Muslims and Hindus are not friends in the Indian Subcontinent. It is not something I understood the depth of until very recently; this animosity between neighbours. When you are brown — even growing up in the diaspora — the distance and distrust between religions, cultures, and nations is normalised and left unquestioned. A tension fills the air when a Desi Hindu and Desi Muslim cross paths – simultaneous with the comfort of finding someone from the homeland who looks like you, talks like you, is the discomfort of generations of baggage and hurt between the two peoples.
The relationship between the two groups can be described through the quiet gasps over the controversy of an interfaith relationship in the community and the ‘good luck’ wishes from the well-meaning few. It can be described through the polite handshake between uncles who then turn their backs on one another in the name of politics. It can be described through the micro-aggressions between friends trying to understand the other’s religion, but often missing the mark with preconceived biases already ingrained. In the diaspora, we exist as neighbours – and, perhaps, distant friends – but never too closely together. In fact, we are warned, over and over, to be careful, to not get too close, to save ourselves from what is expected to be an inevitable hurt. We continue to maintain the distance we were taught, that our parents were taught and their parents before them, and we forget that we all belong to the same land.
The Partition of India in 1947 divided the land into two, the borders running through villages and towns and communities. India was awkwardly placed in the middle of the two states of West and East Pakistan (now Pakistan and Bangladesh respectively) —a division of borders majorly decided based on the major religious population in the respective areas. With tensions already sifting in the air between the two religions, the Partition only resulted in more violence and tragedy between the two faiths. People were forced to flee their ‘homelands’ to the side of the new border that would be ‘safer’ for them, or they were killed in the crossfire. It must be noted that this decision was implemented by the British two days before leaving their Indian settlement after 89 years of direct occupation, rendering the Indian subcontinent completely disoriented. As many as 2,000,000 people were killed in communal massacres. 15,000,000 Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were forced to flee their homes.
Following this was the Liberation War, otherwise known as the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971. West Pakistan abused its power as the governing state to exploit East Pakistan’s resources and labour. Amongst all the politics and history of this genocide, the detail of language loss, and the subsequent loss of culture, has always taken centre-stage in our teachings. In an attempt to enforce Islamic unification between the two states of Pakistan, West Pakistan became intolerant of the language and culture of the East Pakistan (Bengali) peoples, believing them to be too closely related to Hinduism and Sanskrit. Whilst Pakistan was a predominantly Islamic state, the Bengal region has always been a melting pot of Islamic and Hindu culture and peoples. Our Bangla bhasha and our Bengali culture tied us together as one community, one people, in the face of our differences. Thus, our language was ruthlessly targeted, our culture stripped, our scholars massacred, and our Bengali community, Hindus especially, faced with the brutality of the West Pakistani forces.
The war had always felt so far away — so long before my time — until it found its way to my doorstep. The Student Quota protests this year made way for conversations about the war in my home, stories of my familial history and our ties with not only our land, but also with a past community that protected each other in the face of ethnic cleansing. My ammu told us a story of my abbu, an unregistered freedom fighter in his late teens, who snuck out to the village to join the movement. He remembers the story in hazed details; a life so far apart from the one he lives now. He remembers the Pakistani troops raiding the village. He remembers his warning to the Hindu community, his fellow Bengalis before all else, to leave before the troops arrived with the hope that they would make it out unharmed. There are no details of if they did leave, or if they survived the war, or if the slightest act of solidarity was enough to save their lives; but there is always a delicate, almost insignificant, bit of hope in stories like these. I think about the recent circulating images of the Muslim men, in their robes and their toopis, praying in front of the Hindu temple, guarding it through the night against arson and destruction – and while it’s not nearly enough to take the hurt of our history (and our present) and throw it aside, it is hopeful at the very least.
I cling onto this hope like a starved animal, holding onto my language with its Sanskrit roots and my culture with its Hindu/Islamic fusional influence, knowing that I am not Bengali without my other half, no matter how much the two faiths try to abandon each other.
The irony is in that the Hindu/Muslim pairing seems to be a common one, whether it be in friendship, or romance, or kinship. Bengalis, of any faith, of any country, of any region, find each other and they stick like blood against skin. We seem to choose each other in a room full of people of the appropriate religion and convince ourselves that we would be the exception to a generational rule. We share the same face, the same bhasha and, no matter which way you look at it, the same history – we are knotted together with invisible strings and divided by invisible borders.
