People of Bangladesh: So Close But So Different
By FFI Contributing Editor Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari
On Saturday, April 2, 2011, the ICC World Cup Cricket tournament came to an end at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The tournament began on February 19 at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium in Dhaka, Bangladesh and on that day, Bangladeshi team played with the Indian team. I was watching the game on television.
The Bangladeshi cricket team
Names of the players of the Bangladeshi Cricket team were (1) Shakib Al Hasan, (2) Tamim Iqbal, (3) Mushfiqur Rahim, (4) Mohammad Ashraful, (5) Imrul Kayes, (6) Shahriar Nafees, (7) Juaneed Siddiqui, (8) Roquibul Hasan, (9) Mahmudullah Riyad, (10) Naeem Islam, (11)Abdur Razzak, (12) Suhrawardi Shuvo, (13) Shafiul Islam, (14) Nazmul Hossain and (15) Rubel Hossain. All these players were young boys and Mohammad Ashraful was the team captain and Mushfiqur Rahim was the wicket keeper. Once upon a time, I also lived in Bangladesh (the then East Pakistan) and after the partition in 1947, my guardians considered it proper to migrate to West Bengal, India, and we shifted to India leaving our ancestral home in the district of Faridpur.
While watching the match, I was thinking all these things. I was thinking, “How close we are, but how different these people have become! Though they deny that we are same people or sons of the same soil, we speak the same language, we used to drink the waters of the same rivers, we used to breath the same air, but they do not consider me to be their own people. Though Bengali is their mother tongue, they are carrying Arabic names and I am confident that most of them do not know the meaning of their names. Most importantly, they never ask – Despite our mother tongue is Bengali or Bangla, then why our names are Arabic?”
They never feel that their Arabic names are telling them that, “You are no longer a free man and you have turned yourselves into the slaves of Arab Religious Imperialism. As soon as you have become the slaves of Arabia, you have lost your freedom – you have sacrificed your freedom of speech and freedom of expression. You like or not, you have to follow the irrational dictates of the Arabic religious book Koran and other Arabic texts.” There is no one to tell them that “through accepting Islam, you have washed away your real identity, your distinctiveness.”
I was really felt pity for these young boys who have mercilessly been uprooted from their ancestral civilization and culture, and replanted them in a foreign land, in the deserts of Arabia, which is hampering their natural growth. In fact, they have been forced to grow up as dwarfs, as Japanese bonsais. They do not read Ramayana or Mahabharata, the ancient epics that had shaped the lives of their ancestors for past thousands and thousands of years. On the contrary, they have accepted the Koran and the hadiths, that inspire criminal activities in man, as their religious texts.
Though these boys and I am the people of the same land, they hate me as a malaun. They have been taught that it is their duty to kill me, plunder my wealth and riches, setting my house on fire, occupy my tilling land and so on. They have been taught that there is no sin in raping a malaun woman and, on the contrary, it is a pious act in the eye of their Arabian God. They believe that their Arabian God has put merit in killing the unbeliever malauns and on the Day of Last Judgment, he will reward a slayer of malaun with the title of Ghazi and allot him a place in the best part of the paradise called Jannatul Ferdause. Every day, they take the oath for killing the malaun kafirs, five times through namaz. They receive practical for how to kill a malaun like me on the day of Eid-ul-Adha.
Almost every day, Bangladeshi media reports untold incidents of cruel religious persecution and oppression of the Hindus of Bangladesh by Bangladeshi Muslims, including raping of Hindu women. Even minor Hindu girls fall victims of abduction, gang rape, forced conversion to Islam and marriage to Muslim boys. There are many instances where the rapists poured acid on the private part of the victims. In many cases, the rapists are reported to have introduced wooden stick, hot iron or hot egg into the genital of the victims. All these barbarity they commit according to the instruction of the most savage and evil Arabian God as ordained in their holy book Koran. But they never feel that such teachings of the Koran are robbing them of their humanity. They do not care to comprehend how Koran, through such teachings, is polluting their mind, their soul and ultimately turning them into subhumans.
In the wake of creation of Pakistan in 1947, the Muslims of East Pakistan compelled the Hindus to leave the country by intimidation, bloodshed and torture, following exactly what their prophet had to expel the Jewish community of the city of Medina. It is needless to say that the Hindus were talented and creative people and their expulsion lowered the gross intellectual level of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and produced dearth of creativity. Bangladeshi author Salam Azad has highlighted this point in his book Why the Hindu Community Leaving the Country? (in Bengali). As a result, the private hospitals and nursing homes in Kolkata receive constant stream of Bangladeshi patients. They come to Kolkata to be treated by Hindu doctors as they cannot depend on the Muslim doctors in Bangladesh.
In a similar manner, the Muslim clients of Bangladesh prefer a Hindu advocate (a few who stayed back) for moving their cases, particularly for difficult and delicate cases because they cannot depend on Muslim lawyers. Had they not drive the Hindus out of the country, today’s Bangladesh would have been a more creative, more prosperous and more meritorious Bangladesh.
After partition in 1947, the Muslims of East Pakistan thought that, if they drive the Hindus out of the country, they will be well off by grabbing their land and properties. But the question remains – Why Bangladesh has become more poverty-stricken today? I visited Bangladesh in 1979, for attending a symposium on physics, jointly organized by the Department of Physics, University of Dhaka and the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC). After attending the symposium, I went to my native village Palong (now the name has been changed with the Islamic name of Shariatpur). There I met a Muslim villager, who knew me and my forefathers. He lamented, “You have left the country and along with you, Luxmi has also left the country and gone with you.” (Luxmi is the Hindu Goddess of wealth and prosperity).
In the said occasion of my visit, I get very close to a scientist Dr Nizamuddin (name changed) of the BAEC. He told me, “I feel pain when we are introduced as Bangladeshis, but not as Bengalis.” I replied, “Dear Dr Nizamuddin, you admit that you are a Bengali. Furthermore, your mother tongue is Bengali. Then why are you carrying an Arabic name? Why do you prefer to remain a slave of the Arab Religious Imperialism? If you mend your ways, then everyone will call you a Bengali.”
