Creation of Bangladesh: Shining Moment or Strategic Blunder

[Capt.Popeye]

Originally Posted by iajdani View Post
"Well they came through Sea and they did put their mark in Kerala as Joe mentioned. They are the same flock who also put their mark in Malaysia and Indonesia. They are the Arab traders. Rohingya bengali of Myanmar still use the Arabic script. They are the migrant from Qatar."


This explanation is indeed plausible. And there is a parallel in the Indonesian Archipelago. As a matter of fact, that is how there are people of Chinese origin in the Malaccas as well. Blame it on the "Trade Winds" !

Now this 'immigration'; was it a planned immigration? IMO, it was not. The traders/ sailors had to venture far from their home countries and ports had to undertake very long and arduous voyages.Coupled with the fact that sea-borne transportation in those days did not consist of only delivering goods to a port and the sailing out. The Merchants and sailors were usually the same or from the same family/clan. They remained there till all the goods were sold and goods bought for the return voyage. None of the present day Letter of Credit terms.
Then there were the vagaries of seasonal weather that could amend sailing plans drastically.

These periods in the ports partly planned/partly enforced led to many merchants/sailors starting families, and in some cases starting settlements.
This was also a factor in this (somewhat accidental) immigration in the region.

i recall having a fascinating discussion on this subject with a US Consul over dinner in Surabaya, Indonesia. And only because i had stood in the morning to get a US visa.

 

[TopCat]

There were lot of misunderstanding about the actual casualty figure in 1971. I thought this is a important news needs to be shared here.
This is only 2 small palces of Pirojpur district in Barishal division.

Probe chief claims 30,000 deaths in Pirojpur
Pirojpur, Sep 20 (bdnews24.com) – In Pirojpur, during the Independence War of 1971, around 30,000 people were killed, investigation chief of the international crimes tribunal's has said.

A four-member team of the agency led by its chief, assistant police superintendent Mohammad Helal Uddin, on Monday recorded statements of 16 people in two cases filed against Jamaat-e-Islami executive council member Delwar Hossain Sayedee and eight others.

Sayedee hails from Southkali village under Zianagar Upazila.

The two cases were filed on Aug 12 and Aug 31 last year with Pirojpur Chief Judicial Magistrates Court for genocide, loot and arson in areas inhabited by religious minorities.

Manik Poshari, 65, filed one case, while the other was filed by Mahbubul Alam, 55, of Tengrakhali village under Zianagar Upazila.

With this, testimony of 51 people of Zianagar Upazila was taken, of which 35 were done during the agency's previous two-day visit on Aug 18.

The statements were recorded at Parerhat Rajlakkhi High School at Zianagar on Monday.

Later, the team visited the killing grounds of Baleshwar and Hularhat landing stations, Mandalpara, Tejdaskathi Primary School premises and the one at Jujukhola.

They also held a discussion with the freedom fighters at Pirojpur Muktijoddha Sangsad.

The probe chief said: "We have secured information about 29,906 people killed during the war at Parerhat and Zianagar. They were dumped in 12 locations of the district.

"Moreover, at least 300 women were brutally tortured. Incidents of loot took place at 35 houses and 146 houses were put on fire," Helal added.

The team will visit Peyara Bagan killing ground at Swrupkathi Upazila on Tuesday.

After the previous visit on August, the probe chief had said: "We have got a lot of new information from the field work, which we did not find anywhere else before, not even in the case documents."

Sayedee was set to be brought before the tribunal on Aug 10, but it was delayed due to his illness and the hearing got adjourned till Aug 24. The court deferred his appearance again on that day and scheduled it for Tuesday.

He was arrested on June 29 along with two other top Jamaat leaders -- party chief Matiur Rahman Nizami and secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed -- on contempt of court charges.

http://www.bdnews24.com/details.php?cid=37&id=173881&hb=top

 

[Joe Shearer]

"Well they came through Sea and they did put their mark in Kerala as Joe mentioned. They are the same flock who also put their mark in Malaysia and Indonesia. They are the Arab traders. Rohingya bengali of Myanmar still use the Arabic script. They are the migrant from Qatar."

This explanation is indeed plausible. And there is a parallel in the Indonesian Archipelago. As a matter of fact, that is how there are people of Chinese origin in the Malaccas as well. Blame it on the "Trade Winds" !

Now this 'immigration'; was it a planned immigration? IMO, it was not. The traders/ sailors had to venture far from their home countries and ports had to undertake very long and arduous voyages.Coupled with the fact that sea-borne transportation in those days did not consist of only delivering goods to a port and the sailing out. The Merchants and sailors were usually the same or from the same family/clan. They remained there till all the goods were sold and goods bought for the return voyage. None of the present day Letter of Credit terms.

Then there were the vagaries of seasonal weather that could amend sailing plans drastically.

These periods in the ports partly planned/partly enforced led to many merchants/sailors starting families, and in some cases starting settlements.

This was also a factor in this (somewhat accidental) immigration in the region.

i recall having a fascinating discussion on this subject with a US Consul over dinner in Surabaya, Indonesia. And only because i had stood in the morning to get a US visa.

Fascinating indeed. Completely off topic, you might like to look at the following leads.

First, the western end was anchored at one time in the city of Petra. There were several vague references to 'Arabs' in the literature, from the time of the turn of the millennium, that is, the time of Augustus Caesar, onwards. Apparently, the trade with India was controlled by these 'Arabs' after goods left a Mediterranean port close to Alexandria.

There were the following intermediate points, to begin with: a port in the Red Sea, with a Roman centurion (at the time of the Western Empire being at its peak) stationed to collect 25% (25%!) of the value of goods. Then, roughly at the location of modern-day Aden, there was another port, or trading post, that was the exporting point for frankincense. Socotra, across the waters, outside Somalia, near the Horn of Africa, was also a way-station.

Until the discovery of the Monsoon's uses for navigation, the Indian trade crept along the coast, all the way up the Arabian Gulf, and then along the coast of Makran to Broach, or Barygoza. This is in older times; about the time of the Muslim expansion, Sind was an important constraint, the pirates of Debal were feared and hated, and one of the causes of the invasion of Sind was the capture of Muslim women from a trading vessel by these pirates.

Coming back to the traditional route(s), after discovering the regularity and invariant direction of the monsoon, the South East monsoon in this case, sailors could play safe and sail out from the vicinity of Oman and the elbow of the Arabian Peninsula direct to the huge trading posts of the western coast: to Surat, to Broach, to a multitude of points on that coast that were frequented for trading in and out. Wine came from Europe, also gold bullion originally in the shape of regular imperial currency, soon converted into bullion by defacement and being strung on a chord. Cloth went back, and tortoise-shell; there is a wide and fascinating range of goods sought and shipped, and people may wonder what these were.

Meanwhile, if the captain was a daring man, or just simply sure of his skills, he could hang several points closer to the wind and make landfall around the coast of Kerala. This was old by the time of Islam, several hundred years old; the Lords of the Kerala ports, Kochi, Cannanore, the Samudrin, known to thick-tongued Europeans as the Zamorin, and the others, were completely in control of the situation, and usually at odds with each other. This was the great age of the Nair fighting classes, or the growth of martial arts, of their export to China, where a grateful Shaolin Temple absorbed them and transmuted them to a completely different discipline. But we are concerned with trade goods; these were landed on the Kerala coast, moved up on human backs, on horses, on horse-carts, on ox-carts, on elephant-back through the Coimbatore Gap, or the Palghat Gap and across to the Kaveri Delta, to Poompuhar, identified with a site near Pondicherry.

I hope Abir is reading this. The answers to his question on such traffic leaving a footprint of culture on the involved lands is valid, and it exists, in Kerala, and in sections of Tamil Nadu. Most of all, from Poompuhar, the traffic worked its way out into three streams; right, to Sri Lanka, left, to Bengal, and the centre to what was then called the Golden Chersonese. Some of the exchanges started then, some later.

It was this traffic that went up the coastline to Bengal, and the same traffic that broke away towards the Indonesian jungle. This is the mirror image of the Chinese presence that Captain Popeye saw for himself.

To take the theme of migration further, the traders in Myanmar were dominated, in the times of the Raj, by Chettiars whose original homelands were just south of the ancient Roman route from Palghat to Poompuhar. And Chola conquests in SE Asia led to the presence of the Thamizhian in SE Asia, while the Ramayana spread like wildfire.

 

[TopCat]

Man it was too much.. I have to find a Map before I could visualize everything..

 

[Capt.Popeye]

@ Joe Shearer,
Thank you,Sir for sharing.

Fascinating, with a little primer on 'Navigation' included. Personally i'v always been fascinated by what the "Trade Winds". Interestingly there are little pockets of these Arab/Zanzibari settlements in other parts of the sub-continent, in Sind, Junagadh, Konkan apart from the "Maplah" belt in Kerala. Among the people of the Janjira/Ratnagiri region their descendants are known as "Siddis" as they are also in Junagadh and Sind.

In Indonesia, i remember dealing with a very shrewd and wizened shop-keeper/grocer named 'Budimaan'. Since he obviously looked Chinese, i asked him if he was of Chinese origin. He confirmed that he indeed was, though he did not know a single word of Chinese. That was quite amazing- a man called 'Budimaan' (sanskrit) of Chinese descent and a professed Muslim.

In some ways the "Trade Winds' were the "Winds of Change".

 

[Al-zakir]

I said source.. not your foul language..
Everytime you use foul lnaguage you just expose your ancestrie's heritage... You cant denigrate anybody with that but rather denigrate your own 14 generation..

Fine!!! You answer me on question from neutral point of view.

Do you think a poverty stricken nation like Bangladesh should spend any time on a dead and rotten issue when people are are starving for food today? Keep in mind that Jaan bachana farz so if you try to demise a group of people by hook or crook then then bloody retaliation in return.

If your answer is yes then I should use more foul language but if your answer is no then i apologize.

You should only defend your Islamic heritage.

 

[Capt.Popeye]

Originally Posted by Al-zakir
"Do you think a poverty stricken nation like Bangladesh should spend any time on a dead and rotten issue when people are are starving for food today? Keep in mind that Jaan bachana farz so if you try to demise a group of people by hook or crook then then bloody retaliation in return.
If your answer is yes then I should use more foul language but if your answer is no then i apologize.
You should only defend your Islamic heritage. You will not find Hindu show any respect toward Muslim warriors.


LOL, is that the only "wisdom" you could come up with?
This is only a discussion, and you come in with a "flame-thrower".
Take a walk in the cold morning air, it won't hurt.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Man it was too much.. I have to find a Map before I could visualize everything..

I wish I had thought of putting up a map with my post! You are quite right, of course, it needs a map to be comprehensible.

 

[eastwatch]

Exactly the same situation as in the same conditions of Kerala.

Centuries of contact due to trade, a certain degree of intermarriage, early introduction of Islam by traders and large numbers of conversions due to positive local factors.

Of course they converted; they had 0 incentive to stay Buddhist under pressure by the Hindu upper castes.

Better we do not confuse migration from or immigration to southern parts of India. Every region has its unique history. We should stick to the past affairs of only Bengal alongwith north India. NI, because the flow of muslim people was similar there. Kerala was completely different case. We should not draw parallel to that region.

 

[eastwatch]

I'm not sure if the percentage of Turk population was that great. Bengalis still are an amalgam of Indo-Arayan, Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic. The Semetic footprint is not there or very less to be accountable.

If conversion is true, then it is only half true. The other part of truth is since the invasion and capture of Bengal by the Turkic general Bakhtiar from the hands of bullying Sen Dynasty, there were continuous influx of muslim migrants from the hinterlands of Afghanistan and other regions.

In some occasions they were Turkic, but in some occasions they were Pathans as well as central asians. Was it a crime for them to come and settle in a paradise called Bengal, where everything a man could desire in those days for himself and his family was available? It was quite different from their original home countries.

Note one point. There was not a single Muslim Dynasty that ruled over Bengal until 1757 AD was basically Bangali. Only one Hindu Dynasty tried to usurp the system by a palace coup. This Raja Ghanesh was ousted by his overzealous muslim subjects within a year. He abdicated in favour of his son Jitmal, who converted himself to a muslim.

Now, Indians will come out with their worn out old story that only the Sultans had arrived from foreign lands sitting on top of their horses and every one bowed to and accepted them as their sovereigns, and no one else accompanied them or came after.

It is tantamount of saying that some USA Presidents are Irish, some are English and some are French origin, but all other US citizens are the descendents of native Red Indians. I find Indians are quite ridiculous. There is a saying that it is easy to teach an ignorant, but it is most difficult to teach a Pundit, specially an Indian Pundit.

Study the family background of Nawab Siraj-ud-Dowlah, and all the Nawabs, Subedars and Sultans before him. Also study the family background of all those Muslim BARO BHUIYAN (Chieftains) who fought vigorously and resisted the Mughal advance to Bengal for a long 30 yrs.

Were these Chieftains Bangali origin? They were all Pathan origin. So, according to the theory of Indians here, these Chieftains fought war alone, and no one of their own stock came and settled in Bengal. But, in reality, these were the Pathan remnants of Sher Shah. They fled Delhi in 1556 when Adil Shah was defeated by the forces of Humayun in the 2nd Battle Of Panipath. These people settled in Bengal, and not in Afghanistan, which they had left more than 100 yrs before.

It is amusing to see how ignorant some Indians may be. Or, is it because these historical truths make us a superior race in the minds of Hindu zealots? Therefore, a denial of truth! Even 50 years ago the local Hindus would call themselves as Bangali but us as only Mocholmans. Why did they not regard us as Bangali even in this age?

You have to find out the answers in the pages of political history written in Persian by the Muslims, written in English by the British and by the elite Hindu historians in Bengali.

 

[TopCat]

@eastwatch
There is no denying fact that there were massive migration from other part of Asia. But the scale of it is debatable. If it were in that massive scale for instance more than 50% muslims are foreign origin then the whole facial apearance of Bengali Muslim would had altered and we would had become fair skinned people. But the reality is otherwise.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Better we do not confuse migration from or immigration to southern parts of India. Every region has its unique history. We should stick to the past affairs of only Bengal alongwith north India. NI, because the flow of muslim people was same from outside Hindustan.

Let me take a minute to deal with the besetting problem facing any discussion in the Indian context. The participants are seldom able to define the context.

India is not, emphatically not a homogeneous country. It is a number of cultures with some common themes and traditions. It is racially uniform, going by current genetic research. Under these conditions, defining a field of study is itself a major task.

You see Bengal as a part of North India. Putting it plainly, and with respect to your point of view, I don't. Bengal is a monocultural isolate located between the Gangetic culture and the upper Brahmaputra culture. There is huge evidence justifying it being treated differently from Upper India and Southern India, or Western India; therefore, in my view, either we treat it as an isolate, or we can combine it with any other culture, north Indian or south Indian, for certain specific academic purposes of study.

I do not agree that the flow of Muslim people was the same from outside Hindustan to Bengal and to Hindustan alike. It does not account for the numbers. If this was a valid argument, upper India would have had far larger numbers of Muslims.

Far more accceptable and probable is the idea that Bengal was converted by Arab seafarers, preaching to the downtrodden Buddhist masses, under increasing pressure from resurgent Brahminical Hinduism. Buddhism was strong and vibrant at the institutional level until at least Bakhtiyar Khilji; however at the popular level, large numbers of Buddhists converted under the Arabs to Islam, leaving behind the caste Hindus as a remnant.

Nothing else explains the vast difference in composition between upper India and Bengal.

So, we have now a position where I am prepared to consider Bengal as an isolate. You are prepared to consider it only with the linguistically alien cultures of north India, with their wholly different languages, or even as an example of a territory settled by an alien minority which skipped all intermediate lands, including those already rendered friendly, and seemingly to explain a significant part of the population through this settlement by central asians.

Sorry, this does not compute.

To me, this widening of the doors is incorrect and introduces a false picture of a cultural elite who were injected into the country.

Let us agree to disagree.

 

[eastwatch]

@eastwatch
There is no denying fact that there were massive migration from other part of Asia. But the scale of it is debatable. If it were in that massive scale for instance more than 50% muslims are foreign origin then the whole facial apearance of Bengali Muslim would had altered and we would had become fair skinned people. But the reality is otherwise.

You are right upto a certain extent. But, it is very difficult to retain the facial features of a group of of people who migrate to a moist climate of a foreign land and in the next two or three generation they intermarry with the local convets.

Look at the Bangali Brahmins. Those who still live under shades and do worshipping may retain their complexion. Otherwise, the Brahmins who are forced to do cultivation in the hot and humid climate lose their complexion in two generations. Bengal weather is not good for fair complexion. This is what Rabidranath Tagore also said.

President Obama's mother is a white woman. Then why her son should look like a black man? But, of course, he is less black than many other blacks. But, you cannot say that he is less white than other whites. Same thing happened to the Bangali Muslim population, too. Like Obama, the descendents of all those immigrants look more like the local population and less like some of their forebearers.

Even then you will find quite a percentage of sharp nosed and fair complexioned tall Bangali Muslims. I sometimes wonder how it is possible after many centuries of mixing some of us are still retaining those? But, the reality may be that these mixings truly started when most of the descendents of foreign muslims lost their identity due to poverty during the British period, and started to mix with all other muslim groups of populations.

Now-a-days no one tries to identify himself with foreign blood line. So, truly we have become Bangladeshis. But, history must not be allowed to be written in a way that unfairly and intentionally demean our status.

 

[LaBong]

If conversion is true, then it is only half true. The other part of truth is since the invasion and capture of Bengal by the Turkic general Bakhtiar from the hands of bullying Sen Dynasty, there were continuous influx of muslim migrants from the hinterlands of Afghanistan and other regions.

In some occasions they were Turkic, but in some occasions they were Pathans as well as central asians. Was it a crime for them to come and settle in a paradise called Bengal, where everything a man could desire in those days for himself and his family was available? It was quite different from their original home countries.

Note one point. There was not a single Muslim Dynasty that ruled over Bengal until 1757 AD was basically Bangali. Only one Hindu Dynasty tried to usurp the system by a palace coup. This Raja Ghanesh was ousted by his overzealous muslim subjects within a year. He abdicated in favour of his son Jitmal, who converted himself to a muslim.

Now, Indians will come out with their worn out old story that only the Sultans had arrived from foreign lands sitting on top of their horses and every one bowed to and accepted them as their sovereigns, and no one else accompanied them or came after.

It is tantamount of saying that some USA Presidents are Irish, some are English and some are French origin, but all other US citizens are the descendents of native Red Indians. I find Indians are quite ridiculous. There is a saying that it is easy to teach an ignorant, but it is most difficult to teach a Pundit, specially an Indian Pundit.

Study the family background of Nawab Siraj-ud-Dowlah, and all the Nawabs, Subedars and Sultans before him. Also study the family background of all those Muslim BARO BHUIYAN (Chieftains) who fought vigorously and resisted the Mughal advance to Bengal for a long 30 yrs.

Were these Chieftains Bangali origin? They were all Pathan origin. So, according to the theory of Indians here, these Chieftains fought war alone, and no one of their own stock came and settled in Bengal. But, in reality, these were the Pathan remnants of Sher Shah. They fled Delhi in 1556 when Adil Shah was defeated by the forces of Humayun in the 2nd Battle Of Panipath. These people settled in Bengal, and not in Afghanistan, which they had left more than 100 yrs before.

It is amusing to see how ignorant some Indians may be. Or, is it because these historical truths make us a superior race in the minds of Hindu zealots? Therefore, a denial of truth! Even 50 years ago the local Hindus would call themselves as Bangali but us as only Mocholmans. Why did they not regard us as Bangali even in this age?

You have to find out the answers in the pages of political history written in Persian by the Muslims, written in English by the British and by the elite Hindu historians in Bengali.

Eastwatch, I don't know how to put it politely, but you're suffering from a deep complex which makes you trying to find your ancestry to imagined Pathan settlers.

Yes there were Pathan generals and subedars of nabwab, but they have mainly settled in Bihar, in Gaya, Nawada, Aurangabad, Patna, Munger, Darbhanga etc. Some moved to East Pakistan after partition, but they didn't have enough time to be assimilated to be called Bengali.

You're forgetting one thing here, the main bastion of Nabwab was in West-Bengal and East part of Bihar, Murshidabad was the Capital. It was more convenient for them to be settled near the capital city than far east of Bengal (I'm not talking about Nabwab of Dhaka here who is a Kashmiri merchant and got his title after 1857).

As Iajduni mentioned, the migration would have left drastic effects had it been as great as you're trying to prove.

And for the bold part, bigots are plenty in both side of border. Don't be afraid seeing the scarcity of them coming from WB in this particular forum.

 

[RPK]

It is Strategic Blunder only, As some politician at the time of creation, that India created another pakistan.