Book explores contours of Bangla nationalism, legacy

The tragic history of Bangladesh, a heart-breaking tale of war, famine, military dictatorships and war crime tribunals is the subject of a new book penned by an award-winning journalist who has covered the 1971 Independence war against Pakistan.
Titled 'The Colonel Who would not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy' the book by Salil Tripathi elaborates in great detail how nation-states are rarely able to break free of their bloody origins.
Bangladesh, which was earlier part of British India as united Bengal, was partitioned on religious lines in 1905 by Lord Curzon. Though, the decision was repelled in 1911 under tremendous opposition from both Hindus and Muslims and revival of militant nationalism.

In another three decades, however, Bangladesh became part of Pakistan, a nation envisaged as a homeland for the Muslims of South Asia.
Though, Islam did not prove to be the cementing force, many expected it to be, between the two halves of Pakistan and in 1971, Bangladesdh came on its own after a bloody war with the erstwhile West Pakistan.
The contours of nationalism has changed from the collectivity of 'South Asian Muslims' in 1947 to the question of language, economic sovereignty and cultural identity in 1971.

"If East Punjab and West Bengal could both be 'India', why could not West Punjab and East Bengal survive as Pakistan?" Tripathi asks provocatively in his book.

The answer, he believes, lies in India's pragmatic approach to questions of language and cultural identities as it never juxtaposed Tamil language or Tamil identity against Hindi or pan Indian identity.
Tripathi explores in great detail, the seeds of Bangla nationalism that were evident even at the time of independence in 1947.
Pakistan refused to accept Bangla as an additional national language along with Urdu, even though it was spoken by more citizens.
Urdu with its Persian-Arabic roots, writes Tripathi, was favoured as it was equated with the language of Islam in South Asia. Bengali, on the other hand, with its Sanskrit roots was rejected as a Hindu language and its famous poet, Rabindranath Tagore, was made a pariah figure in Bengali consciousness.

Such was the paranoia with Bengali, recalls Tripathi, that 'bhogoban' (a Bengali word for god) was replaced with 'rahman' in poems by celebrated Bangla poet Nazrul Islam and state directives were issued not to play Tagore's songs on radio as they were not "in line with the ideology of Pakistan".