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David McCutchion
In October-November [1964] I made a three to four weeks tour of East Pakistan in order to visit old temples, mosques and other ancient monuments. I was continually on the move, by train, bus, steamer or launch, never more than four days in any one place, often walking miles through fields of tall sugarcane or expanses of paddy to reach some remote village where I had read in an outdated gazetteer that an interesting building might be seen.
I had been told that East Bengal was a land of water, and I soon experienced the truth of this paddling through flooded paths, waiting for ferries, or discovering that places a score or so of miles distant were virtually inaccessible (18 hours by country boat). At the end of the monsoon the land was lush and green, extremely rich; fish was plentiful and the Calcutta food crisis seemed far away. During the first week or so the moon was rising to its full, and I shall never forget the beauty of this soft cool moon at night shining over lakes and rivers, the air slightly acrid with the smell of flooded rice fields and decaying jute.
First impressions are superficial. The beggars no longer invoke Rama but Allah, lungis replace dhotis, ‘namashkar’ gives way to ‘assalam-o-alaikum’, odd little sprouty beards appear on all sides. The people seem to shout much more: violent arguments explode on almost any pretext. A student occupies a first-class seat on a bus and claims half fare; the conductor tells him: no half fare in first class! the student grows pale with fury and demands his rights, the conductor shouts back, eyes glare, lips quiver; moments later it is all over and forgotten (the student pays full).
People sing much more than in West Bengal; it is no uncommon thing on trains or buses for someone to start singing traditional folk songs while the other travellers listen (and there are new ones too, with the word Pakistan’ figuring prominently). This uninhibited singing is perhaps part of a greater simplicity–they seem less touched by the modern world, less sophisticated than the villagers of West Bengal. On two occasions I entered into conversation with a student on a bus, and at the end of the usual interrogation (where do you come from? What is your work? What is your degree? Where is your family? Why not? What is your salary?), he asked me: ‘You please take me to England with you.’ Of course such naivety is not to be found in Dacca, or among the educated middle class in general.
The hospitality too is probably part of this greater simplicity, this nearness to traditional ways of life. The whole of Asia is noted for hospitality, but I have never met such hospitality and general helpfulness–on the personal level–as in East Bengal. Casual acquaintances would go to great trouble to show me the way; arrange my accommodation, invite me for food, offer coconut water when I was thirsty. Occasionally this could be embarrassing when I had no time to delay, when I had a bare hour or so to take my photographs. and a local resident would insist I come to his house. One young research scholar, sharing the front seat on my bus from Barisal to Mahilara (three ferries in five miles), continually insisted that I spend the night at his village, and although he was returning home for the first time in eighteen months, delayed his return in order to accompany me to the Kasba mosque. Without this kind of help and hospitality the whole trip would have been impossible or at least extremely uncomfortable. Only at the District Council Rest House at Khulna was I treated like a burra saab –to be caught for high rates and buckshish.
When I left Calcutta my immediate aim was the Jorbangla temple in Pabna. I planned to spend the night in Ishurdi railway station waiting room (infested with bugs and mosquitoes). But already on the train I entered into conversation with a Hindu businessman from Pabna, who invited me to stay the night with him. Next morning his younger brother took me to the temple, and again in the afternoon. Not only was I saved the exhaustion and difficulties of waiting around for the afternoon sun to move on to the facade, but I was able to meet people and hear about their lives. My host was a partner in a transport business, a prosperous young man who had recently constructed a large house to which he had brought his elderly father, a former pleader in the local court. Before I left he gave me an introductory note to some Muslim friends in Shahzadpur. the next town I wished to visit.
I intended to stay only one day at Shahzadpur. I finally stayed for three. Though I arrived quite unexpectedly and they had never seen me before, my new hosts would not let me go! They arranged for someone to take me to the pre-Mughal mosque I asked about, and when I had returned from there and announced my intention of walking two miles to Potajia, they decided on an impromptu excursion by motor boat. Next morning they put me on the back of a motorcycle to visit the temples of Hatikumrul, twenty miles away (I had been told about these the previous evening by a local maulvi) And when at the end of the second day I was packing my bags. they said “You can’t go now, you must stay and see the Durga Puja!
I was tired and easily persuaded though I thought I had seen enough Durga Pujas already in India. But what a spectacle! I had never seen a Durga Puja like this–no lorries, no loudspeakers, no Bombay sangit instead: horns, drums, fireworks, halooing–it was the first traditional Puja I had seen. And it all took place on the river. There were about twenty images, and they sailed up and down for two hours or more in the later afternoon before immersion. The entire town seemed to be lining the banks, and what amazed me was that Muslims were on the boats as well. Apparently, when there’s a tamasha, everybody takes part (the Hindus join in the Id.)
This of course brought up the communal issue, and my hosts became indignant about Calcutta reports that Hindus in Pakistan cannot hold their festivals. It became more and more evident to me that communalism is not a religious issue at all. At the popular level customs merge: the pujas take place unobstructed and the Muslims join in the tamasha–this was the case wherever I asked. Many villages are entirely Hindu and nobody prevents them from pursuing their own customs: they wear dhotis and go to the Kali temple as in India. In a village near Bagerhat I came across a large brand new brick structure such as I have never seen in West Bengal housing a rath.
In other places, especially Belamla, my hopes of seeing the decoration on eighteenth-century temples were frustrated by finding them “restored in cement by local businessmen. At Dohajari near Khulna, my visit coincided with that of a travelling group of dancers and singers presenting Krishnalila. I was told they come regularly every year. It is even possible that with the typical psychology of minorities (of the Jews in Europe) the Hindus of East Pakistan may cling to their customs more tenaciously than their fellows in West Bengal. I heard complaints about the emphasis on Islamic culture and history in schools, and at least one man was fearful lest his daughter might marry a Muslim, which he clearly regarded as a cultural disaster. This fear of ‘Islamization’ goes hand in hand with the rejection of secularism. In India on the other hand, many high caste Hindus freely send their children to Christian missionary schools with compulsory prayers and Biblical studies.
I asked many Hindus whether they felt secure: they do not. Not because every Muslim is a rapist as I had been told on occasions in West Bengal, but simply because there is always the odd fanatic making it unsafe to be out far alone at night, or the band of goondas who can be stirred up against them. At Abhoynayar, midway between Khulna and Jessore, one of the entirely Hindu villages (neat, clean and attractive with tall hedges and overhanging trees). I was told they have very good relations with the surrounding Muslim villages and were never in any danger of being attacked by them–though the Calcutta riots made them much more afraid.
The danger is from the outsiders, uprooted industrial labour, such as the Biharis who were supposed to have started the Khulna riots. Talk of planned genocide was dismissed as wild. On the other hand, their difficulties are real enough, simply by being those of any minority: their patriotism is suspect, they are easy victims of prejudice in the struggle for existence, they can hardly take part in politics, etc. Officially they are not ‘second class citizens’ at all, but when I reproached a Muslim friend with the difficulties of Hindus in obtaining jobs and permits, he pointed out that as long as they continue to send their money and children out of the country, they can hardly expect equal treatment. Clearly, a vicious circle is involved.
Equally clearly, those Hindus who wish to integrate may do so, but only at the price of special efforts, and of reducing their religious and cultural difference to the private level as in Europe. And of course they must first be reconciled to living in a Muslim majority state, like Roman Catholics in England or Protestants in France. Possibly some of the older generation are not prepared to do this–still not prepared to treat the Muslims as equals and mix with them freely. As in so many of these kinds of tragic situations, a solution is possible, happiness is possible, but only by more than average human effort, patience, goodwill. Individuals are capable of this, the average will continue to feel alienated and frustrated. But so far as I could see, their economic frustrations were less than those of the average West Bengali, so that their best chance of happiness lies in being left in peace where they are.
Their lives and happiness depend entirely on two factors: the Pakistani government, and the Indian communalists. Furthermore, these factors cannot be used one against the other, they can only reinforce each other: you cannot check riots by stirring up counter riots, as was proved by the Narayangunj reaction to Calcutta and the Rourkela-Jamshedpur reaction to Narayangunj. Necessarily then, the more anti-Muslim feeling that is stirred up in India, the more insecure become the lives of the Hindus in Pakistan ( was thinking of this as I walked round those peaceful fertile villages of Khulna district, or was shown the mosques of Dacca by a young Hindu employed in the Archaeological Dept., or walked with a young Hindu school teacher to the village of Kodlai (and afterwards said a few words to his pupils–predominantly Muslim).
Who were their greatest enemies at that moment? —-not the Pakistani government, preoccupied with an election and aware from recent experience that attempts to divide East Bengal on communal lines are liable to provoke violent anti-West wing repercussions. Their greatest enemies were the anti-Muslim propagandists in India. Every embittered Muslim driven out of India puts their lives just so much more in danger, exactly as the influx of Hindu refugees undermines the security of the Muslim community in India. I was told by both Hindus and Muslims that the reports in certain Calcutta newspapers were gross exaggerations.
I wish the editors of such newspapers could have been in my place when a fellow traveller on the train started to attack me for ‘reports of Muslims throwing babies into burning houses’. He was so indignant that it was useless my telling him that I had never even read (let alone written or believed) such reports. Perhaps the editor of the newspaper which printed the report could have given the name of the village or his informant, or had some way of distinguishing truth from the probable exaggerations of a terror-stricken mind.
And on the Muslim side too equally wild accounts are taken up as true, as when I had to defend my own students (of Jadavpur) from the convinced accusation that they had been out en masse looting and burning. Such furious exaggerations arise naturally enough as the expression of helpless indignation, but they can only perpetuate the evil that provoked them. And when these feelings are nurtured months (years) after the event, perpetuating an atmosphere of prejudice and distrust, it is evident that the communalists prefer their own indignation and hatred to the security of their fellow Hindus and Muslims in the other country.
In East Pakistan the communal issue is complicated by other far more sharply partisan divisions: between Bengalis and non-Bengalis, between opponents and supporters of the Government. This leads to further contradictory accounts. When I asked a supporter of the Government the cause of the Khulna riots, I was told it was started by Muslims evicted from Assam, but when I asked an opponent of the Government, he explained it as a device of the Government to distract attention from an imminent strike. It is hard to gauge public opinion from casual encounters, but with election fever running high I came across a good deal of resentment. The businessmen seemed to be flourishing but many academics and intellectuals seemed to be alienated.
This is not surprising for it is here that the loss of freedom has been most keenly felt–academics forbidden to take part in politics, police dossiers on professors, threat of dismissal for ‘activities prejudicial to the country’, government authority required before inviting lecturers, or delegates from abroad, denial of contact with Indian colleagues, etc. Ironically enough, inspired by a clearly defined enemy, secular liberalism seemed to be flourishing much more healthily in a country that has been under a dictatorial regime for six years than in India where it is the official policy. It was in this context–of the struggle for modern values–that educated people frequently asked me in bewilderment: ‘Why did the students take part in the Calcutta riots?’ ‘Why did the educated people not resist?’ They conceived the fanatics and goondas as common enemies on both sides.
And they spoke of their peace marches, the Muslims killed defending Hindus, the banner headlines against the riots, the persecution of the press… Why was the privately-owned press in Dacca against the riots, and the privately owned press in Calcutta actively promoting them. I could only point out that not all educated people and nor all privately-owned newspapers in Calcutta supported or connive at the riot. I spoke of Calcutta’s communal harmony groups, of student help in riot areas and camps for vicitms, of men like J.P Narayana, Annada Sankar Ray. I could hardly give the explanation offered by a colleague of my own university that it was to teach the Muslims a lesson and prove the courage of the Hindus! And yet there was reason to suspect this was no isolated opinion.
A broader cause of resentment in East Pakistan is the so-called issue of parity. The government is very worried about anti-West Pakistan sentiment, and puts it down to ignorance. Thus they have started organisation called the Pakistan Council with the motto ‘Unity through Knowledge’. There I attended a public meeting one evening at which it was proposed to start a department of Comparative Literature at Dacca University in order to promote inter-wing understanding–a curious example of the subordination of academic to political ends. But the East Bengalis claim they are being exploited by West Pakistan–that the foreign exchange they earn by export of jute etc is being spent in the other wing, that investment is unequal, that the only Pakistani paper mill is in East Pakistan but the paper costs more in Dacca, than in Karachi. that the West Pakistanis are given key administrative posts even in East Pakistan, etc., etc.
No visitors can judge the truth or untruth of such affirmations. As far as investment goes, I saw extensive road and bridge building, or huge new sugar mills with ambitious programmes of development for their areas. An attractive modern city is rising at Dacca–wide dual carriageway boulevards, handsome tall contemporary blocks in brand new commercial and shopping areas, a marvelous G.P.O. where I registered a packet in five minutes! The Bengali Academy, the Arts Centre, or the University Club are all housed in clean spacious modern buildings with every amenity.
Consumer goods are also much in evidence–Honda motorcycle, a considerable variety of cars, transistors, etc. A student–who again happened to be a Hindu–took me to the temples of the Naldanga Raj near Jessore on his 1963 B.S.A. motorcycle! In the villages, corrugated iron has far more widely replaced thatch for buildings than in West Bengal. I felt the causes of resentment against West Pakistan lay far deeper than in economic disparity or cultural ignorance– a conviction, that continually emerged of being treated as inferiors. “Should a healthy man linger at the pace of a sick man?” or “The Bengalis have always been ruled–by the Guptas, by the Muslims. by the British” —these were quoted to me as typical expressions of West Paksitani opinion. And those who quoted them seethed with fury. We are still a colony, I was indignantly informed on a bus.
But this does not mean that the East Bengalis entertain friendly feelings towards India. A curious contradiction emerges. They speak affectionately of West Bengal, but angrily of India. Everybody seemed to fear an Indian arms build-up dedicated to the destruction of Pakistan. The newspapers read exactly opposite to those of India: ‘More Indian violations of the cease-fire,” “Indian troops fire on Pak village,” “Indian Muslims brutally evicted from Assam,” “Persecution of Muslims in West Bengal,” “Hindu refugees return after being misled by false propaganda,” and so forth. “Of course we give arms to the Nagas,” I was told.
“The Indian radio is always inciting the Pathans to revolt”. Along with this mania vis-a-vis India goes a bland indifference to any danger from China–reminiscent of the bhai-bhai days of Sino-Indian relations. India’s dispute with China is seen as being artificially prolonged in order to maintain emergency decrces and distract attention from troubles at home (exactly the reason given in India for the Pakistani Government’s anti-India campaign!) The Americans too are unpopular–their “aid is regarded as a cunning extortion of excessive interest and subordination of Pakistan to the United States for generations.”
In all these hatreds (so odd in such a warm-hearted people)– against the Government, against West Pakistan, against India, against America–I frequently detected a disturbing spirit of negativism. Everybody seemed eager to talk against. On one of those many bus journeys, I listened to a long account of corruption and incompetence from a young man engaged in an economic survey. He pointed to the appalling condition of the road, all holes and bumps where the ridiculously thin layer of macadam had given way or swollen up, and told me the road had been built only nine months before, the contractor keeping half the declared cost for himself.
That he said was typical–concrete is half mud, water-systems break down as soon as they are installed (as I experienced for myself in the Rest House at Khulna), the Government supports the contractors because the contractors support the Government. But when I asked him how he proposed to change all this, he had no proposals at all–except to change the Government. No alternative policies. only a vague faith in democracy bringing salvation. (Similarly in India I hear vague talk of ‘What we need is a dictatorship’).
After Shahzadpur I went on to the old Bardhankuti Raj, near Govindagunj in Rangpur District. Here I saw the oldest (1601) surviving group of temples from the Hindu revival. But alas, they are now no more than a cluster of spectacularly over-grown ruins, having been more or less abandoned for a century or more. A great tree at least 100 feet high grows out of the central shrine and towers above the others like a gigantic canopy. At Dacca I heard from the Superintendent of Archaeology of his attempt to protect these monuments, of two years’ efforts–as yet fruitless–to acquire the land, still legally in the possession of the raja family now resident in Calcutta.
At the very end of my tour I also visited the marvellous group of temples belonging to the former Naldanga Raj, near Jessore, these too split open by trees and submerged in jungle, but with a good deal of their terracotta decoration still intact. The Department is more confident of preserving these before they are completely destroyed. Other temples, like the famous Kantanagar temple or the Jorbangla temple at Pabna, are already government-protected and have already been conserved. Crossing the Jamuna from Bardhankuti to Mymensingh, I continued on down to Dacca by bus via Tangail. This gave me the opportunity to spend an afternoon (of pouring rain) wandering amongst the ruins in the ‘Madhupurer Garh’. Here beside a high school financed by the Rani Bhavani Trust can be seen the crumbling ruins of one of the claimants to be Ananda Math (now cleared of jungle by the headmaster and his boys), and across the river, shrouded in creepers or occupied by cows, were miscellaneous temples and a large residence formerly associated with Rani Bhavani.
But the highlight of my tour was undoubtedly the two days I spent at Mainamati, near Comilla. Here on a range of low sandy hills, fifty-three ancient Buddhist sites have been discovered and twenty-one protected. Of these the most important is the so-called Salban Vihara–a large cruciform shrine surrounded by 115 cells forming an enclosure (another Paharpur on a smaller scale). Excavation is continuing regularly every year in the winter season and already the 1963 booklet has been outdated by the discovery of two earlier levels. With so many sites yet to be excavated and the regular discovery of copper-plate inscriptions, the history of the Pala period may expect considerable expansion. At Kotila Mura the three stupas have been partly reconstructed by the French technique of anastylosis, and now command the surrounding countryside as they may be supposed to have done a thousand years ago. Visitors are accommodated in a bright new guesthouse at the Salban Vihara, right beside the site museum where terracotta plaques, bronze statuettes, copper plates, etc., are on display (brilliantly lit and attractively arranged at eye level).
I left East Pakistan more cheered than pessimistic. I had been told the country was backward, and this is still undeniable. But the movement of change is spreading into the most inaccessible areas with new roads, new schools, new industry …. The land is rich and self-supporting, the people less weighed down by the past than in India, and still with many unspoiled virtues–generosity, helpfulness, active idealism.
At Comilla I heard of the astonishing success of the rural cooperative movement under the inspired guidance of Akhter Hameed Khan. The imposing sugar mills, or the Dacca development plan, or the excavations at Mainamati all bear witness to creative energy and pride in achievement. The excitable and angry young students would regard my optimism as glib.
They would point out that in other parts of the country the cooperative movement has failed, that the academic fight for freedom and integrity can be all too easily bought off by motor cars and other perquisites. But I found reason for hope in the very violence with which they react against restrictions on their liberty and infringement of their self-respect. But of course it is one thing to have energy and another to channelise it creatively.
David McCutchion (12 August 1930 – 12 January 1972) was an English-born academic and a pioneer in a number of original strands of scholarship in Indian studies.
The article was published in The Radical Humanist on December 20, 1964.
bangladeshonrecord.com
In October-November [1964] I made a three to four weeks tour of East Pakistan in order to visit old temples, mosques and other ancient monuments. I was continually on the move, by train, bus, steamer or launch, never more than four days in any one place, often walking miles through fields of tall sugarcane or expanses of paddy to reach some remote village where I had read in an outdated gazetteer that an interesting building might be seen.
I had been told that East Bengal was a land of water, and I soon experienced the truth of this paddling through flooded paths, waiting for ferries, or discovering that places a score or so of miles distant were virtually inaccessible (18 hours by country boat). At the end of the monsoon the land was lush and green, extremely rich; fish was plentiful and the Calcutta food crisis seemed far away. During the first week or so the moon was rising to its full, and I shall never forget the beauty of this soft cool moon at night shining over lakes and rivers, the air slightly acrid with the smell of flooded rice fields and decaying jute.
First impressions are superficial. The beggars no longer invoke Rama but Allah, lungis replace dhotis, ‘namashkar’ gives way to ‘assalam-o-alaikum’, odd little sprouty beards appear on all sides. The people seem to shout much more: violent arguments explode on almost any pretext. A student occupies a first-class seat on a bus and claims half fare; the conductor tells him: no half fare in first class! the student grows pale with fury and demands his rights, the conductor shouts back, eyes glare, lips quiver; moments later it is all over and forgotten (the student pays full).
People sing much more than in West Bengal; it is no uncommon thing on trains or buses for someone to start singing traditional folk songs while the other travellers listen (and there are new ones too, with the word Pakistan’ figuring prominently). This uninhibited singing is perhaps part of a greater simplicity–they seem less touched by the modern world, less sophisticated than the villagers of West Bengal. On two occasions I entered into conversation with a student on a bus, and at the end of the usual interrogation (where do you come from? What is your work? What is your degree? Where is your family? Why not? What is your salary?), he asked me: ‘You please take me to England with you.’ Of course such naivety is not to be found in Dacca, or among the educated middle class in general.
The hospitality too is probably part of this greater simplicity, this nearness to traditional ways of life. The whole of Asia is noted for hospitality, but I have never met such hospitality and general helpfulness–on the personal level–as in East Bengal. Casual acquaintances would go to great trouble to show me the way; arrange my accommodation, invite me for food, offer coconut water when I was thirsty. Occasionally this could be embarrassing when I had no time to delay, when I had a bare hour or so to take my photographs. and a local resident would insist I come to his house. One young research scholar, sharing the front seat on my bus from Barisal to Mahilara (three ferries in five miles), continually insisted that I spend the night at his village, and although he was returning home for the first time in eighteen months, delayed his return in order to accompany me to the Kasba mosque. Without this kind of help and hospitality the whole trip would have been impossible or at least extremely uncomfortable. Only at the District Council Rest House at Khulna was I treated like a burra saab –to be caught for high rates and buckshish.
When I left Calcutta my immediate aim was the Jorbangla temple in Pabna. I planned to spend the night in Ishurdi railway station waiting room (infested with bugs and mosquitoes). But already on the train I entered into conversation with a Hindu businessman from Pabna, who invited me to stay the night with him. Next morning his younger brother took me to the temple, and again in the afternoon. Not only was I saved the exhaustion and difficulties of waiting around for the afternoon sun to move on to the facade, but I was able to meet people and hear about their lives. My host was a partner in a transport business, a prosperous young man who had recently constructed a large house to which he had brought his elderly father, a former pleader in the local court. Before I left he gave me an introductory note to some Muslim friends in Shahzadpur. the next town I wished to visit.
I intended to stay only one day at Shahzadpur. I finally stayed for three. Though I arrived quite unexpectedly and they had never seen me before, my new hosts would not let me go! They arranged for someone to take me to the pre-Mughal mosque I asked about, and when I had returned from there and announced my intention of walking two miles to Potajia, they decided on an impromptu excursion by motor boat. Next morning they put me on the back of a motorcycle to visit the temples of Hatikumrul, twenty miles away (I had been told about these the previous evening by a local maulvi) And when at the end of the second day I was packing my bags. they said “You can’t go now, you must stay and see the Durga Puja!
I was tired and easily persuaded though I thought I had seen enough Durga Pujas already in India. But what a spectacle! I had never seen a Durga Puja like this–no lorries, no loudspeakers, no Bombay sangit instead: horns, drums, fireworks, halooing–it was the first traditional Puja I had seen. And it all took place on the river. There were about twenty images, and they sailed up and down for two hours or more in the later afternoon before immersion. The entire town seemed to be lining the banks, and what amazed me was that Muslims were on the boats as well. Apparently, when there’s a tamasha, everybody takes part (the Hindus join in the Id.)
This of course brought up the communal issue, and my hosts became indignant about Calcutta reports that Hindus in Pakistan cannot hold their festivals. It became more and more evident to me that communalism is not a religious issue at all. At the popular level customs merge: the pujas take place unobstructed and the Muslims join in the tamasha–this was the case wherever I asked. Many villages are entirely Hindu and nobody prevents them from pursuing their own customs: they wear dhotis and go to the Kali temple as in India. In a village near Bagerhat I came across a large brand new brick structure such as I have never seen in West Bengal housing a rath.
In other places, especially Belamla, my hopes of seeing the decoration on eighteenth-century temples were frustrated by finding them “restored in cement by local businessmen. At Dohajari near Khulna, my visit coincided with that of a travelling group of dancers and singers presenting Krishnalila. I was told they come regularly every year. It is even possible that with the typical psychology of minorities (of the Jews in Europe) the Hindus of East Pakistan may cling to their customs more tenaciously than their fellows in West Bengal. I heard complaints about the emphasis on Islamic culture and history in schools, and at least one man was fearful lest his daughter might marry a Muslim, which he clearly regarded as a cultural disaster. This fear of ‘Islamization’ goes hand in hand with the rejection of secularism. In India on the other hand, many high caste Hindus freely send their children to Christian missionary schools with compulsory prayers and Biblical studies.
I asked many Hindus whether they felt secure: they do not. Not because every Muslim is a rapist as I had been told on occasions in West Bengal, but simply because there is always the odd fanatic making it unsafe to be out far alone at night, or the band of goondas who can be stirred up against them. At Abhoynayar, midway between Khulna and Jessore, one of the entirely Hindu villages (neat, clean and attractive with tall hedges and overhanging trees). I was told they have very good relations with the surrounding Muslim villages and were never in any danger of being attacked by them–though the Calcutta riots made them much more afraid.
The danger is from the outsiders, uprooted industrial labour, such as the Biharis who were supposed to have started the Khulna riots. Talk of planned genocide was dismissed as wild. On the other hand, their difficulties are real enough, simply by being those of any minority: their patriotism is suspect, they are easy victims of prejudice in the struggle for existence, they can hardly take part in politics, etc. Officially they are not ‘second class citizens’ at all, but when I reproached a Muslim friend with the difficulties of Hindus in obtaining jobs and permits, he pointed out that as long as they continue to send their money and children out of the country, they can hardly expect equal treatment. Clearly, a vicious circle is involved.
Equally clearly, those Hindus who wish to integrate may do so, but only at the price of special efforts, and of reducing their religious and cultural difference to the private level as in Europe. And of course they must first be reconciled to living in a Muslim majority state, like Roman Catholics in England or Protestants in France. Possibly some of the older generation are not prepared to do this–still not prepared to treat the Muslims as equals and mix with them freely. As in so many of these kinds of tragic situations, a solution is possible, happiness is possible, but only by more than average human effort, patience, goodwill. Individuals are capable of this, the average will continue to feel alienated and frustrated. But so far as I could see, their economic frustrations were less than those of the average West Bengali, so that their best chance of happiness lies in being left in peace where they are.
Their lives and happiness depend entirely on two factors: the Pakistani government, and the Indian communalists. Furthermore, these factors cannot be used one against the other, they can only reinforce each other: you cannot check riots by stirring up counter riots, as was proved by the Narayangunj reaction to Calcutta and the Rourkela-Jamshedpur reaction to Narayangunj. Necessarily then, the more anti-Muslim feeling that is stirred up in India, the more insecure become the lives of the Hindus in Pakistan ( was thinking of this as I walked round those peaceful fertile villages of Khulna district, or was shown the mosques of Dacca by a young Hindu employed in the Archaeological Dept., or walked with a young Hindu school teacher to the village of Kodlai (and afterwards said a few words to his pupils–predominantly Muslim).
Who were their greatest enemies at that moment? —-not the Pakistani government, preoccupied with an election and aware from recent experience that attempts to divide East Bengal on communal lines are liable to provoke violent anti-West wing repercussions. Their greatest enemies were the anti-Muslim propagandists in India. Every embittered Muslim driven out of India puts their lives just so much more in danger, exactly as the influx of Hindu refugees undermines the security of the Muslim community in India. I was told by both Hindus and Muslims that the reports in certain Calcutta newspapers were gross exaggerations.
I wish the editors of such newspapers could have been in my place when a fellow traveller on the train started to attack me for ‘reports of Muslims throwing babies into burning houses’. He was so indignant that it was useless my telling him that I had never even read (let alone written or believed) such reports. Perhaps the editor of the newspaper which printed the report could have given the name of the village or his informant, or had some way of distinguishing truth from the probable exaggerations of a terror-stricken mind.
And on the Muslim side too equally wild accounts are taken up as true, as when I had to defend my own students (of Jadavpur) from the convinced accusation that they had been out en masse looting and burning. Such furious exaggerations arise naturally enough as the expression of helpless indignation, but they can only perpetuate the evil that provoked them. And when these feelings are nurtured months (years) after the event, perpetuating an atmosphere of prejudice and distrust, it is evident that the communalists prefer their own indignation and hatred to the security of their fellow Hindus and Muslims in the other country.
In East Pakistan the communal issue is complicated by other far more sharply partisan divisions: between Bengalis and non-Bengalis, between opponents and supporters of the Government. This leads to further contradictory accounts. When I asked a supporter of the Government the cause of the Khulna riots, I was told it was started by Muslims evicted from Assam, but when I asked an opponent of the Government, he explained it as a device of the Government to distract attention from an imminent strike. It is hard to gauge public opinion from casual encounters, but with election fever running high I came across a good deal of resentment. The businessmen seemed to be flourishing but many academics and intellectuals seemed to be alienated.
This is not surprising for it is here that the loss of freedom has been most keenly felt–academics forbidden to take part in politics, police dossiers on professors, threat of dismissal for ‘activities prejudicial to the country’, government authority required before inviting lecturers, or delegates from abroad, denial of contact with Indian colleagues, etc. Ironically enough, inspired by a clearly defined enemy, secular liberalism seemed to be flourishing much more healthily in a country that has been under a dictatorial regime for six years than in India where it is the official policy. It was in this context–of the struggle for modern values–that educated people frequently asked me in bewilderment: ‘Why did the students take part in the Calcutta riots?’ ‘Why did the educated people not resist?’ They conceived the fanatics and goondas as common enemies on both sides.
And they spoke of their peace marches, the Muslims killed defending Hindus, the banner headlines against the riots, the persecution of the press… Why was the privately-owned press in Dacca against the riots, and the privately owned press in Calcutta actively promoting them. I could only point out that not all educated people and nor all privately-owned newspapers in Calcutta supported or connive at the riot. I spoke of Calcutta’s communal harmony groups, of student help in riot areas and camps for vicitms, of men like J.P Narayana, Annada Sankar Ray. I could hardly give the explanation offered by a colleague of my own university that it was to teach the Muslims a lesson and prove the courage of the Hindus! And yet there was reason to suspect this was no isolated opinion.
A broader cause of resentment in East Pakistan is the so-called issue of parity. The government is very worried about anti-West Pakistan sentiment, and puts it down to ignorance. Thus they have started organisation called the Pakistan Council with the motto ‘Unity through Knowledge’. There I attended a public meeting one evening at which it was proposed to start a department of Comparative Literature at Dacca University in order to promote inter-wing understanding–a curious example of the subordination of academic to political ends. But the East Bengalis claim they are being exploited by West Pakistan–that the foreign exchange they earn by export of jute etc is being spent in the other wing, that investment is unequal, that the only Pakistani paper mill is in East Pakistan but the paper costs more in Dacca, than in Karachi. that the West Pakistanis are given key administrative posts even in East Pakistan, etc., etc.
No visitors can judge the truth or untruth of such affirmations. As far as investment goes, I saw extensive road and bridge building, or huge new sugar mills with ambitious programmes of development for their areas. An attractive modern city is rising at Dacca–wide dual carriageway boulevards, handsome tall contemporary blocks in brand new commercial and shopping areas, a marvelous G.P.O. where I registered a packet in five minutes! The Bengali Academy, the Arts Centre, or the University Club are all housed in clean spacious modern buildings with every amenity.
Consumer goods are also much in evidence–Honda motorcycle, a considerable variety of cars, transistors, etc. A student–who again happened to be a Hindu–took me to the temples of the Naldanga Raj near Jessore on his 1963 B.S.A. motorcycle! In the villages, corrugated iron has far more widely replaced thatch for buildings than in West Bengal. I felt the causes of resentment against West Pakistan lay far deeper than in economic disparity or cultural ignorance– a conviction, that continually emerged of being treated as inferiors. “Should a healthy man linger at the pace of a sick man?” or “The Bengalis have always been ruled–by the Guptas, by the Muslims. by the British” —these were quoted to me as typical expressions of West Paksitani opinion. And those who quoted them seethed with fury. We are still a colony, I was indignantly informed on a bus.
But this does not mean that the East Bengalis entertain friendly feelings towards India. A curious contradiction emerges. They speak affectionately of West Bengal, but angrily of India. Everybody seemed to fear an Indian arms build-up dedicated to the destruction of Pakistan. The newspapers read exactly opposite to those of India: ‘More Indian violations of the cease-fire,” “Indian troops fire on Pak village,” “Indian Muslims brutally evicted from Assam,” “Persecution of Muslims in West Bengal,” “Hindu refugees return after being misled by false propaganda,” and so forth. “Of course we give arms to the Nagas,” I was told.
“The Indian radio is always inciting the Pathans to revolt”. Along with this mania vis-a-vis India goes a bland indifference to any danger from China–reminiscent of the bhai-bhai days of Sino-Indian relations. India’s dispute with China is seen as being artificially prolonged in order to maintain emergency decrces and distract attention from troubles at home (exactly the reason given in India for the Pakistani Government’s anti-India campaign!) The Americans too are unpopular–their “aid is regarded as a cunning extortion of excessive interest and subordination of Pakistan to the United States for generations.”
In all these hatreds (so odd in such a warm-hearted people)– against the Government, against West Pakistan, against India, against America–I frequently detected a disturbing spirit of negativism. Everybody seemed eager to talk against. On one of those many bus journeys, I listened to a long account of corruption and incompetence from a young man engaged in an economic survey. He pointed to the appalling condition of the road, all holes and bumps where the ridiculously thin layer of macadam had given way or swollen up, and told me the road had been built only nine months before, the contractor keeping half the declared cost for himself.
That he said was typical–concrete is half mud, water-systems break down as soon as they are installed (as I experienced for myself in the Rest House at Khulna), the Government supports the contractors because the contractors support the Government. But when I asked him how he proposed to change all this, he had no proposals at all–except to change the Government. No alternative policies. only a vague faith in democracy bringing salvation. (Similarly in India I hear vague talk of ‘What we need is a dictatorship’).
After Shahzadpur I went on to the old Bardhankuti Raj, near Govindagunj in Rangpur District. Here I saw the oldest (1601) surviving group of temples from the Hindu revival. But alas, they are now no more than a cluster of spectacularly over-grown ruins, having been more or less abandoned for a century or more. A great tree at least 100 feet high grows out of the central shrine and towers above the others like a gigantic canopy. At Dacca I heard from the Superintendent of Archaeology of his attempt to protect these monuments, of two years’ efforts–as yet fruitless–to acquire the land, still legally in the possession of the raja family now resident in Calcutta.
At the very end of my tour I also visited the marvellous group of temples belonging to the former Naldanga Raj, near Jessore, these too split open by trees and submerged in jungle, but with a good deal of their terracotta decoration still intact. The Department is more confident of preserving these before they are completely destroyed. Other temples, like the famous Kantanagar temple or the Jorbangla temple at Pabna, are already government-protected and have already been conserved. Crossing the Jamuna from Bardhankuti to Mymensingh, I continued on down to Dacca by bus via Tangail. This gave me the opportunity to spend an afternoon (of pouring rain) wandering amongst the ruins in the ‘Madhupurer Garh’. Here beside a high school financed by the Rani Bhavani Trust can be seen the crumbling ruins of one of the claimants to be Ananda Math (now cleared of jungle by the headmaster and his boys), and across the river, shrouded in creepers or occupied by cows, were miscellaneous temples and a large residence formerly associated with Rani Bhavani.
But the highlight of my tour was undoubtedly the two days I spent at Mainamati, near Comilla. Here on a range of low sandy hills, fifty-three ancient Buddhist sites have been discovered and twenty-one protected. Of these the most important is the so-called Salban Vihara–a large cruciform shrine surrounded by 115 cells forming an enclosure (another Paharpur on a smaller scale). Excavation is continuing regularly every year in the winter season and already the 1963 booklet has been outdated by the discovery of two earlier levels. With so many sites yet to be excavated and the regular discovery of copper-plate inscriptions, the history of the Pala period may expect considerable expansion. At Kotila Mura the three stupas have been partly reconstructed by the French technique of anastylosis, and now command the surrounding countryside as they may be supposed to have done a thousand years ago. Visitors are accommodated in a bright new guesthouse at the Salban Vihara, right beside the site museum where terracotta plaques, bronze statuettes, copper plates, etc., are on display (brilliantly lit and attractively arranged at eye level).
I left East Pakistan more cheered than pessimistic. I had been told the country was backward, and this is still undeniable. But the movement of change is spreading into the most inaccessible areas with new roads, new schools, new industry …. The land is rich and self-supporting, the people less weighed down by the past than in India, and still with many unspoiled virtues–generosity, helpfulness, active idealism.
At Comilla I heard of the astonishing success of the rural cooperative movement under the inspired guidance of Akhter Hameed Khan. The imposing sugar mills, or the Dacca development plan, or the excavations at Mainamati all bear witness to creative energy and pride in achievement. The excitable and angry young students would regard my optimism as glib.
They would point out that in other parts of the country the cooperative movement has failed, that the academic fight for freedom and integrity can be all too easily bought off by motor cars and other perquisites. But I found reason for hope in the very violence with which they react against restrictions on their liberty and infringement of their self-respect. But of course it is one thing to have energy and another to channelise it creatively.
David McCutchion (12 August 1930 – 12 January 1972) was an English-born academic and a pioneer in a number of original strands of scholarship in Indian studies.
The article was published in The Radical Humanist on December 20, 1964.
Impressions of East Pakistan | Bangladesh on Record
David McCutchion In October-November [1964] I made a three to four weeks tour of East Pakistan in order to visit old temples, mosques and other ancient monuments. I was continually on the move, by train, bus, steamer or launch, never more than four days in any one place, often walking miles...
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