Glimpses of Hindu persecution in early days of East Pakistan
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Home2019JanuaryGlimpses of Hindu persecution in early days of East Pakistan
Glimpses of Hindu persecution in early days of East Pakistan
January 16, 2019 অনিমিত্র চক্রবর্তীEnglish Corner / ব্যানার0 Comments
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[This is only an excerpt taken from a book named “India Partitioned and Minorities in Pakistan”, penned by Shri Pravash Chandra Lahiri, which is largely unavailable nowadays. Shri Lahiri had been a revolutionary, ardent member of Anushilan Samiti, participated in the much famed Dharail dacoity. Later he joined Congress and remained the same even after partition of Bengal and independence in 1947. Despite the entire odds of worst consequences and braving all he remained in East Pakistan till the early 1960s only to be the last ray of hope for devastated Hindus. – Editorial]
The Quade-e-Azam – the supreme leader – had two sets of teeth in his mouth like that of a rouge elephant – one set was for the show of beauty, and the other was for the real purpose of mastication. His first declaration from the throne of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan as its President as that ‘the Hindus would cease to be Hindus and the Muslims would cease to Muslims in matters of administration’ henceforward and thus form into a Pakistani Nation. This elated the hearts of the politically conscious and nationalist leaders of the minority community in Pakistan i.e. the non-Muslims on the one hand and the people of the world at large on the other. This was the set of his outer teeth for show of beauty but the real teeth of mastication lay covered elsewhere within the mouth – nobody could see that; only the victims could feel and appreciate the monstrosity of them. The Great Leader Mr. Zinnah had his real teeth for mastication in his policy of internal administration which stood for the chauvinistic aggressive Moslem nationalism.
The fundamental policy of internal administration was to create a homogeneous state of one community alone. The whole administrative machinery was run with this end in view. It is, therefore, with the first flush of independent Pakistan that a chauvinistic aggressive Moslem administration began to rise its ugly head and preach the tenets of two-nation theory both from the press and platform, and manifest himself in militant fashion, thus making the lives of the Hindus most miserable from the very start. A planned programmer of Moslemisation if possible, and if not, elimination, was pursued. The Muslim League and its allies of Muslim religious parties openly preached that Hindus could not be regarded as an integral part of the Pakistani Nation and that their status would be like that of “Zimmy” in an Islamic state. The word “Zimmy” had a peculiar meaning with the Muslims in general, whatever might have been the real meaning of the term. The common people of the Muslim community took it to mean as “hostages” for their co-religionists elsewhere in India. The responsible Muslim leaders who were in charge of running the administration also began to prate from the public platform that Pakistan was the homeland of Muslims.
This heightened the sense of superiority complex in the minds of the Muslims in general on the one hand, and depressed the Hindus on the other, so much so that they also began to think they were only aliens, having no right of their own to live in the country except on the mercy of the Muslims. The leaders did not stop here in mere propagating this fantastic ideology – they went so far as to put down discriminatory provisions between the Muslims and the non-Muslims in the Constitution of Pakistan. The Constitution that was framed in 1956 and subsequently abrogated by Martial Law and the Constitution, now presented by President Ayub, contain the obnoxious discriminatory provision that a non-Muslim could not be the Head of the State of Pakistan on the ground that a non-Muslim who does not subscribe to the tenets of Islam cannot be entrusted with the sovereign responsibility of running the state.
The very birth of Pakistan gave a big jolt to the Indian nationalism because of its sacrifice of the fundamental creed and principles, and at the same time thrilled the Muslims of Pakistan with the hilarity of a tremendous victory. This first flush of joy again manifested itself in all its ugliness of lawlessness of among the ‘Muslim National Guards’ and their allies of all the lawless elements and hooligans in the country. Lawlessness prevailed everywhere and the Hindus were shaken to their backbone due to forcible occupation of their lands and properties, crime against their women here and there, and a host of other acts of hooliganism in words and deeds. The government’s policy in seizure of all the firearms from the Hindus alone and granting of licences for holding fire-arms to the Muslims in general and to the lawless elements, including the ‘National Guards’ in particular, added to the sense of insecurity and utter helplessness of the Hindus. There was none to raise them from the morass of this state of mind on the official sides who alone could do that by enforcing law and order in all its strictness, or even if there have been any well-meaning and non-communal officers of district level – their number was very thin, though they were totally ineffective due to the policy of the government emanating from the top.
I have seen this in my district of Rajshahi. The first district magistrate in Rajshahi after independence had been Khondker Ali Tayeb – a very non-communal and well-meaning official – but he too, could give hardly any protection to the minority non-Muslims; he was too helpless to protect himself even from the insults and humiliations hurled against him from the rowdy elements of the majority community. He was nick-named as ‘Kali’ (a Hindu goddess) by his co-religionists for his non-communal approach in the matter of administration. Not only this, he was filthily abused in a public meeting in Rajshahi town while he and Mr. Hassenali, a minister of the Muslim League government in East Bengal, were present in the meeting; yet neither he nor the Minister himself could have the courage or capacity to bring the offender to book! This was the-then condition and shape of things in the country. When the District Magistrate fails to protect himself and a Minister could hardly give any protection to him, how could it be expected that the same District Magistrate would be in a position to give any protection to the minorities! With all his sincere wishes and desires, he also could not; nay, he was transferred to the Secretariate table in Dacca, from the executive office of a District Magistrate to the position of a dignified clerk!
Then came Mr. A. Majid, a non-Bengalee Muslim, in the place of Mr. K. A. Tayeb as the District Magistrate. This gentleman requires special mention, only for a contrast between his and his predecessor’s executive actions and subsequent official careers. This may give an insight into the policy of the government.
One day I met Mr. Majid at his residence and as a member of the East Bengal Legislature I offered my fullest co-operation to him. When leaving his residence, two prominent local leaders of the Muslim League Party, who were waiting for an interview with the D. M. in his bungalow, told me that there had been a serious communal disturbance at Santipur in the district of Nadia in Wet Bengal (India), as a result of which there had been influx of refugees in the town and the local Muslims were very much agitated over the issue and decided to ask me to go over to West Bengal for inducing the government there for remedy and immediate action. On this, my answer to the friends was that I was a good Pakistani citizen as any of them. If a combined deputation of the Hindus and Muslims was sent there to approach the Government of West Bengal, I was ready to accompany but if I was only asked to move in the matter because of my Hindu faith, I would be the last man to go. I was not here in Pakistan as a hostage for India; nor was the Government of India a non-secular Hindu one. My answer was straight and cut and the friends were not satisfied and they threatened that there would be serious repercussions over the Hindus in the district.
These talks give an inkling of the Muslim mind prevailing since partition of India and achievement of independence. The idea of hostage system was in the mind of the Muslim leaders from the very start of Pakistan and this has been worked up to fever-heat by the Ayub regime, which is nothing but a very aggressive edition of the old Muslim League one.
The above talks were held in the month of Ramazan – the holy fast – which was coming to the close. There was a persistent rumour in the town of Rajshahi that there would be a communal attack on the Hindus on the ‘Id’ day. As a member of the legislature who assured the District Magistrate of his fullest co-operation, I informed him by a letter of my talks with the Muslim leaders and the rumour current in the town and the panic caused thereby among the minority community. Mr. Majid sent me a very insulting letter in reply which only showed the trend of his mind and his sympathy with the Muslim leaders. At the outset of his letter he condemned me for not uttering any reproach on the Government of West Bengal and had the audacity to advise me and all other Hindus with the following words: “The Hindus are living here with divided loyalties for their personal ends. As a friend I advise you and others to drop this idea and do for the good of Pakistan with the wishes of the people……” In reply I sent him another letter and I told him outright that no amount of threat (he threatened in his letter as well) from him would cause me to deviate from the path of service to the people and as long as there would remain any opportunity to serve the people, I should there be in Pakistan. In conclusion I said, “I value your friendship, not because I desire any material gain from you but because that you happen to be the servant of an independent state of which I am a citizen.” This reply was too much for him and he expressed that he was nobody’s servant save and except that of “Allah”. He was not even the servant of the state!
As a servant of ‘Allah’ and in His name he did create a havoc among the minorities in the district. He got the octogenarian manager of the Taherpur-Raj, Shri Rasiklal Roy, arrested under the Security Act (detention without trial) for his offence that he fed the coffin-bearers of his dead daughter-in-law (wife of his son) and some other guests and relatives on the eleventh day of the death according to the Hindu shastras, as previously arranged, but accidentally, the morning radio-news of the day (Pakistan news) announced the death of the Quade-e-Azam Mr. Jinnah. Certain disgruntled Muslim tenants under the Taherpur-Raj seized this opportunity and complained to the District Magistrate that the manager of the estate was so much elated with the news of the Quade-e-Azam’s death that he had arranged a feast on the sad occasion, and the D. M. at once ordered for his arrest. He was so much over-zealous to uphold the safety and security of the state that he did not spare an illiterate milk-maid from the clutches of the Security Act for her offence of selling whey and butter on the day of the Qauade’s death!
Nay, these are not all. Arrests were made from all quarters of the district. Shri Birendra Nath Sarkar, a young lawyer of the town who had been a fighter for freedom of India from the British yoke from his very early days, was also arrested under the self-same Security Act on a very fantastic charge of causing communal disturbance in the district of Murshidabad in West Bengal (India), even though he had never been in Murshidabad district for several years and there had been no communal riot there at the time of his arrest! Thus fair and impartial justice for the Hindus came to be the first casualty in Pakistan on her achievement of independence. At the connivance of the District Magistrate himself the palace of the Puthia-Charani-Raj was forcibly occupied by the Kamar Begum having been aided by a pose of National Guards under the captaincy of Jonab (now, deceased) Shamsul Huq. A day earlier to this forcible occupation, all the licensed guns and fire-arms of the Charani-Raj were taken away to Rajshahi Collectorate by the order of the D. M. on the pretext of examining them. This Begum did not stop short at occupying the palace only. She expropriated the entire movable and immovable properties of late Kumar N. N. Roy of Charani-Raj on the plea of her being the legal wife of Kumar after his so called conversion of faith from Hinduism to Islam, even though her case in the Calcutta High Court could not stand on evidences. Puthia, which had once been a seat of Hindu culture and education and which grew up to be a semi-urban township due to accumulation of the Hindu employees for generations together, became denuded of her glory of the past due to the atrocities of the Begum and her allies and the Hindus began to move helter-skelter to other places for safety and security. No law of the land could give them any protection whatsoever. Furthermore, during the ‘Te-bhaga’ movement (claiming two-third share of the crop by the actual tillers of the soil) under the leadership of the Communist Party and its leader, Smt. Ila Mitra, a tremendous havoc was created among the Sontals and the other Adibasi communities by the district authorities in their acts of molestation of the girls and women including the leader, Mrs. Mitra, and burning of their huts and putting them to abnormal physical torture after their arrests at random on mass scale. A graphic description of the acts of violence was given in the report prepared by the Father of a Roman Catholic Church at Andharkotha and I believe that the report is still kept in the archives of the India Government in Delhi. In short, ther D. M. acted as a little nabab of the olden days and there was no remedy for the acts of oppression on the Hindus and fomenting of bitter communalism in the administration as well as in the minds of the Muslims.
I brought all his misdeeds to the notice of Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan, Sir Nazimuddin, Mr. Nurul Amin, the then Prime Minister, Governor-General and Chief Minister respectively, but to no effect. On the contrary, he was subsequently transferred, though after a long time when the Hindus were totally crippled in mind and spirit in the district of Rajshahi, to Mymensingh, the biggest district of undivided Bengal, predominated by the Hindu zamindars and landlords, perhaps to try his ruthless hand of oppression there as well.
He went to Mymensingh and his first act was to requisition of 700 Hindu houses at one stroke of a pen. He became a cent percent success wherever he did go, in breaking and elevating the morale of the Hindus and the Muslims respectively, and he has been awarded with promotion after promotion in his official career by the Government of Pakistan. The official careers of late Mr. Ali Tayeb and Mr. Majid would amply show and prove the anti-Hindu desires and designs behind the policy of the government. The desires and designs of the Government of Pakistan were, at first, in a nebulous condition under the determined but shaky rule of the original Muslim League Party, weakened by internal quarrels for power after the death of Mr. Zinnah and Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan; but as time rolled on with political vicissitudes. Mr. Ayub Khan – the Chief of the Army – seized power for his military ‘junta’ on abrogation of the constitution by Mr. Iskandar Mirza – the-then president of Pakistan – and subsequently formed a new Muslim League Party of his own which was only an aggressive edition of the original Muslim League and ruthlessly carried on his aggressive designs to make the miserable lives of the Hindus more miserable, so that they may either be totally eliminated or annihilated from the social life of Pakistan.
The rot in the Hindu mind had started with the partition of India – it became more and more aggravated due to the unsocial activities of the Muslim League Party and the discriminatory treatment of the government, and at last the Ayub’s Government completely crushed and crumbled the Hindus by its diabolical measures in legislations and physical annihilation as well. The rot is now complete and eagerness of the Hindus of Pakistan to migrate to India has increased cent percent only for upholding honour, safety and security.
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