Mark Meek's Ideas: Bangladesh

I would like to express support for Buffalo's Bangladeshi community after the recent shootings. The sports teams at Buffalo State University are called the Bengals.

When I was growing up we rarely had dinner around a table. We would watch the news while having dinner. Now I am glad of that because I watched so much that I can write about here. I followed the beginning of Bangladesh.

Two of the earliest words that I remember learning were "bungalow" and "veranda". A bungalow is a one-story house with a sloping roof, and often with a veranda. A veranda is a kind of porch under the roof of the house. A veranda usually extends the entire side of the house, and often around a corner.

This was in England. The house where I was born was called "Sunnybank Bungalow". Sometimes we would go outside on the veranda. I never heard the word "porch" until I was in North America.

"Bungalow" and "Veranda" are both Bengali words that have been adopted into English.

Bangladesh is a densely populated primarily Moslem country bordering the eastern part of India. It was Hindu and Buddhist before becoming Moslem.

For nearly 24 years Bangladesh was united with Pakistan, and was known as East Pakistan, before becoming independent in 1971.

Moslem countries can be divided into two broad spheres, Eastern and Western. Western Moslems are north Africa and the Middle East to Pakistan. Eastern Moslems are Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and the southernmost island of the Philippines.

Possibly the best-known Moslem building is the Taj Mahal. It is in India, which is not a predominantly Moslem country although it has a large Moslem minority. We saw in the posting on this blog, "My View Of The Taj Mahal", that I see it as a "linchpin" joining the Eastern and Western Moslems.

But what is so interesting about Bangladesh is that it is a heavy concentration of Moslems that is so far away from any comparable concentration of Moslems.

To understand how this came to be we could think of Bangladesh as the intersection of three major highways. The first is the Bay of Bengal, the way to approach eastern India by sea. The second is the great rivers of India, such as the Ganges, which passes through Bangladesh on the way to the sea. The third is the Grand Trunk Road, one of the great roads of history that has been in use since ancient times. The Grand Trunk Road starts in Bangladesh, proceeds across northern India and what is now Pakistan, and leads to Afghanistan.

Many of the people who thus passed through Bangladesh were Moslems. They spread the Islamic religion. The area was ruled by the Delhi Sultanate, until the Bengal Sultanate gained independence.

The area was then ruled by the Mughals, who moved eastward along the Grand Trunk Road. It was the Mughals who set up the new capital at Dhaka. What is now Bangladesh was very prosperous when ruled by the Mughals.

The All-India Moslem League was formed in Dhaka. This is what would lead to Pakistan becoming a separate Moslem country when India gained independence in 1947. Pakistan was to be in two halves, East and West, consisting of two Moslem-majority areas on opposite sides of India.

Four states in northwestern India, including half of Punjab which was to be divided, would form West Pakistan. In the east of India, Bengal State was to be split into East and West Bengal. West Bengal would remain part of India. The heavily Moslem East Bengal would become East Pakistan. The Indian city of Kolkata (Calcutta) is about 50 km, or 30 miles, from the border of Bangladesh.

But Pakistan, as two halves separated by 1600 km, or 1,000 miles, of Indian territory struggled to hold together. The capital city was in West Pakistan. Urdu was declared the national language but it was foreign to the Bengalis of East Pakistan. It took demonstrations to get Bengali proclaimed as a national language as well. Every leader of the country was from West Pakistan.

I remember from childhood the devastating 1970 cyclone in East Pakistan. The eastern half of the country was dismayed at the response by the government in West Pakistan. There was also a national election. East Pakistanis claimed that their Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won, but was prevented from taking office by the authorities in West Pakistan.

I can remember the news that the world had a new nation. East Pakistan declared independence as the new nation of Bangladesh. A destructive war would follow. India would get involved, on the side of the new Bangladesh, claiming that it had to stabilize the situation due to the flow of refugees into India.

The good news is that Bangladesh has close relations with Pakistan today.

Many nations have stars on their flag, or stars as their national symbols. We tend to put five points on a star because we have five fingers. But stars do not really have these points. The "points" on a star are an optical illusion, known as "halation". The red circle on the Flag of Bangladesh, from the Wikipedia article by that name, shows what a star, such as the sun, really looks like. It is a sphere.

Politics in Bangladesh revolve around two women, familiar to the world as Hasina and Zia.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman ended up being the founding father of Bangladesh. He was killed in a coup in August 1975. His daughter, Hasina, accused Ziaur Rahman (no relation) of being behind the coup. Ziaur Rahman led Bangladesh until his own assassination in 1981. The widow of Ziaur Rahman was Khaleda Zia, who led the country from 1991-96 and 2001-06. Sheikh Hasina leads the country at the time of this writing. Her party is the Awami League which championed self-determination for the Bengalis of the former East Pakistan.

If you are wondering whether there is a rivalry between Hasina and Zia, the answer is most definitely "yes".

Many Bangladeshis live in the west. Brick Lane, in the "Banglatown" neighborhood of east London, is famous for it's Bangladeshi restaurants.

Image from Google Street View.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_Lane#/media/File:Brick_Lane.JPG

Dhaka today is one of the few largest cities in the world. It was the Mughals that made it into an important city and it was originally named for the Mughal emperor Jahangir, who we met in the posting on this blog "Lahore And The Mughals". It is the capital city of Bangladesh.

Lalbagh Fort was built by the Mughals at Dhaka. The first two images are from Google Street View.