Today is our topic of discussion Prem Nei .
Prem Nei
Prem Nei is a novel based on the rural life of the Muslims in Bengal in the mid-1930’s. Gour Kishore Ghose has depicted the rural Muslim society in Bengal with an exceptional insight even though he does not belong to the Muslim community and this makes the novel more significant. He has portrayed the developments and transformations taking place in Muslim society in rural Bengal in the years between 1935 and 1937.
The dominant phenomenon in Bengal in the years from mid-1930’s onwards till the partition in 1947 was the emergence of bitter communal relation between the Muslims and the Hindus. The novel portrays the years when political changes and social developments were taking such shapes as to lead to an imminent clash between the two communities.
The author does not make mere reflections and comments on the Muslim society as an observer from outside. Rather it seems as though he went deep into the fabrics of the Muslim community in rural Bengal and portrayed the tensions and transformations in the community as it was from within. He had made an intensive study of the social taboos, religious conservativeness, communal relation and the existing economic, political and religious tensions as reflected in journals and newspapers of the time.
particularly, the Mohammadi and also made use of personal contacts and observations. Prem Nei depicts the existing tension between religious and social conservativeness and progressive ideas, love and hate between individuals, their sufferings and conflicts, their religious beliefs and political affinity. The story of the novel is based on the lower middle-class life in rural East Bengal .
The author has chosen a period of only three years, 1935 to 1937 as the setting for his novel because these can be considered the years of watershed in the history of the Muslim community in Bengal.
The most significant political event during this time was the Government of India Act of 1935 which was to come into force in 1937. The Act had replaced dyarchy by provincial autonomy and had increased the electorate from 61/2 million to about 30 million. In Bengal, the extension of the franchise allowed a breakthrough for the Muslim League.
Bengal, particularly, East Bengal, being a Muslim majority region, the extension of franchise and the provisions of weightage and reservation of seats for the Muslims heightened communal tension. As a majority community in Eastern Bengal, the Muslims began to consider these electoral concessions as their right? Whereas, the Hindu community.
comparatively far advanced in education and advantageously placed in jobs and professions felt that it was their right to dominate the socio-economic and political life in Bengal. In the rural areas of the province, relation between landlord and peasant worsened because Muslims in this region being mostly peasants and the Hindus being landlords.
The political activities of the Muslim League and the Krishak Proja Party during these years dominated the rural life in Bengal. The Krishak Proja Party, formed in 1936 became popular in the villages with its slogan “land to the tillers”.
The demand for abolition of the zamindari introduced clashes between the peasants and the landlords. With the formation of the Krishak Proja Party Fazlul Huq emerged as the most popular leader of the Muslim masses. The Muslim League had not been popular to the masses as yet.
The party itself had no stronghold in Bengal. Jinnah came to Calcutta by the end of 1936 and also visited Dhaka in 1937. The Provincial elections were to be held in February 1937. Muslim League leaders in Bengal, like H. S. Suhrawardy, Maulana Muhammad Akram Khan and others were engaged in campaigning all over Bengal. The story of the novel is set on this political background.
The novel starts with a bathing scene on the river bank. Two teen-aged girls, Togor and Bilkis, a Hindu and a Muslim respectively, chat on how to please their husbands. 3 Bilkis, as a Muslim, has learnt from her grandmother and from maulvi Khaleq, that if she displeased her husband in any way she was sure to be burnt in hell-fire. Muslim women were taught to bear ungrudgingly their husband’s torture on them.
Muslim men are allowed by religion to keep four wives and their wives were taught to bear with their husband’s whims patiently. Women in the Muslim society had no education at all, except that they were taught to learn Arabic alphabets and the Quran by heart without learning its meaning.
They were in strict purdah and were never allowed to come out of the four walls of their houses. As a result, they were ignorant and helpless. By the 1930’s, however, this situation was beginning to change. The newly educated Muslim youths who had been to towns for the purpose of study or employment encouraged their wives and sisters to learn Bengali and English.
Those were the first generation of Muslim youths in Bengal who had received English education and had started taking up jobs in government offices and also careers as teachers and lawyers. They were enlightened through urban culture and through liberal ideas from European education. They began to give up the prejudices of their parents regarding religion and female education. Shafiqul, alias Fatik in the novel is the epitome of such a youth.
He was married to Bilkis, alias Chobi, the daughter of a nikiri or a fish-seller, Ghulam Abbas, who later performed hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca and climbed the social ladder. Ghulam Abbas haji, as he came to be called, after he had performed hajj, aimed at giving his daughter, Bilkis in marriage to Shafiqul, a bright youth and the son of an agriculturist, in order to raise his social status further.
In the countryside the distinction between the ashrafs and the atraps was very rigid. The ashrafs were the Muslims of upper class who considered themselves as direct heir to their Arabian, Turkish or Iranian ancestors and the atraps were considered as lower class Muslims because they were originally converted to Islam from Hinduism and Buddhism. There was also stratification among the ashrafs and the atraps. The so-called ashrafs kept themselves aloof from the local converts, i.e. the atraps and looked down upon them as natives.
Mobility from atrap to ashraf was rare but by the early twentieth century certain amount of mobility could be noticed within the lower strata of the society. Among the atraps, the agriculturists were considered respectable and they treated the nikiris with much contempt 4 In the novel the reflection of such social mobility among the lower groups of atraps can be noticed in the marriage of Bilkis and Shafiqul.
Shafiqul was the son of an impoverished peasant, Sajjad. Having no hope to earn his living from land, Shafiqul was determined to take up a professional career. He started as a school teacher and later studied Law in Calcutta. English education no longer remained a taboo to the Bengali Muslim youths.
From 1920’s onwards they had began to shake-off the prejudice of their older generation regarding English education and accepting jobs in government offices or choosing various professions in the urban centres. The conservatives in the Bengali Muslim community were greatly alarmed at this.
The author shows how an educated middle class was emerging in the Muslim community in Bengal and how those educated youths were experiencing a tortuous pull between their future urban-based life and their past ties with land.
They felt the pangs of tearing off their roots from land for ever. Fatik i.e. Shafiqul who had recently completed his Bachelor of Law and would soon practice as a lawyer, noticed his ailing father sleeping on a torn mat and his frail mother husking paddy and became conscious of how his relation with his parents and with the rural life was getting severed.
“ফটিক বুঝতে পারল তার সঙ্গে তার পরিবারের নাড়ির বাধনটা ছিড়ে গিয়েছে। কিন্তু এই আবিষ্কারে সে অস্বস্তিবোধ করতে লাগল। সে কেমন বিপন্ন হয়ে পড়ল। তার বাপ তার মা তার আত্মীয় কুটুম, তার সমাজ থেকে কোন একটা অদৃশ্য শক্তি যেন তাকে টেনে নিয়ে চলেছে। সে যেন হুইল-ছিপে গলা আটকে- যাওয়া একটা মাছ, সুতোর টানে ধীরে ধীরে সে সরে যাচ্ছে তাদের কাছ থেকে, যাদের সঙ্গে তার রক্তের সম্পর্ক। কোথায় তবে যাচ্ছে সে? ফটিক চোখ বুজে দেখতে চেষ্টা করল। কিন্তু সে তটভূমির কোনো ছবিই তার চোখে ভাসল না। “
(Fatik discovered that the roots with his family had broken off. But, he began to feel uncomfortable at this realization. He felt disillusioned as well. He had been pulled out of the relationship with his close associates, his mother, his relatives and in-laws by an invisible pull. He felt his throat hooked to a fish- angle, “being slowly pulled by the thread from those he knew so close and with whom he had blood connection. But, what could he do? Fatik began to wonder. He could find no way out.)
These newly educated Muslim youths in Bengal felt the pangs of separation for another reason besides mere sentiment and that was the uncertainty about their own future. In Fatik’s case, he realised how tough it would be for him as a Muslim and also as a newcomer in legal profession, to make a place among the firmly established Hindu lawyers in the courts of Calcutta.
The economic condition of the peasants in the 1930’s was deplorable. The effect of the world depression of 1930-31 fell on the economy of Bengal too, particularly in the field of agricultural products.
The price of raw materials, especially food grains fell in the world market. The peasants in Bengal suffered the most. The peasants in north and east Bengal grew jute. Trade in jute was directed exclusively for export market and, therefore, controlled by the British-owned manufacturing houses in Calcutta. The price of raw jute depended upon the demand in world market.
After the slump in the price of jute in the early 1930’s, the peasants got such small amount for their jute that they stopped selling it with the hope that they would be able to sell in future with higher returns. They even stopped cultivating jute. The price of paddy was also too low. Sajjad, father of Shafiqul says with bitter anger and frustration,
তিন বছর ধরো ধান হচ্ছে না, কিন্তু আমরা চাষারা যার যেটুকু হয়েছে সেটুকু হাটে নিয়ে গিয়ে শুনি ধানের মন না আনা চোদ্দ আনা, দিবা তো ল্যাও নাহলি পথ দ্যাখ। ব্যাপারীদের কথাবাত্তার এই হ’ল ধান। “
(There has been no cultivation of rice for three years, but the peasants take to the market whatever they produce. There the middlemen offer such little price like twelve annas or fourteen annas a maund. That is a very low price but the middlemen would not even increase the price a little. Either you have to sell the crops to them or come back without selling.)
In the same page and on the same context, Sajjad says,
কুষ্টা ! দ্যাখ গত বছরের কুষ্টা এখনও গলায় ঝোলছে। কুষ্টার কথা আর কোয়ে না। গেল বছর চাষের খরচই পড়িছিল দু’টাকা। সেখিনে মোকামের দর ছিল পাঁচ সিকে পেতৃ টাকা মন। সব কুষ্টা বাড়ি আনে ছাওয়ালের ঘরে ভারে রাখিছি। ইবার হয় ঐ কুটা খাতি হবে আর না হয় পাকায়ে গলায় দিয়ে ঘরের আড়ায় বুলি পড়তি হবে। ………..
(Jute! look last years jute is still stacked unsold. Don’t talk of jute. Last year it cost two takas per maund for cultivation. But the market price was one taka five anna or one and half taka per maund. So I have stacked all jute in my son’s room. Either we have to eat this jute or make those into rope and strangle ourselves.)
The urban traders and money lenders also stopped financing the cultivators of jute after the dpression of 1930-32. The jute manufacturers also reduced the number of intermediaries engaged in the supply of raw jute after the slump as finished goods remained unsold because of less imports from outside.
The other phenomenon clearly exposed in the novel is the exploitation of the poor peasants by the non-Bengali, i.e. the Marwari moneylenders. They were the external exploiting forces who lend money to the peasants at high interest and also bought crops and jute at the lowest price possible. Tension between the peasants and the Marwaris was increasing in rural Bengal. The peasants used abusive term like Mero as a vent to their anger against the Marwaris.
Not only the Marwaris, the Bengali Hindu moneylenders, e.g. the Sahas took high interest from the poor peasants who borrowed money from them. The condition of the peasants was precarious. Besides lack of irrigation, low productivity of land, high interest rates for loans, the peasants had their ignorance and extravagance to add to their miseries. They often spent their borrowed money for marriage and religious ceremonies.
They would not think of doing trade even on a small scale. They were poor, helpless and dependent. Whereas the Hindu commnity in the rural areas were comparatively in a better economic position.
They opened stationary and retail shops and traded in iron, tin, kerosene and clothes and similar such commodities which they would bring from towns and sell those to the villagers. 10 From the 1920’s onwards average 300 pieces of property of the Muslims got sold everyday in auction. No Muslim was able to buy those. Their lands were sold in auction because of their increasing debts to the moneylenders.
For over a century the Muslim peasants in Bengal lost more than 10 thousand small and large zamindaris, 50 thousand taluks, 3 lakh 15 thousand jotes, 53 thousand lakheraj and jaigir properties besides a cash of over 6,000 million taka to the Hindu and Marwari merchants and moneylenders.11 Unless this situation could be checked the whole Muslim peasant community in Bengal would turn to porters, clerks, servants and labours because they would neither have means to live on land nor have the required education to do better jobs than those.
This was how the peasants were being made conscious by the Krishak Proja Samities that they were being exploited and that they must work hard, remove their ignorance and at the same time stand up against exploitation by landlords, jotdars moneylenders. In the novel, Mualvi Abu Taleb preaches to the peasants on behalf of the Krishak Proja Party that the peasants and debtors of both the Hindu and the Muslim communities should stand up unitedly against the oppression and exploitation of the landlords and mahajans.
The Proja Samities had made an impact on the peasants of Bengal from the late 1920’s (formed in 1929) and the Proja movement became predominantly an East Bengal movement because the region consisted of an overwhelmingly large Muslim peasantry.
The Muslim population of some of the districts of East Bengal can be found from the Census of India, 1931 that Dacca had 66.81%, Mymenshingh had 76.53%, Faridpur 63.76%, Pabna 76.89%, Bogra 83.33%, Jessore 61.88%, Khulna 49.45% of the total population of the districts respectively 12 Although the Proja Samities and later the Krishak Proja Party (as the Proja Samities came to be called from 1936) attempted to form an united movement against the zamindars their movement became popular only among the Muslim peasants in East Bengal.
The Hindu leaders, most of whom were themselves zamindars and wealthy landholders (jotdars) were reluctant to do anything for the tenants and peasants. The 1928 Amendment of the Tenancy Act had legalised for the first time sale and transfer of rayoti occupancy holdings but with a stipulation of a 20% landlord’s fee (i.e. 20% of the sale price to be given to the landlord) and the landlord’s right to pre-emption.
This had widespread effect of putting a temporary halt to the sales because the landlord’s fee had reduced the value of a holding and a raiyat had to sell a larger portion of his land in order to obtain a certain sum of money. But, this phenomenon could be noticed only in the northern and eastern districts of Bengal where a second crop. i.e. jute was available to meet the peasant’s need for cash13.
However, sale or transfer of rayati occupancy did not actually stop because the distressed peasants needed cash and, therefore, they mortgaged their land in order to evade the 20% landlord’s fee. According to a study in 1935 there were 1,60,341 sales and 3,57,297 mortgages, in 1936 there were 1,72,956 sales and 3,52,469 mortgages, and in 1937 there were 1,64,819 sales and 3,02,529 mortgages of occupancy holdings in Bengal.
During the Muslim League and Proja Coalition ministry with Fazlul Huq the Prime Minister, the amendment of the Tenancy Act was passed in 1938 which removed all restrictions, i.e. transfer fee and the right of pre-emption on the transfer of occupancy holdings. Other pro-peasant bills were passed like the Bengal Agricultural Tenants Act, Bengal Agricultural Debtors Act, the Money Lenders Act, etc.
The Proja movement in rural Bengal became dominated practically by the Muslims but actually it was not meant to be a communal movement. Abu Taleb, who campaigned for the Proja movement stressed in his speeches that the party was against the interestes of the zamindars and exploiters, not against Christians or Hindus.
But, the fact, was, the Proja movement ultimately turned to a Muslim movement. The Hindu zamindars and jotdars alienated the Hindu peasants from the Proja movement by injecting into their minds the fear of being forced to get converted.
“চাচা তুমাগের কামকাজের মধ্যে মুসলমান মুসলমান ভাবটা বড্ড বেশী আসে লড়তিছে। এতে অন্য যারা আছে, আর তুমাগের মতই মহাজন জমিদারের অত্যাচার খতম কত্তি চায়, তাগের কিন্তু পূরি সরায়ে দিবা। কথাতা হচ্ছে প্রজা আন্দোলন। আমাগের এরই উপর জোর দিয়া ভালো। হুতি পারে প্রজাদের মধ্যি, চাষীগের মধ্যি, খাতকলের মধ্যি মুসলমানের সংখ্যা বেশী। তাহলিউ ইভা এল আন্দোলন
(Uncle, it seems there is too much Islamic sentiment in your proja movement. There are others as well in the movement, who too want relief from the oppressions of the mahajans and zamindars but you will lose their support by your excessive Islamic feeling. This is a proja movement. We have to give importance to this fact. Might be that Muslims are a majority among the projas, peasants and the debtors but we have to remember that it is essentially a proja movement).
In page 218 Sajjad observed, that the Islamic modes of greetings and the use of religious symbols at such gatherings led the Hindu leaders to misguide the ignorant Hindu peasants which made a united Proja movement impossible. The author goes deep into the analysis of why the Krishak-Proja movement, impregnated with a great possiblity of a socio-economic change in Bengal ended in failure.
One of the reasons of its failure, Gour Kishore Ghose mentions through the conversation that had taken place between Bashir, Abu Taleb, Goya and Sajjad, is that the enormous number of estate managers, rent collectors and clerks engaged in the zamindari estates were Hindus and they united against the Proja movement.
Abu Taleb also pointed out the disinterestedness of the Hindu nationalist leaders regarding the problems of the peasants. The author has pointed out the limitations of the Hindu nationalist leaders both extremists and the moderates and also the Congress nationalists. None of them came forward to protect the interests of the peasants.
The other political movement that made the life of the urban Muslim youths in Bengal turbulent in the years around 1936-37 was the rise of the Muslim League. Jinnah had visited Calcutta and Dhaka in 1936 and in 1937 and had infused new life into the Muslim League Party by giving speeches of inspiration to youths and the non-Bengali business community in Bengal.
The Government of India Act of 1935 which had extended the franchise and provided safeguards and weightage in electoral seats for the Muslims, acted as a breakthrough for the Muslim League. After the 1937 election results and the formation of the League-Proja coalition, mass mobilization for the separatist movement started in Bengal.
Tough competition with the Hindus for jobs in government offices and in other careers led the rising Muslim middle class to join the separatist movement. But, not all Muslim youths were swayed away in this trend as yet. In the conversation between Yakub, the cousin of Bilkis and Shafiqul, husband of Bilkis brings out the difference of opinion among Muslim youths regarding the emerging separatist movement led by the Muslim League from the late 1930’s.
Yakub, educated in Dhaka in Eastern Bengal, felt enthusiastic about the new wave of Muslim nationalism. He was aware that the Muslims were a majority in Dhaka and, therefore, he felt it was their democratic right to get more privileges.
He stressed that the University of Dhaka should be a monopoly for the Muslim students in Bengal just as the Calcutta University was for the Hindu students. To Yakub, Calcutta and Dhaka seemed poles apart; Calcutta being a Hindu-majority and Dhaka being a Muslim-majority region. Yakub praised Kemal Ataturk for his reforms in Turkey and regarded him a source of inspiration for the Muslimyouths in Bengal.
Kazi Nazrul Islam’s (1899-1976 ) poems like “Kemal Pasha”, “Anwar”, “Shatt-il-Arab”, “Qurbani” (all composed around 1920-21 ) inspired the Bengali Muslim youths by evoking in them the lost glory of the Muslims. Shafiqul, however, does not support the idea of Muslim separatist movement. He felt that such a movement had a negative aspect contributing to communal tension. Yakub, enthusiastic about the idea of Muslim nationalism tells Shafiqul
“ঢাকায় গেলি বোঝতেন, বাংলার মুসলমান কত দ্রুত জাগছে। ঢাকা তাই আমার খুব ভালো লাগে । ”
(If you were in Dacca, you would have known how fast the Muslims are progressing. That’s why I like Dacca )
A few lines above on the same page. Yakub had said,
“ঢাকা আমাগের চোখ খুলে দেছে। ঢাকা ইউনিভারসিটির হিন্দুরা মক্কা ইউনিভারসিটিই কন আর ফকা ইউনিভারসিটিই কন এই ঢাকাই বাংলার মুসলমানের চোখ ফুটোবে ফুটোচ্ছে, তারে জাগাবে,
(Dacca has made us conscious about our community. Although the Hindus call it a Mecca University or a fake University this Dacca University will make the Muslim community conscious of their demands.)
Yakub called this the “spirit of Dhaka” and he was determined that
“মুসলিম মেজরিটি বাংলা থেকে হিন্দু আধিপত্য হটাতেই হবে। বাই হুহু অর বাই জুক। ”
(By whatever means Hindu domination must be removed from the Muslim majority Bengal)
Shafiqul could not agree with Yakub on this matter. In the novel Shafiqul represents the trend of Bengali Muslim nationalism as opposed to Yakub’s Muslim separatism. Shafiqul said that Calcutta was his “Alma Mater” 20 He was brought up in a village where peasants of both the communities lived side by side in harmony. To him communalism was a new wave which he sensed harmful.
He felt surprised that Yakub, even though educated, could not come out of religious prejudices. The Bengali youths who believed in Muslim nationism abused Nazrul Islam of his secular writings. To them secularism was a synonym for love of Hinduism. Their attitude, at times, was almost chauvinistic.
Their Hindu counterpart, the Hindu Mahasabha had the same attitude towards the Muslims. In this respect Gour Kishore Ghose depicted what the progressive and secular intellectuals of the time thought about communal relation in Bengal.
Motahar Hossain Chowdhury (1903- 1956), one of the contemporary Muslim writers, in a speech to the students of Carmichael College in Calcutta said in the early 1930’s that in Bengal the Muslims were heirs to ancient Hindu culture since most Muslims were originally converted from Hinduism. The Hindus did not inherit Muslim culture. So, he said, it was natural to expect that the Muslims should take the initiative to intermingle the two cultures.
Muslims should not expect the Hindus to come forward to make harmony with the Muslims. Rather, the Muslims, as inheritors of their culture, should make the first move to establish harmonious relation between the two communities.21 To Fatik, ie. Shafiqul, this was a very wise approach to communal relation but, in fact, by the late 1930’s even the educated Muslims began to support communalism. Fatik’s reflections expose that education could not make those youths secular.
On the contrary, as the numbers of English educated youths increased among Muslims in Bengal, communal jealousy intensified because of lack of jobs and clash of interests. Besides, the superiority complex in the middle-class Hindus and their attempt to dominate the society contritted to communal tension.
The novel also depicts the attitude of the conservative section of the Muslim community towards the younger generation of Muslim youths who had accepted English education and were taking up jobs in the urban centres.
The role of the mullahs and maulvis in the rural areas of Bengal was quite influential. The illiterate and ignorant masses were easily swayed by their religious preachings. But, those mullahs were mostly half-educated or completely illiterate. They spoke Urdu and Arabic and credited the use of those languages as aristocratic.
This pretension had originally come from the ashrafs. In the novel, Maulvi Din Mohammad Daulatpuri represents the orthodox section of the Muslim community in Bengal. The orthodox Muslims considered English education harmful to Islam. He complains that the Muslim youths no longer wanted to get educated at madrassas or maktabs where Arabic alphabets and the Quran were taught. He says,
মুসলমানের ছাওয়াল আর মক্তব মাদ্রাসায় পড়তি চায় না। তারা ইশকুল কলেজে ঢুকে এলমে বেদীন শিখাতছে। তাদের ঈমান নষ্ট হতিছে। ঈমান নষ্ট হলি মুসলমানের কি আর মুসলমানত্ব থাকে? সে তো কাফের হয়ে যায়। তাই সব অ্যাখন হাত যাচ্ছে। ভাই মুসলমান, সামনে অন্ধকার। হুঁশিয়ার হও। “
(Muslim youths no longer want to study at maktabs and madrassahs. They are learning un-Islamic subjects at schools and colleges. They are losing faith in religion. Once they lose faith do they remain Muslim any longer? They become Kafirs. There is grave danger ahead. Be careful.)
The educated Muslim youths in Bengal were beginning to realize how the ignorant and half-educated mullahs and maulvis were resisting the spread of education and enlightenment in rural Bengal. The progressive-minded youths preached anti-mullah opinion through newspapers and journals, e.g. the Sikha published from Dhaka in the years between 1927 and 1932.
The Muslim Literary Society, founded in Dhaka in 1926 by the educated and progressive group of Muslim youths contributed to the rational analysis of religion. They believed that,
“সমাজ বর্তমান মৌলবী, মোল্লা ও পীর সাহেবগণের হস্ত হইতে মুক্তিলাভ করিতে পারিলে, প্রকৃত প্রস্তাবে অনেকাংশে উন্নতির ক্ষেত্রে অগ্রসর হইতে সমর্থ হইত; তাহাতে বিন্দুমাত্র সন্দেহ নাই। মৌলবী মোল্লাগণ সমাজের উন্নতিকে অন্যূন আরও কয়েক শতাব্দী পশ্চাতে হুটাইয়া দিয়াছেন।
(Our society will progress only if it is made free from the influence of the maulvis, mullahs and pirs. They have prevented the development of the Muslim community and had, in fact, taken the society a hundred years backward.)
These mullahs and maulvis were given moral support by the Muslim aristocrats in Bengal who were mostly conservative. They were alarmed at such remarks against them and felt apprehended that the English-educated Bengali Muslim youths were getting irreligious.
They hated the rational interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith. They feared that the spread of English education would lead the younger generation of Muslims against the principles of Islam. They also disliked learning Bengali and the use of the language. Maulvi Din Mohammad expresses his fear and anger against this progressive trend. He remarked.
“এখন আবার ফ্যাশন হয়েছে, আরবী ফারসীর বদলে বাংলা চালু করা। মৰ মাদ্রাসা থেকে আরবী ফারসীকে নির্বাসন দাও। তা হলেই ষোলকলা পূর্ণ হয়। ইসলামের সর্বনাশ পুরা হয়।… “
(It has now become a fashion of the Muslim youths to learn Bengali. They demand abolition of Arabic and Persian from the maktabs and the madrassahs. It means that the destruction of Islam will be complete then.)
What was most shocking and alarming to them was that these were being initiated not by the Hindus or the Christians but by the Muslims themselves. The Bengali Muslim clergy and the aristocrats spoke Urdu.
Most of the Bengali Muslims who had been educated for two generations and were professionally well-established also spoke Urdu. Urdu and Persian were cosidered prestigious languages until the late-nineteenth century. The Muslims in Bengal spoke these languages to prove that their ancestors had come from Arabia, Turkey.
Afghanistan and Iran. The ashrafs continued to speak Urdu for the same reason and felt a kind of superiority over those Muslims who spoke Bengali. They considered Bengali the language of the atraps. The upper-class Muslims in Bengal felt a kind of satisfaction in identifying themselves with the Muslims of the Arab world. An identity crisis was still present among the Muslims in Bengal even in the 1930’s. Shafiqul was in a puzzle as to where his roots lay. He asks himself,
“আমার শিকড় কোথায়? কেন, আমার গ্রামে। জন্মেজি যেখানে? কিন্তু আমি তো এখন উকিল। তবে এখন আমি কি? তুর্কী না তুরানী, আরবী না ইরানী? সৈয়দ না শেখ, মোঘল না পাঠান? না বাঙালী? “
(Where does my roots lay? Why in the village of course. I was born there. But I am a lawyer now. So, then should I be a Turkish, or Iraqi, Arabian or an Iranian now? Shaikh, Syed, Mughal or Pathan? Or am I a Bengali?
This was not the case only with Shafiqul. Most educated Muslim youths were puzzled about their identity. The attitude of the older generation of the Muslims made the newly educated middle class Muslim youths deluded about their identity.
In the rural areas of Bengal, the mullahs and maulvis preached orthodox practices among the ignorant peasants. They spoke Urdu, a language unknown to the villagers who spoke Bengali.
The distance between the Urdu speaking rural Bengalis and the rural masses, therefore, was far wider than the Bengali speaking Muslims and their Hindu neighbours. Prem Nei depicts this ashraf-atrap dichotomy among Muslims in rural Bengal very clearly. The maulvis spoke in Urdu at religious gatherings and as one peasant said to the other,
-আরে উড়া হ’ল মৌলবী সাহেবগের জবান। ও বুঝা কি আমাগের কমমো।” আর বাকী সবাই বললো, “তা যা বলিছ, মৌলুদ মিলাদে উনারা কন আর আমরা মারহাবা মারহাবা কই। বাস্। “
(Don’t you know that this is the language of the maulvis? Can we ever understand what they say? Others in the gathering agreed and said, “you are right. The maulvis preach at the milads and we just praise them. That is all!)
Prem Nei depicts the reaction of the middle class among the Muslims in Bengal to the established religious practices and social taboos, their open defiance of the maulvis and mullahs and a feeling of uncertainty in them growing out of their own inferiority complex.
Prem Nei exposes how the authority of the mullahs was crumbling as increasing numbers of Muslim youths were taking English education and were beginning to think in a more rational and progressive manner.
These youths were particularly against religious orthodoxy and, therefore, anti-mullah. This phenomenon was prominent in rural Bengal, particularly, eastern Bengal where most of the population were Muslim peasants and they were illiterate over whom the mullahs had easily acquired an overpowering influence.
The novel shows that by the mid-1930’s the peasants in the villages had begun to doubt the spiritual greatness of the maulvis and the mullahs. A comic scene takes place in the novel in pages 227-228 when Maulvi Din Mohammad Daulatpuri dropped his turban carelessly in the mud on the river bank. Inspite of requests to the passengers on the bus none came to pick the turban up for him.
The passengers on the bus were Muslim villagers. At last a drunken Hindu of the lowest caste, who the maulvi despised, brought that turban to him for a reward of an anna (1/16th. of a rupee) with which he would buy hashish, while the Muslims present there kept watching unconcernedly . The above incident is highly symbolic of the socio-religious change taking palce in the Muslim society in Bengal.
The conservative Muslims and religious priests apprehended that Islam was losing its influence on both the educated youths and the ordinary illiterate Muslim masses. Shafiqul’s revolt against religious orthodoxy is represented in his disrespectful behaviour to Maulvi Din Mohammad. A period of change is always characterized with crisis which is present throughout the novel. Shafiqul, the central character in the novel embodies the tensions of the period.
On the one hand, he rebels against the existing social and religious orthodoxy of his community, on the other hand, as a lawyer, he struggles as a Muslim to establish himself in the professional domain already captured firmly by the Hindus. These youths had to face a two-pronged struggle, one against the orthodox section of their own community and the other against the already established middle-class Hindus.
The younger generation of the Muslims faced tough competition for jobs. Those in professions also struggled hard to establish themselves in their respective fields. Although educated, these Muslim youths coming to towns from their rural background could not become fully urban yet in their expression, dress and habits. They had still in them a pull between the urban and the rural modes of life.
This brought an inferiority complex in them. Besides, the exclusive attitude of the Hindu babus and their superiority further created a feeling of inferiority among the Muslims. It is a common psychological phenomenon that a kind of alienation grows out of inferiority complex. And this happened to the Muslims which led to the birth of a separatist tendency among them.
Though not democratic in content, the movement for Pakistan was popular. It aroused popular aspiration and hopes for the emerging Muslim middle class who wanted safeguards for their interests and, therefore, they joined the movement “en masse”. The author implied in his novel that a sincere effort from the really secular minded Hindus and Muslims would have prevented communalism and might have also prevented partition .
Gour Kishore Ghose has made keen observations about the significant changes taking place in the Muslim community in rural Bengal. He has reached so close to Muslim life and has depicted the transformations in their society so realistically that it makes one difficult to believe that the author does not belong to the same community.
Being a Hindu he highlighted the problems of the Muslims in Bengal and the novel clearly reflects his secular and humanistic approach to those problems. In this respect the novel can be considered an outstanding work on the Muslim community in Bengal.
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