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Bengalis through <> centuries

Dr A.M.Choudhury
I wanted to write about people I visited abroad but 1 thought that to begin with, 1 should write a little bit about our own history. This is necessary' both for my own education and for others as well. During our times in school in Pakistan days we used to learn history of India and Pakistan and hardly any history of Bengal at all. Whatever I have learnt about our own history', I have learnt it myself. 1 do not know whether in an independent Bangladesh history of Bangladesh finds an adequate place in our school curriculum. 1 shall only make a bird’s eye view of our own history. We need to learn our whole history' because if we want to look forward we have to look back also about our own past. It is not possible to separate history' of East Bengal and West Bengal and other adjacent parts of the old Bengal will come up as Bengal rulers in the past expanded their territory' beyond the frontiers of Bengal.
History' of Bengal dates back to some five thousand years. Not much is known about our ancient history because of the changing nature of our land. There is frequent change in the course of our rivers and consequently the archeological evidences are lost. Remnants of copper age settlements in the Bengal region date back four thousand years. Some archeological findings of Burdawan district in West Bengal have shown existence of a civilization there some three thousand years ago. The archeological findings in Mainamati and Paharpur belong to 7 to 12 century A.D. which falls during Pala period. However, the relics at Mahastangar in Bogra district are believed to be 2300 years old. The relics of Wari Bateswar in Narshindi is believed to be 2000-2500 years old. Ptolemy in his book Geographia referred this as Saunagoura. Some historians think it as the second phase of the Indus Valley civilization. It is probable that some civilization existed in this part of the world at the time of the Indus Valley Civilization which is some five thousand years old, but the relics are lost because of the shift of the mighty river courses that characterize this region.
The original inhabitants of Bengal were non-Aryans, Dravidians but believed to belong to a separate family. They are supposed to belong to a family of races called Nishad or Austric .They perhaps originated from Central Asia. They were followed by another group called Alpine a sub group of Caucasian race. Later on the Turks, the Afghans, the Mughals established their rule here and some of them might have settled here. But they are a small minority and the bulk of the population of Bangladesh is the descendants of Nishad and Alpine races. They also spread over other areasr say south India and many East Asian countries. There is no truth in the assertion that Aryans were a superior race than the non Arayans because the non Arayans established the superior Indus Valley civilization or the Wari Bateswar civilization in Bangladesh. It is now generally held that foundation of agriculture-based village life, which is also believed to be one of the foundations of Indian Civilization were laid by the Nishad people of Bengal. Many of the customs followed in our national life, for example chewing betel leaves and making tarmaric cere-
mony (gaye holud) in our marriage ceremony, we owe it to our pre Aryan ancestors. Bengal was an ancient seafaring nation. As early as 544 B.C. Bengali Prince Bijoy Singha established the first kingdom of Srilanka, a fact acknowledged by modern Srilankans. The art of navigation and mari-time warfare developed because of the many rivers and long coast. Bengal acted not only as centre of trade and commerce but also served as connecting land link between the subcontinent, Myanmar, South China, Malaya Peninsula, Indo- China etc.
Alexander the Great invaded India in 327 B.C. He defeated king Porus of middle Punjab, the kingdom next to Taxila. Of course, he surely intended to proceed further eastwards. Greek authors reported that he did not do so fearing the might of a very powerful kingdom called Gangaridi, whose location coincided with Bengal. Its King Xandremes had an army of 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2000 chariots and 4000 elephants trained and equipped for war. Porus assured him the correctness of the information. Thus our forefathers conquered Srilanka and Alexander was so terrified by the might of the then kingdom of Bengal that he did not venture conquering it. As a matter of fact, there had been few conquests of our motherland. The Aryans used disrespectful language about Bengali people because they were afraid of them. They could not conquer them for a long time. In the epic books Ramayana and Mahabharata, the fights that were mentioned were restricted to North and Middle India. There is some mention of some Bengali warriors helping some factions of the fighting groups. The Ary'ans penetrated Bengal very late. They came to India some 2000 years B.C. Bengal came under the domination of the Maurya Empire during Ashoka and that too in the western part of Bengal. The eastern part remained independent. But Ashoka turned into a Buddhist and under his influence Bengal also turned Buddhist. Gautam Buddha fought for freedom from linguistic and cultural domination. He was totally against the caste system. In Bengal, Buddhism spread rapidly among the people who
never took to the Aryan caste system. After the Maurya rule, the Guptas ruled India as well as the upper part of Bengal. A stone inscription from the period of Gupta King Samudragupta refers to Samatat and Pushkaram as two independent states and they are respectively East and West Bengal. After the Gupta rule, there had been many invasions from outside but they were confined to Northern India. Bengal remained independent. Around 606 A.D. Shashanka united many parts of Bengal into one kingdom and established an independent country. Pundra, Gaura and Vanga became the three independent regions of Bengal.
After Shashanka's rule, Bengal suffered an internal chaos and external aggression. Oppressed by untold miseries, people of Bengal developed a fine political sense and realized the necessity of a strong and popular government. Hence they elected Gopal as their King to put an end to the prevailing anarchy and confusion. He founded the famous Pala dynasty around 750 A.D. under which Bengal was to enjoy a long period of prestige and prosperity. The Pala rulers were Buddhists and their rule lasted for four centuries. The election of Gopal was a great act of nationalism and patriotism on the part of Bengalis. It was also a great practice of democracy. This should serve as a beacon to all Bengalis for all time. The fame of Bengal spread far and wide during the Pala period. The rule extended beyond the borders of Bengal and included Bihar. During the Pala Empire, Nalanda University was established as a centre of great learning and it was one of the great universities in recorded history. Entire range of world knowledge then available was taught in that university. A Bengali scholar named Shilabhadra was appointed as Vice Chancellor of this university. Students from far and wide including China used to come to study in the university. We all know of Sreejnan Atish Dipankar who went to Tibet to spread knowledge. He was born in Bikrampur, now M u n s h i g a n j, and was appointed Chancellor of Vikramshilla Mahavira in Bhagalpur, Bihar. At the invitation of the king of Tibet, he went there and a Royal recep-
tion was arranged to welcome him. Tibetans revered Dipankar so much that he was regarded as second only to Gautam Buddha. He not only taught Buddhism but hydrology also. He taught the Tibetans how to construct dams for irrigation to increase crop yield. His mortal remains have been brought back to Bangladesh and a University has been named after him. These are commendable acts.
The Pala period was the golden period in the History of Bengal. They also developed the Bengali language. It was during the Pala dynasty that the collection of poems named Charyapada was written which was discovered by the great Haraprashad Shastri in 1917 in Nepal. Modern Bengali language owes its origin in the language of Charyapada which consisted of 50 full poems and one unfinished poem. The development of Bengali language is a turning point in the history of Bengal and we must give full credit to the Pala rulers for developing this language. The original inhabitants of Bengal, the Nishads and the Alpines did not have a written language of their own and they did not have a script. Bengal came under the influence of the Aryans perhaps last in the subcontinent. The language of the Aryans was Sanskrit but it was not the language of the common people. So it was quite a feat to develop a language separated from the clutches of the difficult grammar of Sanskrit, which is understood by common man and this is how Prakrit was developed and this was the language of Charyapada. In the course of time Bengali language has become one of the great languages of the world and the great poet Rabindra Nath Tagore won Nobel Prize by writing in Bengali. The International Mother Language Day in remembrance of the martyrs of the Bengali Language has been recognised by UNESCO and it is observed throughout the world. It is because of the existence of Bengali Language that we got independent Bangladesh. We must payhom-age to our forefathers who developed this language. The native languages of our neighboring states say Bihar or Orissa have not developed like Bengali language.
Palas were succeeded by Sena Dynasty in Bengal. The ancestors of this dynasty came from Kamata in the Deccan and established a principality in Western Bengal and were in the service of Palas. It is believed that when the Pala rulers became weak, the Senas aooka4*&ntage of&il^situ^RTh and occupied the whole of Bengal in the middle of the twelfth century. The rule of the Sena dynasty was not long. It lasted less than one hundred years. Bengal throne was captured in 1203 by Ikhtiar Uddin Muhammad Bakhtyar Khalji a Muslim Turk. It is said that he conquered the throne with only seventeen sepoys while the ruling king Laksmanasena fled away without a fight. He moved to East Bengal and set up his capital at Sonargaon and he and his successors ruled there for about another hundred years. The Senas were Hindus and during their time lot of people must have got converted to Hinduism.
With the arrival of Bakhtiar Khilji began the rule of Muslims in Bengal which is to last for several centuries. At that time, the ruler in Delhi was Mohammed Ghori. As the rulers in Delhi changed from one dynasty to another, the, rulers in Bengal also kept changing. In Delhi, Ghori Dynasty' was succeeded by the Slave Dynasty, Khilji Dynasty', Tughluq Dynasty, Sayyid Dynasty' and finally the Mughal Empire. The Mughal founder Babar defeated Ibrahim Lodi at the battle of Panipath in 1526. He claimed descent from great warriors both Chinghiz Khan and Tamer Lane. The Mughal rulers could not conquer the whole of Bengal until the emperor Jahangir, almost at the fag end of the Mughal rule. Before Jahangir, Bengal either remained independent or an autonomous region. From 1338 to 1487, Bengal remained completely independent of the Delhi rule and is known as the Sultanate period. During this period the Sultans patronized the development of Bengali language. In other times also it had a lot of autonomy. It can be judged from the fact that according to my count starting from Bakhtyar Khalji to Nawab Siraj ud Daulah there were 107 rulers in Bengal. There were few more during the East India Company rule. This means that for about 550 years there were 107 rulers giving an average life of 5 years of rule per ruler. Some have ruled only for one or two years, some little more. Only exception was Shyest Khan who was appointed Subedar twice for a total length of 24 years during the Mughal
period. There were far less number of rulers in Delhi during this time. This shows that Delhi had little control on choosing rulers for Bengal.
Bengali language did not develop much during the Mughal period. Because they imposed Persian which was the state language at that time. There were four habshi rulers from 1487 to!493.There were four rulers during a period of six years. The last habshi ruler became extremely tyrannical and the people rose in revolt against him and chose his minister AJauddin for the throne. Like Gopala, Alauddin Hossain Shah was chosen by the people. He was a wise ruler and his enlightened policy made him the most popular ruler of Bengal at that time. He expelled the Abyssinians who had become a menace to the throne of Bengal. He was a great promoter of Bengali language.
The Mughals had a tough time in conquering Bengal. After the death of Emperor Babar, his son Humayun succeeded him. Sher Shah, an Afghan, was an employee in Babar's time in Bihar and plotted to overthrow Humayun and he succeeded in doing so. Humayun of course regained his throne after lot of struggle, which is a well known fact of history'. But during Humayun's absence, Bengal came under the control of Afghans in 1540. The descendants of Sher Shah ruled Bengal for sometime and they were succeeded by Suleman'Kararani who'established a new Afghan Dynasty; Suleman’s son Daud Khan Kararani was defeated by Akbar and was executed. But still the Mughal supremacy in Bengal was resisted for half a century by some of the powerful local feudal chiefs known as “Bara Bhuiyans" - the chief of whom was Isa Khan based at Sonargaon. Akbar ultimately sent his Rajput General Raja Mansingh with a large army to bring the Bara Bhuiyans under control. This was not an easy job and Mansingh faced very' tough resistance for many years. Though during the days of Akbar the Bara Bhuiyas were defeated, the rank and file was not in a surrendering mood. The last of the Afghans, Khaja Osman took shelter in Sylhet and set up his rule there. But the army of the Mughals in Emperor Jahangir’s time pursued him and a fierce battle in a village named Durlamrbarpur took place and Osman was killed very tragically. Thus ended the Afghan rule in Bengal. Most of those who surrendered were taken to Delhi, but it is possible that some of the Afghans settled in Sylhet.
Dhaka was made capital during Emperor Jahangir and was named Jahangirnagar. Because Bengal was the richest province and granaiy' of India, powerful generals of the Mughal Court and the royal princes were sent to Bengal as Governors. Bengal used to produce enough agricultural products to feed its population and export the surplus to feed the imperial army. During the Muslim rule in Bengal, many Muslim saints came to this region. Mention may be made of the great saint Hazrat Shah Jalal accompanied by 360 of his disciples who conquered Sylhet. In each of the sub regions there had been more than one saint, they spread Islam among the masses and this helped making Bengal a Muslim majority state.
After Emperor Aurangzeb, Mughal Empire started disintegrating and regional powers came into existence. Nawab Ali Wardi Khan became the Nawab of Bangla, Bihar and Orissa in 1740. He was an able Nawab but he could not find a capable successor. He had three daughters but no son and he made his grandson Siraj ud Daulah as the Nawab at the age of 23. He
was a patriot but he could not command allegiance of all his relatives and Ghashette Begum, his aunt. Mir Jafar Ali Khan another member of the family constantly made conspiracies against him and virtually they invited Robert Clive of East India Company to defeat him in the battle of Plassey resulting in the loss of independence not only of Bengal but gradually the whole of India. The British East India Company was founded as a joint stock company in 1600 by the British to do commerce. They had no mandate to occupy another country'. The action itself was illegal. Nawab Ali Wardi should have realized the evil designs of the company and expelled it from the country. He should not have allowed the company to acquire arms. The Nawabs did not have any intelligence activities whatsoever. All the Indian states could have joined hands together to expel the common enemy East India Company. Robert Clive committed suicide later and his successor Warren Hastings was impeached by British Parliament. The East India Company was later dissolved but the British Government acquired the Indian Empire gradually by a series of acts of Parliament.
The British occupation of Bengal was disastrous for the economy of the country'. The British may have done many good things for themselves and for us too. which I shall narrate elsewhere but they made an independent country a dependent one. we used to manufacture very fine quality and expensive muslin cloth which was exported throughout Europe and earn huge foreign exchange and that was stopped by the British to protect British textile products. They forced our peasants to plant indigo in place of rice. Thus they ruined our agriculture. Two great famines, one in 1770 and another in 1943 killing millions of people, occurred in Bengal during British rule. The Permanent Settlement introduced by Lord Cornwallis deprived the Bengal peasants of their basic right to own property'. He created a class of Zaminders who owned all the land and the whole popu-lation became tenants. Previously land belonged to whosoever was cultivating it. Most of the Zaminders were Hindus and naturally Muslims who were the rulers became tenants. Historian William Hunter observed "During the last seventy -five years the existence of Muslim families has either disappeared from the face of the earth or buried under the wealthy class created by the British." Thus from a very rich nation on the earth, Bengal became a very' poor nation.
Islam came into the subcontinent in 712 A.D. with the conquest of Sind by Muhammad bin Quasim. But he was withdrawn by Hajjaj bin Yusuf, the Governor of the eastern prov-inces during Umayyad Dynasty. After Muhammad bin Quasim. Islam from Arabian land did not spread in the subcontinent. The Muslims who came from Central Asia and ruled over the subcontinent and Bengal were of a different variety'. They did not inherit the glory’ of Baghdad or the civiliza-tion developed by the Umayyad in Spain. Hence they did not consider development of science and technology. However, they made this subcontinent their homeland. The Mughals described Bangladesh as the paradise of India while Aurangzeb went further and termed it as paradise of nations. For foreign travelers from Ibn Batuta downwards, Bengal was the richest storehouse of natural beauty, opulence and artistic excellence.
The British, though they exploited our wealth also developed education and science.
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