Pinaki Bhattacharya:  West Bengal’s attitude to Bengali Muslim

“When our books are in the hands of Bangladeshi readers, they never ask — What is the religion of the writer? They judge it by whether it’s readable, whether the story is charming, or whether it’s pleasant to read. But when our Hindu readers from West Bengal, reading books by Bangladeshi authors, come across words such as amma, fufa, namaaz, they have a strange reaction. And it’s due to this reaction that books by many Bangladeshi writers don’t reach the readers here. I want to state this very clearly: compared to Bangladeshi readers, the readers from West Bengal are a lot more fundamentalist.” — Samaresh Majumdar.

This is a very curious quotation by Samaresh Majumdar. It should be noted, however, that he uses the word “fundamentalist” to mean “communal.” The unease associated with reading a book by Muslim writers is communal rather than fundamentalist.

There is a political aspect to this realization by Samaresh Majumdar. It is clear from this statement of the cultural rejection of East Bengal (Bangladesh) from the mental landscape of West Bengal. This rejection is related to political power. This communal rejection is politically encouraged so as to obstruct the possibility of a national unification of West and East Bengals on the intellectual level.

Only when West Bengal will be able to appreciate the political gains by the Bengali Muslims, the conditions will be created for the two Bengals to come closer to each other. You may also ask, is the gain by Bangladesh only for the Bengali Muslims? Judging by numbers, we have to give them the credit.

It was this East Bengal which resisted the attack of the Aryans, fought against caste discrimination, founded the first nation for Bengalis. And their biggest achievement was to unify all the people of this land regardless of their religion and race in the fight for their national freedom. In the recent history of the Bengalis, it was the East Bengali leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was able to bind Hindu, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians into the Bengali identity.

With their Muslim religious identity the Bengali Muslims were able to mount an armed assault at the heart of the religious state of Pakistan, and so it is very unfortunate to attempt to paint the Bengali Muslims as fundamentalist and communal.

Original post in Bengali: