Abu Zolfiqar
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ustad ji ''jute'' maat bolo 
Creation of Bangladesh: Shining Moment or Strategic Blunder
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SaifullahK
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Dr Manzur Ejaz: Pakistan and India: apples and oranges?
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
Most Pakistanis and Indians equate Pakistan with the Muslim world and start idealising or criticising it, as if religion is the single most important denominator. Pakistanis project themselves to be part of the so-called ummah in self-denial of their own real history to idealise their past and Indians find it convenient to put Pakistan in a religious category and demonise it. Pakistanis believe they are heirs of Muslim rule and their opponents believe in the same notion as well. In short, Pakistani and Indian nationalists agree on this point.
The fact of the matter is that most of the Muslims living in Pakistan are converts of lower layers of different castes. Till the time of the partition their status as a lowly mass of peasants, artisans and labourers continued. Muslim feudal lords mostly owned land and urban centres were completely run by the Hindu elite. Muslims of the present Pakistan had hardly any representation in the business community, bureaucracy, or education. During the entire Muslim rule, their status remained similar to the untouchables who converted to Christianity during the British rule. Therefore, other than a small percentage of Urdu speakers who may have come from the old ruling Muslim elite, it is misleading for the Pakistanis to idealise themselves as heirs to Muslim ruling elites who had descended from Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East.
Looking at the National Assembly members, representatives of the people of Pakistan, there will be hardly anyone from traditional rulers of Muslim India like the Mughals, Ghauris, Ghaznavis, Khiljis or Lodhis. Most of the National Assembly members have been and are Jats, Rajputs, Gujjar, Arain and Syed. The caste make-up of the ruling classes in Pakistan, the majority of whom come from Punjab and Sindh, is similar to contemporary northern Indian states if one equates the status of Syeds with Brahmins.
Conversions of Jat, Rajput or Gujjar families have made no difference to their day-to-day behaviour and the caste system is alive and well in both India and Pakistan. If one looks at the last names in Punjab one can find their exact counterparts in India, specifically among the dominating Jats. If Alberuni would come to his India today it was only Punjab because he accompanied Mahmood Ghaznavi, who had conquered only this region his differentiation of Indians from northern invaders would not be different. In short, despite the misleading idealisation by Pakistanis and demonisation by Indians, the majority of Pakistanis have their roots in the Indus Valley civilisation. Their eating and drinking habits, marriage and death ceremonies are comparable to the people of northern India. Therefore, a large part of Pakistan and northern India can be rightfully compared even if the Indian counterparts fare better than Pakistan.
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
Most Pakistanis and Indians equate Pakistan with the Muslim world and start idealising or criticising it, as if religion is the single most important denominator. Pakistanis project themselves to be part of the so-called ummah in self-denial of their own real history to idealise their past and Indians find it convenient to put Pakistan in a religious category and demonise it. Pakistanis believe they are heirs of Muslim rule and their opponents believe in the same notion as well. In short, Pakistani and Indian nationalists agree on this point.
The fact of the matter is that most of the Muslims living in Pakistan are converts of lower layers of different castes. Till the time of the partition their status as a lowly mass of peasants, artisans and labourers continued. Muslim feudal lords mostly owned land and urban centres were completely run by the Hindu elite. Muslims of the present Pakistan had hardly any representation in the business community, bureaucracy, or education. During the entire Muslim rule, their status remained similar to the untouchables who converted to Christianity during the British rule. Therefore, other than a small percentage of Urdu speakers who may have come from the old ruling Muslim elite, it is misleading for the Pakistanis to idealise themselves as heirs to Muslim ruling elites who had descended from Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East.
Looking at the National Assembly members, representatives of the people of Pakistan, there will be hardly anyone from traditional rulers of Muslim India like the Mughals, Ghauris, Ghaznavis, Khiljis or Lodhis. Most of the National Assembly members have been and are Jats, Rajputs, Gujjar, Arain and Syed. The caste make-up of the ruling classes in Pakistan, the majority of whom come from Punjab and Sindh, is similar to contemporary northern Indian states if one equates the status of Syeds with Brahmins.
Conversions of Jat, Rajput or Gujjar families have made no difference to their day-to-day behaviour and the caste system is alive and well in both India and Pakistan. If one looks at the last names in Punjab one can find their exact counterparts in India, specifically among the dominating Jats. If Alberuni would come to his India today it was only Punjab because he accompanied Mahmood Ghaznavi, who had conquered only this region his differentiation of Indians from northern invaders would not be different. In short, despite the misleading idealisation by Pakistanis and demonisation by Indians, the majority of Pakistanis have their roots in the Indus Valley civilisation. Their eating and drinking habits, marriage and death ceremonies are comparable to the people of northern India. Therefore, a large part of Pakistan and northern India can be rightfully compared even if the Indian counterparts fare better than Pakistan.
TopCat
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Interesting reading. That means the conversion of Pakistani muslim are mainly from Hinduism to Islam. Were there anything in between? What was the social structure of pre islamic Pakistan? Was it more close to Iranian?
Interesting reading. That means the conversion of Pakistani muslim are mainly from Hinduism to Islam. Were there anything in between? What was the social structure of pre islamic Pakistan? Was it more close to Iranian?
Joe Shearer
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Backwards:
- No, it was not close to Iranian, except in Afghanistan proper, much of which was part of Iran for fairly long stretches of history;
- As the article painstakingly points out, the social structure of pre-Islamic Pakistan was the social structure of post-Islamic Pakistan. That was the point of the entire article.
- I don't know what you mean by 'in between', but in Sindh, a substantial Buddhist population was converted.
Abu Zolfiqar
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Alhamdolillah
I must correct a mistake. I think, almost all of the Budhists had converted themselves in Bengal that includes west Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand. This is why it is almost impossible to find a single Budhist family among Bangalis. About Barua Budhists in Chittagong, they are racially different from other Bangalis. They are a mix between Bangali Hindu and Burmese Budhists when CTG was part of Arakan/Burma.
My opinion is even though there were conversions, there were also mass immigration to our land of plenty from the dry and parched land of north India and Bihar. This is the reason why there are fewer muslims in those areas and there are more muslims in the east. However, the main reason for their evacuating those places was time to time invasions of other groups of fortune-seeking hungry Muslims from the west.
The British were not aware until the 1st Census in 1870 that there were so many muslims in Bengal. So, they had started many thesis and hypothesis and imagination to this effect without going through the detail of the political history and then understanding the migration process from the north throughout the muslim era of about six Centuries.
Other than conversion and immigration, there are some other factors, too, that someday the muslim population of Bengal proportionately became larger than the Hindu population. Among these were widow marriage and polygamy. Moreover, muslims historically have a tendency to bear more children than the future conscious Hindus.
How more children results in more population can be seen from the population growths of Pakistan and BD. In 1947, the then east Pakistan had 35 million people whereas west had 25 million. Now, we have more than 140 million, but they have more than 160 million.
Similar thing happened also in Bengal between Muslims and Hindus. I think, a higher rate of growth was a strong reason for muslim population to someday overwhelm the Hindu population in Bengal. It means a lesser number of conversion than we generally assume.
I think, you have misunderstood my point. I have nowhere claimed that majority of us are the descendents of foreign Muslims. I just wanted to say the immigration of muslims from foreign countries as well as from north India is a major reason that there are more muslims in Bengal than they are in central India.
I have studied the subject almost thoroughly, but most of the people who respond to my posts here in this thread did not study that minutely and immediately come to a superficial self-made conclusion.
I have also noticed in other threads that the Indians want to stick to this idea that there are only converted (forced?) muslims in India, and there are no immigrant muslims. It is very silly. Indians do not try to seek truth and try to be egoist and self-centered. They want all of us to center around their thinking.
Can the Indians give a reasonable answer to a simple question where are those foreign muslim people who entered India as soldiers, as traders, as fortune seekers and as settlers? Have you already thrown them to the Indian Ocean, or are they are still living in our three countries?
Joe Shearer
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@iajdani
Unfortunately, the language and terms that you use, and the language and terms used by others participating in this thread and who have been pleading a special case, differs in certain vital respects. It seemed to me that your last series of posts, with detailed extracts from popular sources, indicated a readiness to look at a particular theory regarding the origins and composition of the population, and for that reason, I had explained that it seemed better to abstain from this discussion further.
This is not possible. There has been so much additional muddying of the waters that allowing these different ragged philosophies to stand is an implicit acceptance of their premises and their conclusions alike.
It has become an unpleasant yet necessary task to set some of these misconceptions and misunderstandings right. In doing so, it is clearly more meaningful and relevant to confine oneself to the specific point of view expressed by one of the discussants, eastwatch, rather than trying to parse every single point of view and recast them in a coherent, logical fashion where everybody's views find a place.
The key difference to the two sets of arguments seems to be that eastwatch believes that the Muslim and Hindu components of the population are essentially 'different'. My understanding of the facts as they are on the ground is that this is fallacious, based on the scientific evidence, and the historical evidence that he, and you, have reproduced are not sufficient to contradict the scientific evidence on the ground. Both the historical evidence and the scientific evidence have to be considered, and have to be taken on board. In fact, in saying this, I might be guilty of exaggerating the support given by the historical evidence to the case made. Each of your three enclosures admits of interpretation in either direction; about eastwatch's references, we shall see as we go into specific detail below.
Before going further, it is necessary to point out that the definition of population and the definition of different are never frozen; eastwatch has been in full retreat from the scenes of his earlier battle-field, and has moved in rapid, forced marches from the population of East Bengal, "mockingly called Mochholman", to the population of the whole of Bengal, then to the population of Sube Bangal, and from these current extracts, apparently the whole of Hindustan is now the canvas for his theory of Indian eugenics.
An aside before going further: every east Bengali reading these exchanges, perhaps some west Bengali foreigners also, will recognise the dialectal distortions which have been presented here as mockery. This pronunciation, or mis-pronunciation, is common; it is perception that makes it mockery, although in numerous other cases, a similar distortion of the sibilant calls for no particular notice.
It might appear to a sensitive east Bengali that the mockery lies in taking up this defect in pronunciation, variation actually, and making it an issue.
How silly it is can be gauged from the fact that this is a usage of the minority Hindu population of east Bengal, which has been reduced to a bare fraction of its size during the 63 years since the British left, and not of the larger numbers in west Bengal. Would a rapidly-diminishing minority population, under relentless pressure from the majority, persist in this supposed, suicidal 'mocking'? What utterly oversized inferiority complex can come to this conclusion?
Different is also not defined; from what can be made out, apparently conversion from one religion to another constitutes irreversible genetic change which permeates beyond the capacity of scientific methods to detect or to report.
This kind of inflammatory language invites more in response.
I am not writing here as an "Indian". Elsewhere, I have had reason, more than once, to refer the totally partisan advocates of one utterly biased point of view or the other to refer to the seminal book of Julien Benda, La Trahison des Clercs.
In this book, Benda points out that an intellectual's first duty is to the world of the intellect, to reason, to logic, and a displacement of this loyalty to a flag, to a state, to a national anthem, is treason. This is the treason of the world of intellect, and it is not the treason of the world of partisan factions. What we see here is this treason to the intellect, a treason committed in the name not even of a state, but of a religion. I refer eastwatch to this book, before he extends his intellectual researches further; a firm ideological foundation is required for these exercises, without which we are reduced to trading propaganda cheap shots.
In my next post, this evening, I shall address the first post cited here.
Unfortunately, the language and terms that you use, and the language and terms used by others participating in this thread and who have been pleading a special case, differs in certain vital respects. It seemed to me that your last series of posts, with detailed extracts from popular sources, indicated a readiness to look at a particular theory regarding the origins and composition of the population, and for that reason, I had explained that it seemed better to abstain from this discussion further.
This is not possible. There has been so much additional muddying of the waters that allowing these different ragged philosophies to stand is an implicit acceptance of their premises and their conclusions alike.
It has become an unpleasant yet necessary task to set some of these misconceptions and misunderstandings right. In doing so, it is clearly more meaningful and relevant to confine oneself to the specific point of view expressed by one of the discussants, eastwatch, rather than trying to parse every single point of view and recast them in a coherent, logical fashion where everybody's views find a place.
The key difference to the two sets of arguments seems to be that eastwatch believes that the Muslim and Hindu components of the population are essentially 'different'. My understanding of the facts as they are on the ground is that this is fallacious, based on the scientific evidence, and the historical evidence that he, and you, have reproduced are not sufficient to contradict the scientific evidence on the ground. Both the historical evidence and the scientific evidence have to be considered, and have to be taken on board. In fact, in saying this, I might be guilty of exaggerating the support given by the historical evidence to the case made. Each of your three enclosures admits of interpretation in either direction; about eastwatch's references, we shall see as we go into specific detail below.
Before going further, it is necessary to point out that the definition of population and the definition of different are never frozen; eastwatch has been in full retreat from the scenes of his earlier battle-field, and has moved in rapid, forced marches from the population of East Bengal, "mockingly called Mochholman", to the population of the whole of Bengal, then to the population of Sube Bangal, and from these current extracts, apparently the whole of Hindustan is now the canvas for his theory of Indian eugenics.
An aside before going further: every east Bengali reading these exchanges, perhaps some west Bengali foreigners also, will recognise the dialectal distortions which have been presented here as mockery. This pronunciation, or mis-pronunciation, is common; it is perception that makes it mockery, although in numerous other cases, a similar distortion of the sibilant calls for no particular notice.
It might appear to a sensitive east Bengali that the mockery lies in taking up this defect in pronunciation, variation actually, and making it an issue.
How silly it is can be gauged from the fact that this is a usage of the minority Hindu population of east Bengal, which has been reduced to a bare fraction of its size during the 63 years since the British left, and not of the larger numbers in west Bengal. Would a rapidly-diminishing minority population, under relentless pressure from the majority, persist in this supposed, suicidal 'mocking'? What utterly oversized inferiority complex can come to this conclusion?
Different is also not defined; from what can be made out, apparently conversion from one religion to another constitutes irreversible genetic change which permeates beyond the capacity of scientific methods to detect or to report.
This kind of inflammatory language invites more in response.
I am not writing here as an "Indian". Elsewhere, I have had reason, more than once, to refer the totally partisan advocates of one utterly biased point of view or the other to refer to the seminal book of Julien Benda, La Trahison des Clercs.
In this book, Benda points out that an intellectual's first duty is to the world of the intellect, to reason, to logic, and a displacement of this loyalty to a flag, to a state, to a national anthem, is treason. This is the treason of the world of intellect, and it is not the treason of the world of partisan factions. What we see here is this treason to the intellect, a treason committed in the name not even of a state, but of a religion. I refer eastwatch to this book, before he extends his intellectual researches further; a firm ideological foundation is required for these exercises, without which we are reduced to trading propaganda cheap shots.
In my next post, this evening, I shall address the first post cited here.
integra
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To eastwatch
Whas your opinion on this
Whas your opinion on this
As far as I know I've read in a book by muntasir mamun and also Dr. Saeed sir once told me that the first known record of muslim immigration and conversion was in Chittagong?
I have also read this account. It is true, I think. Even Hazrat Shahjalal entered through CTG with all his companions and went to Sylhet. Many of the Sylhetis became muslims in his hands. Note that the entire CTG region was once a part of Arakan, and CTG was the northern Arakan.
But, CTG changed hand many times. There were many wars between Bengal, Arakan and Tripura to control CTG. Finally, it became a part of Sube Bangal during the time of Mughal Subedar Shayesta Khan (sometime in late 17th century?) when Aurangzeb was the Emperor of Hindustan.
So, CTG played a strong role to spread Islam and was a gateway for going to Lukhnouti, the Bengal Capital, by the poor Arab settlers as well as rich traders and other fortune seekers. Many of them who became familiar with the region settled in CTG itself. Most of the CTG muslims are sharp nosed and have tall and strong physical feature.
It is not unusual that their language here is quite sharp. It may be due to the influence of Arabic. Same is true with the present day Arakanis (Rohingyas). However, only the pre-Turkic conversion cannot be counted for all the conversions. Also, not the conversions only are responsible for an increase of Muslim population.
While the ruling Turkic Muslims were after enlarging their domain and wealth, and were busy with killing each other, the foreign Muslim Sufis were active to preach Islam. However, the Muslim govt certainly assisted these Sufis by granting them taxfree lands to support their activities.
By the way, no offence intended, but do you know that the first four Turkic Maliks (Kings) were killed? They were Malik Bakhtier Khilji, Malik Shihabuddin, Malik Ali Mardan Khilji, and ------- I do not remember the last name. Muslim history is just like this, killing and annihilating each other. But, Hindus keep on crying that the Muslims had killed their kins. It is just incorrect, at least not to the extent they claim.
Joe Shearer
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@iajdani
@eastwatch
It helps to define what one is discussing with others. Unfortunately, in this discussion, after seeking an answer to whether the creation of Bangladesh was a Shining Moment or a Strategic Blunder, we have got entirely sidetracked into a racist and genetic argument of most dubious validity and no utility whatsoever, where one side is reduced to arguing on the basis of the sharp noses that he has detected in a section of the population.
This is bizarre, nothing short of an effort to convert religious differences into racist differences.
As far as I can make out, the argument is as follows:
1. There were 'conversions' among the existing inhabitants of Bengal;
2. These conversions, voluntary or otherwise, do not account for the numbers of Muslims in the population today;
3. The large numbers of Muslims in the population today must be accounted for by very large numbers of immigrants into South Asia/ India/ Hindustan/ Sube Bangla/ West and East Bengal/ Bangladesh.
It is not clear what is the purpose of this line of argument. Let us take things at face value, not assume any underlying argument, and merely examine these clauses as they are.
First, let us examine the clauses presented to us.
In the whole of India, the whole of South Asia, outside the Himalayan settlements of Baltistan, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh, there was no Buddhist family to be found, other than the Ambedkarite neo-converts. It is true not only of Bengal that includes west Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, political Bengal at a particular point of time in history, that is, but all over India.
No exceptions.
This has no effect on any discussion of the present genetic composition of Bangladesh whatsoever. Whether this population was Buddhist or not, whether they were universally converted or not, the fact remains that the present population is clearly genetically uniform. Whether they were by religion originally Surya-worshipping Hindus, Shiva-worshipping Hindus, Shakta Hindus, Tantrik Buddhists, animists or tribals worshipping other spiritual entities has nothing to do with their genetics.
The point being? It was sought to extend Bangladesh to Sube Bangla in order to demonstrate a mass influx of Pathans and Turkics, and to thereby argue that the genetic composition of these areas 'must' include a major portion of Pathan and Turkish 'blood'; now it is sought to exclude Chittagong for the opposite reason, apparently in a balancing attempt, to define the area under discussion in such a manner as to maximise the hypothetical and wholly imaginary of Turkish and Pathan immigration.
In politics of a plainer sort, this is known as gerrymandering. It is instructive to look up the term.
Baffling.
What dry and parched land of north India and Bihar is this? These were the granaries of India, not Bangladesh, not ever. These were perpetually irrigated by the Ganges and the Yamuna and their tributaries.
The simple reason why there are fewer Muslims in these parts than in Bangladesh is this: the majority of the population of Bengal, west and east, was Buddhist and in opposition to the neo-Hindu wave of the post-Sankara Hindu reforms of 800 AD. They were under increasing pressure from the ruling classes, which was caste Hindu and inclined to oppress the peasantry for both class and religious reasons.
Buddhism itself at the time of which we are speaking had failed in its message; it gave its supporters no code, no rule of life, no way to cope with daily pressures, as it used to in its vigorous and reformist early days, nearly 1,400 years before, and had lost its attraction to the poor people who still followed it by default.
Nor did revivalist Hinduism with its baggage of casteism have any relief in store. Most of the population east of Gaya was considered beyond the scope of caste; according to the orthodox, Bengal consisted of Brahmins, sat sudras and untouchables. Behind the so-called upper caste domination of society by so-called upper caste Hindus is the skeleton of the caste position of these "upper castes" in the eyes of the rest of India.
It is easy to understand why any human being with feeling gladly adopted the relentlessly egalitarian Islam when the first Arab traders and preachers arrived soon after its spread in its own land.
There has been a lot of outright bullshit printed in various extracts and in various opinion pieces. Let it be recorded straightaway that trade links between the cities at the mouths of the Ganges and the Arab lands date back to the turn of the millennium, the reign of Augustus Caesar, and this connection has been spelt out in an earlier post. So there was no miraculous deus ex machina appearance of Arabic preachers of Islam; the connection was several centuries old.
What has this got to do with the genetic make-up of Bengal? Or the genetic make-up of Muslims of Bengal?
And even a cursory examination of this statement will leave any professor of logic and philosophy baffled.
Observe:
......there were also mass immigration to our land of plenty from the dry and parched land of north India and Bihar. This is the reason why there are fewer muslims in those areas and there are more muslims in the east.
However, the main reason for their evacuating those places was time to time invasions of other groups of fortune-seeking hungry Muslims from the west.
It is all clear now: mass migration to Bengal from north India and Bihar (no longer part of Sube Bangla) is proven by there being fewer Muslims in those areas, and more Muslims in the east.
The inference is that these mass migrants were also Muslims, and their leaving their original homelands depleted those homelands of Muslims and led to larger than normal numbers in the east.
Now the killer: this evacuation of their homelands was not because the well-washed plains of the Ganges and its tributaries was 'dry' and 'parched'; no, that was in that paragraph, now we are in this paragraph, so please let us not get confused.
In this paragraph, fortune-seeking hungry Muslims from the west emigrated here, pushed out the original Muslims of these dry and parched lands, and depleted them of Muslims.
We are never to know what happened to these fortune-seeking hungry Muslims, but that's that paragraph now; please let's try to keep up and not slow the whole class down.
This is giving me a headache. Are we now talking about the Muslims in Bangladesh? in Bengal? in Sube Bangla, including Bihar and Jharkhand (oh, a couple of posts ago, we included Orissa, please don't forget)? in Hindustan? in South Asia? in South and Central Asia?
Or can it be explained by the twists and turns taken to try to justify an untenable argument, in the teeth of historical evidence, in the teeth of genetic evidence, to bring it to some bizarre racist conclusion that even Gobineau would shrink from proposing?
And what would be the earthly purpose of this fantastic leap of the imagination? We find that our conspiratorial, divisive, racist British, pro-Muslim until 1857, pro-Muslim after 1905, are for the short period between 1857 and 1905, just enough to squeeze in the Census, hostile to Muslims, for some unknown reason, and immediately unleash their vast conspiratorial machinery to create fresh theories and hypotheses and imaginary effects - to what purpose? to refuting eastwatch's proposition of 2010.
What exactly does this prove?
I have now spent around 45 years vigorously combating the Sangh parivar and its pernicious nonsense about Muslim conspiracies to overthrow Hinduism in its homeland, and convert India to a Muslim-majority country, starting with west Bengal, which is to be swamped with illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
This vision, presented here, must exceed their wildest nightmares. I am beginning to think that eastwatch may well be a Sangh parivar member, introducing the Sangh's poisonous racist theories in the guise of a Muslim Bangladeshi.
And this is just his first, least harmful post.
@eastwatch
It helps to define what one is discussing with others. Unfortunately, in this discussion, after seeking an answer to whether the creation of Bangladesh was a Shining Moment or a Strategic Blunder, we have got entirely sidetracked into a racist and genetic argument of most dubious validity and no utility whatsoever, where one side is reduced to arguing on the basis of the sharp noses that he has detected in a section of the population.
This is bizarre, nothing short of an effort to convert religious differences into racist differences.
As far as I can make out, the argument is as follows:
1. There were 'conversions' among the existing inhabitants of Bengal;
2. These conversions, voluntary or otherwise, do not account for the numbers of Muslims in the population today;
3. The large numbers of Muslims in the population today must be accounted for by very large numbers of immigrants into South Asia/ India/ Hindustan/ Sube Bangla/ West and East Bengal/ Bangladesh.
It is not clear what is the purpose of this line of argument. Let us take things at face value, not assume any underlying argument, and merely examine these clauses as they are.
First, let us examine the clauses presented to us.
In the whole of India, the whole of South Asia, outside the Himalayan settlements of Baltistan, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh, there was no Buddhist family to be found, other than the Ambedkarite neo-converts. It is true not only of Bengal that includes west Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, political Bengal at a particular point of time in history, that is, but all over India.
No exceptions.
This has no effect on any discussion of the present genetic composition of Bangladesh whatsoever. Whether this population was Buddhist or not, whether they were universally converted or not, the fact remains that the present population is clearly genetically uniform. Whether they were by religion originally Surya-worshipping Hindus, Shiva-worshipping Hindus, Shakta Hindus, Tantrik Buddhists, animists or tribals worshipping other spiritual entities has nothing to do with their genetics.
The point being? It was sought to extend Bangladesh to Sube Bangla in order to demonstrate a mass influx of Pathans and Turkics, and to thereby argue that the genetic composition of these areas 'must' include a major portion of Pathan and Turkish 'blood'; now it is sought to exclude Chittagong for the opposite reason, apparently in a balancing attempt, to define the area under discussion in such a manner as to maximise the hypothetical and wholly imaginary of Turkish and Pathan immigration.
In politics of a plainer sort, this is known as gerrymandering. It is instructive to look up the term.
Baffling.
What dry and parched land of north India and Bihar is this? These were the granaries of India, not Bangladesh, not ever. These were perpetually irrigated by the Ganges and the Yamuna and their tributaries.
The simple reason why there are fewer Muslims in these parts than in Bangladesh is this: the majority of the population of Bengal, west and east, was Buddhist and in opposition to the neo-Hindu wave of the post-Sankara Hindu reforms of 800 AD. They were under increasing pressure from the ruling classes, which was caste Hindu and inclined to oppress the peasantry for both class and religious reasons.
Buddhism itself at the time of which we are speaking had failed in its message; it gave its supporters no code, no rule of life, no way to cope with daily pressures, as it used to in its vigorous and reformist early days, nearly 1,400 years before, and had lost its attraction to the poor people who still followed it by default.
Nor did revivalist Hinduism with its baggage of casteism have any relief in store. Most of the population east of Gaya was considered beyond the scope of caste; according to the orthodox, Bengal consisted of Brahmins, sat sudras and untouchables. Behind the so-called upper caste domination of society by so-called upper caste Hindus is the skeleton of the caste position of these "upper castes" in the eyes of the rest of India.
It is easy to understand why any human being with feeling gladly adopted the relentlessly egalitarian Islam when the first Arab traders and preachers arrived soon after its spread in its own land.
There has been a lot of outright bullshit printed in various extracts and in various opinion pieces. Let it be recorded straightaway that trade links between the cities at the mouths of the Ganges and the Arab lands date back to the turn of the millennium, the reign of Augustus Caesar, and this connection has been spelt out in an earlier post. So there was no miraculous deus ex machina appearance of Arabic preachers of Islam; the connection was several centuries old.
What has this got to do with the genetic make-up of Bengal? Or the genetic make-up of Muslims of Bengal?
And even a cursory examination of this statement will leave any professor of logic and philosophy baffled.
Observe:
......there were also mass immigration to our land of plenty from the dry and parched land of north India and Bihar. This is the reason why there are fewer muslims in those areas and there are more muslims in the east.
However, the main reason for their evacuating those places was time to time invasions of other groups of fortune-seeking hungry Muslims from the west.
It is all clear now: mass migration to Bengal from north India and Bihar (no longer part of Sube Bangla) is proven by there being fewer Muslims in those areas, and more Muslims in the east.
The inference is that these mass migrants were also Muslims, and their leaving their original homelands depleted those homelands of Muslims and led to larger than normal numbers in the east.
Now the killer: this evacuation of their homelands was not because the well-washed plains of the Ganges and its tributaries was 'dry' and 'parched'; no, that was in that paragraph, now we are in this paragraph, so please let us not get confused.
In this paragraph, fortune-seeking hungry Muslims from the west emigrated here, pushed out the original Muslims of these dry and parched lands, and depleted them of Muslims.
We are never to know what happened to these fortune-seeking hungry Muslims, but that's that paragraph now; please let's try to keep up and not slow the whole class down.
This is giving me a headache. Are we now talking about the Muslims in Bangladesh? in Bengal? in Sube Bangla, including Bihar and Jharkhand (oh, a couple of posts ago, we included Orissa, please don't forget)? in Hindustan? in South Asia? in South and Central Asia?
Or can it be explained by the twists and turns taken to try to justify an untenable argument, in the teeth of historical evidence, in the teeth of genetic evidence, to bring it to some bizarre racist conclusion that even Gobineau would shrink from proposing?
And what would be the earthly purpose of this fantastic leap of the imagination? We find that our conspiratorial, divisive, racist British, pro-Muslim until 1857, pro-Muslim after 1905, are for the short period between 1857 and 1905, just enough to squeeze in the Census, hostile to Muslims, for some unknown reason, and immediately unleash their vast conspiratorial machinery to create fresh theories and hypotheses and imaginary effects - to what purpose? to refuting eastwatch's proposition of 2010.
What exactly does this prove?
I have now spent around 45 years vigorously combating the Sangh parivar and its pernicious nonsense about Muslim conspiracies to overthrow Hinduism in its homeland, and convert India to a Muslim-majority country, starting with west Bengal, which is to be swamped with illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
This vision, presented here, must exceed their wildest nightmares. I am beginning to think that eastwatch may well be a Sangh parivar member, introducing the Sangh's poisonous racist theories in the guise of a Muslim Bangladeshi.
And this is just his first, least harmful post.
TopCat
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Before i go to detail reply let me point something interesting.
Hindu population
Aryan + Non Aryan. Aryan came from same place as the later Muslim invader. There were substantial intermixing but less than the Muslim and Buddhist.
Muslim population
Central Asian Muslim + Aryan Buddhist + Non Aryan Buddhist + Non Aryan Hindus.
Full intermixing. Yet there still some taboos left in the society like Syed, Fair Skin etc.
So if we look at logically the genetic composition of Hindu and Muslim population should be almost same, may differ slighty because of degree of intermixing.
From my personal experience there are a little or minute featurastic differnces exist between Hindus and Muslim in current Bangladesh. Not sure about WB but it does in Bangladesh. Please dont make me racist for this..
Hindu population
Aryan + Non Aryan. Aryan came from same place as the later Muslim invader. There were substantial intermixing but less than the Muslim and Buddhist.
Muslim population
Central Asian Muslim + Aryan Buddhist + Non Aryan Buddhist + Non Aryan Hindus.
Full intermixing. Yet there still some taboos left in the society like Syed, Fair Skin etc.
So if we look at logically the genetic composition of Hindu and Muslim population should be almost same, may differ slighty because of degree of intermixing.
From my personal experience there are a little or minute featurastic differnces exist between Hindus and Muslim in current Bangladesh. Not sure about WB but it does in Bangladesh. Please dont make me racist for this..
Joe Shearer
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@iajdani
@eastwatch
The abuse of our intelligence and common sense continues in this second post by eastwatch.
Let us form the equations.
[Outside Bangladesh
{Muslim converts from original residents in the rest of India}A1+ {Muslim immigrants from Central Asia and Afghanistan}A2 +
{Muslim immigrants from other parts of India}A3
] = A
[In Bangladesh
{Muslim converts from original residents}B1+
{Muslim immigrants from Central Asia and Afghanistan}B2 +
{Muslim immigrants from other parts of India}B3
] = B
B>A
B1>A1
B2>A2
B3>A3
This is the simplistic explanation.
For eastwatch's hypothesis to be correct, we need the following:
B>A, and this it is, being the foundation of his argument;
B1<A1
Necessary to prove that the only reason for B to be more than A is the other two factors, not the numbers of original residents converted
B2<A2
Not necessary, but argued by eastwatch; it is repeatedly argued that the immigration from outside India to Bangladesh passed through intermediate locations and gravitated to Bangladesh; those who are familiar with the conditions of living in Upper India and with Bangladesh, or with the Punjab, the Terai, Kashmir and Gilgit, and Bangladesh, can make up their own minds whether this is likely. It is also worth assessing whether the Murshidabad Raj's ownership and disposition of land went so far as to settle migrants into east Bengal where they had relatively less influence.
B3<A3
Not necessary, but bizarrely argued by eastwatch; to him, nothing was more attractive for the entire population of the Indus and Ganges basins, and also the starving millions of the Afghan mountains and the cis- and trans-Oxian steppes than the Ganges delta.
This must be remotely provable, not dependent on the opinions of dedicated researchers like yourself. There is no evidence that there was a flood of Muslim immigrants from Central Asia, of Turkish and Pathan descent as you have reported. Some may have come. Numbers are not proven, although there are reports that you have adduced.
Further, in the unlikely case that we are able to establish how many Muslims in Bangladesh today are descended from immigrants attracted by cheap and readily available land, we cannot make a relative statement from that: we cannot conclude simultaneously that there was less Muslim influx into other parts of India.
Finally, there is a complete disconnect between the conclusions and the contradictory information of genetic studies.
A surprisingly arrogant conclusion.
Any evidence? Other than your own assessment?
As I have made clear, I do not approach any intellectual issue from the point of view of being an Indian. If there has been a coincidence of the arguments that I have produced with the arguments of other Indians, it is that and nothing more, a coincidence.
However, there is a serious correction to be made.
It is an objectionable and provocative statement to say that Indians want to stick to this idea that there are only converted (forced?) muslims in India....
It has been my consistent point throughout that Bangladesh/east Bengal was converted peacefully and overwhelmingly by peaceful preachers; in addition, although unstated specifically here, that Kerala, in fact, the west Coast was also so converted, with the greatest possible amicability; that in many parts of India, Sufi preachers and their message overwhelmed the weak and rotten structures of the existing religion.
The first paragraph is cheap propaganda, seeking the sympathy of others on the grounds of religion and earlier bonds, and a shared animosity towards Indians to counteract the weakness and obvious lack of reasoning in the logic used.
For the second, the immigrants are very much among us, part and parcel of the 140 million Muslims (the oldest census figure) who form part of the Indian population. As far as India is concerned, there is no distinction between one citizen and another, whether that citizen claims descent from Arab stock, from Persian, from Turkish or from Aryan, or even from the Moon-born.
@eastwatch
The abuse of our intelligence and common sense continues in this second post by eastwatch.
Let us form the equations.
[Outside Bangladesh
{Muslim converts from original residents in the rest of India}A1+ {Muslim immigrants from Central Asia and Afghanistan}A2 +
{Muslim immigrants from other parts of India}A3
] = A
[In Bangladesh
{Muslim converts from original residents}B1+
{Muslim immigrants from Central Asia and Afghanistan}B2 +
{Muslim immigrants from other parts of India}B3
] = B
B>A
B1>A1
B2>A2
B3>A3
This is the simplistic explanation.
For eastwatch's hypothesis to be correct, we need the following:
B>A, and this it is, being the foundation of his argument;
B1<A1
Necessary to prove that the only reason for B to be more than A is the other two factors, not the numbers of original residents converted
B2<A2
Not necessary, but argued by eastwatch; it is repeatedly argued that the immigration from outside India to Bangladesh passed through intermediate locations and gravitated to Bangladesh; those who are familiar with the conditions of living in Upper India and with Bangladesh, or with the Punjab, the Terai, Kashmir and Gilgit, and Bangladesh, can make up their own minds whether this is likely. It is also worth assessing whether the Murshidabad Raj's ownership and disposition of land went so far as to settle migrants into east Bengal where they had relatively less influence.
B3<A3
Not necessary, but bizarrely argued by eastwatch; to him, nothing was more attractive for the entire population of the Indus and Ganges basins, and also the starving millions of the Afghan mountains and the cis- and trans-Oxian steppes than the Ganges delta.
This must be remotely provable, not dependent on the opinions of dedicated researchers like yourself. There is no evidence that there was a flood of Muslim immigrants from Central Asia, of Turkish and Pathan descent as you have reported. Some may have come. Numbers are not proven, although there are reports that you have adduced.
Further, in the unlikely case that we are able to establish how many Muslims in Bangladesh today are descended from immigrants attracted by cheap and readily available land, we cannot make a relative statement from that: we cannot conclude simultaneously that there was less Muslim influx into other parts of India.
Finally, there is a complete disconnect between the conclusions and the contradictory information of genetic studies.
A surprisingly arrogant conclusion.
Any evidence? Other than your own assessment?
As I have made clear, I do not approach any intellectual issue from the point of view of being an Indian. If there has been a coincidence of the arguments that I have produced with the arguments of other Indians, it is that and nothing more, a coincidence.
However, there is a serious correction to be made.
It is an objectionable and provocative statement to say that Indians want to stick to this idea that there are only converted (forced?) muslims in India....
It has been my consistent point throughout that Bangladesh/east Bengal was converted peacefully and overwhelmingly by peaceful preachers; in addition, although unstated specifically here, that Kerala, in fact, the west Coast was also so converted, with the greatest possible amicability; that in many parts of India, Sufi preachers and their message overwhelmed the weak and rotten structures of the existing religion.
The first paragraph is cheap propaganda, seeking the sympathy of others on the grounds of religion and earlier bonds, and a shared animosity towards Indians to counteract the weakness and obvious lack of reasoning in the logic used.
For the second, the immigrants are very much among us, part and parcel of the 140 million Muslims (the oldest census figure) who form part of the Indian population. As far as India is concerned, there is no distinction between one citizen and another, whether that citizen claims descent from Arab stock, from Persian, from Turkish or from Aryan, or even from the Moon-born.
Last edited:
Joe Shearer
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Before i go to detail reply let me point something interesting.
Hindu population
Aryan + Non Aryan. Aryan came from same place as the later Muslim invader. There were substantial intermixing but less than the Muslim and Buddhist.
Muslim population
Central Asian Muslim + Aryan Buddhist + Non Aryan Buddhist + Non Aryan Hindus.
Full intermixing. Yet there still some taboos left in the society like Syed, Fair Skin etc.
So if we look at logically the genetic composition of Hindu and Muslim population should be almost same, may differ slighty because of degree of intermixing.
From my personal experience there are a little or minute featurastic differnces exist between Hindus and Muslim in current Bangladesh. Not sure about WB but it does in Bangladesh. Please dont make me racist for this..
[sigh]
et tu, Brute?
The genetic composition of Hindu and Muslim is identical. Hindu and Muslim are not ethnicities, they are religious beliefs. Which part of that, dear friend, did you not get? There are Rajputs, Punjabis, Jats (neither Punjabi nor Rajput for the purpose of this discussion), Gujjars, Hindustanis from the huge massof people in central north India, the Gangetic plain, Biharis, Bengalis, Marathas, Gujaratis who happen to be Muslim or Hindu. Why should the genetic composition differ? Because of the minute numbers of immigration during this period? Please realise that in this case, two things happened: either they formed endogamous groups and stayed aloof from the general population, and their genetic analysis is quite different from that of the general population, or they mingled, and they now form part of the general population, and whatever analysis we make of this general population is true of them as well.
Look around you. The British came last of all to South Asia. As is known to a select few, they intermarried with the black people that they met here (to the British, you will understand, even a Pathan was a coloured, a black man). Now, tell me, what is the range of skin colour and complexion that you see among Anglo-Indians? I know blonde, blue-eyed ones, and I know those who would pass for Tamilian farmer.
And lastly, never again use Aryan as a race descriptor if you want to stay out of trouble. Aryan is currently a description of a group of languages in science; only a member of the royal clan or the warband was entitled to be known as 'arya' by his clansmen, and they are all dead and extinct now, regardless of what Rajputs say about themselves.
Al-zakir
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I as a Sylheti differ with you about the arrival of Hazrat Shah Jalal in Sylhet. The story such that Sheikh Burhan Uddin sacrificed a cow secretly for his son Akika but the then Hindu king Gour Gavinda found out and ordered to kill Sheikh son while imprisoned him.
This inhuman action of Gour some how reached to Moinuddin Chisti of Ajmir. Hazrat Shah Jalal happen to be in Hindustan to spread the light of Islam. He was either requested by Moinuddin Chisti or Nazim Uddin of Delhi to rescue Sheikh and other Muslims from the tyranny of Hindu king.
He arrived in Sylhet with 360 disciples and fought against the Hindu king. He not only liberate Sylhet form the tyrant but decided to stay and spread the light of Quran and Sunnah.
Saints of Chittagong none other than the disciples of Shah Jalal.
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