Subcontinent's greatest illusion is crumbling

One of the Indian subcontinent’s enduring and treasured illusions is shattering before our eyes. The illusion is that Bangladesh street values language above religion.

- HINDOL SENGUPTA

Islamism had been Bengal's Achilles Heel long before the Indian subcontinent was partitioned, and it is easily forgotten today that the first ever partition that occurred in India was the split of Bengal in 1905. Six years later, the divide was removed but the differences between Muslims and Hindus remained.

Only four decades later, the demand to include the city of Calcutta (Kolkata) in Pakistan was strident, and opposition to this incredible demand was one of the reasons for the relentless violence and bloodshed that Calcutta saw right before, and after, partition. The Muslim League and its supporters could not get Calcutta, but that did not mean that other hardliners like the Jamaat-e-Islami got a consolation prize with partitionnot only the Punjab, but Bengal was also divided in the service of Pakistan. The two-nation theory was validated, even though groups like the Jamaat always saw the entire subcontinent, and especially the whole of Bengal, as their ideological lebensraum.

These groups never stopped trying to change the demography of Indian Bengal, and Calcutta, and never prevented widespread illegal migration to India. Some of this migration has been a by-product of unceasing atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh, including through the infamous Enemy Property Act to takeover Hindu property, which was a legacy from the time Bangladesh was East Pakistan (before independence in 1971), and which was corrected in 2011 through the Vested Properties Return Amendment Bill (2011).

The Islamists in Bangladesh have always had two major and near-term goals-eliminating Hindus from Bangladesh, and capture as much land as possible from neighbouring Bengal through demographic change using the porous border.