Mukti: Free To Be Born Again

MUKTI

FREE TO BE BORN AGAIN

Partitions of Indian Subcontinent, Islamism, Hinduism, Leftism, and Liberation of the Faithful

SACHI G. DASTIDAR

Mukti

Copyright © 2021 by Sachi G. Dastidar. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021901824

ISBN 978-1-64753-675-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64753-676-3 (Digital)

18.01.21

Contents

Preface

Preface to 2021 Edition

Chapter 1: Shuva Rani Joins the Mother

Chapter 2: Swarup-kati: The Land of the Black Mother Goddess Kali

Chapter 3: Swapup-kati: The Land of the Terrible Event

Chapter 4: Who will marry a Hindu Widow?

Chapter 5: Shyamnagar of Shuva

Chapter 6: Sani Puja: Praying for Lord Saturn’s Blessing

Chapter 7: Bibhuti Headmaster’s Matchmaking

Chapter 8: The Era of Partition: Desh-Bhaag

Chapter 9: The Vanishing Act

Chapter 10: Dear Aunt Khuki

Chapter 11: Headmaster’s India Pilgrimage

Chapter 12: Amal’s Aadda Gossip

Chapter 13: The Journey of the Truthful Headman: The Community Leader

Chapter 14: Strange Bedfellows

Chapter 15: Calcutta Darshan Pilgrimage

Chapter 16: In Search of Kalikapur

Preface

Mukti is a product of love and pain of at least three decades. It is a byproduct of over three decades of field work, social work and travel in the 1947 Partition-affected Bengal –Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), West Bengal (now called PaschimBanga) State of India – as well in the neighboring states of Northeast India – Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Odisha (Orissa) state’s Bangladeshi Hindu-refugee-settled Dandakaranya Forest, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. During my travel in Muslim-majority Bangladesh I have come across the term ‘ mukti ’ from many, especially indigenous pre-Islamic Hindu, and lately Buddhist, families as they pray for liberation from their suffering. Mukti is an often-used term in Hindu-Buddhist-Jain philosophies which means, according to Sahitya Samsad Bengali-English Dictionary, ‘salvation, nirvana, rescue, liberation, relief, freedom from earthly attachments’ and more (Sishu Sahitya Samsad Private Ltd., 24 th Printing, Calcutta, p 761). Book Mukti is a non-fiction with many fictionalized names for their protection as well of their homes and villages. The book is directed towards Western readers many of whom may have heard of India, yet very little is known about post-partition Muslim-majority Bangladesh and Hindu-majority West Bengal, the effects of Indian Partition on the people of the Bengali-speaking region, the former mixed Hindu-Muslim Bengal Province of Colonial British India. Although Partition took place in 1947 its effects continue to this day.

The story is based in Bengal – the present-day Bangladesh, and West Bengal and Tripura states of India covering the largest – Ganga-Brahmaputra – delta of the world. It is a lush evergreen charming land crisscrossed by rivers, streams and canals, yet with harsh reality for tens of millions of inhabitants. This is a place where both modern Indian Renaissance and Hindu Reformation Movement were born in the 19th Century. (Muslim Reformation Movement of the same era failed.) It is also an area which witnessed three unnatural, man-made large-scale mass killings in the last part of the 20th Century: British-created Bengal Famine of 1943 in the era of bumper crop during colonial rule, the India-Pakistan Partition carnage of 1947, and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan of which Bangladeshis were the majority. Yet no one was held for these mass killings.

One of the effects of 1947 Partition in the northwestern British India was the creation of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, with partitioning of Punjab Province; and later partitioning of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir. Indian part declared herself a secular Republic of India. With that partition almost the entire non-Muslim minority of Pakistan, well over quarter of the population – Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsees and Christians – was killed or cleansed, bringing the minority population down to barely 2% of the population. This is often referred as jhatka killing or killing in one stroke. After partition of Kashmir in 1948 the non-Muslim minority population of Pakistani Kashmir came down from a fifth to practically 0%, fortunately Muslim-majority remained in Indian Kashmir. In the east Bengal Province was partitioned to East Bengal/East Pakistan (joining as the majority population of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, later called Bangladesh) and West Bengal State of India. Yet a treaty was signed in New Delhi on April 8, 1950 by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan that forced East Pakistan’s (Bangladesh) Hindu minority to live in perpetuity in East Pakistan, and no rehabilitation for Hindu refugees was allowed in India, unlike refugees from West Pakistan i.e., from the provinces of Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and Northwest Frontier Province. In 1947 eastern Bengal’s minority Hindus (plus a small number of Buddhists and Christians) was 30% of the population, including many areas where they were majority. Since 1947 that minority non-Muslim population has come down to less than 10% in 2001 Census, with over 49 million Hindus missing from the Census.¹ Anti-Hindu pogroms would continue regularly taking thousands and thousands of lives, with confiscation of homes and businesses by declaring their property as Enemy Property, and cleansing of tens of millions. Yet the privileged-caste Hindu-refugee elites quickly rose to power in two Hindu-Bengali-majority states in India: West Bengal and Tripura. They would champion liberal, left and Marxist ideologies but refused to show solidarity with the oppressed, mostly belonging to Hindu oppressed castes they left behind. The minority Muslim population in Hindu-majority West Bengal in India has gone up from 18% in 1947 to 27% in 2014, is spite of migration of tens of millions of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan/Bangladesh. It is estimated that the one-third of West Bengal’s 90 million people (2011) are of Bangladeshi-refugee origin.

As I traveled with my entire family with children, it broke many of the social taboos. We were welcomed in homes lot easily by poor and rich, and by Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Buddhists, especially by women. Women’s hesitation of talking to a man was broken easily.

The Bengal of British India was known to be a relatively-tolerant mixed Hindu-Muslim society where both Hindu and Muslim nationalism played significant role. In a surprise twist of history after partitions of Bengal and India in 1947 both Bengals took stride towards intolerant politics, one anti-Hindu Islamism, the other anti-Hindu Leftism, led by Bangladeshi (East Pakistani) Muslims and Bangladeshi (East Pakistani) Hindus, albeit refugee. The book delves into that ethos and contradiction, although politically incorrect and, at times, impolite.

I have authored several books on the issue of partition and change. Among them are, Empire’s Last Casualty: Indian Subcontinent’s Vanishing Hindu and Other Minorities (2008), Living among the Believers: Stories from the Holy Land down the Ganges (2006), A Aamaar Desh (in Bengali; This is My Home; 1998 and 2013), and Ai Bangla, Oi Bangla (in Bengali, This Bengal, That Bengal; 1991 and 2012). I have authored over dozens of articles on the issue as well as have made numerous presentations in the U.S., India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Europe. I have also testified in Washington D.C.,

Seeds of Mukti was sown in early 1990s when many of my friends and associates asked for translation of my Ai Bangla, Oi Bangla (This Bengal, That Bengal.) Afterwards appeared my A Aamaar Desh (This is My Home), a collection of Bengali short stories. I am not sure when I first started writing Mukti. Then I finished a collection of a short story book, Living among the Believers: Stories from the Holy Land down the Ganges. After completion of my Empire’s Last Casualty: Indian Subcontinent’s Vanishing Hindu and Other Minorities in 2006 and published in 2008, I started writing again Mukti. Thus, looking back, it must have taken over 15 to 20 years to complete the project. I was a firsthand witness of 1990, 1992 and 2001 anti-Hindu pogrom in Bangladesh, as well as 1992 Hindu-Muslim riot in West Bengal which influenced me.

I am a firsthand witness to several contradictory flows in Bengali, Hindu, Muslim and Indian cultures. Some of that I have tried to share with readers. One of the contradictions is the presence of fatalistic tolerance as well as hardcore intolerance. In the same space some find the presence of spiritual connection to the land, water, flora and fauna while some feel no connection at all yet glorify everything Arabic, Russian or Chinese. One finds militant defenders of the oppressed while the same activists militantly oppress the oppressed. Some champion for the rights of the religious and linguistic minority while oppress their own minority. The people who champion anti-caste messages also oppress the oppressed caste. People who claim to be deeply religious keep on destroying temples, deities, ashrams and forcefully convert the uninitiated. Those who were victims of British colonialism yet colonize other people’s lands. People who champion Hindu-Muslim cohabitation refuse to live with the other, while calling who live with the other as communal or racist. Then there are people who are internationalists but refuse to cross international border to visit their ancestral lands walking-distance away yet travel tens of thousands of miles to be a tourist and rights worker in distant lands.

In the midst of despair there are courageous defenders of the oppressed. These protectors work at individual level, sometimes risking their own lives. There is another aspect that I witnessed during my field work is the conflict between indigenous polytheism with missionary monotheism. There are few places in the world where this conflict is as stark as in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India as all the pre-monotheistic polytheistic religious practices have been eliminated except for India. From Arabia to the Americas, from Peru to Poland and from Norway to Namibia all the indigenous practices are lost forever to museums. Their beliefs are treated as ‘non-living’ or ‘old myth.’ The brutality of destruction of old traditions had not been that different from what Yazidis and Christians faced from Islamists in 2014 in Iraq and Syria.

In the Subcontinent one’s name gives away one’s language, region, religion, caste or tribe, as in Europe or Africa. At times these give away their perceived position in the society. Thus for non-native readers’ further explanation has been provided, yet superfluous or redundant to knowledgeable persons.

I have no power to protect individuals and families who have shared their deepest feelings to my family. I have no power to protect their villages either. As a result, I have not used real names, villages and neighborhoods. As much as possible I have used comparable caste, gender, religious and regional names which may not be easily discernable to non-natives. People sought help when I visited torched homes, destroyed temples, raped and murdered daughter, ruined cremation areas or ashrams. I have been approached by families seeking arrest of killers of their son or daughter. Yet all those victims sought mukti, liberation, from the suffering to live in the land of their ancestors.

I dedicate this edition to venerable Sunil Maharaj, a Hindu monk in Bangladesh, who rose from a peasant background to become a swami or ordained monk, and in spite to serious challenges the poor monk has chosen to live in his homeland. He is now an inspiration to tens of thousands of tolerant Muslims and is a pillar to thousands and thousands of oppressed Hindu minority providing courage to live at home with dignity.

Preface to 2021 Edition

C:\Users\dastidars\Pictures\Bangladesh\Chittagong 90 Pogrom.jpg

Sachi G. Dastidar

Since publication of the book in 2016, I was truly flabbergasted by response from the readers. The story of Mukti revolves around ethnic cleansing of indigenous, pre-Islam Hindu minority in Muslim-majority areas of partitioned India, marginalization of secular Muslims in those areas, separately the racist-attitude of the political left, the elite Hindu refugees in India who soon rose to rule two Bengali-Hindu majority states yet never protested against mass killings, rarely supporting tolerant Muslims in Muslim-majority areas, while censoring free media in India. I was happy to see that the first woman who got a copy from me in person was a Bangladeshi Muslim cultural leader, and the first man who got a copy from me was an African-American professor in New York. I received a call from an unknown woman, an ultra-left Hindu-turned-atheist refugee activist of India living in Texas who informed me that she got half-a-dozen copies, and then a young nationalist Indian-American from New Jersey who informed me of getting copies of the 680-page book.

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(1947 Partition of British-India’s Bengal Province)

The book is based on my firsthand experience, but ignored and censored in Western media just as by many elite-controlled media in the Subcontinent. I was extremely surprised with hundreds of calls from publishers in the U.S. and Canada for a smaller, cheaper version. After lots of hesitation, I started the work. It was difficult to make a shorter version as rereading the book reminded me of stories of bravery, selflessness, courage-under-duress and poverty, neglect by the elites, freedom from fear, dishonesty, forced conversion, true-believers’ true belief in oppression, faithful’s belief in reincarnation free of oppression – Mukti, progressives’ repression, sectarian write up in the free media, bravery of true secular individuals, and more.

C:\Users\dastidars\Pictures\Maps\India\India Pak 1947.png

I am not a pundit or fortune-teller, yet I am more than surprised as the Bangladeshi-Indian-Hindu-refugees claiming-to-be-atheist Communists were completely wiped out of two Indian-Bengali-Hindu-majority states – West Bengal and Tripura – as I wrote about their utter dishonesty presenting a false narrative in their partition-related politics, why they chose not to live with the Muslim-majority in their homeland while claiming to be ‘secular’, and acting as one of the communal or sectarian political groups in the Subcontinent. Thus ruling Communist Party is now referred by many as Communal Party. Almost all of its leaders were/are Bangladeshi-Hindu-refugee, and now second or third generation Bangladeshi-Indian, who preached Hindu Muslim bhai bhai (Hindu Muslims are brothers together) in public meetings in Muslim-majority homeland, then ran home and told their families, kintu tader saangey baash naai (but don’t live with them as neighbors). Soon they fled to India to be political leaders preaching secularism and cohabitation while doing just the opposite. Ethnic cleansing, persecution and hypocrisy is hardly reported in the world’s free press. Politicians are known for hypocrisy, but this particular politics has caused true misery, deaths and genocide. Even in all-India politics I thought while starting Mukti…in 1990s if divide-and-rule politics of the Colonial Britain carried on by post-colonial India changes, it might give to pre-independence unified nationalism, as has already happened with the rise of a nationalist party. After visiting pogrom-affected villages in early 1990s I wrote the South Asia Forum Quarterly about such a possibility.² But this is post-partition, post-Hindu (and Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, Parsee) cleansing era from partitioned Pakistan and Bangladesh. Besides Congress Party, Communist Party, Communist Party-Marxist, Jana Sangh, and now Bharatiya Janata Party, almost all other parties of the 1,700 political parties of India taking part in 2019 election are sectarian or communal representing small and large groups, regions or religions, tribes or plains. Indian Leftist parties, especially in east and northeast India, which influenced my post-1947 generation, acted as Bengali-Hindu-refugee-elite sectarian parties, not caring for the oppressed-caste poor Hindus they left behind, or supporting these poor homeless seeking shelter in India. (Hardly any Indian-Bengali Muslims were forced to leave their home, thus this was not an issue in Indian or Bangladeshi politics. Oppression of the small Bangla minority Buddhists began after 1970s and Christians in 1990s after the First Gulf War.) Not once the refugee ruling elites spoke out against atrocities and genocide in their homeland, in their ancestral village of millennia, as mentioned in my South Asia Forum article included in the Appendix. They didn’t help secular Muslims who were trying to protect their minority. Left even opposed rehabilitation by Congress Party of the oppressed-caste refugee peasants in Dandakaranya in Central India and in Andaman Islands after largescale massacres in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Unfortunately, in democracy people can easily be divided as it did by Colonial Masters. New politicians diligently take to extreme racial-linguistic-caste-religious partisanship to get vote: thus 1,700 parties. Hinduism is fatalistically tolerant. Yet Hindus are easily divided through caste, sub-caste, language, regional imagery, tradition and heredity. As India urbanizes, and as caste, tribe, region and language differences diminish a movement may rise representing all of diverse India, as happened in pre- and post-1947 Congress Party-led India. Indian anti-British anti-Colonial nationalist movement began in 1800s with Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Sikh, Parsee, agnostics, even joined by some Europeans. The movement looked to pre-European-Colonial-British-Christian era, and pre-Central Asian-Farsi-Islam era of India rooted in Indian tradition, known in the West as ‘Hindu tradition.’ Political movement in India in 2000s is not that different from Native Americans looking to their pre-Christian-English roots, or Incas looking to their pre-Catholic-Spanish era, or Africans looking to their pre-Islam-Arabic and pre-Christian-European traditions for their identity. Pluralistic tolerant Hinduism is able to accommodate many of the beliefs of monotheistic and non-native religions as part of Hindu ethos. Britain created Muslim-Hindu partition of Bengal in 1905, starting a communal-separatist Muslim League Party, when no Muslim and no Hindu asked for such a division. Then they used this tool in Ireland and other parts of the world. However, Subcontinent’s post-2020 transformation will be very different from 1800s as money and political intervention is quite serious from sectarian nations like many constitutionally discriminatory Islamic republics, moneyed Islamist monarchs, former European colonial powers, Euro-settler democracies, one-party China, and the new social media.

After the release of Mukti, I was invited to several places in the U.S. and India for reading and discussion. I was also invited by TV and radio stations in the U.S.

Since the writing of Mukti: Free to be Born Again… we started an Indian Subcontinent Partition Documentation Project (ISPaD) in New York. Inspiration of documentation was my earlier book, Empire’s Last Casualty: Indian Subcontinent’s Vanishing Hindu and Other Minorities, which documented missing of 49 million minority Hindus from Bangladesh Census from 1947 Partition through 2001 Census. It documented the most painful saga of division, the killing of between 1.4 million and 3.1 million minority Hindus in East Pakistan/East Bengal/ Bangladesh from1946 Noakhali Pogrom till 2001 election of an Islamist party with its anti-Hindu and anti-secular pogrom. The largest killing took place in 1971 when Pakistan Army and its Islamist Bengali- and Urdu-allies killed 3 million people, mostly Hindu minority with secular Muslim and Awami League Party activists during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. ISPaD has recorded hundreds of interviews of refugees, protectors and survivors – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist and Christian. Yearly conferences since 2010 have brought diverse individuals from the U.S., Indian Subcontinent, and Korea. ISPaD’s annual journal has created a space to discuss the effects of such colonial-imperial division, and later carried out by local politicians. It has created a forum for reconciliation and bridging.

I have received feedback from some of Subcontinent-origin readers that some of my explanations of Indian terms were unnecessary, whereas some non-Subcontinental said that it helped them. So I didn’t change those explanations, at times duplicative.

I hope more people would be made aware of seriousness of colonial division of peoples, and its lasting effects that many forces are still pursuing worldwide.

I thank Mr. Tony Black of UR Link and Media for taking up the project.

December 14, 2019

Ma’s 20th Death Anniversary

My 44th Marriage Anniversary

Chapter 1

Shuva Rani Joins the Mother

Whenever I go to Halishahar District I try to visit Shuva Rani and her parents, Mr. & Mrs. Jibon and Saroja Ghosh, at their Paban-kati village in the riverine south Bengal in the Indian Subccontinent. My family and I met Shuva mostly at her parent’s hut where her two boys live, but not Shuva and her daughter Purnima. The entire family is always there to greet us. They would always like to give us the traditional welcome by touching our feet as a sign of respect. We would always decline Jibon, Saroja, Shuva and other older persons of the village to touch our feet to overcome any perceived class difference. But the village children, and that of ours, were a different story. But when our children Joyeeta and Shuvo would attempt to touch their feet in respect, they would vigorously oppose, No Baba, Baba being an endearing term than father, don’t do that. We’re poor. There are others who anxiously wait for our return as well. By Indian tradition I am Shuva’s kaka , a paternal uncle, and my wife Shefali a kakima , paternal aunt, endearing terms for an intimate person with whom they could share everything. They would say that they are able to share their haarir katha , secret words that are hidden in kitchen storage pitcher, haari . Kaka or uncle is frequently used as a sign of respect in the Subcontinent than a family relationship or because of age. In Bengal, as in the rest of India, uttering older person’s first name is considered disrespectful, uncivil and bad mannerism. Everyone calls their uncles, aunts, older brothers and sisters by a relationship not uttering their first names, for example, First Uncle, Second Uncle, Lotus Aunt, Rose Aunt – Lotus and Rose being substitute for real names, Middle Older Brother, Youngest (of the) Older Sister(s), and so on. Our children called Shuva, Shuva Mashi , maternal aunt, also a common custom in the Indian Subcontinent. Shuvas are Hindu in a predominantly Muslim nation. Gradually Shuvas became our relative or aattiyo by local Bengali tradition. Aattiyo , or atmiya in Sanskrit, literally means soul-mate. Whenever we went to the village they wouldn’t know what to do for us! From the moment we set our foot they and other villagers would make sure that we feel we belong there. " Babu , Sir, this is your village," they would insist. If green coconuts were available in trees of their little homesteads, someone would climb the trees immediately and offer us coconut drink. If cucumber was in season, they would offer that. Or, paan , the betel leaf from the vine. Or, if nothing was available they would send some village boys to climb the tall chalta – also known as elephant apple – trees to get us some of those sour-testing layered-skin roundish green fruits normally used for pickles. Otherwise, a few wild flowers. Shuva and her parents are very poor. More precisely, very, very poor. By the United Nations statistics, they fall into the fourth quartile of the Fourth World nations - barely surviving on $150 dollar a year for the family of eight of three generations! They can hardly afford two meals of rice and lentils a day, but they are not starving. They became our ‘protectors’ in the village. And somehow we became their sanctuary. In our village expeditions we always kept our luggage and valuables at their furniture-less mud-walled, thatched-roof hut without a moment of worry. Our possessions must have been worth several years of income for the family, but missing any of our items has never been a concern to us. Moreover, the jute sack- and bush-protected bamboo machan platform called ‘toilet’ was extremely helpful, especially for my wife Shefali and daughter Joyeeta.

Jibon’s home is a mere 8’x12’ rectangular room divided into two spaces by a jute sack curtain hanging from a string. During daytime the curtain is lifted so that the room becomes one space. The room sits on a 3 ft high earthen plinth, and the front wall is made of mud, reinforced with bamboo. Other walls are made of bamboo matting, in places allowing sunlight to enter, and rain in monsoon causing real misery. On the back plinth a small hole was clearly visible. While proudly showing his home around, Jibon said Babu, Sir, every time I close these mouse holes they reappear in days. Shuva’s Ma doesn’t like it. These become snake dens. Jibon in typical traditional style didn’t utter his wife’s name, instead said ‘Shuvar Ma’ or Shuva’s Mother, Mother of my Daughter. Saroja, of course, will always address Jibon either as ‘Shey’ or him, or ‘Shuvar baba,’ Shuva’s Father. In Bengal, as in rest of India, even if husbands use the first names of their wives, as they are older than their wives, their wives would never utter their husbands’ first names, much less use it on a daily basis. In the more recent urban version of it is ‘Ogo’ (hello) or ‘Shunchho?’ ‘Are you listening?’ I still get a laugh thinking how one of my aunts, Modhu Pishi, Aunt Honey, harassed the local mailman trying to deliver a registered letter for her husband. With my uncle absent at home the mailman agreed to deliver the mail if Modhu Pishi could identify her husband and mention his full name, a logical request. Aunt Modhu charged back, "From what planet are you from? Don’t you know that I am a married woman? Can’t you see my wedding sankha conch bangles or my wedding sindur vermillion mark? The mailman realizing his mistake promptly apologized. Are there any children around? he asked in desperation. No. Then Aunt Modhu Pishi started her quiz. Can you say another name of moon? But moon being one of the Gods has 108 names. After some head scratching mailman started with Chand, Chandra, Chandrama, Sashi, Sudhakar …. until he came up with Sudhangshu when aunt ordered him, That’s it. Stop there! That’s his first name," then she added the family last name.

The front of Jibon’s hut has a 3 feet wide verandah which doubles as a living space and one end of verandah acts as a kitchen. The room and the verandah are covered by a Bengali-style dochala, double-slopped, thatched roof. The front side has one entrance door, while the back wall has two small windows. While the squeaky almost-see-through battered wooden door can be secured with a wooden khil cross-bar, the windows are mere holes in the mud wall secured by wooden sticks instead of iron bars. Windows had no leafs; only torn gunny sacks acting as drapes. On summer days it allowed breeze to flow through making the heat slightly bearable, but in monsoon ‘indoor’ was not much different from ‘outdoor.’ Water came from the top through leaky roof and from sides through the windows. There is a fading floral alpana design on the floor at the front door. The mostly white with red alpana is made out of white lime and red vermillion liquid pastes. Goddess of Wealth Lakhsmi’s white foot prints follow the vine like alpana pattern from outside to verandah to all corners of their home, especially towards the pictures of Gods, Goddesses and leading personalities — the imaginary corner of wealth of the wealth-free family — to the non-existing bed and the corner called ‘kitchen.’ A torn sari serves as the bedding for someone, while a few earthen pots — some broken — serve as storage for ‘valuables.’ Rolled coils of hay serve as pillows. There are no other objects in the room. Several pictures from old calendars of Black Mother Kali, Mother Durga — both goddess of strength and protection and reincarnation of the same Mother, Lord Krishna, the 19th Century Hindu reformer Sri Ramakrishna, Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore, and the Bangladesh independence leader Mujibur Rahman decorate the walls. Surprisingly there was a picture of young Preetilata Waddedar of East Bengal, now Baangladesh, a martyr of Indian independence struggle against Britain, seated like demon-killer Ma Durga. Saroja kept the hut and the front yard spotlessly clean, dutifully cleaning after offering the early morning prayer to the rising Sun God Surya Dev, for bringing the daylight, and then again in the evening before lighting a lamp for Goddess Tulshi, the mint-like tulshi plant, representing respect for all plant life, and to drive away the fear of darkness of night. Jibon and Saroja would invite us, Why don’t you spend the night here? We will sleep outside. On this visit Mrs. Saroja Ghosh also confided The suitcase you gave us, along with a few clothes and utensils we had been taken away during last year’s riot i.e. anti-Hindu pogrom. "As they could not find Shuva’s father, they badly beat me up. By the grace of Mother Kali I survived. They were looking for Shuva who hid herself among the floating hyacinth in the leech-filled doba marsh on the back of our neighbor’s home."

Now either we take turns to eat on one earthen plate that neighbor Aunt Mashi gave us or use banana leaves as dinner plates. For you we will get some banana leaves. Jibon assured.

Jibon and Saroja call their home as ‘Notun Barri’ or New Home. They refer a two storey wooden house as their ‘Purono Barri’ or Old Home. That building, one of the oldest of the area, belonged to an indigenous Hindu Das family, one of the first residents of the area hundreds of years back. The Dases were called ‘bonedi’ family. Bonedi means a family with long tradition and roots to the area, with proper culture and good education, ideal grooming and someone to whom the villagers may look up to during the time of crisis and for leadership. Over centuries Das clan became owners of land, many of them became teachers in schools and colleges. They were in the civil service, political parties and more. For generations Jibon’s family was cow herders, who also took care of Das’s cows. Jibons themselves owned couple of milk cows as well as goats. By profession and caste, they were milkman, goala, although only a few of their family members follow that profession now. Immediately after the Indian and Bengal partition of 1947 there were several threats on the Das Family, however, not until the 1950 there was no actual frontal attack on the family, only verbal abuse in the bazaar, or discovering slaughtered cow parts in their family temple, or unsigned letters with marriage proposal for the extended family’s pre-teen daughters to old Muslim men in their 40s and 50s. During the 1950 anti-Hindu pogrom, the Islamists on a well orchestrated attack on the family decimated the clan, their Hindu workers and Hindu neighbors. Some were killed; many others were forced to flee to India. Even today Saroja would say, Many of the girls and wives were kidnapped and eventually converted to Islam. Halim’s wife Rabeya told me at one of her secret sessions that her original name was Parul Bala Kirtaniya wife of Raja Ram Kirtaniya, the former oppressed-caste peasant neighbor named Dr. Das. They were simply ‘lost,’ as people would say. For the first couple of years Rabeya wasn’t allowed to step out of their home. It eased a bit after the birth of their second child. Jibon’s father Gouranga at that time worked for Dr. Kalpana Ranjan Das, a physician. As attack on Kalpana Ranjan was imminent Gouranga and his wife Binoda Sundari ran to his boss Kalpana Ranjan and brought the large extended family into their one room 60 square feet hut. Gouranga thought that their poverty will protect them. This was the last time that Dr. Kalpana Ranjan Das and his family entered that poor man’s home. On the third night Gouranga and Binoda Sundari helped their life-long protector to the river bank to catch a dinghy of Hindu boatman Kanailal Majhi which eventually took them to India in two days of trek and boat ride. At the Das residence the gang not finding the doctor and his immediate family, first looted their home of their possession of seventeen generations, then beheaded the old Dulal-Dadu or Dulal Grandpa, looking after the home first cutting open his bowl, then stuffing cow flesh on his mouth, and finally setting the home and the cowshed full of domesticated animals on fire. Dr. Das made several attempts to return home from the plastic-covered refugee shelter in an eastern suburb of Calcutta, Naaktala. After many threats from local Muslim gangs and advice from Muslim and Hindu well-wishers Dases gave up the idea of ‘returning home.’ However, in an effort to keep some link with his homeland they gave formal ownership of their share of the 700-year brick-built old property to Jibon’s father Gouranga Ghosh, who belonged to a traditional Hindu oppressed caste as did Dr. Das. Local influential Muslims could not accept the idea of a poor, oppressed-caste Hindu living in such a sturdy building. The thugs did not have to wait too long. During the 1964 anti-Hindu Hazrat-Bal Danga pogrom Pakistan government rechristened an old racist law with a new name as Enemy Property Act. This law allowed confiscation of only minority Hindu properties without any cause, compensation or notice. A Muslim had to lodge a complaint in a local police station that their Hindu neighbor is an ‘Enemy of the State’ and thus its property an ‘Enemy Property.’ No reason is needed for a newly arriving Muslim to call an indigenous Hindu living in his own homestead for a thousand year an ‘Enemy of the State.’ One night after the evening Muslim Maghrib namaz prayer, a group of thugs came to Jibon’s Purono Barri Old Building – the ancestral home of Das family – and ordered them to leave the property in the next fifteen minutes. They ordered, "you malu bastard" malu being Arabic-based derogatory word for Hindus and non-Muslims, leave this Hindu Enemy Property immediately. Police won’t protect you. You know that very well. We will be nice to you if you leave this building in next the 15 minutes; your wife and daughters won’t receive any pleasure from us. In the name of God, we will allow you to build a hut in the back of this building. The thugs brought a freshly severed cow’s head with dripping blood to rechristen their new booty. And Gourangas ended up building a hut which they called Notun Barri, new building.

Before my journey I would always write "Jibon-Babu, Mr. Jibon, from the City we will take the overnight launch to Barisal City. From Barisal we will catch the morning 6 O’clock bus. We will be reaching the Saktiganj bus stop by 8 AM and then it will take us about 30 minutes to reach your home by foot. If we can hire a rickshaw, we might be there a few minutes early……." And most of the times Shuva, Jiban’s oldest daughter, will be at the bus stop at 7 in the morning, hours ahead of our arrival to greet us. In the monsoon the last quarter of a mile will take us longer since the unpaved dirt roads become muck-like slippery and treacherous path for people like us. Sometimes Shuva will wait with her friends and children. She would always insist that we visit her home in the neighboring Swarup-kati village where she lived with her daughter and in-laws.

Because of our upcoming hurricane tour, I wrote Jibon …this time I may not be able to visit you. I have very little time. In Dhaka I will be staying either at the residence of NaserDa, Older Brother Naser or with BhusanDa, Older Brother Bhusan. Bhusan is short for Mr. Indu Bhusan Poddar, a Hindu, who knew my parents but discovered after four decades of lost contact due to the partition of 1947. Mr. Nasiruddin Ali Islam, a Muslim, is a friend of mine. Nasiruddin or Naser is also known by his Bengali name as Shujohn or Good Man. They are from the same area as that of my parents who lost their home of 16 generations after a pogrom, but hung on to the idea of ‘return’ for many years. Both Mr. Poddar and Mr. Islam have taken it upon themselves to be our local guardian during my family’s ‘visit home.’ They have now become our ‘relative or aattiyo’ as per local custom.

After I have barely settled down at Nasiruddin’s in Dhaka, the home helper Habib informed me Saheb, a common Bengali Muslim and North-Indian form of address for Sir, "yesterday someone came to see you from your village, but I can’t say who it was. He didn’t give his name. He will come to see you tomorrow morning. He said that he is your aattiyo." Habib, the servant boy, is a 13-year-old Muslim from the same locality as that of Naser and me.

Habib then murmured ……the man indicated that it was quite urgent. He continued, but I don’t know how can he be your relation? He looked dirty and poor. He looked Muslim.

I wondered who might that be, since the people I know at Paban-kati village it will be too expensive for them to come here by paying for buses, overnight ship and rickshaw.

Before I could get up in the morning, I heard a knock at my door. Sir, someone is waiting downstairs to see you, said little Habib from the other side of the bedroom door. He said, he came so early because he didn’t want to miss you. He said you are his uncle, but wouldn’t give his name. And said it is urgent. Habib added, He doesn’t look like your relation. He is poor, and a Muslim.

Please ask him to wait, I will be there in a minute I instructed Habib.

I arranged myself quickly and came down to meet my guest. There was a skinny, dark 5’-2" tall man, with bushy hair with unshaven face and wrinkled skin. A man in his 40s or 50s, little dirty, but looked much older. In rural areas peasants age quickly because of their back-breaking work in the field, poor health condition plus relentless heat of the tropical sun. The man was wearing a blue checkered lungi sarong waist wrap-around and a crumpled half-sleeve pink Hawaii shirt torn on the left shoulder. On one hand he was carrying a shopping bag made of jute fabric. At my sight his eyes glowed and he gave a big smile. Before I could say anything, the man quickly bends down and touched my feet, then folded his palm and said ‘Namaskar,’ as well as ‘Aadab’ in Muslim-style greeting.

I said "Namaskar. Aadab. Greetings. But I could not recognize him, and said, Please forgive me, I am getting old. Where have we met?"

The man smiled again, Uncle Kaku, don’t you remember me? I am Ramzan. Mohammad Ramzan Khan. I am the share cropper neighbor of Jibon’s family. I have come from Paban-Kati. Shuva’s parents have sent me for you. Last time when you were in your village, I was with you. My daughter played with your kids. I went with you to the neighboring Durgapur village. Ramzan took a deep breath and continued, "Don’t you remember? I carried your bag. You even gave some cash gift to buy my daughter some mishti, the Bengali sweet, and clothing."

Oh, yes. Of course I remember now. Your daughter’s name is Radha. I called her Radha Rani Begum. Isn’t that true? Ramzan nodded. Radha is the name of Lord Krishna’s companion, a Hindu sage; an unusual name for a Muslim girl. But Radha also means a pretty face in colloquial Bengali. This also follows a long Bengal tradition, as in many other parts of India, among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists to keep names not along religious lines but with names with regional identity and meaning. "Seeing her beautiful face, Radha’s mom called her by that name. The local maulana Islamic preacher gave her an Islamic name, Zebunnessa Khatun, which no one knows," Ramzan confided.

After a little pause I continued, "But Ramzan-Babu, Mr. Ramzan, why are you here? It is so far from Paban-Kati. Why did Shuva’s parents sent you? When have you come to Dhaka? Where are you staying? Did you have your breakfast?" Ramzan did not pay much attention to my questions.

Ramzan reminded me that as a person of means I should call him by his first name and not with a formal overtone addressing with mister. "Why are you calling me mister, babu? Just call me Ramzan. I am a very low caste poor landless Muslim peasant. A share cropper. I am staying in Paikpara Basti slum near Mohammadpur neighborhood. I am staying with my, fufu, father’s sister, Ramzan said using a Bengali-Muslim word for his paternal aunt. Her shack is located on top of Paikpara Jala swamp. He lives there with his family in one small room. I came here the day-before yesterday. I went to the other address as well. Kaki, Aunt Saroja Ghosh, Shuva’s mother, said that you will be giving me the transportation money. He stopped, caught his breath, and then continued, At the village we took collections for my fare. Had you not come here I would be in a big, big trouble, but Bhusan Uncle from the other house was very nice. He said, had I missed you, he would have given me the money for my entire trip and for food……"

Why have you come here? I cut him off. But Ramzan was not listening and continued "…I barely slept. I was afraid I might miss you. I got up before the Muslim fazr azan morning prayer call, then came running for you. I walked these couple of miles. Suddenly Ramzan stopped. There was complete silence for a few seconds. He seemed to reassure himself, contemplated for seconds, and then whispered something which I thought was a Muslim prayer. Ramzan then talked to me looking at the floor Shuva in no more with us. Ma Kali, Black Mother Goddess Kali, has taken Shuva to Her bosom. Ma Kali gave Shuva her life, and She took her back. Even her 15-year-old daughter would have been finished as well. One of the maulavis, an Islamic preacher, and some local Muslim boys were after that little girl. You must have known that Purnima was saved by one of your relations in the City. Haven’t they told you? He is the one who saved Purnima. Paban-kati villagers have sent me to take you to our village. Then he added, Babu, Sir, you belong to us. Please come to the village with me."

Ramzan then narrated the entire story without catching a breadth. Afterwards I would hear that story from my ‘relation’ Kamolda, Brother Kamol, followed by Jibon and Saroja, from Purnima and from so many others. Unless I was a first-hand witness to this, it would have been difficult for me to believe such things can happen today. I know there is less security in villages compared to cities. I also know that women of all faiths have even less security in both rural and urban areas. Then for the minority Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, tribal or non-tribal, rich or poor, there is practically no security at all. That security is completely non-existent for Hindus in rural areas. Shuva Rani was a village woman in that society. She was pretty smart and talented by any standard. She was literate. And if she was born in a middle-class family, I am sure, she would have gone far. Because of her talents she became the head of the ‘Self-sufficient Village Committee.’ Later on Government appointed her to be a social worker. That job paid her a couple of hundred takas, few dollars, per month.

Politics of Identity:

Depending on political polarization, minorities are often the victims of both ruling and opposition parties. Ramzan told me that Shuva and her teenage daughter started getting threats from ‘criminal-revolutionaries’ of both ruling and opposition groups. Finally, one day in the middle of the night Shuva along with Purnima fled her beloved Swarup-kati for the Big City. Mother and daughter found jobs in the garment industry. They rented a shack on top of a marsh where she eventually had an untimely death because of poverty, hunger, decease and for lack of treatment. In the Big City Shuva would always walk miles to be with her Uncle Kamol - the only person of means she knew there to share her pain and pleasure – a Hindu she came to know accidentally. There is a Bengali saying that ‘People under severe stress are often saved by their death.’ Nowadays many Shuvas are unable to be even ‘saved by their own death.’ Shuva couldn’t either. At times minorities were prevented from giving last rites to their loved ones. After Naser’s neighbor’s Hindu physician uncle died in his native Surma District many neighbors told the family "Don’t take the Hindu malaun’s body through the streets at this time. Don’t take it through our neighborhood. In the name of God the Merciful those streets are closed to namos." Malaun is an insulting and derogatory Arabic-based word used to describe non-Muslims, and namo is also a derogatory word for Hindus derived out of namasudra, Bengali name of oppressed caste now used by Muslims to denigrate all Hindus and non-Muslims. Even those patients who were treated by the uncle free of charge hesitated to oppose those inhuman acts. There are always courageous Muslim men and women, who seems exception to the norm. My friend would say, In the land of God, there’s no God. Mr. Kamol had lots of trouble in giving the last rites to Shuva as well, especially for the cremation ritual. Finally, with the help of the Ma Durga Mission, a Hindu spiritual organization in Muslim-majority region, the body was cremated practically next to a highway on a make-shift cremation ground all the while hearing insults and slurs from passing strangers including ‘funare jahannam khaledina iha’ – let the infidel burn in hell, the Arabic which even the cursers did not understand. For the past several decades many of the old cremations grounds have become ‘Enemy of the Nation’ through the application of the Enemy Property Act. Before her mother’s death, the only question the orphaned Purnima kept asking her Kamol Grandpa repeatedly Kamol Grandpa Dadu, would Ma look after me from the Heaven?

For the last few minutes a Muslim Ramzan wept for a Hindu orphan Purnima and kept telling We couldn’t save Shuva. I have offered puja offering for Purnima at the Hindu Kali Mandir temple. I have sought blessing from Allah; sought blessing from Bhagaban (God). Would you please look after Purnima and the other children? Otherwise they would be destroyed. Before we could finish our conversation, my other appointments had already arrived.

Next day I was invited to the home village of friend Mukul. The door was opened by a Hindu widow whom I believe I met at Mr. Bhusan Poddar’s residence last time when I visited the Big City. At that time her entire family, a son, daughter-in-law, grandson all used to work and live there. At that time Mashi, the aunt, had said We are from a faraway place called Ganga-chhori, few hours beyond Rongpur in the north. We used to be weavers there. This is about a day’s journey by bus or two days by boat and bus. Later when I talked to Aunt Mashi I asked her while thinking about Shuva’s last rites, "Aunt Mashi what do you do there when someone dies at your home?"

What else to do? We are Hindu. We cremate! Mashi is a Hindu widow and as a result wears a white borderless thaan sari — an outfit for perpetual mourning. Thaan is practically a man’s dhoti outfit, almost like what the dead husband used to wear.

Oh, then you must have nice cremation grounds there.

Yes. I felt so relieved thinking about Shuva’s death and last rites. Mashi continued "In our area we have lots of Hindu fishermen,