Bengal and Bengal problem I mean even if you look at nationally also it happened >> right right and this s this sudden drop in the in the in the fortunes of uh the Muslims uh helps us to a certain extent understand the kind of passions that led eventually to the partition, right? Uh wherein a certain class of people and this is something we say about the Hindu uh ruling class as well when it comes to uh the struggle for for for independence from the British uh which is that um here was a class which rebelled against the British because they had never forgotten that they were the ruling class. They wanted to bring back the glory days and in a sense Hindu nationalism today is that that oh we were once the rulers and that's why you see all these historicals. Last time when you came on the show we were discussing these historicals in which uh there these grand larger than life narratives created about Hindu rulers and things like that. Why? Because the imagination is that we will one day go back to that um pristine past and uh that we when we read this uh stuff right when we read the census when we read about this systematic way in which uh the Muslim ruling class was subordinated by the British we get a sense of where the early rumblings for a separate state might have come from might have come from only those people who were a former ruling class. they they could have they are the only people who could have possibly given this kind of a a call the legs that it needed right saying that we were once the rulers we will be rulers once again uh and that ultimately led to the formation of these two states uh the Hindu state and the uh Muslim state uh were formed but what do we then see that the Muslim state also has a contradiction that there are Muslims and then there are Muslims And which is that that contradiction finally boils over in 1971 when the Bengali Muslim realizes that there is something different about their experience from the um North Indian Muslims who were ruling them up until 1971.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. This is this is where we have to I think get into this territory of delineating the experience of uh the julah chasha from the ashra sed mughal personate kind of uh experience right um and that's that's why I think Richard Eaton becomes very exciting to talk about you think >> Richard Eton >> uh okay before going into Richard Eton what you were talking about the narratives of the grand past what we have started reimagining through film or through certain other um text. Uh I would like to point out here um just I I would like to hear my personal own experience. I want to bring in on too.
Uh if you look at the narrative, this narrative also got a bit of changed because when I was growing up, I have grown up in West Bengal and a rural place in West Bengal and I have studied in a local vernacular language uh primary medium school a primary school and also after that towards again subsequent education happened there itself. So when we used to be in our primary school and there used to there used to be one class only for storytelling and where our teachers we used to call them diironi. He used to come and he used to tell uh different different stories every day and she used to even uh till today I remember the stories and one story she pointed out that how India had glorious past and we had that sonikia these and that and the narrative was little different at that time as he pointed out that uh Britishers they came and they looted us and even our kohhenor has gone to Britain and then the villain was primarily even if you look at that is 30 years or 35 years back the villain was actually not the Moguls because it was never pointed out that Mughals they came and they invaded and that's how we have become poor rather it was more of like Britishers were the main invaders and they have looted us but now if you look at the historicals and the historical reimagination is what is happening through cultural text. It's not only we are not limiting only to the Britishers rather it has gone beyond even we have gone to medieval period and the variable rulers and the invaders and they are represented as lutters. So therefore the I think uh now we are creating or recreating that imagination that uh one the again not only British again the medival rulers like Mgles and they also came and they are looted us. I wanted to just add on to this and um definitely uh that is one aspect we need to also because the changing narrative how it is changing gradually that also we need to highlight uh and uh what you have just pointed out that uh now we should be talking about Richard and the whole class and the um how the whole conversion happened and primarily the cast and class and how the conversion happened. I think that's what we need to we we would like to point out here, right?
>> Yes. Yes, we would want to do that. But you know, just because you brought up this uh question of you know who are the lutters, who are the uh you know looted so to speak and uh you know as as uh as I suppose in the in the in the lowest denominator we are all pro-democracy people, right? uh from that mindset alone if you look at the process of extraction right what we're looking at uh in Indian history despite claims and counter claims that uh the Hindus looted or the Muslims looted or the Christians looted is this great collaboration in the loot right between ruling classes you know this this history >> yeah you are absolutely right >> because this this history what does it show so there is a great understanding collaboration between the Mughal rulers and the uh bodhalloque of Bengal and this is not just Bengal we're talking about in different parts of the country the Mughals were people who were interested in taxation and to that extent they were very secular because the the the the extraction was a very secular process in which there were layers in different parts of the hierarchy I mean there were people who were tax collectors there were people who military in the military. There were different coalitions in the military itself. The military was a multicultural entity. But in all of this, all this multiculturalism somehow uh kind of coagulates at the top.
Coagulates at the top. Why? because there's a nice little collaboration between Rajputs and Mughals between uh the different sultans and nawabs who ruled uh Bengal between the end of the Sena dynasty and the coming of the Mughals. There were many other sultans who who ruled. They all had a great collaboration with the local Hindu uh ruling class. In fact, that was the uh system of administration which is that we will not disrupt your local cast, customs, hierarchies and all of that.
Yeah, >> we will in fact give you protection and appoint you as the talogdar or the tilda or the zaminda or whatever and through that collaborative exercise we will extract surplus right and now in today's time the funny part is that both these ruling classes have their own pieces of land and both those lands in a way are failed states because they have failed to uplift the most marginal in those states.
That is why we are having this conversation right that is why we are saying that there needs to be a conversation which is apar oar which means it is over and above this binary of Hindu Muslim it's over and above this binary of Bangladesh and West Bengal in which you have a common population which is suffering on both sides of the border right and the suffering of Both these populations can be traced back to these >> primitive forms of extraction and which have been modernized over time.
>> Right? Why else would you have uh so many Bengali Muslims uh still migrating to India to collect garbage from Bangladesh? If religion could have solved the problems of Bangladesh, if religion could have solved the problems of India and if India was for so-called Bengali Hindus, why do we have such a large population which is now stateless thanks to the S and when the NRC comes or whatever even in Assam when the NRC happened there were lacks and lacks of people who are not Muslim. They were Hindus who were left out of uh the NRC exercise. So that shows what that the Hindu imagin imagined Hindu state has also failed.
Right?
So the Hindu state and the Muslim state have both failed and they've both failed only one class of people >> the cultivating masses. The cultivating masses.
>> Uh >> all right >> and that's why we're having this conversation I suppose. Um but yes, how do we come back to >> I I think um as we uh just spoke about the looting and invaders and all of it connecting the connecting to that we would we should be talking about uh the whole work of Richard Eton and he has talked about what he has talked about um how much force and how much looting happened and the whole idea conversion how it happened and whether it happened with force or what. So I think that is very important segment we need to also speak here. Um so what he spoke when we talk about the origin and um and he has talked about that uh uh he identifies that workingclass theology and here when he speaking about workingclass theology he is primarily talking about a religion of Lao and what does it mean that u that emerged in the eastern Bengal delta between the 16th and 18th century and one of the greatest um historical event and uh why because despite Muslim regimes ruling the region since 19 uh since the 13th century no noticeable community of Bengali Muslim emerged alongside them till the 16th century. So therefore north Indian ashra elites were found exclusively in the urban centers in small number. So how did >> just hold on to that thought.
>> True. Yeah, just hold on to that thought, you know, just to underline that we are looking at close to from 1200 to 1600, we're looking at close to 400 years of rule by different sultans and nabs during which the population of Muslims in the region of Bengal does not go up. That is what that's what Eton's work shows and that's what different democratic demographic studies from that time show.
So therefore the first theory right which is the favorite theory of people like uh Himontto Viswas and the BJP and all of these people which is that the religion was spread through the sword by Nawabs who defeated the SA dynasty right the SA dynasty was the last dynasty in Bengal ruled by Hindus which I think was defeated in 1200 and something >> uh and the and different sultans and nabs from Afghan Persian extractions came to rule Bengal all for close to 400 years they ruled despite which there is no sudden sudden burst of uh Muslims in that region it happens only in the 1600s is what Eaton's work shows and why does that happen >> yeah so therefore what Eton writes that north Indian astro of elates were found exclusively in the urban centers and in small number definitely and it the number has not gone up so how uh did we get to today where Bengali Muslims constitute the largest Muslim ethnicity in South Asia and third globally. So if you look at this is the largest ethnic uh community in the uh South Asia and third in globally how we have become such a big number. So there three uh things we just and so >> that is so surprising >> and it's surprising and also mindboggling if you consider that this is not the it's not even close to being the oldest Muslim community. It is perhaps I dare say the newest Muslim community in the world just 400 years old. The Bengali Muslim is just 400 years old.
>> Did not exist before that.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. But go on.
>> Yeah. Yeah. The the ethnicity is one of the newest ones.
So uh and uh to back up this argument and to just response to this particular question, we first we need to talk about the refutation of conventional theories.
That conventional theory is that uh religion of the short and uh that that you with force you are just forcing someone to convert his or her religion.
That is one and um that is the first thing he is refuting in his book and in and the conventional theory what we have and the second one he points out that the role of the religious gentry what does it mean a critical insight is the emergence of the Muslim religious gentry composed of petty Clark's holy men that is pir we just call it pier and mosque functionaries and Muggal authorities issued tax-free land grants to those individuals on the condition that they clear the jungle and cultivate the land and these pioneers became the uh nucle of new agrian communities and their mosques and shrines served as the primary nodes of social and religious identity for the newly settled peasants and that is one of the important factors How this number has increased because the land was given and therefore and because of the land and they were just given that you make it as aggregant uh land and that's how the community just multiplied and increased. So hold on >> and the third >> so so you're saying that uh in this period from when the Mughals took over uh there is this emergence of uh agriculture or or rather a lot of pressure on the population to cultivate and uh to to to uh kind of break fresh land.
>> To break fresh land, right? and to prepare land for the agricultural purposes. Right.
>> Right. And this process of preparing land for agricultural purposes. Once again, see I I okay firstly I want to empathize quickly take a break and empathize with our audience over here who might be getting a little confused with these dates and what we are trying to get at. Once again to remind you we are in the 1600s and in the 1600s the Brit the Mughals have taken over and they have consolidated power in Bengal.
They've taken over from all the different various sultans who are there and now the Mughals are firmly in control and what are they doing? They are putting pressure to increase revenue from agriculture. They are putting pressure on uh the peasantry to expand the land under cultivation and they are expanding to the east. Is that correct?
>> Yeah. Absolutely. So because uh till uh that time if you look at the religion was very much concentrated to cities and urban spaces. Even if you look at the report census report just a few minutes back I I just read it out that uh uh it was completely opposite if you look at in the 20th century and late 19th century because Hindus were more concentrated in urban spaces. But here we are talking about just completely opposite. We are telling that we are actually why it happened. Now we are telling the reason why Muslims were primarily uh limited to our rural areas because again they were somewhere pressurized and they were encouraged also to create those or to make those aggregate lands. So that's how they they they actually the population of Muslims belonging to the rural areas. So that is one definitely and >> the muggles were giving out >> and the muggles were giving out these grants of land he said right.
>> Yeah yeah yeah >> taxfree land grants >> and yeah for cultivation. Yes, taxfree land grants and at the same time as they were giving those taxfree land and uh on the other hand these population they were making those mosques and shrines and so they could perform their social and religious identity also in those new spaces. So that's why actually it was a very organic way of spreading the religion. So that is one and there is one more reason what Eton has pointed out that Islam as a religion of Lao in the eastern delta Islam became uh locally understood as a civilizational a civilization building ideology and highlights how local traditions reinterpreted Islamic figures like Adam and Abraham as pioneers of agriculture who reduced the earth to the plow at god's command. So that is so fascinating like you are telling that the representative of gods and that that that religion itself is the religion of love right. So that's how you are very organically also you are spreading that's the message and that is one and that's how the the again religion got it had some kind of spread and then the another point he writes that the process of cultural integration that is another important factor he says that he describes Islamicization as a gradual three-stage uh evolutionary process The first one is inclusion. The Islamic superhuman agencies were added to local cosmologies alongside existing deities. So that is one fascinating fascinating thing. And the second one identification the Islamic figures were marched with local ones identifying Allah with Sanskrit Niranjan. And the third one displacement eventually Islamic agencies replaced local ones a process accelerated by the 19th century reform movements and that's where uh again Wahid movement comes in and the whole idea of um wahi movement actually starts taking place. So the purification of Islam that particular the philosophy of Wahhabi Muslim why movement talks about >> right now for you know so there are a few uh interesting things for me also in this uh work that Eaton has put together and one of the first things he says is that you should not see this huge uh change in demography as a conversion exercise or at least you shouldn't see it as the conversion exercise from Hindu to Islam, >> right? And uh you know that is that is for me a very striking thing that Richard Eaton says saying that okay >> in the 1600s what is happening is that the uh the the the Mughals have taken over uh and uh the what is also happening at the same time is that the river is moving east. The Ganga is changing changing trajectory >> because it is changing trajectory it is going closer to this river called the Padma >> which Bengali can't pronounce. So they say Poda. Okay. So anyway so the river Ganga is moving east and it becomes closer to the Padma and in doing so new land emerges.
New land emerges and uh this land emerges in a place which was otherwise before that just forests deep dark forests which were never penetrated by either the sultans before them or even the Hindu rulers the entire so-called Bengali uh civilization was concentrated in what is Kolkata and the west of Bengal and the east was unchartered territory. So this chartering of this territory started happening under British time uh under Mughal time uh by people who were giving given land grants and these uh people who are given land grants went into these regions which are amphibious right because yes there are forests but there are also rivers cutting through those forests and these are constantly changing. These are dangerous territories. You have mangroves, you have floating land, you have disappearing land and all of that in these dangerous territories. Uh a group of pioneers go out into the east.
Uh and who do they recruit? They recruit the indigenous population over there is what Eaton says. Now the indigenous population over there up until that point had not been touched by Sanskritization, Brahmanization, Hinduization, Sernization, whatever you want to call it, right? These were Chandal Dome kind of communities who were entirely dependent on the riverine the riverine ecosystem the forest produce that is what they were dependent on and these people were recruited by these pioneers who were commissioned by the Mughals to go east to cultivate the land. Now another coincidence is that many of these pioneers were actually Muslim.
They were not just Muslim. They were also people who uh were quite enlightened I would say. Uh because they are dealing with a branch of Islam which is different from the branch of Islam practiced by the ruling class Mughals or the Sultans before them. Most of them were followers of the Chihi order.
Right. Whereas these pioneers they take a different interpretation of Islam like you were saying. They take a different uh invocation really. They invoke the creed of Adam.
The cre the creed of Adam is what? The first person does what? The first person creates. And in this case, you're looking at what? The creation of a certain crop, a creation of a certain population as well. And the creation in in third as the creation of a certain faith system, which is tying all of this together, saying that we are the cultivators. We are we are going to fertilize the earth and we are going to populate populate the earth.
>> Right? This kind of interpretation of Islam uh is very different is is is is you know to my mind a lot of the Sufi orders the chist orders >> in to be to if you look at them from present uh lenses they may also seem a little postmodernist right? Yeah, definitely definitely because you are just breaking down all the structure structural understanding of it and this traditional understanding of it. I think definitely >> and then you have suddenly somebody who's taking out all of this metaphysics out of the way and getting into the material not the metaphysical saying that there is a material aspect to this faith >> that it is connected to the creed of the cultivator the creed of Adam you know so that that's something that eaten brought through for me was very uh interesting that he put it like that saying that they were not Hindu to start off with so it's not like they were converted at all and again He he uses that word conversion quite carefully because he says that this Islam was not just all of this new interpretation and all of that.
Yes. Sure. But it also meshed with the local faith system. M here I would like to point out as you have beautifully talked about and you brought in the whole idea of the people who were the original inhabitants of that particular religion because if you look at those they were sanatani or they were what religion they belong to that the whole conversion will happen right the conversion can happen only if you belong to a particular religion then you are just converting yourself to some something else but Again if they were the predominantly the local and they were not following any as such particular religion religion then how the conversion is also happening that is also questionable right >> sure and and to that now when we're looking at it like like this suddenly you're looking at the emergence of Islam as a liberation theology.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. We use the term liberation theology quite often in the Christian context. Liberation theology you know in in the south you have many Christian orders you know which liberated uh former Dalith slaves uh using this ideology particularly in this region around Maduray. You have Christian evangelical groups and you know liberation theologians and all of that.
But this to me is liberation theology telling a bunch of indigen people who are not looked upon as fully human by either the Muslim rulers or the Hindu rulers of back then West Bengal. There is a process of humanization that is happening here. There's a process of civilization that is happening here.
Right? And I don't want to use this word civilization in any colonial context to somehow suggest that people were barbarian before that. So they needed to be civilized.
Right? But nevertheless, there's there's the emergence of a >> working-class population. There is an emergence of a finite kind of economic uh entity in terms of the workingclass Muslim who is a cultivator Muslim, right? And all of these things are taking shape under a very different type of Islam.
That's probably what is striking about Eton's findings.
I think at that time the way the religions uh with the religion Islam um actually uh got uh spread out. Uh but later on also we have to consider that the um the restriction on that particular approach the restrictions which restrictions which were imposed uh when movement happened. So that also we need to talk about it. Yeah, let's talk about that part of the Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely. Let's talk about that part.
Yeah. So you have what is an organic uh rooted form of Islam taking birth and if that is revolutionary the counterrevolution quite literally starts happening very soon. So what is this counterrevolution that you speak of uh Naz?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um see on the one hand we have these all the liberation or the uh the liberated Islam ideology of liberated Islam but on the other hand also uh uh WW Hunter has talked about as you were pointing out few minutes back that also Wahi movement the way he has looked at uh though there uh there are certain things we need to question but at the same time even there are certain facts we need to acknowledge. at the at the same time. uh so uh the whole uh transformation of theology the way it actually happened through uh in the Y movement uh S Ahmed's uh he is the whole propagator of this particular movement and when he actually went to Magmaka for pilgrim pilgrimage uh uh and uh he came back in 1822 and he has accepted his mission to uh from moral reform to formulated theology of militant resistance and he actually talked about the holy war and that is again we can call it also jihad. So he talked about that the whole idea of this uh in in just now we talked about that you can just also worship god or Allah as niranjan. So here in this particular movement it was pointed out that no you should not because you should be following only one monotheism should beh followed very strictly and he actually this particular movement was the movement which was propagating and encouraging the whole idea of Persian and Arabic Islam and not the localized version of Islam. So that was one thing also we need to talk about when we are on the one hand we are talking about the liberated Islam. On the other hand also we have to talk about the subsequent movements and subsequent act uh actually uh outcry which happened in terms of Islam. So uh this was the this this was the thing also happened. So therefore it was more uh had more restraint more conservative approach of Islam through this particular movement we have noticed later on.
>> Okay. Now this this for me again is is kind of ironical. Right now here you have a class of Muslims north Indian Muslims let's say for the lack of a better term. If you want to go further, you can say uh Ashrafa say Muslims from the from the northwest and all of those uh people who collab who found it more uh appealing to collaborate with uh Rajputs with Bodlo with different ruling cast class Hindus of the subcontinent until their subordination happened under the British. Then they come back to reclaim what they think is theirs. Uh and in that reclamation project, Wahhabi Islam becomes a a potent kind of ideology to unite the Muslim masses to rise up and reclaim what was theirs.
And the people who are giving the call to action are once again from the same classes as those people who collaborated with the Rajputs, with the Bodhall at the expense of the people who now suddenly they want to you know embrace as part of the Umaha, embrace as brethren saying that now we have to wage this holy war and all of this ferment is what ultimately leads to the formation of Pakistan. Right.
H yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and um and also because of this movement or I would like to point out that uh because of the uh they wanted to keep it puritan and the uh purity intact of the religion. So therefore that also had a quite a um significant amount of repercussion on the situation what's uh later on in the subsequent period Muslim had because uh this particular movement also objected the western education and English education right so definitely when you are lacking English education in a British era automatically you are let out from the administrative jobs right and that's how one middle class this whole middle class traitor got gradually vanished. So this is one of the moments actually that's how the situation of Muslims gradually became this is one of the reasons I'm not telling this is the only reasons uh reason this is this is one of the reasons actually that also mean must acknowledge >> and it is kind of sad if you look at it from again this perspective of liberation that here's a religion just now we talked about how this is liberation theology and how that liberation within a few decades or centuries is can spin on its head.
Right? Why do I say it's liberating to all those people who talk about oh well there is there are elements in Christianity, there are fanatical elements in in Islam. So why are we uh differentiating them from Hinduism as a Dalith? When I answer that question, I say well there is there is there is there are some fundamental differences between the Abrahamic religions and the Sanskritic or the Brahminical religions, right? And one of those fundamental differences is that the Brahminical religion is defined by who cannot be included, who can not read the scriptures. Whereas the Abrahamic uh religions are defined by who can read the scriptures. If you belong only if you be you if you can if you're literate in the scriptures. So therefore it spread through the pen through the book.
Right? And that is something that happened in uh this this new population of Bengali Muslims as well. They were like I said indigenous people but suddenly they had not the not just the axe and the plow which is the axe to cut the forest and the plow to uh cultivate the land but also the pen and paper.
>> Right? The act of reading is such a powerful thing for a bunch of people who have been denied education who have been told that you're not good enough. You know that's the experience of cast.
That's the experience of untouchability.
And here is a religion which which is giving them a book and a pen and that spins on its head. Why? Because that is modernity at one time and suddenly that itself becomes a certain kind of uh primitiveness. I don't know if what is the right term to use because when the British come >> conserviveness I think conservativeness I think conservativeness >> so between the time when the Mughals were ruling and the British came those few centuries is when we see a certain rise in literacy among the peasantry of uh Bengal. Why? Because there are these pioneers these Sufi peels who are going about spreading Islam. And then the British period comes during which that education becomes obsolete.
That Persian education, that udu education, that Arabic education becomes overnight becomes obsolete and suddenly from a literate person you become again once again illiterate.
>> See because even we when we talk about literacy, illiteracy, you know, we're talking about a bunch of codes that we have been taught in school which may not match with a bunch of codes that another person uh has, right? that I always I would like to point out here one thing that I always have the uh discussion and argument that u when we talk about that uh Muslims are not that educated or for example madrasas are not the proper educational institutions so I tell that probably that is not as we are equating that to western education that's why it is not but if the power shifted completely the global power Then and that would have been the standard. Then you would have told that that is actually completely it is it is it is all together different game right. So who is measuring it and who is telling you and who is defining and who is um just weighing it. So it all depends on that who is educated who is not which educational institutes are good which are not which education is better which is worse. So it's all very apparent right >> and in the end of the day uh a convent and a madrasa mean the same thing right they're places where you get educated but then the the terms are so loaded yeah um anyway but moving on so here I suppose at the end of all these confusions you know both of us have been grappling over here trying to make sense of all this stuff that we have read in the last few weeks and bring home the story of the Bengali Muslim to estab what I suppose what we have established so far is a uh that there is a unique story here there's a unique anthropological story here because we are looking at the largest one of the world's largest Muslim populations which also happens to be the world's newest Muslim population and we are looking at a set of social and political factors which a led to their emergence and subsequently also their decline. And that decline is what we are trying to really uh bring focus upon.
>> And that and because this decline and this this uh operation is something that we see them facing today as of as of today, right? Uh so we've covered the cast experience. We've covered the uh uh class experience in terms of what is their what was their occupation and uh what was their cast origin thanks to eaten thanks to all these anthropological studies. We know that this population was entirely drawn from the untouchable indigenous population of Bengal and leads me to make a provocative claim that Bangladesh is perhaps the world's largest Dalith country. Right? Considering that the Bengali Muslims over there are entirely converted >> primarily and only from these two three communities, >> right? So to that extent it's the largest Dalith Muslim country in the in the world. But um today what are we seeing today? We are seeing uh that that whole region is facing haha. So we have let's take about say let's say 20 minutes or half an hour more and talk about why all of this history is relevant today.
uh and also and also uh try and now connect these two seemingly disparate populations. So we have spent all this time understanding the chains of the Bengali Muslim. We have we are yet to talk about the Bengali Dalith, right? And despite all these contestations over land and religion, >> these two populations find themselves exactly where they were >> about a century ago. I suppose that's the tragedy of Bengal, right?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where we have started our discussion with the um ragos and the garbage collector. So uh and why they are becoming these two communities are getting involved in this kind of manual jobs right and um so we are connecting uh these historical context to this contemporary context and the situation of the people at this moment what's going on uh >> and and both populations are facing >> I think uh >> and no I think I suppose both populations that is the Dalit Muslim of Bengal and sorry the Dalits of Bengal and the Muslims of Bengal are both experiences experiencing a certain kind of statelessness I suppose you know in this entire thing of being a migrant laborer there's some amount of statelessness as well but yeah continue >> okay yeah yeah of course so uh let's I will talk about from the perspective of uh Muslim and uh the kind of statelessness and the uh uh like suspect in their citizenship the way it's happening I think from your as you have gone through the book. So you talk about the situation of Dalits and how their citizenship is at a question at this moment at a stake at this moment. uh Muslims if you look at the uh it though the situation was started getting deteriorated during British rule and afterwards actually then because they actu they lost their administr administrative positions and gradually that deteriorated during uh partition and postindependence period it was much more uh the deteriorating situation and though there was some kind of uh Nairovian era and the ideology the way it was perceived and therefore there were certain still there were certain kind of status and certain kind of retention which happened in the administrative positions and even in the policym in the uh politics uh Indian politics and that's how the representations of Muslim was there even in 50s and 60s but if you look at gradually from 70s and 80s mostly late 80s onwards it started getting deteriorated more and more because of the religopolitics of this particular nation. So um and when we talk about Bengali Muslims in this entire context what's happening uh during I I will talk about the situation of Bengali Muslims primarily in the neoliberal uh neurable neoliberal setup because after 1991 the situation of Bengali Muslims started getting deteriorated deteriorated more and more because uh when liberalization happened though the whole idea on the ideology of liberalization is we should be having the mobility right across the states and the across the continents but again here what is happening even Naven's book Naven Mushid's book talks about in detail that though we are encouraging and the policy talks about the without any restrictions the uh movement should be there but it is not there and we are how we are restricting that movement in within the discourse of legality and illegality. Right? So here as within the legality and within uh legality and illegality framework when we are looking at from that particular landscape.
So Bengali Muslims how they are getting um like scapegoat and they are getting somewhere uh pieced off or they they they somehow they are the sufferer in this entire game because here uh mus Bengali Muslims and Bangladeshi Bengali Muslims they it's a kind of very difficult to distinguish in this entire discourse right when the certain politics is happening in Assam Assam and Bengal even during election that the rhetoric of Guspatia and termites and uh the infiltrator the way it is pointed out it is very uh it's not very distinct that whom you are talking to and whom you are referring to whether Bengali Muslims or Beng Bangladeshi Bengali Muslims so uh and if you if you look at um there are lot of cases even Indian Bengali Muslims they are termed as they are looked at that they are and there are thousands of cases like that that they are tagged as they are Bangladeshes and they have they are transported to border and they are transported to detention center this and that so that's how the situation at this moment it's happening more and more and uh and in terms of NRC as just few minutes back you talked about that uh when in Assam the NRC and uh happened and um it was it it was it was find found out that the most uh hind the name of the Hindus came in rather than Muslims. So here even in S when we have looked at the data here more of our motor community and their names just came out as they their names are deleted. So now who are insider and who are outsider the whole discourse and here again Bengali Muslims are not uh pre uh and they are somehow they are staged with certain um infiltrator and and in this entire system. So therefore in this particular uh context what uh and why uh again as you talked about that we started the discussion with garbage collector and sweeping and sweepers. So why this uh there are first we will let's start with that why Bengali uh Muslims they are coming and migrating to India and to work here.
What is what are the possible reasons right? So the first one what Naven Mushid talks about that um labor market segmentation. So what she is pointing out here that Bengali Muslims are often uh segregated into a deeply segmented lema market where they are uh funneled into lowkilled manual and nine positions in cities like Bangalore which are characterized by IT corridors and knowledge parks. there is an accompanying demand for massive low paid workforce to manage the city's waste and infrastructure. Here she actually connects connects um Bangalore and she relates Bangalore to Tokyo and New York and she says that Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore these cities are no different than Tokyo and uh New York because even these big global cities are the way they manage their waste in in their country.
Even here also we are doing the same same thing. So the second things he is pointing out the trope of illegal Bangladeshi. So what does it mean that pervasive political narrative conflicts all lowincome Bengali speaking Muslims with illegal Bangladeshes residents nin and therefore she writes Bangladeshes were not the likely targets in that in the speech. I suggest that rather India's Bengali Muslims are more targeted in the political current Indian political discourse because they shared the same ethnic identity that renders them to Bangladeshi in the Indian imagination and these included an instance where a man um and she is giving one particular example that um uh when this particular rhetoric about Indian uh Bengali Muslims it's going on.
So there are cases like there are some instances where a man was stripped and lynched by a mob for the uh alleged uh alleged rape of a local woman in Dimapur. What incited the lynching was not the rape which had occurred a month earlier but the rumor was that he was an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh. That incident showed how easily a Bengali Muslim could become Bangladeshi when accused of a crime and this is called as Bangladesh problem. So that's that's one of the important things we need to uh highlight here. And the second thing uh why they are also uh coming to Bangalore because again the if we talk about from the Bangladesh context that 70% of Bangladesh population they actually leave on less than $2 a day. So therefore when they are coming and migrating to India their wage is better even in her books he has pointed out that they daily wage 70 rupees more they're getting that's how they think that this is much more lucrative option for them and u the other issues she has talked about that Bangalore specific appeal that is very important and fascinating why they are not going to Delhi and Kolkata or other cities because Bang Um first of all Bangalore has a very pleasant weather and second thing is that south Indians and in Bangalore people are much more polite than North Indian uh people and also it is pointed out that that if they are in Kolkata then they can be easily ident they can be easily identified because of their dialect.
Kolkata uh people can easily identify that they are the outsiders right because their dialect Bangladeshi dialect is different. So but if they are going to Bangalore it is very difficult to identify them as they are the Bangladesh because they are not going to speak in Bangla. So that is one of the other reasons that why they are specifically moving to uh Bangalore.
So uh primarily these are the uh conditions why uh these people are going to Bangalore. If we specifically talk about and uh if we talk about that Indian Bang uh Bengali Muslims are are it's not that only Bangladeshi Muslims are migrating to Bangalore but Indian Bengali Muslims are also migrating to Bangalore to do the same job collecting garbage. So why Bengali Muslims are going? The first reason is extreme soioeconomic marginalization because 80% of rural Bengali Muslim uh population they lives below the poverty poverty line >> and this you're talking about quickly and this you're quickly talking about the Indian side West Bengal when you say yeah >> yeah yeah now I'm talking about uh quickly Indian side earlier I have spoken primarily from the Bangladesh side why Bangladeshies are coming here in Bangalore so now um uh the first uh is that the extreme socioeconomic marginalization that's that the race ruined under British rule as we just spoke about then 80% of the rural Bengali Muslim population lives below the poverty line that is one thing and what are the districts primarily uh the these people are moving to Bangalore Mushidabad and Malda those are the broad these are the border districts and here uh these are the uh districts again they are dominated by the Muslim population and they are of course as I just now pointed out 80% of the population they are below poverty line so uh though u and why they are because again uh TMC government came uh won election in 2011 and they have adopted the slogan mammati manush that means mother motherland and people and promising the land protection right and that is one of important cases. Of course, all of us and I think our audience they also know that uh Nandigram and Singor the way the government uh the current government at that time they were opposition they actually opposed the uh industry of the uh Tata group. uh they actually oppose the setup of the industry of the data group and therefore uh and but later on if you look at the TMC actually uh markets West Bengal as an ideal place for business and illustrated by the many sign boards in Kolkata and elsewhere claiming Bengal means business. So in practice neoliberal policies have been directed towards services rather than industry and reforms to make India digital and the gig economy are the two most visible aspects of neoliberalism.
But when it comes to therefore we have IT sector in Kolkata to some extent that service industry is there. But again if we look at even um just few minutes back we discussed that uh uh Muslims and Dalits both the communities they are not skilled workers. So therefore what is left for them? They can't join in this particular service industry. they are limiting themselves to the manual by very manual kind of job and this labor and they are joining in the labor market physical labor market.
The next thing uh why Bengali Indian Bengali Muslims are join going and migrating to other city. The second point demand for labor in the need economy. So what is need economy that in the global neoliberal structure uh and cities uh global neoliberal cities like Bangalore are characterized by high growth IT corridors and knowledge parks and that form of accumulating economy.
Ironically the um uh this in West Bengal and Bengali uh nationalism supposedly protects Bengali Muslims and Bengali uh Muslims are voiceless betrayed by partisan uh ignored for decades by communist for whom identity politics was a distraction from the class struggle.
Yes, that is very important thing.
Though we are telling that um uh uh communist party was there CPIM for a long time in Bengal they actually ruled. So but the Bengal Bengali Muslims never got a like big opportunities and they got a big opportunities to uplift themselves because uh for Marxist ideology it was more beyond religious identity and uh they never bothered about religious marginalization rather for their main focus was class struggle. So therefore the whole idea of marginalization was still going in the uh Marxist or the during the CPM era as well. So and here if we talk about the Indian Bengali Muslims are frequently um segregated into deeply segmented labor market and as I told just now that they are primarily in the manual job and the primarily the manual job and therefore they are unable to contribute to the accumulating economy being and therefore they are denied entry into the need economy as they are deemed secondass citizens even uh stripped of the privileges of formal citizenship in a manner similar to what actually uh has called exile citizenship because again during neoliberal um economy and neoliberal period what happened Bengali Muslim identity is at a stick and it is questionable more because of again infiltration and these kind of political discourse So I think because of that again Bengali Muslims are also migrating to and when you are tagged as they you are infiltrator and you are um probably you are Guspetia you you can be utilized uh much easily with a cheap labor. you you probably you you you have to be paid less than any other person, right?
Because you have already uh certain tags which are assigned to you uh that and you are always having the fear. So therefore it is easier for the uh owners and the employer to exploit you. So that is also another thing that's how they are getting absorbed in this particular uh u uh garbage picking and these manual jobs. Yeah, if you want to please add on to this, but just my arguments are >> No, I not more than the arguments. I suppose what you're doing is uh you know uh consolidating consolidating things from yeah >> uh uh the argument if you'll allow I will make you know and please >> yes the argument that I want to make is that all of this illustrates the failure of that project called the Islamic nation right because uh yes you can definitely and it should be spoken about India is a secular state I mean some people would like it to be a Hindu state but it's a secular state. So India is answerable for the uh way in which uh you said you gave a statistic which said 80% of the Muslim population is below the poverty line in India in in on the Indian side of uh Bengal right uh now definitely the Indian state is responsible for it but I think the greater failure is the failure of the Pakistani state and later on the Bangladeshi uh state and here is where I want to get into this question of uh you know social justice social justice as a project I don't think was undertaken with any degree of seriousness in um in Pakistan u and uh that is where I suppose this book becomes a great uh reference cast and partition in Bengal so what is happening in this book in the early chapters is that there is a great alliance that is happening between the scheduleulcast federation and the Muslim League. And I think I here's where I think we should also conclude this uh episode, you know, by by way of conclusion, I want to say this. So the the thing is that there's this great alliance happening between uh Dalits and Muslims and the Shadulcast Federation and the Muslim League. On what grounds? on the grounds that there is an intersecting reality that a majority of uh Muslims are uh julaha and chasha which is weavers and uh cultivators and a majority of Hindus are also cultivators and lowered working-class people right and you have this this this really interesting character at that time called Joendraat Mund right Joannat Mund is somebody who's calling for Dalith Muslim unity and that Dalith Muslim unity is something as you might have heard has come up many times in postindependence India saying that these are the two most persecuted communities in India why don't they come together and why don't they come together is a question that was asked even before uh India got independence by the shedcast federation of Bengal under the leadership of Joendraat Mundul and uh he's finding or he's looking for ways to make this alliance work. And to make this alliance uh not just some kind of thing that you do to gain limited political objectives, but he saw this as the vision for a new nation. He imagined Dalithan and Pakistan to be one or or rather for the Muslims and for the Dalits of Bengal to create a new Bengal outside of their religious identity. So to that extent it is a Dalith Dalith alliance. It is not as much as a Dalith Muslim alliance.
Right? He's saying that these Muslims are not just Muslims. They are not the same Muslims as those personate Muslims.
they they're not the same Muslims as the Ashrafa Muslims and we should collaborate and I have a few uh sections here in this book that I want to bring attention to. Um what what is the Bodhoko response and here is where I I really uh you know I'm amazed by um the the Mavavelian nature of Badrlo or Savern politics. So what do they uh realize? They realized that hey the eastern districts are Muslim dominated so obviously we have to be separated from those eastern districts in order to have some kind of a political entity for Hindus. So we need to have the west to ourselves. But when they're trying to carve out this western niche for the Hindus they discover that there are parts of the west also which have a lot of a certain kind of Hindus who are not the desirable type of Hindus. So then they come up with another plot to push not just the Muslims to the east but also to push the undesirable Hindus or rather the Dalits also to the east to the east. So East Bengal that as imagined by the Hindu Mahas Sabha and later uh endorsed by the Congress was that piece of land where which was dominated not just by Muslims but also by Dalits and by Dalits over here specifically Namashudra Motwa and Rajongi communities right which is what leads after this in 1946 sometime I think uh yeah December 1946 uh there's a meeting of the West Bengal provincial committee you know in which which is headed by uh Shama Prasad Mukharji. So you can imagine >> so Sham Prasad Mukharji comes up with this partition plan in which the Bhadlo Bengalies the Kaya Bhido Brahman communities of Bengal have a safe haven towards the west and everything towards the east is pushed towards East Bengal or Pakistan. And uh at that time a lot of people who are actually not in agreement with people like Joendraat Mundal. So Joanath Mundal is saying that Dalit should ally with Muslims. But there are a lot of Dalith leaders at that time who are saying that no we should not ally with Muslims but who are also saying that hey we need separate protections from the Hindus.
Right? Because these are people who are saying that fine we will come with the we want to go with the western side because we think that we are Hindu in addition to being Dalits. So we will not survive in the east which is a Pakist Pakistan which is a Muslim country. So we want to be in the western side but we need certain protections right we need uh political protections we need separate electorates. So this is the demand and in all of this what comes through quite clearly is that uh you know to use a Bengali term again the dalits are the real umble of Bengal means that part which is not very easily digestible they're not entirely Muslim they're not entirely Hindu and their future there's a huge question mark on their future and ultimately what happens because of this machavelian strategy of the bodhalok is that indeed the eastern districts which are Namosudra or Ajbongi majority also get pushed off into Pakistan and that is the great uh that is the one big reason why even today we are talking about minority persecution in Bangladesh right we are talking everyone frames it in this Hindu Muslim binary but the fact of the matter is those Hindus who are in Bangladesh are actually the Dalith Hindus who could not migrate to West Bengal Right. Uh this book also talks about how between 1946 and 1950 the migrations that happened of the Hindus from east to west were almost entirely upperccast Hindus. Right? And the Dalits over there did not migrate. They started migrating in fact after the riots started in 1950s.
Now there's a difference between the eastern border and the western border.
the Pakistan border and the Bangladesh border. The Pakistan Pakistan border saw a lot of violence in 4647 whereas the uh uh Bengal border did not see any violence in the 4647 those years. It it saw violence starting from the 1950 you had the first uh big riots uh which led to the exodus of these Bengali Muslims uh sorry Bengali dalits from East Bengal to West Bengal. That's how Bengal's migration actually hap happened in waves waves of migration of these Dalits who left uh Pakistan and came into India.
Now all of this we understand in terms of uh the persecution of these people by Pakistan by a country at that point which did not uh see them as Dalith but saw them only as Hindu right uh that was the nature of that persecution which led to this exodus.
Then comes this very interesting uh period of 1971 which is the liberation war which is when the contradiction really becomes apparent which is that yes you are Muslim I am Muslim but I'm a Bengali Muslim and you are a Patan or a Punjabi or a Persian or a North Indian Muslim and that's what leads to this second kind of uh uh partition where uh East Bengal gets separated from uh you know East Pakistan gets separated from West Pakistan, right? Um that is when you see the migration of a large number of Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh into India, right? Uh and why do they migrate? They migrate because of the persecution that they face under the Pakistani state. Now all of this is pointing towards what that there is churning happening. But there's churning happening only among one set of the population which is Dalits and these Chasha Jolaha Muslims.
Right? There are two forces pulling at opposite ends. The Hindu landed and the Muslim landed forces or the dominant forces are pulling at opposite ends.
Whereas the bodies which are getting literally put on the line are that of the indigenous Muslim and the Dalith population. So that for me is the real tragedy of Bengal and it really completes a circuit when you look at the final results of the sir which is all of this churning has happened and finally who is left out the same populations who who have experienced a certain statelessness for close to two three centuries now.
>> So that is the other reading I wanted to bring in. U but any any any uh thoughts on the basis of this uh nadra this dalith Muslim unity this this this core suffering that has happened you know and the same set of people >> yeah that's u that's uh yeah that's the fact we uh I don't know what to say here but uh and most of the cases if we look at forget about the uh citizenship not having uh citizenship or questionable citizenship. But I think uh again the people these people are marginalized not only from the perspective of citizenship rather it is beyond that what I find from every aspects of life it is one of the prominent factor now we are talking as we are talking about the whole idea of citizenship but if you look at the all the arenas of our life from socio from political from cultural from economic from all the aspects. These are the people who are mostly uh subjugated and they are the sufferer and they are taking uh whatever the lowest uh repercussions it they can have.
I think uh as we are sure particularly talking about the questionable citizenship but all parameters if you look at they are the people who are the sufferers >> right and sufferers uh who have suffered as a result of the oppression of two ruling communities and that is the most striking part of all of this for me uh I like to say that the story of South Asia is the story of cast it's not the story of religion >> right religion is the smoke Yeah, absolutely.
>> The the biggest takeaway for me in all of this is that religion is a smoke screen. That the fight is not between Hindu and Muslim. It is between upper cast and lower cast cutting across religions.
But this has been a very difficult exercise Nadira to kind of put all this together to try and make sense of this.
I would have been able to do it without you. uh but going forward my hope is that we'll be able to string a few more conversations in this series to talk about Bengal to talk about these unique challenges that the marginalized populations of Bengal uh experience and in that project I hope I have your collaboration. I do hope that these people that we spoke about you heard the names of Navin Musher uh Richard Eaton I do hope to have them on the show. I also hope that I can have some people uh who are working in the grassroots among these migrant populations to come here on the show to make this a kind of a holistic conversation. Uh but while if we have those conversations I want you to remember that this was possible because of the collaboration that Nadira Kun gave. Uh she's the one who started off saying okay at least let's look at these three four texts see if we can make sense of them and then build a conversation going forward. So Nadira thank you so much for this uh it's been lot of sweat blood and tears huh going through all of this.
>> Thank you so much Sudipto for giving me the chance to uh explore because I have never worked in this area as I told you initially when we started this dialogue.
Um but uh there was a lot of learning in the process and uh it is a new horizon for me to explore and thank you for relying on me believing in me and I don't know how you just came and approached me. I don't know from where you got the idea that Nadira can be probable person whom we can collaborate to. So it was I I am I'm from my heart I'm just saying you even I told you earlier that thanks a lot and uh thanks for approaching me. Thanks a lot.
>> Thank you Nadira. Thank you so much.
That's all we have time for. This has been a fairly lengthy episode. I hope you can see why it was lengthy. I hope you also are hungry for more and want me to get deeper into this conversation and get more guests to talk about the tears and sorrow of Bengal. That's all for now. Thank you very much for watching.
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