Aftermath of Plassey
প্রকাশিত হয়েছে : ৬:২১:১৩,অপরাহ্ন ২৩ ডিসেম্বর ২০২১ | সংবাদটি ৩৫৭ বার পঠিত
Mokon Miah:
As the present cannot be understood without the past, so the future cannot be planned without the analysis of the present.
The country, which was born as Bangladesh in 1971 and placed on the world map as an independent state, has a long history. So there is no scope to discuss since ancient times. Therefore, I will start from the beginning of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent.
The unexpected defeat of Siraj al-Daulah at the battlefield of Plassey on 23 June 1757 and his flight threw the capital city of Murshidabad into utter confusion and bewilderment. Mir Ja’far, the commander-in-chief of Siraj al-Daulah (the Nawab of independent Bengal), conspired to become Nawab and joined the English to overthrow him. The victory at Plassey had indeed made the English masters of Bengal. As a result, British Raj began in this country. The person who betrayed his own people for power, for obvious reason, British could not trust him. Therefore, they snatched the power from the hand of Mir Ja’far and established British Raj. In 1857, after the seizure of power from the last emperor of Delhi, Bahadur Shah, the British Raj was strengthened throughout the Indian subcontinent. Thus, it took centuries to establish the British Empire in the Indian Subcontinent. The seed of slavery that was planted in the field of Plassey turned into a huge tree.
The subsequent history of the British conspiracy to enslave the Muslim nation forever was scandalous. Although the Muslims ruled the subcontinent for about six hundred years, it took the British one hundred years to snatch the vast power from the Muslims. The British displaced Muslims from all sectors after the conquest of Delhi for the sustainability of the British Raj in the country and provided education, trade, government jobs and zamindars to non-Muslims. As a result, within 50 years, the ruling nation became a nation of slavery. The book ‘The Indian Muslim’ by English author William Hunter is a faithful witness.
Bengali Muslims have been enslaved by the British for two hundred years since the beginning of the British Raj in Bangladesh. Owing to the repression policy of English on Muslims, Bengali Muslims were tied up by the chain of slavery twofold. On one hand, they were under the British administrative and political aspects. On the other hand, they were on the economics and cultural aspects of the Non-Muslims who were previously under the Muslims influence. The oppression of non-Muslims landlords on Muslims and exploitation of those who lend money on interest-earning loans of those days is beyond the imagination of today’s Muslims.
After the non-Muslims advanced in education, they gained wealth as well as influence, and when the ‘Indian National Congress’ and Non-Muslim leaders led a revolution to free India from British slavery, the Muslim nation joined the revolution even in a half-dead situation.
But not long before Muslims realised that even if they become free from British subordination, they will be bound to remain subordinated of the non-Muslims. The population of undivided India in 1947 was approximately a 390million. After partition, there were 330 million people in India, 30 million in West Pakistan, and 30 million people in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). This data constitutes that if a democratic government had been formed then the Muslims would have been subordinated to non-Muslims forever.
When the British created the central and provincial Act in 1935 to run India and hand over the least power in the name of autonomy to the people’s elected representative, the Muslims demanded separate elections and somewhat managed to safeguard themselves. The arrangement of electing Muslims’ representatives through casting votes by the Muslim population is called a separate election. If the united election system took place and both the Muslims and non-muslims voted together then a few Muslims would have been elected to the Parliament upon courtesy of non-muslims, but Muslims would not have any separate entity. Therefore, Muslims demanded a separate election.
Under the 1935 Act, in the 1936 elections, Congress ruled 7 provinces. In contrast, due to separate elections in four provinces, including undivided Bengal, there were more Muslim members than non-Muslims due to the majority Muslim population in those provinces.
The Muslims accepted Mr Jinnah as a leader and called him Quaid-e-Azam (the best leader) after he had taken the responsibility to lead the Muslim nation. In March 1940, under his leadership and at the initiative of the Muslim League, a huge historic conference was held in Lahore. Sher-e-Bangla A.K Fazlul Haque attended the conference and proposed the formation of a separate state from India with the provinces inhabited by the majority Muslim population on the basis of two nations, which was unanimously approved. That proposal exists as the greatest ‘Pakistan proposal’ in history.
In 1945 Muslim League made that proposal an electoral issue in the course of India’s central and provincial elections. The Muslims gained absolute victory in that election as a separate Muslim nation. The victory would not have been possible if there was no separate election process. The British were bound to accept the demand of separate states after that victory. On 15 August 1947, Congress-led India and the Muslim League-led Pakistan became two separate independent states.
India was formed out of the majority Hindu regions of British India and Pakistan from majority Muslim areas. Pakistan was made up of two non-contiguous enclaves, West Pakistan and East Pakistan (eastern Bengal province having a mainly Bengali population), divided geographically by India. The distance between the two parts was approximately 1,100 miles. The first capital of Pakistan was the coastal city of Karachi in West Pakistan, 20 years later Islamabad officially became the capital of Pakistan on 14 August 1967.
People voted for Pakistan with the colourful hope of standing with head held high as an independent citizen in an independent country, but as days passed by people saw all the dreams were shattered due to the betrayal of leaders by the clear mandates given by the people at the birth of Pakistan.
In 1948, although the total population of Pakistan was Bengali-speaking majority in East Pakistan, the government rejected Bengali as one of the national languages and made Urdu the only state language, which provoked widespread protests among the Bengali-speaking majority. The misconception of imposing Urdu as the sole state language on the Bengalis was the first to sow the seeds of division. The Bengali-speaking majority did not demand Bengali as the only national language. They demanded that both Urdu and Bengali be given the status as state languages.
It was the duty of the government to declare Bengali as one of the national languages in terms of the population rather than calling it “provincialism.” The government considered the language demand as anti-state and wanted to suppress the Bengali Language Movement by firing, in turn, on 21 February 1952, police opened fire on rallies and meeting in East Pakistan and killed Salam, Barkat, Rafiq, Jabbar and Shafiur whilst hundreds were injured. These four students of Dhaka University and others names are not known sacrificed their lives for their mother tongue. Apart from the Bengali nation, no other nation in history ever shed blood for their mother tongue.
For the past 23 years of post-independent life, the people of East Pakistan had been subjected to boundless oppression, humiliation, exploitation and deprivation. Owing to discrimination in the economy and ruling powers against them, the East Pakistanis strongly protested and declared independence on March 26, 1971, under the great leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The Pakistani government sent troops to East Pakistan and carried out genocide in order to suppress the instability in the region. The nine-month Bangladesh Liberation War ended with the surrender of the Pakistani army on 16 December 1971. The number of martyrs is estimated to be 3 million and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped.
AFTERMATH OF PLASSEY
(Plassey to Bangladesh)
By: Mokon Miah, B.A (Hons) IBM
About the Author
Mokon Miah earned a bachelor’s degree in International Business Management from London South Bank University. His Research Interest includes Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship. Mokon Miah is managing his small business and is a community activist.