Bengal’s Escape. Conte crayon and pen and ink.
My cartoon here depicts a theme I saw running throughout the course: the failures of religion as a sole identifier, as seen in the case of Pakistan. In particular, I am responding to the Bengali language movement articles by Lawrence Ziring and Rafiqul Islam that we read for the “Politics of language and religious identity in South Asia” section. Both articles showed how poorly matched East and West Pakistan were, at least on the language level, and how that led to the eventual formation of Bangladesh. Using what I learned by reading these pieces, as well as Stewart’s and Uddin’s essays from earlier weeks, I tried to illustrate the relationship between East and West Pakistan, if a bit hyperbolically.
Pakistan was formed to be a homeland for all South Asian Muslims. Behind the idea of a homeland lies Jinnah’s claim that Muslims constitute a culture and a nation. However, as the articles I mentioned above show, that just isn’t true. The “culture” that Muslim League separatists spoke of was their culture, that of the Urdu-speaking, urban, North Indian and Punjabi Muslim elite. The masses of Bengal, as well as most inhabitants of West Pakistan, didn’t share in this ashraf culture. Their journey to and practice of Islam was very different, as well as their language, script, culture, and social status.
West Pakistan, or at least the ruling Punjabi class, refused to accept the validity of Bengal’s Islam, language, script, or culture. East Pakistan contained the majority of Pakistanis, which threatened the elites’ power. Furthermore, the ruling elite were largely ashraf and Bengal was mostly ajlaf low-caste converts, so classism and racism also played into how West Pakistan treated East Pakistan more as a second-class colony rather than a full part of the country.
My cartoon shows Bengal running away from West Pakistan, trying to break free and celebrate its own culture. West Pakistan lassos it and pulls it back in, using Islam as the lasso. The only thing that tied East and West together was religion, but that wasn’t enough. Moreover, the Islam practiced wasn’t even the same interpretation.
Lawrence Ziring, “Politics and Language in Pakistan: Prolegomena 1947–1952
,” Contributions to Asian Studies 1 (1971): 107–22.
Rafiqul Islam, “The Bengali Language Movement and the Emergence of Bangladesh,” Contributions to Asian Studies 9 (1978): 142–52.
Tony Stewart, “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving the Muslim-Hindu Encounter Through Translation Theory,” in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 363–92.
Sufia M. Uddin, “Islamic Themes in Premodern Bengali Literature and Life” Chapter one , Constructing Bangladesh: Religion, Ethnicity and Language in an Islamic Nation.(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006) 17-40.
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