ISPaD Partition Center Journal 2024
ISSN 2377-7567
77 Years of Indian Partition;
India-Pakistan Independence
53 Years of Bangladesh Independence & Genocide, & Pakistan Partition
Editor: Dr. Sachi G. Dastidar
Published by
Indian
Subcontinent Partition Documentation Project (ISPaD)
Established: 2009
Jamaica,
Queens, New York City
___________________________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
The
ISPaD Project Annual Report – How
this NGO has a Tangible “Lifesaving Impact”, even Before Merging with The
Probini Foundation Shuvo
G Dastidar Page 1
Waiting on Borderlines: Mapping
Exile Histories in South Asia Harmain Ahmer p 4
Appeal to the World Leaders for Saving Indigenous Minority Lives Overcoming Prejudice and Censorship Sachi G Dastidar p 15
Bangladesh Indigenous Minority Oppression Since August 5, 2024. September 19, 2024, Report Dipankar Ghose p 18
The Ubiquitous term, Worldwide, “post-WWII Holocaust Remembrance” in
Comparison to the Nonexistence of Education or Knowledge about Genocide
Throughout the Indian Subcontinent
Shuvo G. Dastidar p 25
Information P 31
Sponsors: 31-35
Cover
Picture: August 2024 Protest at the
U.N., New York City, against attack on indigenous minorities in Bangladesh
after Prime Minister fled the Nation..
Cover Photo
Credit: Sachi G. Dastidar
© ISPaD Project Inc. NY Date: October 2024 Editor: Dr. Sachi G. Dastidar
Availability: ISPaD Office, 85-60 Parsons Blvd, 1st
Floor, Jamaica, NY 11432
Phone: 917-524-0035 Email: Ispad1947@gmail.com
Web: YouTube— ispad1947 Channel; Blog: Empireslastcasualty.blogspot and Empireslastcasualty2.blogspot
Editorial Board: Dr. Sachi G. Dastidar, Editor, New York; Dr. Alireza Ebrahimi, Dr. Saradindu Mukherji, Dr. Mohsin Siddique, Dr. Caroline Sawyer, Dr. Edi Manetovic Price $5.00
The
ISPaD Project Annual Report
Indian Subcontinent Partition Documentation Project or ISPaD’s Recent
Work Achievements:
Shuvo
G. Dastidar
Coordinator
Mr. Priyotosh Dey, Chairman of
Partition Center, visited two educational organizations in India supporting
poor and orphaned children donating funds from Partition Center. They are
Bankura, West Bengal, India
Durgapur,
West Bengal, India:
Partition
Center and Probini Supporters Established a Nihar Kana Ghosh Educational
Endowment for the poor and the very-poor to
be managed and run by Pranab Ashram of Madaripur, Bangladesh. Ms. Nihar Kana
stood first in Bengal, now Bangladesh, in school exam in 1919, possibly the
first girl to stand first, winning British ruler’s praise and gold medal. Her
commemorative is being built in Madaripur now. It is a fixed deposit account.
Funds were
donated by, in order of
donation, are, Prof. Dr. Sachi G & Dr. Shefali S. Dastidar, Mr. & Mrs.
Anil & Chhaya Gupta, Mrs. Aruna Baskota, Mr. Sushil Sinha, Miss Shriya
Lakshmi (9-year-old), Mr. Shuvo Ghosh Dastidar, Mrs. Apala Eagan, Mr. Khurshedul
Islam, Mrs. Pratima Roy Chowdhury, Prof. Dr. Sujata Ghosh Dastidar, Dr.
Dipankar Ghosh Dastidar, Mr. Shirsendu Brahma, and Rev. Arlene Wilhelm. Donors
are from diverse nationalities and religions, but with one mind. Donation ranged
from $20 to $2,100 dollars. There were donors from the U.S. and India.
Books,
Journals and Reports Received:
Bangladesh Hindu Persecution Report:
Jan-Dec 2022, Smriti O
Chetona (Memory and Consciousness)
Behind Latticed Marble---Inner Worlds of
Women” by Jyotirmoyee Devi
Sen, has been gifted to the ISPaD Library of New York. The writer won the prestigious
Rabindra Puraskar Award for Bengali writing in 1973. A review may be found at: https://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/behind-latticed-marble-inner-worlds-of-women-by-jyotirmoyee-devi-sen/
Bengal’s Hindu Holocaust – Partition of India
and Its Aftermath, by Sachi G. Dastidar, Garuda Publisher, Delhi, India; 2022
Churchill’s Secret War – The British Empire
and the Ravaging of India during WWII, Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books, NY; 2010.
Bangladesh Hindu Persecution Report: Jan-Dec
2023, Smriti O Chetona
(Memory and Consciousness).
Hudson Ganga Merger: Joining of America’s
Hudson River with India’s Ganga – Revealing Worldwide Friendliness and
Fanaticism, and Openness and Oppression, Sachi G. Dastidar & Shuvo G. Dastidar, Author’s Tranquility Press,
U.S.; 2024.
_______________
Presentation at Queens Partition Center: The
book discusses joining of two of the largest open societies of U.S. and India,
as experienced by the authors. U.S. colonized indigenous land and welcomed
millions of people from all over the world, while India is the only indigenous
culture to survive with tens of millions killed in all neighboring countries
and gave shelter to tens of millions of diverse refugees from those nations.
Presenters included
of Shuvo G. Dastidar and Sachi G. Dastidar, and the first purchaser of the
book, Prof. Dr. Alireza Ebrahimi, and many others. It was held at the Partition
Center. See Hudson Ganga Merger Joining of America’s
Hudson River with India’s Ganga (empireslastcasualty2.blogspot.com)
Bibhuti
Bhushan Ghosh-U.S. Independence Day Education Fund: A fixed-deposit endowment was opened on 4th of July, the
American Independence Day. The endowment is named Bibhuti Bhusan Ghosh-American
Independence Day Education Endowment for the Poor. It is a very important
landmark for us. Donors, in order of donation, are: Sabyasachi & Shefali
Dastidar, Ms. Sumedha Jana Dastidar, Dilip Chakravortti, Ms. Linda Reenie, Ms. Aruna
Barskota, Prof. Dr. Sujata Ghosh Dastidar, Miss Shriya-Lakshmi (9-year-old),
Anil & Chhaya Gupta, Mr. Amitabha & Keoli Chatterjee, Ms. Dara
Rodriguez, Shuvo Ghosh Dastidar, and Anindita & Sumit Ghosh Dastidar. Our
donation ranged from $20 to $2,500 dollars. There are donors from the U.S.,
Canada and India, and of several nationalities. The fund will be managed by
Madaripur City Ashram of Bangladesh, headed by Monk Maharaj. He has appointed
all the donors as his advisor. Please visit the historic areas near the ashram
and stay in their guest house.
******************
Waiting on Borderlines: Mapping
Exile Histories in South Asia
Harmain Ahmer
Grad History Student, Arizona State U
“Waiting
in itself is a terrible thing”[1]
Amidst hours spent talking with and interviewing Naushad sahib, the spectacle of displacement was perhaps most aptly described in this phrase, underscoring the waiting condition. For him, it was waiting for a childhood lost in conflict, waiting to return to his first home in Rehmatnagar in then-East Pakistan, waiting in jail, waiting for reunification with family, waiting in transit camps, waiting for clearance, waiting for a homeland. While the wait now belongs in his past, in his stories, just the act of having to wait for his story to be documented is also part of a gruesome waiting in history, a historicism that often accompanies
subaltern narratives [2].
The street of
Naushad sahib’s house [3]
Naushad sahib’s (Mr.’s) story of waiting
is one of many that can elucidate on the realities of waiting in exile. Within
the confines of this text, exile can be understood through Said’s following words “And just
beyond the frontier between “us” and the “outsiders” is the perilous territory
of not-belonging: this is to where in a primitive time peoples were banished,
and where in the modern era immense aggregates of humanity loiter as refugees
and displaced persons.”[4]
This
concept provides us with an opportunity to think and know about the waiting
that accompanies the process of creating borders in a post-partition order vis
a vis displacement and exile. Within the context of the 1971 Bangladesh
Liberation War, new borders emerged, sovereign states, identities, citizens,
and their antithetical–the exiled. The exilic condition has consumed lives,
families, and identities for certain South Asian diasporas and communities,
including Bihari and Bengali communities across Pakistan, Bangladesh, and
India. Exile for some communities sticks like a feeling, a past, a long wait, a
memory, and an experience oft-ignored in our texts and curated memories.
Bordering
Lives: From Rehmatnagar to Orangi:
In the events leading to the 1971 War and its
aftermath, approximately 10 million individuals migrated to India, while
others, a figure that currently evades historians, sought refuge in Pakistan,
Nepal, and Myanmar, or were internally displaced within what became Bangladesh[5].
Several spaces materialized or expanded across Bangladesh and Pakistan, formerly
united Pakistan, often marked as ghettos, slums, and camps for migrants from
the 1971 Partition and its consequent years. These include 116 existing refugee
camps in Bangladesh, such as the Geneva Camp, the Murapara Camp, and the
Kurmitola Bihari Camp in Dhaka, and massive townships and colonies in Karachi,
such as Orangi Town, Korangi Town, Musa Colony, Machar Colony, and Chittagong
Colony[6].
The
1971 War’s history has to be critically approached from the perspective of
migrants and refugee collectives, allowing us to record the histories of
displacement and border-making. This can help us understand how bordering and
(re)bordering have implications for those inhabiting the lands circumscribed by
borders. It is important to realize that borders are not erected overnight and
in distant lands with barbed wires and security forces. Borders penetrate
towns, cultures, families, and real lives.
Zehra Khan’s work Baalpin Borders is a necessary reminder that border-making is also found in stories that surround us in broad daylight [7]. Something as germane in our lives as a baalpin (hairpin) is as familiar and embedded as the borders intersecting the stories of families and communities around us. Her work forces us to surrender to the thought of how intimately our lives are woven with borders, regardless of the time and space we erect between us.
Left:
Indo-Pakistan border. Right: Indo-Bangladesh Border.
The
story of Naushad sahib, a Bihari
minority born in Rehmatnagar, District Parbatipur in erstwhile East Pakistan is
one like that, cutting across 1947, 1971, and the eastern and western
boundaries of the Radcliffe Line. As a Bihari, he traces his family’s history
to the 1946 Bihar (state of eastern India) riots and the 1947 Partition,
wherein his family first encountered violence and migration and resettled in
East Bengal/East Pakistan. On the eve of the 1947 Partition, communal rioting
in 1946 across Bihar led to many of its residents being displaced, moving to
the safer and neighboring lands in East Bengal[8]. The trickle of migrants and refugees
continued till after the 1947 Partition as these Muslim communities were
advised by the All-India Muslim League and their leader Jinnah to migrate to
Pakistan, which then included the Eastern wing of Bengal and Sylhet of Assam, a
homeland for the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent.
However,
a second partition of the South Asian subcontinent in 1971 led to having to
leave their homeland again in search of ‘Pakistan’ – a homeland generations in
his family have been striving towards. The violent events preceding the 1971
War in East Pakistan prompted many individuals to move across borders as they
sought refuge from the volatile landscape of the province. Large-scale
militarized operations and militant violence targeting particular ethnic and
racial groups triggered massive waves of migrations that seeped across South
Asia. When asked about the time before the creation of Bangladesh, Mr. Naushad
sahib described the time during and beyond March 1971 as “Whether day or night,
sometimes there is firing here, sometimes there is firing there[9]”
As
violence spread across East Pakistan and eventually led to the creation of
Bangladesh on 16 December 1971, approximately 10 million people migrated and
took refuge in India, around 16 million were internally displaced in East
Pakistan i.e. Bangladesh, and 500,000 people were left stranded across the
subcontinent[10].
Amongst the internally displaced was also Naushad Sahib’s family, who were
forced to flee their hometown in search of refuge and protection. Describing
the scene, he states:
The food was cooked, but no one was eating, meaning
there was such chaos, like doomsday, so we left in such a state.[11]
Following
the Fall of Dhaka on 16 December 1971, the non-Bengalis in Bangladesh were
subjected to “denationalization” by the Government of Pakistan as the
Government failed to allow non-Bengalis to enter into Pakistan[12]. Pakistan’s renunciation of non-Bengalis as
Pakistani citizens was also pronounced by their understanding of non-Bengalis
as mere refugees and aliens, and conceiving their unauthorized movement into
Pakistan as a breach of their borders and sovereignty. Additionally, the
People’s Republic of Bangladesh’s failure to recognize them as citizens of
Bangladesh led to their defector status as stateless.
The
trilateral Delhi Agreement (1973-1974) attempted to aid the repatriation
processes and organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the Stranded Pakistanis General
Repatriation Committee (SPGRC) pushed for the resettlement of refugees
across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. However, the states’ aporetic dialogues
over the refugee crisis of 1971 have been marked by their anxious
sovereignties. The three countries persistently downplayed and denied the
aforementioned figures in their efforts to deny the large influx of refugees
and the porosity of the borders as that implied a border breach for them[13].
The leadership in Pakistan then created a
discourse and rhetoric that ungraciously sidelined non-Bengalis, specifically
the ethnic Bihari community. The overall national dialogue and political
activities were oriented around an unfailing unacceptance of non-Bengalis from
East Pakistan in erstwhile West Pakistan. This was palpable in the criteria set
by the Government of Pakistan for their clearance in the Delhi Agreement (1974)
which issued clearances for “non-Bangalees [sic] who were either domiciled in
former West Pakistan, were employees of the Central Government and their
families or were members of the divided families, irrespective of their
original domicile”[14]
The total number of non-Bengalis repatriated,
which included ethnic communities such as Biharis and other non-Bengalis
originating from the United Provinces, etc., came down to 144,800. While more
than 258,000 people still awaited repatriation to Pakistan from Bangladesh[15].
In the newly independent Bangladesh, ICRC
established transit camps for people awaiting repatriation and seeking
protection in the aftermath of the war. Amongst the non-Bengalis that inhabited
the camp were people belonging to the ethnic Bihari community and some belonged
to Urdu-speaking communities that originated from United Provinces, British
India. By 1972, around a million Biharis had relocated to camps with hopes of
finding shelter, and security, with many wanting to repatriate to now-truncated
Pakistan or return to their homes in Bangladesh[16] .
In the
wake of the new sovereign power succeeding the previous Government of Pakistan
and the creation of an independent Bangladesh, the status of Biharis became a
subject of controversy and political debates. With Pakistan’s continuous
denationalization and willingness to only accept a certain amount of Biharis
and not the entirety of the 95% existing Biharis wanting to repatriate to their
homeland–Pakistan, Bangladesh was their only recourse.
Section 2B of the President’s Order No. 149 of
1972, promulgated by Mujib ur Rehman, the first President of Bangladesh and
leader of Awami League–the party spearheading Bangladesh’s liberation–provided
the opportunity for accruing Bangladeshi citizenship through a provisional
order, which did not allow for citizenship of persons who “owes, affirms or
acknowledges, expressly or by conduct, allegiance to a foreign state.”[17]
Consequently, the Bihari community
overwhelmingly desired to resettle in the former western wing. They pledged
their allegiance to the state of Pakistan and hoped for an eventual
repatriation to their homeland, one which they had sacrificed for the second
time since 1947. This allegiance meant their denial of Bangladeshi citizenship.
Mr. Naushad was one of those Biharis, a prisoner of war, who did not have
access to citizenship as he spent time confined in a jail. For him, living in a
prison was the safest place in post-war South Asia. The idea of living in an
actual country only occurred to him when he was finally released from jail and
saw his mother, promising to go to Pakistan only. Even later, as he worked and
waited for clearance to migrate to the new Pakistan, the erstwhile western
wing, he refused Bangladeshi citizenship as he remained committed to the long
cross-generational and arduous wait to go to ‘Pakistan’ since the eve of the
1947 Partition. He had decided that “Either I would go to Pakistan or a
graveyard.”[18]
However, the idea of opting for naturalization
in Bangladesh was not as simple since Biharis were already marked as ‘traitors’
and considered to have colluded with the central government during the
months-long war[19].
Moreover, Sen notes that the Government of Bangladesh’s additional measures
seemed to contradict the message in the Order above with the forceful
acquisition of private properties, businesses, and bank accounts of Bihari
residents. While the Bengali elites from Awami League, militants from the Mukti
Bahini, and civilians took over “abandoned” properties, the government only
further reinforced and supported the illegal occupation of properties with the
provisions of legal devices. The
Abandoned Property (Control, Management, and Disposal) Order, 1972
(President’s Order No. 16 of 1972) was used to justify the forceful occupation
of private properties, including homes and industries, (also of Hindu minority)
that were temporarily left unoccupied by Biharis during the persecution they
were subjected to in 1971 and further. Naushad sahib’s family home had itself been later occupied by Bengalis and
his desire to live or revisit that house remained unfulfilled.
The indifference and ignorance of the State’s attitudes toward the
situation of Biharis was apparent in the heedlessness of the context for which
many Biharis left their homes and industries. The order also disregarded the
reality of violence that industrial zones and areas had succumbed to during the
war with a significant number of attacks on Biharis at mills[20]. Such
legislation was hardly a surprise to the Post-partition order of migration and
rehabilitation in South Asia, with such Acts only being a progeny of the
earlier Acts such as the Evacuee Property Ordinance, the Enemy Property Act,
and Ordinance adopted by India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the 1947
Partition[21].
With the use of legislation by Bangladesh, the
denationalization of Biharis, and the ceasing of ICRC operations by 1975, the
Bihari community was left at the mercy of international laws and actions. While
the international refugee protection regime defined them as stateless refugees
in need of protection measures by the hosting country and the international
community, Bangladesh’s decision to not adhere to those protective mechanisms
was not met with any accountability. It was only until the ruling of the Bangladesh
High Court in 2008, that non-Bengalis and Biharis born after the creation of
Bangladesh, or were minors then, could qualify for citizenship and voting
rights[22].
However, the continued existence of transit camps keeps one in the folds of
exile. Wherein, despite legal mechanisms, spatial and urban politics reinforce
the waiting conditions for many Biharis in Bangladesh.
Naushad sahib
recalled the relief he and his family had succumbed to after years of waiting,
to have finally seen his name on the board in 1974 for attaining clearance to
travel and move to Pakistan. However, the wait hadn’t ended. Upon entry into
the transit camp at Saidpur, he remembers hearing about the last two flights
leaving for Pakistan until the operation ceased.
Mr. Naushad Sahib, like many non-Bengalis,
spent five years in the transit camp, perpetually waiting and attempting to
live in a space and time marked by exile and liminality. He would later marry,
witness the birth of his first son, and spend many Eids in the same Saidpur
transit camp. Talking about the camp, he recalls being in an 8-foot by 10-foot
room, with a cloth partition placed in between a strange family of four members
and his own family of nine members.
It was a room like this [...] there was a
partition in the middle, one family on this side, one family on that side [...]
they were cooking their bread over there, and we were cooking our bread over
here.[23]
Further elaborating on the camp, he described
it as:
A camp is still a camp. That was a
technical college, it was a two-story building [...] made of tin, sheets, like
people here build by putting up sheets, and there were also sheets on the sides
[...] someone made it like a tent or something and gave it to them, and that
boundary, the boundary of the technical [college], inside that, there used to
be four
policemen, day and
night, two were right at the entry [...] and the others were in that corner and
one in that corner, so that no problem would arise.[24]
It would take almost half a decade more for
Naushad sahib and his family to
finally receive tickets, a total of 300 Pakistani Rupees, and get on board to
finally go to Pakistan, where they lived in Muzaffargarh for 2 years until
relocating to Lahore. His family would relocate to Orangi, Karachi, while he would continue to
live in Lahore for work.
Orangi Town [25]
Tickets to Pakistan for Mr. Naushad sahib and some of his accompanying family members (2024) [26]
His family was some of the approximately 15,000 Biharis to have been repatriated until 1982 witnessed the cease of the repatriation operations again.
Between 1977 and 1979 nearly 9,900 Biharis were repatriated to Pakistan followed by another 4,800 Biharis in 1982. Finally, in 1993, 53 Bihari families were accepted by Pakistan before protests there stopped the process.
During this time,
owing to economic opportunities and low-priced undeveloped land, many immigrant
populations, including Bihari families, ended up settling in Orangi. Adding on
to these reasons, for Biharis specifically, the biradari (kinship) system would
encourage them to relocate to Orangi as a large majority of them would resettle
there and attempt to restart their lives, hence, attracting their families to
Orangi’s charm.
Orangi Town [27]
However, Karachi’s landscape was also succumbing to tensions between
ethnic groups such as Muhajirs, Pashtuns, and Biharis, serving as a prelude to
the later ethnic conflicts and riots in the 1980s and 1990s. These years were
marked by incidents such as the Qasba-Aligarh Colony Massacre, which
particularly targeted Biharis of Orangi Town, or the ethnic violence that would
become embedded in the later decade, engulfing Orangi and its residents in
fears of the bori-band-lāsh i.e., bodies stashed in gunny bags . When talking
about this period, Naushad sahib recounted the anxiety that engulfed him for
years as his family resided in Orangi whilst he lived separately in Lahore due
to his job at Water and Power Development Authority [WAPDA]. Upon asking him about
this separation, he shook his head and repeatedly muttered to himself how he
had warned his family about relocating to Orangi in the late 1990s. It would
take additional years until he could finally reunite with his family as he
moved to Orangi with his family in 2016.
Towards the end, in his haunted
account, when asked about having to leave his homeland and possessions, Mr.
Naushad sahib described the phenomenon of migrating from Rehmatnagar to Saidpur
to Orangi in the following words:
The first blow to the head, even if mild, makes you feel it's very intense. The second blow to the head, meaning the pain, if it even feels intense, you'd say it's mild. When the third blow to the head strikes, strong, you'd say you don't even know what it is.
Borders and Belonging: Reflections from the Post-Partition Land
Such histories and stories are a
needed reminder and point of reflection for how we construct and constitute
borders, visible and otherwise. It is a testament to the failures and
shortcomings of political imaginations in South Asia. As South Asian states
continue to confront protracted refugee crises and urban development and
planning that continues to build and sustain silos, ethnic enclaves, ghettos,
slums, and camps, history can help us revisit the way we imagine cities and
living with communities marked and defined as refugees, stateless, aliens, etc.
They remind us that borders and fences constructed in seemingly faraway lands
of contact zones pierce the realities and fabrics of our lives and the ontology
and definitions of people and communities. They remind us of the urgent need to
relinquish the notion of exile and estrangement and to think of belonging as
the task of our political imaginations. The contemporary and present landscape
of Pakistan and the wider globe begs us to revisit the histories of the
present. A present that reeks of exclusion, where the other, alien, refugee, is
inscribed upon to carve out borders–in search of belonging in exclusion and
estrangement. By scrutinizing our own lived realities and stories such as
Naushad sahib’s, the task of inclusion requires us to gently confront and
understand the ‘other’ we have built in our cities, memories and lived
realities, which is globally and locally proving to be an exigency of our time.
********************
Appeal to the World Leaders for
Saving Indigenous Minority Lives Overcoming Prejudice
and Censorship
Note: On August 2024 Partition Center
received a copy of a letter written to a “Human Rights” group located in U.S.A.
They ignored human rights oppression in Bangladesh, unlike Bangladesh
minorities and secular Muslims in Bangladesh, but criticized Indian leader for
reminding Islamic extremism in the Subcontinent.
Here’s the letter: Dear “Leaders of Human
Rights”:
“I read
your report in Bangladesh media on Indian (politician’s) statements on Islamists
during his election campaign. I have no problem with criticizing (politicians),
but in India’s case your presentation is similar to White Supremist racism in
the U.S. who complained about African-Americans mentioning about slavery,
discrimination and about Black Lives Matter movement. Is (your organization) supports
Hindu oppression? U.S. supported Hindu genocide and killing of secular Muslims
during the 1971 carnage by the Army of Islamic Republic of Pakistan and its
Bengali Islamist allies who killed over 3 million people in 9 months, over 90%
to 95% native Hindu minority, and rest secular Muslims, and displaced over 10
million. Should we censor our Islamist killing? To support 1971 genocide U.S.
sent its Navy to Bay of Bengal. Are you following the same pro-genocide
politics by remaining silent on pogroms, and criticizing for remembering that?
At 1947 Partition, Bangladesh/ East Pakistan, world’s 5th most
populous region, had one third population of indigenous Hindu minority, barely
6% now losing 50 million till 2001 census, possibly 60 million cleansed by now.
Sadly, my family too was driven out from our home of 1500s, and my wife’s
mother died after crossing the border when her baby was a toddler. There are
tens of millions of refugees like that of Islamist cleansing since 1947. It has
brought indigenous people from a third of the population to barely 6% now and
in Pakistan 25% to 1%, and 0% in Afghanistan. Indigenous minorities have also been
cleansed from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bhutan and Tibet (Buddhists) to India. Hindu
lives not matter? We must censor that? During 1991 and 1992 anti-Hindu pogrom
in Bangladesh I met your head as you didn’t say a word, before she headed to
(Asia). Every single nation around India – Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka,
Myanmar, Bhutan, Tibet (Buddhists) have called indigenous people “Hindu” and
cleansed to India. Are we not to say that? Am I not supposed to say that my
family was cleansed from our home of 1500s, my mother-in-law lost her life, and
our shrines of 1500s and 1700s destroyed by Islamists? You may call Hindus as
suicidally-fatalistic-tolerant-indigenous-divisive-coward people, as the only
surviving non-converted culture. Luckily, the Muslim population increased in
India, in spite of tens of millions of refugees like us. All monotheists want
to convert India. As a professor of Human Rights, and Politics of India and
Subcontinent for decades, my students and I visited your office. Why didn’t you
say a word about our cleansing and tried to take us back to our homeland?
Here are some of my pictures among thousands
that I have:
Eight
dirt-poor Hindus in Bangladesh were cut into pieces as they didn’t go to India
while other Islamists watched. I visited their home;
I witnessed 100s
of Hindu homes burned to the ground.
BD Human rights lawyer R Ghosh’s destroyed home
Family saved from forcible change.
You can check empireslastcasualty
blog.
For me, supporting ethnic cleansing of indigenous Hindus and
not speaking about it is a form of inhuman rights position. I guess you support
Palestine’s killing of Jews and Israel’s killing of Palestinians, and remain
silent. Just from Bangladesh over 60 million Hindus are missing and over 3.1
million killed, and keeping silent is support for extermination. Why you don’t
talk about our extermination, and legal discrimination of pre-Islam Hindu
people in all nations in South Asia? I don’t know if your plan is to push U.S.
Hindus/Indians to the other side as it happened in India’s two Bangladeshi
border states of West Bengal and Tripura run by “progressive” refugees from
Bangladesh. They controlled over 90% of State Assembly seats in 1990s. With
second generation refugees realizing politicians’ duplicity of not protecting
their families and not fighting against Islamist cleansers changed politics.
Now Left represent 0% seat in State Assembly.
I am begging you to take unbiased action against our killing by Islamists
and help bring refugees like our family and secular Muslims back. I visit our
village regularly, but cannot enter our home of 1500s. We have rebuilt temples
of 1500s and 1700s destroyed by Islamists. In Pakistan Muslims rebuilt a
pre-Islam temple and asked me to be with them.
Did you write anything about cleansing of
Hindu teachers/ professors in Bangladesh that is going on now? Here’s a short
list: 1. Sonali Rani Das- Assistant professor, Holy Family Nursing College, 2.
Bhobesh Chandra Roy- Principal, Police Line High School and College, Thakurgaon,
3. Soumitra Shekhar- VC, Kazi Nazrul Islam University, 4. Ratan Kumar Majumder-
Principal, Puran Bazar Gegree College, Chandpur, 5. Mihir Ranjan Haldar- VC,
KUET, 6. Adrish Aditya Mandal- Principal, Kopotokkho Maha Bidyaloy, Kaira,
Khulna, 7. Dr. Satya Prasad Majumder- VC, BUET, 8. Keka Roychowdhury-
Principal, VNC, 9. Kanchan Kumar Biswas- Physics teacher, Jhinaidaha Collectorate
School and College, 10. Dr. Dulal Chandra Roy- Director, IQAC, RU, 11. Dr.
Pranab Kumar Pande- Public Relation Administrator, RU, 12. Dr. Puranjit
Mahalder- Assistant Proctor, RU, 13. Dr. Ratan Kumar- Assistant Proctor, RU, 14.
Dr. Bijay Kumar Debnath- Sathiya Pilot Model School, Pabna, 15. Gitanjali
Barua-Principal, Azimpur Girls School (she was tied up with a tree), and many
more. Recently I received a call from Bangladesh whose house was being
destroyed, a video of a person being slaughtered, a call from a professor to
flee overseas, among others. I hope you have written about these, and hope that
oppressed lives matter as well. Sincerely,
*********
Bangladesh
Indigenous Minority Oppression Since August 5, 2024. September 19, 2024 Report
Mr. Dipankar Ghose Advocate,
Bangladesh
A
report presented by Bangladesh (Minority) Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity
Council:
Dear
Journalist Brothers and Sisters:
On behalf of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist
Christian Unity Council, an anti-religious discrimination human rights
organization, we extend our heartfelt greetings to all of you. We would like to
express our sincere gratitude to all of you for your generous presence at
today's (September 19, 2024) press conference in response to our call.
Dear
brothers and sisters:
We are here today with a heavy heart, as we
gather to address recent and deeply disturbing incidents affecting our minority
community. We all know that, on 5th August 2024, the government was forced to
resign following a one-point demand for the resignation of the Sheikh Hasina.
This demand emerged from the student community, which had been protesting for
over a month, calling for fair reforms to the quota system in government jobs.
The movement intensified after acts of brutality against innocent students,
further fueling the unrest. Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council
has expressed deep anger and shock at the killing of innumerable people
including children and students in the antidiscrimination student movement. The
Oikya Parishad (Unity Council) prays for eternal peace of the departed souls of
those who were killed in the student movement and expresses deep shock and
sympathy to the family members of the victims. The Oikya Parishad (Unity
Council) is praying for the speedy recovery of those who are injured in the
movement and urging the rich people of the society to come forward to help the
injured so that proper treatment is provided to them. I am urging the interim
government to take legal actions against the criminals involved in the killing
of students and people in different parts of the country.
Dear Journalist Friends:
After
the fall of (Prime Minister) Sheikh Hasina's government, the law-and-order
situation in the country deteriorated drastically during the period between the
Hasina government fall and the assumption of office of the interim government
led by Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus on August 8, 2024, which is
still continuing thereafter. Taking advantage of this situation, a section of
opportunistic miscreants have attacked, vandalized, looted and set fire on
minority community houses, places of worship, business establishments in across
the country. Land has been forcibly occupied and is still getting occupied
forcibly. In some areas, women have been raped and tortured, and innocent
people have been tortured and killed. Extortion has been done, or there has
been a threat to leave the country, and the threats are continuing. In the
psychological perception of a section of people, anti-India sentiment has
turned into anti-Hindu sentiment. In such a mentality, a wicked class of
students, instigated by miscreants by the name of general student, has
humiliated and harassed teachers of minority communities in different
educational institutions across the country. Those teachers have been forced to
resign or threatened to resign. These actions are very sad, condemnable and a
crime against human rights. Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council
expresses deep resentment and condemnation over these incidents and demands
exemplary punishment to the miscreants involved in the above-mentioned crimes
under the law.
Dear
Fellow journalists:
On
August 3, 2024, the central committee of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian
Unity Council formed a six-member central monitoring cell to monitor the
overall security of the religious-ethnic minority communities and the
activities of communal evil forces in the light of past experience in terms of
the course of the student movement. The list of members of the monitoring cell
is given below: -
Mr.
Nirmal Rozario as convener, Manindra Kumar Nath as member secretary, Advocate
Kishore Ranjan Mondal as member, Sagar Halder as member, Advocate Dipangkar
Ghose as member and Engineer Suvra Dev Kar as member.
The Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council,
after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government, before the interim government
assumed office, has collected the information regarding the violent incidents
taking place between August 5 to August 8 against the religious and ethnic
minorities in different parts of Bangladesh through phone calls from the
victims and their associates, social media data and reports published on media
and sincerely tried to disseminate the aforesaid information to the concerned
authorities so that they can protect the religious and ethnic minorities of the
country. On August 9, the day after the formation of the interim government, an
open letter was sent to the Honorable Chief Adviser Dr. Muhammad Yunus through
a press conference held at the Reporters Unity in Dhaka, in which it was
primarily reported 205 incidents in 52 districts. That day, we have mentioned
that the monitoring cell of the Oikya Parishad (Unity Council) is continuing to
finding the facts of communal violence, and today, we present a more
comprehensive list detailing the incidents of attacks, vandalism, looting,
violence against women, and arson targeting minority communities between August
4 and August 20 through this press conference. There is much more information
beyond this which we could not be able to comprehend yet. The list prepared
based on the information received from the district/metropolitan committee of
Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, was scheduled to be
published on August 23 2024. However, due to unforeseen delays in preparation,
we regret that this was not possible. We apologize for this unintentional
delay.
Dear
journalists: Today, we present the list
of incidents that occurred between August 4 and August 20, 2024, which
documents 2,010 instances of violence. A summary of the details is as follows:
• A total of 1,705 families have been
directly impacted by 2,010 incidents of communal violence in 68 districts and
metropolitan areas out of the 76 in Bangladesh. Among those affected, 157
families had both their homes and businesses attacked, looted, vandalized, and
set on fire.
• The Khulna division saw the highest
number of cases of communal violence, where four women were raped, including
one who is speech impaired.
• Of the 1,705 families affected by
communal violence, 34 belong to indigenous communities, whose houses have been
looted, vandalized, set on fire and lands of some of these families have been
encroached upon.
• In communal violence, 69 places of
worship were attacked, vandalized, looted and set on fire. An analysis of data
on incidents of communal violence shows that these incidents occurred in every
division and places of worship and people belonging to Hindu, Buddhist,
Christian and indigenous communities were affected.
• From August 4 to 20, 2024, about
50,000 men, women, adolescents, children and people with disabilities were
directly affected by communal violence and the number of victims of trauma is
estimated at 20 million religious-ethnic minorities and indigenous people
across the country who are currently living in panic and fear.
• There are 157 families who have lost
their homes, business establishments, money and everything and are now living a
miserable life with their families.
Division
Wise Information:
Summary
Total
incidents of communal violence– 2010
Dear
Journalist Friends:
The main objective of the anti-discrimination
student movement is to ensure equality, human dignity and social justice as
mentioned in the Declaration of Independence of April 10, 1971 in the light of
the spirit of the Liberation War by eliminating discrimination at all levels of
the state and society irrespective of religion, caste and gender. Bangladesh
Hindu Bouddha-Christian Oikya Parishad (United Council) hopes and wants to
believe that the interim government led by Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus will
play an unfaded role in removing the inconsistencies and inequalities in all
sectors of the society during their tenure and will pave the way for
establishing Bangladesh as a truly non-discriminatory, democratic and
noncommunal state in the world. But it is unpleasant but true that the reading
of only one Holy Scripture at the swearing-in ceremony of the new advisory
council at Bangabhaban building has disappointed the minority community. We met
the Honorable Chief Adviser on August 13, 2024 and placed an 8-point demand on
behalf of the minority community, including stopping communal violence
immediately, and ensuring exemplary punishment of the miscreants. But we do not
see any visible initiative to implement the 8-point demand. We strongly demand
the implementation of the 8-point demand (8 points attached):
Dear Journalist Brothers and Sisters:
The great purpose and goal with which
Bangladesh was liberated, for which Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians
joined shoulder to shoulder in the liberation war, three million people
sacrificed themselves, two lakh mothers and sisters were violated, one crore
(ten million) people had to take shelter as refugees in India and had to lead
an inhuman life, 92 percent of whom were minorities, especially the Hindu
community. In that independent country, after 1972, 1990, 1992, 2001 to 2006,
2013 to 2021 and then till the current government took charge in 2024, during
the tenure of every government, minority communities, most of whom are Hindus,
have been victims of torture, oppression and discrimination in different ways
in different parts of the country. It is unpleasant but true that during the
tenure of any previous military-civilian government, thousands of tortures and
oppression on minority communities have not been prosecuted or the culprits
have not been punished. As a result, the population of minority communities has
come down from 19-20% in 1970 (one third during Indian partition of 1947) to
about 9% in 2024.
It is a matter of hope that this time against
communal violence, against crimes against humanity, women and men, students,
youths and teenagers of minority communities all over the country have taken to
the streets to protest and try to build resistance. The minority communities of
the country want to have confidence and belief that the culture of impunity in
the past will not continue even during the tenure of the present government,
which came to power through the anti-discrimination student movement, and not a
single person of the minority community will be forced to leave the country.
Dear
Journalist Friends:
The news of the investigation activities
being conducted under the supervision of the United Nations Fact-Finding
Committee in the case of crimes against humanity that took place during the
anti-discrimination student movement has assured the people of Bangladesh. From
this press conference, we earnestly appeal to Mr. Antonio Guterres, the
Honorable Secretary-General of the United Nations on behalf of the
religious-ethnic minority people of Bangladesh that after the fall of P.M.
Sheikh Hasina, the incidents of communal atrocities targeting the minorities as
well as all the crimes against humanity and genocide committed on the
minorities from October 1990 to 2021- should be investigated under the
supervision of the United Nations. It should be determined whether the
continued violence against minorities is state sponsored, politically motivated
or communal in nature. On behalf of the minority people, we are emphasizing the
importance of bringing those responsible for these incidents to justice. From
today's press conference, we urge the UN Secretary General in this regard. In
this connection, I would like to mention that the Shahabuddin Commission was
formed in 2009 under the direction of the Honorable High Court to investigate
communal violence from 2001 to 2006. Although the committee submitted its
report to the previous government in 2011, it did not see the light of the day,
let alone implementation of the recommendations. The communal violence that
took place from 2013 until 2021 was also not prosecuted. The then Attorney
General's appeal to the Chamber Judge of the Supreme Court was stayed
immediately after the start of the judicial inquiry into the communal violence
during the Durga Puja period of 2021 under the direction of the Honorable High
Court. We think and strongly believe that the communal incidents targeting
minority communities over the last four decades also amount to crimes against
humanity.
Dear
Friends:
We thank you for your time and attention. We
hope that you will bring these critical issues to light in your respective
media outlets and support the human rights movement against ethnic and
religious discrimination in Bangladesh.
We wish you good health and a long life.
Thank you very much,
Dr. Nim Chandra Bhowmik, Ushaton Talukdar, Nirmal
Rosario, Chairperson, Manindra Kumar Nath, Acting General Secretary and Deputy Coordinator
Religio-Ethnic Minority Alliance
Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity
Council
*********
The Ubiquitous term, Worldwide, “post-WWII
Holocaust Remembrance” in Comparison to the
Nonexistence of Education or Knowledge about Genocide Throughout the Indian
Subcontinent
Shuvo G.
Dastidar
What is globally known as “The
Holocaust” has come to be defined and understood and remembered ~exclusively as
the Nazi persecution of Jews during WWII which has come to being attributed as
being the greatest act of brutality and genocide of mankind. There are even
collections of traumatic, painful, first-hand memories complemented by
disturbing pictures of a horrific time as well as governmental and
organizational documents that is evidence, in fact, it is proof validating an
“unbelievable” time and human actions history of an ignorant population that
refuses to believe the truth.
However, this was not the immediate understanding of the events following liberation and the end of the Second World War. Memory and education of the Holocaust has developed differently in different countries at different times and continues to expand. The global ignorance to the genocide, or Holocaust, of the Indian Subcontinent, including Partition, is due to elaborate mistruths that have become accepted as fact due to the dramatic colonization by colonial forces as well as indigenous populations whose opposition was captured and exacerbated and even utilized,
Many would promptly disdain or disregard my
words as being absurd, ignorant, and naïve because I believe the “injured party
members” do bear, in any way whatsoever, responsibility for the information
regarding decades of genocide and a Holocaust of the Indian Subcontinent
remaining unbeknownst to a huge number and percentage of people worldwide. The
collection of individuals who have either living in and survived through the
post-colonization and/or post-Partition three contemporary nations of the Indian
Subcontinent: Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan (~2 billion people in 2023) is
numerically tremendous. That victims’ responsibilities must be attributed – in
part – for lack of global awareness of such days of genocide documented in a
multitude of media resources publicly available that prove and provide
legitimate documentation of oppression and genocide, as well as the horrific
days amongst the people of the Indian Subcontinent Holocaust. The populations
of these nations and immigrants from this region are not pushing for this
genocide to be recognized throughout the world – as the Jewish population has
admirably and successfully done for education about and recognition, worldwide,
of the Holocaust Jews faced during WWII. Memories of the Indian Subcontinent’s
colonization and Partition done by the United Kingdom and its direct,
secondary, and ancillary effects continue to dominate the [predominantly
minimal and/or tangential] issues that we learn about [if, at all] in school
textbooks or from our history/ social studies middle school teacher. The
research or recollection of what is the definition of and the role of the
Holocaust within it was, embarrassingly and unfortunately, somewhat overlooked.
I have
researched and write this piece as I believe what has been referred to and
popularly termed as “the Holocaust”, is basically what was done and is now
remembered as a time when Jews in and around Germany had been subject to Nazi
discrimination, murder, persecution, segregation, torture, violence, and
genocide. Beyond any copyright or a legal monopoly of the term “Holocaust”,
what Jews were subject to around WWII by Nazis is contemporarily, globally
labeled as the Holocaust. With no intent to diminish the significance of the
Holocaust but the activities taken throughout the world by all sorts of people
and many different nations, recognition of and education about the Holocaust
should be actions that genocide in/of the Indian Subcontinent are similarly
recognized and taught to people and countries everywhere.
When we take into account, all other details aside, & acknowledging that neither all of the guilty nor all of the victims have been determined, the number of people involved that been evaluated and found to be persecutors as well as the number of people who were the victims in the Holocaust, compared to the number of guilty individuals and victims in the genocide(s) before, during, and after the Partitions of the Indian Subcontinent is exponentially different as the victims who have been affected in the Indian Subcontinent is millions and millions more than the Holocaust. Moreover, the before, during, and after of the Holocaust is miniscule when compared to the
before, during, and after of the genocide
effects on the Indian Subcontinent as there are effects of/from what fueled the
genocide that remains enshrined as laws in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.
Some of these laws may not be blatant ingredients but a great example of
continued sentiments & society of continuance is in the article The Past
Has Yet to Leave the Present: Genocide in Bangladesh. https://hir.harvard.edu/thepast-has-yet-to-leave-the-presentgenocide-in-bangladesh/
“Holocaust
museum, any of several educational institutions and research centres dedicated
to preserving the experiences of people who were victimized by the Nazis and
their collaborators during the Holocaust (1933–45). Among the victims were
Jews, Roma, homosexuals, Christians who helped to hide Jews, and people with
physical and developmental disabilities. Notable examples of Holocaust museums
include Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, and the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.”[28]
Remembering and memorializing the
Holocaust is difficult and complex. As the historian Dan Stone asks, “what form
of monument could ever prove suitable to so profound a catastrophe?”. Despite
the difficulty that the topic poses, since the end of the Second World War,
thousands of memorials have been built and dedicated to the Holocaust.
Memorials are not apolitical: they must be viewed in context of what they are
built for, where, and by whom.
The purpose of memorials is
typically to celebrate or remember a specific historical event, although this
is extremely broad and can vary dramatically. In the case of the Holocaust, for
example, memorials have been created to celebrate Jewish resistance to the
Nazis, commemorate the victims, and remind viewers of the evils of fascism. The
Warsaw Ghetto monument, unveiled in 1948 in front of 20,000 spectators,
memorializes both Jewish resistance in the ghetto and their ultimate
destruction. The front of the large stone monument focuses on resistance in the
form of the armed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the back of the monument shows
Jews being driven out of the ghetto. Several countries maintain laws requiring
the presentation of information concerning actions of the government of Germany
regarding Jews in its territory during the period of that government's control
by the National Socialist (Nazi) German Worker's Party from 1933 to 1945,
commonly referred to as the Holocaust. In the United States, laws of this kind
are maintained by individual states and typically specify curriculum content
and the ages of the pupils to which various portions of the curricula are to be
presented.
Many of the particulars of conformance with
these laws are specified or influenced by policies and pronouncements of the
Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Holocaust
Remembrance, and Holocaust Research. A country's membership in this
organization, however, does not necessarily imply any legal mandate within the
said country regarding Holocaust education. I read and research all of this
data & information, throughout the globe, in decade upon decade, yet I do
so by wondering how/when/where will the Holocaust within the Indian
Subcontinent ever be simply mentioned and what can be done to engender the
world funding perpetual research on genocide that the devils who are human
individuals and organizations that attempt to have these decades of
discrimination, murder, persecution, segregation, torture, violence, and
genocide in/on the Indian Subcontinent “disappear” – to make such a Holocaust
that is, embarrassingly, yet to be even heard about…by everyone in the
world…forevermore.
Laws prohibiting "Holocaust denial"
are maintained by many—but not all—of the same jurisdictions that have these
laws. These laws apply to individuals and involve criminal punishment and
therefore they are in all cases separate statutes. Besides evidence of
documents as proof of the legalization of decimation of the vast majority of
the Indian
Subcontinent’s population, audio and pictorial and video records are necessary in the pursuit of broadening the population cogniscent of the pogrom millions and millions were, are, and shall be victims of. Evoking emotional empathy and/or sympathy, that needs to be recognized and recorded (fully) in context of the genocide/Holocaust, the “official genocide” that is both blatant and extensive butchery, ethnic cleansing, forced conversion, Holocaust, mass destruction, rapes, and mass homicide was miniscule relative to colonization but was exaggerated and utilized to divide and conquer by British colonial rule that ended with Partition in 1947. The Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, and Sikh faith had their battling and separation from Islam exacerbated and enshrined politically within the Indian Subcontinent by the British colonizers.
After
torching of 35 Hindu homes in one small area
After
destruction and killing of indigenous Hindu minorities
Destruction of hundreds and hundreds of murtis (deities) throughout the
nation
Destruction of puja pandals
(tents)
Destruction inside mandirs
(temples)
Destruction of mandirs
(temples)
********* ************
Indian Subcontinent Partition Documentation Project Inc.
ISPaD Needs Help from Y O U
Several
Bengali-Americans in New York, individuals whose families were victims of
partition of the Indian Subcontinent – especially of former British-Indian
Bengal – formed a partition documentation project called ISPaD or Indian
Subcontinent Partition Documentation Project Inc. to save the history and
experiences of lost and displaced individuals and families, their villages,
their life, and of survivors and that of protectors.
The Project has received not-for-profit status from the Departments of
Education and State of New York State and a 503-C tax-exempt status from the
I.R.S. (of the U.S. Government). ISPaD is open to all.
The
purposes of the project are:
a) Document
information from the people affected by the partition;
b) Collect
historical records;
c) Study and
document demographic and social changes caused by the partition;
d) Create a
center to disseminate and share the information with the public and civic
groups and rights organizations engaged globally in such activities;
e) Interact
with the concerned governments and international bodies to raise awareness
about the plight of the victims of ethnic cleansing and support the needy;
f) Organize
meetings, seminars, conduct scholarly research, and publish journals and books.
g) Solicit
funds to support the above activities.
Ispad
is looking for individual and family stories, documents, pictures, narratives,
deeds, artifacts, books, family history, stories of refugees, survivors,
protectors and that of the lost ones, tapes, films, videos of Bengal, Punjab,
Assam, Kashmir, and Indian partitions – from 1947 through the present. I’m
pleased to help Partition Documentation! Here’s my gift! Please make
checks payable to ISPaD: The Indian Subcontinent Partition Documentation
Project Inc. Donation Amount $______ One time; [ ] Yearly _________ ; Monthly
_______ (Approx. Date) Name
_____________________________________________
Address__________________________________________ Email_____________________________________________
Phone ____________________
_____________________ Mail:: ISPaD, 85-60 Parsons Blvd, Jamaica, NY 11432;
Phone: 917-524-0035; https://www.ispadproject.org/; ISPaD: Indian Subcontinent Partition
Documentation Project Inc. and on YouTube Ispad1947
Channel; email: ispad1947@gmail.com Board of Directors: Mr. Priyotosh Dey (IT Specialist), Dr. Sachi
G. Dastidar (Distinguished Prof Emeritus & Author); Dr. Tom Lilly (Attorney
& Professor); Dr. Shefali S. Dastidar, (Urban Planner); Dr. Alireza
Ebrahimi (Professor and Social Activist); Mr. Dilip Chakravorti (Social
Activist), Ms. Priyota Dey (Educationist);
Project Coordinator Mr. Shuvo G.
Dastidar (Educator and Social Media Person)
Wishing a
Successful
2024 Partition Center Journal and Forum
Laura Healey & Linda Rennie,
Long Island
|
Wishing a Successful 2024 Partition Center
Journal and Forum |
Wishing a Successful 2024
Partition Center Journal
and Forum |
Mr. Priyotosh Dey, New York Dr. Dwijen Bhattacharya, New York
_____________________________________________
Wishing a
Successful
2024 Partition Center
Journal and Forum
Anil Gupta, New York
[1] Naushad sahib
(Mr.), Oral History Interview, 2024. Untranslated Urdu excerpt: Intizār hai hī
burī cheez
[2] Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference, Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2000), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.04798.
[3] Harmain Ahmer,
The Street of Naushad Sahib’s House, 2024, Photograph, 2024.
[4] Edward W Said,
Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Harvard University Press),
accessed November 30, 2023, https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674009974. p. 177
[5] Antara Datta, Refugees
and Borders in South Asia: The Great Exodus of 1971, 2013, https://www.routledge.com/Refugees-and-Borders-in-South-Asia-The-Great-Exodus-of-1971/Datta/p/book/9781138948433.; Willem van
Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia,
Anthem South Asian Studies (London: Anthem, 2005), http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0606/2006270058.html.
[6] Al-Falah
Bangladesh, “Annual Report” (Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2014), https://www.alfalah.com.bd/annual-report-al-falah-bangladesh-afb-2014/; Zoha Waseem,
“‘It’s like Crossing a Border Everyday’: Police-Migrant Encounters in a
Postcolonial City,” Journal of Urban Affairs 0, no. 0 (2022): 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2022.2091448; Victoria
Redclift, “Re-Bordering Camp and City: ‘Race’, Space and Citizenship in Dhaka,”
in The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City, ed. Suzanne Hall and
Ricky Burdett (London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2018), https://search.worldcat.org/title/sage-handbook-of-the-21st-century-city/oclc/1007248286.
[7] Zehra Khan, Baalpin
Borders, 2024, Diptych on paper, 11.7" x 16.5", 2024.
[8] Annu Jalais,
Joya Chatterji, and Claire Alexander, The Bengal Diaspora: Rethinking Muslim
Migration (Routledge, 2018), https://www.routledge.com/The-Bengal-Diaspora-Rethinking-Muslim-migration/Alexander-Chatterji-Jalais/p/book/9781138592971.
[9] Naushad sahib,
Oral History Interview, 2024. Untranslated Urdu excerpt: Kyā din, kyā
rāt, kabhī kidhar firing, tau kabhī kidhar firing.
[10] Datta, Refugees
and Borders in South Asia. Datta
explains that the exact number is unavailable as only the Government of India
undertook the task of counting refugees that were coming across its border and
taking refuge in its territory, but these numbers are considered a bit biased
due to India’s involvement in the 1971 War and the political stakes involved
for it. This number also does not account for the amount of internally
displaced people in East Pakistan and Bangladesh, and neither of people who
took refuge or migrated to Nepal, Burma, and Pakistan.
[11] Naushad sahib,
Oral History Interview, 2024. Untranslated Urdu excerpt: Khānā pakkā
hu'ā hai, koi khā nahīn rahā, yani aisī afra tafrī, qiyāmat, tau aisay hāl mein
niklay. Mein ne āp ko batāyā na, jo meray wālid thay, us ko kuch samajh nahīn
āyā. Tou aik bakrī kā bachā thā, usne dekhā nikaltay hu'ay, tau woh chīkhna
shurū ho gayā, tau us ne kahā terī aisī kī taisī, koi cheez–sāmān rakhay hu'ay
thay sar pe, unhon ne us ko waheen phenka, bakrī ke bachay ko uthāyā aur
kandhay par rakh ke us ke sāth chalā gayā
[12] Sumit Sen,
“Stateless Refugees and the Right to Return: The Bihari Refugees of South Asia
- Part 2,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY, January 1, 2000), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=916126.
p. 642
[13] Datta, Refugees
and Borders in South Asia.; Willem van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland:
Beyond State and Nation in South Asia, Anthem South Asian Studies (London:
Anthem, 2005), http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0606/2006270058.html.
[14] Bangladesh,
India, and Pakistan, Tripartite Agreement, New Delhi, April 9, 1974
(Rawalpindi: Dept. of Films & Publications, 1974). p.503
[15] Antara Datta,
“Pakistan–Bangladesh Partition 1971 and Forced Migration,” in The
Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2013), https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm586.
[16] Sen,
“Stateless Refugees and the Right to Return.”.
[17] Bangladesh,
“Bangladesh: Bangladesh Citizenship (Temporary Provisions) Order, 1972,” § 2B
(1972), http://old.bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/upload/bdcodeact/2023-12-21-15-42-37-452.-Bangladesh-Citizenship-(Temporary-Provisions)-Order,-197.pdf?hl=1.
[18] Naushad sahib,
Oral History Interview, 2024. Untranslated Urdu excerpt: yā to main
Pakistan jāūnga yā qabristān
[19] Sen,
“Stateless Refugees and the Right to Return.”
[20] Sen,
“Stateless Refugees and the Right to Return.”; Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose, War
and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh, First
(University of California Press, 1991).
[21] Vazira
Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia : Refugees,
Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), https://search.worldcat.org/title/long-partition-and-the-making-of-modern-south-asia-refugees-boundaries-histories/oclc/122261773; Joya
Chatterji, “South Asian Histories of Citizenship, 1946–1970,” The Historical
Journal 55, no. 4 (December 2012): 1049–71, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X12000428.
[22] Datta,
“Pakistan–Bangladesh Partition 1971 and Forced Migration.”; Datta, Refugees
and Borders in South Asia.
[23] Naushad sahib, Oral History Interview, 2024. Untranslated Urdu excerpt: Aisā hī kamra thā [...] beech mein ek partition hotā thā, ek family idhar, ek family udhar [...] woh apnā roti udhar pakā rahe hain, aur hum apnā roti idhar pakā rahe hain.”[23]
[24] Naushad sahib,
Oral History Interview, 2024. Untranslated Urdu excerpt: Camp to camp hī
hai. Woh ek technical college thā, do manzila building thī bari [...] tin ka,
chādar ka, jaise log yahān banāte hain chādar dāl ke, aur side mein bhī chādar
[...] kisi ko khēma banā ke, ya yeh banā ke de diyā, woh jo boundary thā na, jo
technical [college] kā boundary hai, uske andar hī, wahan chār police walē hote
the, day and night, do to hote the bilkul entry pe [...] aur bāqī uss kōnē mein
aur ek uss kōnē mein, takay uss pe koi masla na banē
[25] Harmain Ahmer, Orangi Town, 2024, Photograph, 2024.
[26] Harmain Ahmer,
Tickets to Pakistan, 2024, Photograph, 2024.
[27] Harmain Ahmer, Orangi Town, 2024, Photograph, 2024.
[28] [Dan Stone (ed), The
Historiography of the Holocaust, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 509]
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