People are upset over the anti-Hindu pogrom post August 5, 2024. But the book under review, The Joy Bangla Deception by Dr Kaushik Gangopadhyaya and Devavrata powerfully argues that this is nothing unexpected.
Towards the penultimate years of 1960’s troubles were fomenting in undivided Pakistan, a born problem state. Awami League under Mujib gained absolute majority to form national government; Bhutto would not cede power to Mujib. At his instance Mujib was imprisoned by the military rulers.
Angered over this development large-scale mob violence gripped East Pakistan. Yahiya Khan-led junta unleashed horrible terror on the civilians. On this side of Bengal we were ecstatic that ultimately Muslim Bengalis had awakened to Bengali nationalism. The extent and intent of Bengali Hindus’ enthusiasm in West Bengal reached a crescendo. Thus an illusion was initiated.
A peep into the history: The Muslim League formed in pre-partition Bengal was most virulently posited against Hindus and caused one of the bloodiest pogroms on 16th August, 1946 in Calcutta followed by Noakhali Genocide on 10th October, 1946.
During 1947-71 with the West Pakistanis not sharing power with Muslim Leaguers of East Pakistan the majority members of the Muslim League raised a new party named Awami Muslim League(Awami means people’s). Hindus still constituted a critical segment in East Pakistan’s electoral outcomes. This new party foresaw that Hindus may not favour them due to the word Muslim; they erased it and thus was born the Awami League— Muslim League in a new cloak. The main architect of the Awami League was Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy, the Butcher of Bengal!
Upclose with Kausik Gangopadhyay – The Joy Bangla Deception; Persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh
They posed themselves as a secular linguistic group and Hindus believed them. Left liberals and secular Hindus of West Bengal helped inflate this euphoria. The persons manning the Awami League were the same group of people that carried out the Great Calcutta Killings and the Noakhali Massacre and perpetrated numerous Hindu massacres. Later they never condemned these incidents. Ever since Bangladesh gained independence, the Awami League’s Hindu members had been killed, looted and raped by Muslim members of the Awami League in conjunction with non-Awami League Muslims.
In 1971, the pretense of language-based Bengali nationalism did not arise from love for the native culture and the desire for independence. It was directed with a view to hiding the hard-line communal Islamism that emerged in East Pakistan. Awami League chief Mujib was an active Muslim Leaguer and participated in the Great Calcutta Killings. He was never secularist. He always willfully pampered Islamism— for example purposeful exclusion of Hindus’ contribution to Bengali literature, raising Surahwardi to the status of a national hero and installation of his statue in a prominent place and making Nazrul the national poet of Bangladesh only because of religious identity.
The educated Muslims of Bangladesh considered the Bengali language as a vehicle of Hinduism and Islamized it. There was no love for the mother tongue. They propagated that in ancient times it were the Buddhists, in the Middle Ages the Muslim elites and rulers and during the British period the Muslims who contributed more to Bengali literature. This narrative is deeply ingrained in their psyche unexceptionably.
The lone person in Bangladesh who volunteered to make Bengali the state language of Pakistan was a Bengali Hindu Dhirendranath Dutta, an MP. The language movement in Bangladesh with hardly any emotional attachment towards Bengali language was prompted as they apprehended that they would be deprived of government jobs vis-a-vis West Pakistan. It was neither a students’ movement.
Of the six people shot dead one was a student of Dhaka University, the rest were ordinary citizens, accidentally thrown into the chaos. In East Pakistan Bengali educated Muslims wanted to write Bengali in Arabic script.
On March 29, 1971, Dhirendranath Dutta and his younger son Dilip Dutta were taken by the Pak army to the cantonment, their limbs broken, eyes gouged out and killed on April14, 1971. Bodies were not returned. Bangladesh has completely forgotten Dhirendranath Dutt.
Not a Bengali by blood Mujib is a descendant of an Iraqi Dervish. He applauded Surahwardi, as saintly, liberal, and moralist! Mujib stabbed a Mahasabha worker at the house of Suren Banerjee, a Hindu Mahasabha leader in Gopalganj and served seven days in jail, later got released after paying 1500 taka.
The West Bengal communists extolled hard-liner Shariapanthi fundamentalist Bhasani who settled Muslims from East Bengal to Assam that bred subsequently infiltration issue in Assam. Bhasani’s peasant movement in Assam and Bengal aimed at amelioration of Muslim farmers only.
August 1949-January 1950 saw large-scale Hindu genocide from Jessore to Chittagong. Brutal killings, rapes and widespread anti-Hindu violence erupted. Two million Hindus fled to India in April 1950. Suhrawardy’s close ally Bhasani maintained a studied silence over this massacre. He wanted Hukum-e-Rabbani, the rule of Allah, the Khilafat and the rule of Sharia. Hindu communists were highly jubilant over this. Bhasani deceived Hindus and Buddhists by articulating that the rules of the Creator will prevail here, not the rules of man. He systematically sowed the seeds of Sharia in the administration. Therefore Hindus and Buddhists have to follow the rules of Islam.
Bhasani claimed that the Creator, the Lord of Muslims, provides all needs of people of all religions. It does not mean that everyone would be first-class citizen, Hindus and Buddhists would be second-class citizens, as per the will of Allah. After independence, Hindus became political non- entity there. The possibility of Bangladesh moving from Islam to secularism had become slim.
He demanded a greater Bangladesh including Assam, West Bengal and Tripura without any place for Hindus-Buddhists there, national anthem Amar Sonar Bangla be replaced by Prince Mahmud’s poem.
In 1971 Pakistani soldiers along with ordinary Muslim neighbors killed Hindus indiscriminately, burnt their every belonging. Bengali Muslims did more harm to Bengali Hindus than the West Pakistan soldiers.
Bangladesh is more Islamist than Pakistan. Mujib government issued the Islamic Foundation Act on March 28, 1975 under which Islamic Foundation, Baitul Mukarram Society and the Islamic Academy were created.
On March 15, 1984, the Bangladesh government declared Friday as a weekly holiday. Pakistan declared a weekly holiday on Friday in 1977 but reverted to a weekly holiday on Sunday in 1997. Bangladesh subsequently gave two days off on Friday and Saturday since May 31, 1997. They suffer financial losses because they do not match the international market, as religious fundamentalism is more important.
Bangladesh Islami Bank, first Islamic bank in the Indian subcontinent was established under the Companies Act, 1913 whereas the first Islamic bank in Pakistan was established in 1997. In 1979 the Islamic University of Bangladesh was established in Kushtia and in Pakistan in 1980.
On June 7, 1988, Ershad declared Islam as the state religion of Bangladesh. The Awami League didn’t change this. In 2008, Hasina established the Islamic Arabic University. On March 22, 2014 she declared following the laws of Medina and the last fatwas of Nabi. She was following her father. She built a model mosque complex in each district at a cost of 8,500 crore taka.
& finally they brought home the destiny – Hindu homeland of West Bengal
Bangladesh under Mujib to Ziaur robbed 20 lakh acres of land from 11 lakh Hindus. 60% of Hindus became landless. It was falsely propagated that Hindus owned more land and so it was rightfully taken away from them and given to Muslims! The rest Hindus had no land! The grabbed land was not distributed to them. These are the findings of research by Dr. Abul Barkat of Dhaka University.
The Joy Bangla Deception
The above discourse has been drawn from the book The ‘Joy Bangla’ Deception. It is one of the hosts of books of this genre but outstanding in the sense that here for the first time it has been successfully attempted to dispel the skin of misconception from the eyes of gullible Hindus with the backings of left liberals about the Bengali nationalism across religions. The Muslims of Bangladesh haven’t only snatched Hindus of their motherland which they enjoyed over millennia they have robbed the Hindus, the most advanced section of Bengali speaking people, of their Bengaliness by the brute majority and with the connivance of the Britishers.
The authors have painstakingly researched out of volumes of original documentary evidences that never ever there was an iota of Bengali nationalism either with Mujib-led Awami or with the more radical groups.
The book is written in a very comprehensive, deductive process and makes it a must read for all.
Sudip Narayan Ghosh
16.06.2025
