Bengal Divided

Title: Bengal Divided – The Unmaking of a Nation (1905 – 1971)

Author: Nitish Sengupta

Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2007 (First)

ISBN: 9780670999132

Pages: 260

India’s partition in 1947 basically involved the division of the two provinces of Bengal and the Punjab, as the other provinces went in as a whole to either of the two sister nations. Large scale violence erupted in Punjab and minority populations were exchanged across the new border. Bengal remained calm but tense due to the healing touch provided by Gandhiji’s physical presence there. As a result of this, a large number of Muslims stayed on in Indian Bengal and a similar number of Hindus in East Pakistan. Cultural, social and industrial interactions were subsequently more active in Bengal than Punjab. If we look back in history, the partition of Bengal occurred first in 1905 and then in 1971, when the region obtained independence from Pakistan after an armed struggle with the help of Indian arms. This book covers a period of 66 years from 1905 to 1971 that unmade the nation of Bengal on religious lines. It follows the events when the two parts of Bengal stayed united, and when they were separated. Nitish Sengupta is an academician, administrator, politician and writer who was a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) from 1957 to 1992. After retirement, he headed the International Management Institute in New Delhi and has been director on the boards of several private and public sector companies. He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1999 and served on several committees of Parliament. He has authored many books and is currently based in Delhi.

The turn of fortunes for the religious communities of Bengal in the nineteenth century was dramatic. Till 1871 – when the first ever census was conducted in India – everyone thought that Bengal was a Hindu-majority province. The census report came as a surprise to all to learn that the Muslim community enjoyed a numerical supremacy among the people. Conversion to Islam had begun in Bengal in the twelfth century itself and had continued in full swing for another three centuries. Sengupta notes with secularist relish that the lower castes changed their religion to ‘get out of the concentration camp type existence in Hindu society’. He accuses the orthodox Hindus of not admitting women forcibly abducted by Muslims back to the fold as one of the reasons for the drop in numbers. If this is true, the perpetual fear and threat under which the Hindu community stayed under Muslim rule is terrifying. The Muslims wanted to have greater control of the administrative machinery as a corollary to their superiority in number.

This presented another problem. After the British had defeated the sultans and usurped power, the Muslims withdrew into a cocoon and harboured separatist visions of a free Muslim state. With the loss of political, economic, social and educational prominence, they had begun wholesale downgrading of the emerging society. They were averse to English which rose to occupy the position which Persian had adorned as the state language. The Bengali Hindus quickly stepped in to exploit the available opportunities to the full and replace Muslims in the revenue, taxation, police, judiciary and army departments which were till then monopolized by them. Bengal was partitioned in 1905 between Hindu and Muslim majority areas, which was strangely opposed by the nationalists but supported by Muslims. It annulment in response to vociferous protests alienated the Muslims in East Bengal. It was only natural then to extend more privileges to Muslims in the re-integrated Bengal. Irrational opposition emerged from the Hindus as well, who even opposed provision of financial assistance to the newly constituted Dhaka University. Chittaranjan Das was a respected leader whose admirers were in both communities. He introduced the Bengal Pact in 1923, under which 55 per cent of the jobs were reserved for Muslims. Congress vehemently rejected it and after Das’ death in 1925, it was no longer an item in the political agenda. We get a feeling that perhaps if the partition of Bengal in 1905 was allowed to stand, Hindus and Muslims would have been happy in their respective provinces and the fateful partition of 1947 could’ve been avoided.

The author notes that the unmaking of the nation began in the period 1927-37. Muslim mass organizations like the Krishak Praja Party (KPP) earned the support of workers and peasants, while the bhadralok was marginalized further and further. When election to the provincial assembly was carried out according to the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935, the Congress refused to ally with the KPP to form a government. Sengupta suggests that this decision was taken by Gandhiji himself under the selfish influence of the well known industrialist G D Birla. He reproduces a letter written by Subhas Chandra Bose rebuking Gandhi for this irrational decision. The reason for Birla’s aversion to KPP was their orientation to the workers, against the class interests of the zamindars and large businessmen.

This book provides ample proof to denote the Congress party as a Hindu outfit prior to independence, after which they donned the mantle of secularism. Its early leaders like Tilak organized Ganapati and Shivaji festivals on behalf of the party. The Pirpur Committee (1938), commissioned by the Muslim League to study the atrocities against Muslims in Congress-ruled states, reported that the Congress insisted on singing Vande Mataram, which they alleged to be an ‘anti-Islamic’ and idolatrous song. It also accused the Congress of withholding licenses for cow-slaughter in provinces which they ruled. Doing politics was a tiresome occupation in those days as the politicians were always on tenterhooks to ensure that their every action was to promote cordiality and amity between the two communities which fought against each other at the slightest pretext. Reading these lines, we might wonder that partition of the country on religious lines ensured some benefit on this front. However, the Fazlul Haq – Shyama Prasad Mukherjee coalition government in 1941-43 provided a great example of accommodation between the two communities.

Even though Bengal excelled other Indian provinces in literary and social reforms, the Bengali society was riddled with communalism of the worst kind. The atmosphere was always explosive, waiting for the slightest spark. The author mentions that between the five years from 1922 to 1927, a total of 112 communal riots occurred in which 450 people were killed and about 5000 were injured. Hindu processions which played music near mosques automatically triggered riots, while the public slaughter of cows engendered retaliatory strikes. Sometimes, the hatred surpassed all rational barriers such as the Muslim opposition to the word ‘shri’ and the symbol of the lotus in Calcutta University’s motif. Riots in Dhaka saw hundreds killed and tens of thousands fleeing to West Bengal. The Direct Action Day (August 1946) and Noakhali Riots (October 1946) were the two large scale riots before independence.

The book is quite interesting to read only in Part 1 which covers till 1947 and the remaining part is included only as an afterthought as to cover the history of the Bengali nation in full. The narration is left open in the present age. A major point reiterated by the author is that the destiny of Bengal was not decided by its own leaders. At the end of the freedom struggle, the partition of the province was finalized by a committee which didn’t include a single Bengali leader both on the Hindu and Muslim sides. Subhas Chandra Bose was its tallest leader after the death of C R Das, but he fell foul with Gandhiji over finer points of the way forward in the struggle. His exit left the way clear for Nehru and his cronies to make a mess of free India. Another factor to note is the sad predicament of the Dalit leadership during partition. Arraigning fellow Hindus for the discrimination they suffered, Dalits established alliance with the Muslim leaders and followed them to East Pakistan. Jogender Nath Mandal became the first law minister of Pakistan. However, his disillusionment after just two years at the sad plight of Dalits and Hindus in general was pathetic. He ran back for his life to India and sought asylum. This book reproduces the letter of resignation written by him to Pakistan’s president. Today’s Dalit leaders should read this at least once! In the letter, Mandal voices concern about the status of Dhimmis assigned to Hindus as per Islamic law. It negates all civic rights to minorities as citizens of the nation, but offers basic protection to life upon payment of a tax.

The book is very attention-grabbing and the narration is uncluttered. It includes a good bibliography and a commendable index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Muslim Question

Title: The Muslim Question – Understanding Islam and Indian History

Author: Raziuddin Aquil

Publisher: Penguin, 2017 (First published 2009)

ISBN: 9780143428916

Pages: 289

Secular historians attribute the entire blame for the incendiary religious scenario at the time of India’s partition on the British. They argue that the British policy of ‘Divide and Rule’ sowed the seeds of mistrust and mutual antagonism between the Hindus and Muslims. This leaves the hinted conclusion that they were living in a fraternal spirit before the Europeans arrived. But is this true? Even with the heavily and selectively edited accounts of the Sultanate and Mughal periods of Indian history that are then sanitized by Marxist historians, we presume that not everything was alright for the non-Muslims in India in those times. We frequently read about murder, rape, pillage, forced conversion, temple destruction and disenfranchisement of the non-Muslim populace at the hands of Muslim rulers. In short, we were divided and they ruled. A glorious example like the latter half of Akbar’s rule is an exemption rather than the rule. Raziuddin Aquil is an associate professor of history at the University of Delhi. He has published widely on Sufism, religion and political culture, literary and historical traditions and questions of historiography in medieval and early modern India. He examines a few representative samples of Islamic books penned during the period from Sultanates to the beginning of the twentieth century and presents its synopsis with evaluation in a free and lucid manner, quite unlike other secular historians who often have an agenda to perform.

Sufism is widely touted as the middle ground between Islam and Hinduism in medieval times where Sufi shrines were frequented by Hindus as well. Its syncretistic spirit is claimed to have grouped the whole society under its fold without concern for their caste or religion. Aquil puts paid to this pious falsehood. Sufism was always just another weapon in the arsenal of Islamic occupation of India. Sufis who undertook an active part on behalf of Muslim rulers include such eminent figures as Nizam-ud-Din Auliya who sent his khalifas with the army. Chishti Sheikh Muin-ud-Din Ajmeri greatly helped the Turkish conquest. Nur Qutb-i-Alam of Bengal and Abdul Quddus Gangohi of North India’s attitude towards non-Muslims can be discerned from the letters written by them to the ruler of the state (p.188). Non-Muslim disciples of a Sufi master usually joined the master’s faith with their old customs and practices intact. Another Sufi guru, Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, suggested that the honour of Islam required the humiliation of infidels, who were to be oppressed, treated like dogs and mercilessly forced to pay jizya. He also emphasized that a very effective way of establishing the supremacy of Islam was the slaughter of cows (p.67). While one stream of conversions flowed through the Sufi route, the other proceeded apace with the battle cry of Imma’l Islam, Imma’l Qatl (Islam or death), by the conqueror’s sword. Sufis contributed to the spread of Islam by conversion is attested to by the numerous examples seen in authoritative Sufi texts that can’t be simply wished away as useless accounts of Sufi exploits. Secular scholarship ignores all these to declare that the Sufis were never interested in the propagation of Islam.

This book delivers a hard knock on the secularist agenda of medieval historiography. His erudite attack on the left-oriented scholars who deny the existence of any religious struggle between Hindus and Muslims prior to British rule invalidates and ridicules the weak homilies of the Marxist historians. He states that in the blatantly present-minded scholarship, modern ideological concerns such as secularism and nationalism etc. are projected backward in time to present a sanitized picture of medieval India. It is shocking to learn that for nearly four decades, the history of religion or ideas was a neglected area because of the dominance of leftist historians in medieval Indian historiography (p.31). Aquil exposes revivalist Islamist theologians like Ahmad Raza Khan Barelwi, who treated all infidels as untouchables. We know from history that Husain Ahmad Madani of the hardline Dar-ul-Ulum Deoband School opposed the partition of India in 1947 on the principle of composite nationalism. Many appreciate him even today for his unusual position towards partition among Muslim clergy. But his real motive is laid bare in this book. Madani wanted composite nationalism so long as Muslims were in a minority, so that they couldn’t be expected to fight with the Hindus and British simultaneously. In such a situation, it was advisable to fight against an enemy of Islam with the help of another! In contexts where Muslims were numerically stronger and controlled political power, there was no need to enter into such a political alliance and make compromises. He then went on to castigate the ‘falsehood’, ‘intolerance’, ‘insensitivity’, ‘illegitimacy’ and ‘immorality’ of other religious traditions including Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. (p.186)

We have seen everywhere in the world where Islam is in the majority to enforce the Sharia law, which claims that only Islam is true, or haqq, and all other religions are falsehood, or batil. During the early centuries of the Muslim era, this could go on as their armies were victorious in battle everywhere. The first jolt to wake them up to reality came in 1257 when the pagan Mongols sacked Baghdad and killed the caliph in a humiliating way. The idea that Sharia shouldn’t be the sole criterion of governance was propounded first in Akhlaq-i-Nasiri of Khwaja Nasir-ud-Din Tusi (d.1274), which was dedicated to Maraghah, a non-Muslim Mongol ruler in Azerbaijan. Even with that forced moderation, the ulema didn’t take kindly to the concept of wahdat-ul-wujud (human soul could achieve union with god) of Sufism. The puritans considered it heretical as it challenged the primacy of the divine. Aquil presciently notes the similarity of the idea of wahdat-ul-wujud to Shankara’s Advaita philosophy.

As far as the destruction of temples is concerned, the author takes a casual stance like although-some-temples-might-have-been-destroyed. He later comments that places of worship were generally plundered for their wealth. Their despoliation was aimed at hammering home the point that the old regime was overthrown and that it could no longer protect the people and their religious places. So far so good. But his ‘theory’ falls to the ground when the contestants in a battle were Muslims like Babur’s defeat of Ibrahim Lodi or Nadir Shah’s triumph over Muhammad Shah Rangila or the Ghurid victory over their Ghaznavid predecessors. We don’t hear of any mosques being destroyed or desecrated in any of these cases! Our historians continue to shy away from identifying fanaticism as the true motive of temple destruction.

The core of the book covers the little known political and religious treatises of the medieval period. The examined works are Zia-ud-Din Barani’s Fatawa-i-Jahandari and Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Abdul Qadir Badauni’s Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, Sheikh Abdul Haqq Muqaddis Dehlawi’s Adab-us-Salihin and Mir Muhammad Jafar Zatalli’s Zatal Nama. Needless to say, that all of them encapsulate extreme hatred towards infidels. Still, Barani is sanitized by secularist historians even in spite of his tirade against infidels. However, Zatalli is a different issue altogether. He attacked all nobles without reference to their religion, in a language and symbolism unbefitting to cultured speech. A few examples cited in the book helps to gauge the audacity of the man, but is hardly decent enough even for a mention. However, it serves to assess the wide variety of literature produced during the period.

Aquil’s book is refreshing to read. Hardly do the secular historians come out with a candid work such as this. He justifies the shift in perspective with the assertion that ‘in these times of intolerance in religion and politics, it is imperative to develop a new theoretical framework through which one may re-examine the past’. The book is well-researched and illuminates some of the dark corners of the medieval mansion of history. It contains a lot of Notes as a separate section, an excellent glossary and a superb index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Civilian Warriors

Title: Civilian Warriors

Author: Erik Prince

Publisher: Portfolio/Penguin, 2014 (First published 2013)

ISBN: 9781591847458

Pages: 404

We know that war is a nasty thing where two states and their troops fight against each other, causing extensive damage to themselves and the countryside in which they fight. In spite of this, the fighting man is the cornerstone of patriotism and sense of duty to one’s country that it might be difficult for some to digest the idea that in the last few decades, the private sector has borne a major share of the military effort, if not actual fighting, from the military’s shoulders. They have their advantages too, when traditional forces can inflame a situation instead of pacifying it. Moreover, nimbleness and fiscal efficiency of contracted Special Forces are so appealing for the government to let the opportunity pass. All the major armed forces use private contractors to outsource many of the ancillary services connected to the military. Blackwater is the most famous among them, whose workers accompanied the US military effort in the Middle East in a big way. As the years rolled by, the company piled notoriety up for its supposedly highhanded misdemeanors towards the locals and was subject to extensive investigations. Erik Prince, a former Navy man, founded Blackwater in 1997 and served as its CEO until 2009, and its chairman till 2010, when the company was sold. A native of Michigan, he now splits his time between homes in Virginia and Abu Dhabi where he pursues a variety of business ventures. This book is the story of the company, its progress, fall from grace and an honest reply to the string of wild allegations against it.

Use of private individuals in war had been going on for a long time, and Prince affirms that they were employed in the US War of Independence against the British. These smart individuals contributed a great deal to secure America’s freedom. By the end of the war, they had captured 2283 British ships, as compared to fewer than 200 by the standing Continental Navy. They have been in operation in all wars since, including the two world wars. Private Military Contractors, or PMCs for short, can be employed for a wide range of activities that includes transportation and engineering services, working laundry details, staffing of dining halls in forward operating bases, provision of security and even fighting for the CIA. Another boon for the military is that these contractors can be used to fudge the number of soldiery present in a foreign land. The quantity of fighting troops can be surreptitiously driven upward by employing more contractors as non-combatants. In the First Gulf War, PMCs hardly comprised 2% of the military manpower engaged. In Iraq a decade later, that number skyrocketed to a whopping 54%. Blackwater protected the Defence department first, but later landed up lucrative contracts with the State department to provide security to its personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. Prince claims that without Blackwater, US diplomacy didn’t run. If their motorcades didn’t run, the State department didn’t run.

Born in a very rich family which even had its own aircrafts, it’s amazing that the author opted for the hardships of the military in enrolling in the navy as a SEAL (Sea, Air and Land team). However, he didn’t continue for long in that career and retired. He and a few of his friends thought up a training facility to impart training to military and law-enforcement agencies. He employed military-trained ex-employees in Blackwater and plunged headlong into the highly remunerative service of providing security to the government staff in Iraq. They are claimed to be instrumental in providing the CIA with a direct link to the Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in the fight against the Taliban after 9/11. Max Boot, who provided the Afterword of the book, claims that Blackwater had been a front partner to many of the CIA’s operations. However, this is not mentioned in Prince’s narrative, who claims that the manuscript of the book was vetted by the CIA and that he is constrained by several no-disclosure agreements.

Within a few years of Blackwater’s excellent track record in Iraq, the floodgates of opposition opened. They were accused as mercenaries and flayed in the press and cyberspace as immoral killers and profiteers of misery and war. When four of its workers got killed in an ambush in Fallujah, the critics blamed the company for not providing enough ammunition to protect them. But when its operatives used excessive force in Nisour Square in which seventeen innocent Iraqi civilians were killed in a gun battle, public opinion decisively tilted against Blackwater. Prince admits that his guards had indeed used some intimidating tactics like throwing water bottles at Iraqi drivers or shooting at the car’s hood when it came very near to Blackwater’s motorcade. The author justifies it on the need to protect the person under their charge. Suicide bombings were fairly common in Iraq, and how can you ascertain beforehand whether the car approaching you is not a suicide bomber, but an ordinary Iraqi going about his daily business? But it is equally true that no self-respecting nation or a society could allow a bunch of foreign armed personnel meting out such rebuke to its own citizens. When the pressure mounted on the company, Prince sold it out in 2010, but claims that his company enjoyed a 100 percent success rate in protection duty. Although many of their guards were killed in attacks, none of the persons they were protecting did suffer any major injury. Critics doubted its tactics, but never its results. It is also noted that when President Bush faced a shoe thrown against him by an Iraqi journalist in 2008, it was Blackwater’s men who pounced upon the man and prevented him from throwing a second one.

Prince gallantly defends the allegations leveled against him, with a wide array of convincing arguments and statistics. There’s indeed a limit to the accusations that can be directed against a man for the deeds of his employees stationed thousands of miles away in a war zone on another continent. Even with this concession, his finding fault with the NTSB investigation that followed a Blackwater plane crash in Afghanistan exceeds the limits of propriety. As is common with other American evaluations of Asian capability, Prince lambasts the operational facilities and motivation of Asian soldiers. After the untimely exit from the company he had founded, the author now works for a private equity start-up, financing agriculture, energy and mining projects in Africa, the Middle East and other difficult parts of the world.

The book is basically the owner’s response to the flood of allegations heaped on his company. The language is crisp, witty and sharp. He doesn’t mince words when elaborating the pointlessness of many dumb Congress investigators in which the members had no idea of what was going on. The book includes a few photographs, a comprehensive section of Notes, but strangely, no index.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star