review of Dr. N Bose's 2014 book on Bengali Muslims in Hindi

 डॉ. चित्रलेखा जुत्शी और डॉ. नीलेश बोस की पुस्तक में वर्ग विभाजन (किसान बनाम उससे उच्चतर अन्य) पर चर्चा की गई है। कश्मीर और मुफस्सिल बंगाल में बीसवीं सदी के दौरान विभाजन अक्सर धार्मिक मतभेदों (हिंदू और मुस्लिम) में समाहित हो जाते थे। बोस का काम राजनीतिक इस्लाम के विभिन्न पहलुओं पर प्रकाश डालता है जो मुख्य रूप से व्यापक सामाजिक मुद्दों पर लक्षित थे। 1910 के दशक में, मोहम्मडन लिटरेरी सोसाइटी ने निबंध और कविताएँ प्रकाशित कीं, जिनमें माना गया कि इस्लाम कई "पिछड़े" लोगों का धर्म था, लेकिन शायद धर्म के कारण नहीं बल्कि किसान धर्मांतरित लोगों की मूल स्थितियों के कारण (पृष्ठ 15)। उदाहरण के लिए, साहित्यिक भाषा के रूप में उर्दू पर बांग्ला को प्राथमिकता देने के मुद्दे को भी एक वर्ग की आवश्यकता के रूप में देखा गया क्योंकि ज्यादातर विशेषाधिकार प्राप्त मुसलमान उर्दू का अध्ययन कर सकते थे और आम लोग बांग्ला का इस्तेमाल करते थे (पृष्ठ 141)। बंगाली मुसलमानों को टैगोर और बंकिम चंद्र चट्टोपाध्याय की भाषा होने पर गर्व था, भले ही लोगों ने इनमें से कुछ साहित्यिक कृतियों में प्रदर्शित हिंदू मतभेदों को स्वीकार किया हो। उदाहरण के लिए, काजी नजरूल इस्लाम ने अपनी कविता विद्रोही में सामाजिक आलोचना के साथ दिव्यता में अद्वैतवादी विश्वास की (हिंदू) वेदांतिक अवधारणा का उपयोग किया। इस्लाम उस समय की राजनीति को नेविगेट करने का एक बिंदु था, लेकिन अन्य चिंताओं पर स्पष्ट मिसाल नहीं बनी; इस समय के दौरान इस्लाम में सुधार भी हुए और कई बंगाली विचारकों ने विज्ञान और संस्कृत मूल के शब्दों को समायोजित किया। मुस्लिम साहित्य समाज के एक विचारक, काजी अब्दुल वदूद ने संदेश को बड़े दर्शकों से जोड़ने के लिए पैगंबर को “महापुरुष” तक संदर्भित किया (95)। 1929 में, सेवक प्रकाशन में काम करने वाले मुहम्मद अकरम खान ने तर्क दिया काजी अब्दुल वदूद

इसी तरह, जुत्शी ने दिखाया कि 1910 के दशक के कश्मीरी कवियों ने लोगों को पीरों की बात सुनने के बजाय कुरान पढ़ने के लिए प्रेरित किया (पृष्ठ 153)। जुत्शी ने क्षेत्र की लंबे समय से चली आ रही असमान वर्ग संरचना पर भी जोर दिया: राजा ललितादित्य, जिन्होंने 8वीं शताब्दी में कश्मीर पर शासन किया था, को राजतरंगिणी में यह कहते हुए उद्धृत किया गया है: "किसानों का दमन किया जाना चाहिए और उनकी जीवन शैली शहर के लोगों की तुलना में निम्न होनी चाहिए अन्यथा बाद वाले को नुकसान होगा।" (पृष्ठ 65) इसी तरह, राजस्व प्रवाह ने ग्रामीण क्षेत्रों की तुलना में श्रीनगर जैसे शहरी केंद्रों को लाभ पहुँचाया।

रीकास्टिंग द रीजन का पहला अध्याय पाठक को उन्नीसवीं सदी के उत्तरार्ध से लेकर बीसवीं सदी के दूसरे दशक तक बंगाली मुस्लिम साहित्यिक संस्कृतियों की एक संतुलित तस्वीर से परिचित कराता है। उन्नीसवीं सदी के दौरान मुसलमानी बांग्ला या दो-भासी बांग्ला का उत्कर्ष, ढाका में कई ग्रंथों के प्रकाशन से स्पष्ट रूप से मुस्लिम पाठकों के बीच इसकी लोकप्रियता, और एक मानकीकृत, अधिक संस्कृतनिष्ठ बांग्ला भाषा के आगमन के साथ एक कमतर भाषा के रूप में इसका धीरे-धीरे हाशिए पर जाना, बंगाल में प्रिंट संस्कृति के इतिहास के अन्यथा उपेक्षित तत्वों में दुर्लभ अंतर्दृष्टि प्रदान करता है। बोस मुसलमानी बांग्ला में पुस्तकों की निरंतरता का पता लगाते हैं, जिनके विषय यूसुफ-ज़ुलेखा और हातेम ताई की लोक कथाओं पर केंद्रित थे, बावजूद इसके कि संस्कृतनिष्ठ बांग्ला की बढ़ती व्यापकता और स्वीकार्यता ने ऐसे विषयों को अनिवार्य रूप से बाहर रखा और इसके बजाय रामायण और महाभारत की कहानियों के अनुवादों पर ध्यान केंद्रित किया। बंगाली हिंदू लेखकों द्वारा बंगाली भाषा से फारसी और अरबी शब्दों को मिटाने के दृढ़ निश्चय ने बंगाली साहित्य को जन्म दिया, जिसने बंगाली मुसलमानों को तीन परिचित पात्रों में विभाजित कर दिया: 'स्वार्थी किसान...(अगला) मुसलमानों में से एक बंगाल के लिए विदेशी...(क) तीसरी रूढ़ि में स्थिर समाज के लिए खतरे के रूप में घुमंतू मुस्लिम पुनरुत्थानवादी को शामिल किया गया' (पृष्ठ 17)। बोस ने साहित्यिक और राजनीतिक हस्तियों के लेखन में बंगाली मुसलमानों के बारे में इस तरह की लोकप्रिय नकारात्मक रूढ़ियों के लगातार निर्माण को नोट किया है। हिंदू और मुस्लिम अभिजात वर्ग दोनों द्वारा उपहास किए जाने के बाद, मुसलमानी बांग्ला केवल घुमंतू मुस्लिम पुनरुत्थानवादियों और उपदेशकों के गीतों और शिक्षाओं के कम विवादास्पद स्थानों में एक 'सामाजिक भावना और भाषाई रूप' के रूप में जीवित रहा, बंगाली के मानकीकरण के लिए हिंदू, मुस्लिम या मिशनरी प्रयासों से बहुत कम प्राप्त हुआ। बंगाली मुस्लिम लेखन के ये उभरते हुए मुख्य सूत्र 'कलकत्ता में वैचारिक यातायात' अध्याय में फिर से दिखाई देते हैं जिसमें लेखक उस समय के कुछ प्रमुख व्यक्तियों: नजूल इस्लाम और मुजफ्फर अहमद की साहित्यिक दुनिया की खोज करता है। इस्लाम और बंगाली राष्ट्रवाद की राजनीतिक विचारधाराओं का सामाजिक न्याय और समतावादी मूल्यों के प्रति गहरी सहानुभूति और प्रतिबद्धता के साथ एकीकरण इन दोनों महत्वपूर्ण बंगाली मुस्लिम लेखकों के लेखन को रेखांकित करता है, जिनके विचारों के परिवेश में 1920 के दशक की शुरुआत का 'धूमकेतु क्षण' शामिल था। ज़मींदारों, पूंजीपतियों और राज्य की निरंतर आलोचना के माध्यम से वर्ग चेतना के निर्माण पर इसका ध्यान केंद्रित था। लैंगोल जैसी पत्रिकाओं में नज़रुल की कविताओं को एक शक्तिशाली सामाजिक आलोचना के रूप में मनाया गया, विशेष रूप से संगठित धर्म के उनके खंडन के लिए।

1920 का दशक 1930 और 1940 के दशक के मध्य से भिन्न है, जब बंगाली मुसलमानों की अपने हिंदू समकक्षों से सांस्कृतिक विशिष्टता के विचारों को साहित्यिक क्षेत्र के माध्यम से बढ़ावा दिया गया था, जिसमें बुलबुल जैसी पत्रिकाएँ शामिल थीं और राजनीतिक अधिकारों और चुनावी राजनीति पर प्रवचन के माध्यम से इसे और मजबूत किया गया था।

जबकि नायर का विवरण अधिक सतर्क है, जो विभाजन जैसे कथित "अवांछित" राजनीतिक परिणामों के प्रति पंजाबी हिंदू के अविश्वास की ओर इशारा करता है, बोस द्वारा बंगाल का विवरण एक समायोजनकारी साहित्यिक संस्कृति के संदर्भ में अधिक आशा प्रदान करता है। बोस ने पहले अध्याय की शुरुआत में और किताब के पिछले कवर पर खिलाफत के एक गीत का एक बहुत ही मार्मिक उद्धरण शामिल किया है-

“हालाँकि अब आज़ादी नहीं है, फिर भी आप क्यों चिंतित हैं

इस्लाम आज़ादी है, मुसलमान आज़ाद हैं, इंसान हमेशा आज़ाद हैं।”

मुझे यह रवैया अधिकांश समय और धर्मों के समाज सुधारकों के लिए बहुत शिक्षाप्रद लगता है।

.

for a sample of a contemporary sadhu poet expressing high ideas in Hindi and Bangla (10th and 16th minute in the video)--

On the East India Company’s Attitude Toward Slavery in the 1700s

As far as Eurocentric accounts of slavery are concerned, malaria played a key role in the use and abuse of sub-saharan African people in agricultural plantation contexts. Up to the twentieth century, geneticists including those from Turkey, Britain and Arabic-speaking countries, debated on the biological factors that demarcated the “boundaries between white and African, Arab and Turk.”[1] Many of them attributed African ancestry to the “problem” of sickle cell related diseases, which has also been a widely cited the reason for justifying the usage of African slave labor in the Americas. Following the arrival of falciparum malaria in the 1680s, “the colonies where conditions were more favorable to endemic malaria also showed the greatest rise in slavery… In all, the introduction of falciparum malaria explains about 75% of the dramatic rise in the proportion of African slaves in the US south after 1690.”[2] White Europeans as well as wadi Arabs suffered from malaria and certain social groupings that segregated them from sub-saharan Africans were partly the result of this phenotypic difference.[3]

The situation was very different in Asia around the same time. Similar to the socioeconomic situation in Tang Dynasty China (the 7th to 9th century), the phenotype of slaves did not form the main concern for those who sold and controlled them in the subcontinent or Southeast Asia in the 18th century.[4] Religious manuals offer some insights to the attitudes towards slavery in Asia. “Al Hidayah fi Sharh Bidayat al-Mubtadi,” also known as The Hedeya, was a 12th century Islamic legal manual by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani. Translated from Arabic into Persian in 1760 by Indian scholars upon invitation of an East India Company scholar, it was later edited by the same Company scholar—Charles Hamilton—into an abbreviated English version. There are sections devoted to explaining how to manage one’s slaves within the Central Asian Hanafi madhhab framework. In the opening dedication to Warren Hastings, the Company boss, in the translated English version, Hamilton does not comment on the explicit acceptance of what his later generations fervently opposed—the evil of slavery—within the text. He focused on the functional purpose of the text: to govern the subcontinent’s Muslim subjects within an Anglo-Muhammadan framework. Slavery did exist in various forms prior to the arrival of the British, as documented in Slavery in South Asia. The reasons differed greatly from problems of the malaria-infested plantations of the Americas. Kinship patterns of slaves in South Asia adapted to local customs and identities. Arakan slave expeditions into the Bengal region temporarily abated during various strong rulers as well, which deterred slave raids. However, tantra orders and practices suffered ignominy as a result of the Islamic rulers' understanding and boundary demarcation of normative humanhood and sexuality through their new religious outlook. (See Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal . )

Tarikh-i-Assam (History of Assam) was written by court historian Ibn Muhammad Wali Ahmad during the Mughal period and provided a description of these raids. In a quote of this text by British administrator Maurice Collis (1889 - 1973), the historian better known as Shihabuddin Talish recorded: "The Arakan pirates, who were both Portuguese and natives, used constantly to come by water and plunder Bengal. They carried off such Hindus and Muslims as they could seize, pierced the palms of their hands, passed thin slips of cane through the holes and shut them huddled together under the decks of their ships. Every morning they flung down some uncooked rice, as we do for fowl…Many noblemen and women of family had to undergo the disgrace of slavery and concubinage. Not a house eventually was left inhabited on either side of the rivers leading from Chittagong to Dacca.” 

Maurice Collis continued to write on the curious connections between slavery and religion:

“The pirates, the slavers, who were [the friar's] countrymen and co-religionists, helped the Mission in a curious way. When a captain returned to Dianga after a rain, with the holds of his galleys full of Hindu and Moslem peasants, these unfortunates were visited by the friar before they were sold into slavery and, he claims, he was able to convert a very large number of them to the religion of the cruel men who had pierced their hands, and fed them like fowl. The ironic comedy of such a proceeding did not strike him or, if it did, he justified it in this way: the Portuguese in defending the frontier of Arakan against the Mughal were, in effect, continuing the agelong crusade against the Moslem infidel, which had been the glory of Portugal for so many centuries and had inspired da Gama in his voyages eastward.” Among the 5400 captured annually, the Portuguese friar Manrique managed to convert 2000.

Yet it is interesting that barely one century after the emergence of Enlightenment thought, the East India Company accepted the lack of human equality in the region where they traded and co-opted these texts. The conflict between what officials noted as “Islam” and “modernity” was also a conflict between colonialism and modernity, which centered on the control of labor and its surplus within designated spaces. The empire’s interest in capital accumulation gave rise to other polities, such as the Gulf States, in the twentieth century. As scholar Adam Hanieh wrote, Arab workers in the Gulf was replaced by a non-Arab, mostly South Asian male, disposable class. He termed it as the “spatial fix” in which the Gulf states managed the capital-labor contradiction.[5] Scholar Neha Vora also documented in her anthropological work the emergence of being identified as South Asian or “Indian” in the Gulf as linked with their marginalized working class occupations. 

After the formal abolition of slavery, historian Eric Williams published his seminal book Capitalism and Slavery. He argued that the British Empire abolished slavery due to material interests such as the waning profits in the slave labor. I will research into the British archives to explore the tenuous balance the East India Company struck between Enlightenment values of equality and conditions of inequality for the purpose of revenue extraction in the 1700s, such as Charles Hamilton’s compilation The Hedeya. While many scholars wrote on this type of Orientalist knowledge industry of India,[6] my project will show that the divergences from the “ground” was possibly a conscious one, especially in areas such as slavery. If knowledge about humans through empirical methods à la Kant was not the Company’s goal, perhaps it is not a surprise that the empire projected itself as both the beacon of equality and the protector of bonded labor regimes.[7]

Endnotes

[1] Burton, Elise. 2019. “Red Crescents: Race, Genetics, and Sickle Cell Disease in the Middle East.” Isis. Volume 110, Number 2 June.

[2] Mosquitoes, malaria and the spread of slavery in the US.  https://wp.unil.ch/hecimpact/mosquitoes-malaria-and-the-spread-of-slavery-in-the-us/

[3] Reilly, Benjamin. 2014. "Mutawalladeen and Malaria: African Slavery in Arabian Wadis." Journal of Social History 47, no. 4: 878-96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43308820.

[4] New historical works on supra-local connections emerged in places under French colonial control as well as Dutch-controlled Indonesia. Filliot’s study of the Mascarenes showed that slaves from various Asian and African societies converging in one slave system.

 Titas Chakraborty, Matthias van Rossum, Slave Trade and Slavery in Asia—New Perspectives, Journal of Social History, Volume 54, Issue 1, Fall 2020, Pages 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shaa004 

[5] Hanieh. Adam. 2011. Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

[6] See works by C. A. Bayly and Bernard Cohn.

[7] Kant, Immanuel. 1798. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.

Solidarity, Dissimulation, and Making Space

Many recent articles now have discussed the rather unwelcoming world of activism and how it could potentially discourage activism. I personally have yet to be fully engaged in any offline activist community, due to my transient occupation as a student. But I do see these trends and feel the effect. Similarly, there have been heated debates revolving the politics of Ta-Nahisi Coates and Cornel West. While I do agree with West's analysis, there are also the issues of authority and personal relations at stake: Who gets to call someone a neoliberal? Who are we talking to? Where is the public sphere? Twitter? Cafes? Likewise, there have been intense name-calling among Arabs in the U.S., especially in light of the Lebanese-Saudi tensions. A Lebanese performer in Boston criticized the policies of Saudi Arabia last month, which caused many people to leave the venue in either outrage or dismay. I was not there so I am not sure what was exactly said. I wish there was a way for people to share their opinions without resigning to a simple refusal. Al Jazeera also published a good piece about the value of connected histories and a certain type of mindset that prevents these histories. I agree with him that "What we are witnessing throughout the Arab and Muslim world is a battle for the soul of the Muslim past to inhabit the spirit of the Muslim future." Perhaps that is also why Cemil Aydin's history book on The Idea of the Muslim world is so timely. He also shares a lot of contemporary connections with politics on a great episode of the Ottoman History podcast. He argues: through tracing the historical roots of Pan-Islamism, one can become wary of the sloganeering of politicians and rebel factions. The author of the Al Jazeera piece, Professor Hamid Dabashi, also published a book Being a Muslim in the World engaging in similar themes. 

I also have been questioned by an Iraqi Kurdish person in the U.S. in regards to my allegiance vis-a-vis Arab-Kurd relations, which prompted me to think: How should we make space for one another in this context?  Much effort is dedicated to explaining Others to an "American" public, but identities are fluid and Muslim / Brown-skinned folks living in the U.S. also should provide space for each other. In other words, we are also entitled to the public sphere to process our own beefs as much as anyone. 

A friend studying in Turkey wrote about the book markets of Istanbul and how patrons usually avoid political subjects. This phenomenon can be traced to the Ottoman era, and is a mark of being "cultured." Nowadays, most of us in the U.S. no longer have that leisure to be that "cultured." At the same time, too much criticism also can be a hindrance to forming solidarity.

It also reminds me of a history paper presented on a learned scholar who practiced dissimulation in the Ottoman era. The paper argued that the scholar was Shi'a and most people around him knew about it for decades on end. In my understanding, even dissimulation, in either the religious or political sense, is not simply an individual act and requires patience for and understanding of each other. Dissimulation (into whiteness or heteronormativity) requires not only the person to meticulously dissimulate and pose as a  authentic member of the "mainstream," but also a community of people who take him/her at his/her words and not reveal.

In a rather different context, for many who faced discriminatory checkpoints in the post-2005 urban Iraq, pretending to be a person from different sect was an important survival skill. While the scale of violence has yet to become that high in the U.S., there are definitely rising tensions around me. Much has been written about how to organize without leaking information about undocumented people to the ICE. Yet I am also speaking about a social issue. At times, exclusionary views seem to be much easier to espouse than inclusive ones, which then silences and erases certain people's experiences. How can we devise politics that allows space for thinking and debating, without invoking too much of a person's identity that s/he/they would rather not speak about? 

Below is an interesting passage on South Asian-Iraqi connections from page 45 of Recasting the Region by historian Neilesh Bose. Even though he was writing about political organizing of the early twentieth century, it is equally relevant to today as well. 

“Shatt-il Arab” one of Nazrul’s most well-known poems from this era, expresses the feeling of a Bengali soldier in Iraq, near the Shatt-il Arab, and his loving feeling of admiration for Arab heroes in Iraq, the ‘land of martyrs’. Repeated laments over the ‘spilt blood of valiant Arabs’ and pure Arabian riverbanks establish the poem as a paean to Arabic culture and Islamic civilization in that region. The poem also sings a song of fondness to that ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates as a measure of universalist Islamic identity. The end of the poem places the suffering of the Bengali soldier, the pain, sorrow, and hurt felt in war, and in death, alongside the Iraqi army: Iraqi army! Here in this story / We in the Bengal army / Can say your suffering is ours!” Regarding Muslims identity, Nazrul places the Bengali and the Iraqi into a common Muslim world of mutual love and admiration. The Bengali protagonist remains a Bengali, never to be shorn of a particular cultural location. Muslim identity is part of a larger universalism which doesn’t exclude, but rather, actively includes the local sense of identity. It is one of the first poems to appear after WWI that combines a look towards the future with a feeling of belonging in the Muslim and Bengali world.

While one may be skeptical about the "objectivity" in the idealism invoked by the poet Nazrul, it is also a breeze amidst heated geopolitical contestations and certain venomous youtube comments. 

Iraq, Indian soldiers within the British forces in a suburb of western Baghdad in 1917. First shared by Old Iraqi Pictures