Here I am in Dhaka, almost exactly a year after my last visit. End-January 2025 was not very cold; early-January 2026 has grown colder and older. Even as an elderly citizen of the world, I find the weather bracing. In any case, I am warmed up by insistent conversations with colleagues from the Dhaka Courier and the United News of Bangladesh, part of the Cosmos Group, atop whose headquarters I am staying, in a terrace room that affords me a roving view of life below. I am also reading Bangladeshi newspapers, which capture the pulse of the nation's life as only news can. I read them of course in my abode abroad, but that is only digitally. There is nothing better than the tangibility of print to complement the physical immediacy of life. A newspaper is about news, but it is also about paper. To turn news into paper is to turn paper into news. Only print journalism can do that.
I scan the newspapers of Bangladesh in Bangla and English. I want to know where Bangladesh is headed. But to know that, I need to know where the journey to Bangladesh began, why and how.
I chance upon The Daily Star and an article on three competing nationalisms in Bangladesh written by a young scholar, Asif Bin Ali. He cites the Islamic, the Bangalee and the Bangladeshi variants. The oldest of the three is Islamic nationalism, the roots of which go back to late-colonial Bengal. "The partition of Bengal in 1905 and the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dhaka in 1906 created a new arena in which Muslim elites organised as a community they saw as vulnerable in a Hindu-dominated political economy... The birth of Pakistan in 1947 looked like a clear victory."
However, the central leadership's attempt "to impose a single Muslim Pakistani identity, built around Islam and Urdu" created tensions that produced Bangalee nationalism. "With the language movement of 1952, the education movement of 1962, the Six Point Programme of 1966, and the mass uprising of 1969, a Bangalee political identity emerged that was no longer willing to be the submissive 'eastern wing' of a Muslim Pakistan. That sentiment was transformed into an armed struggle with the Liberation War of 1971. The founding moment shifted from 1947 to 1971...." Bangalee nationalism defined itself broadly in theory, but in practice it was centred on the culture of the Bangalee majority and marginalised many Biharis, indigenous communities and non-Bangla speakers. Also, "Islamic nationalism did not vanish with Pakistan's defeat. In independent Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami was banned, and religious politics were pushed back from the centre of power, but mosque networks, madrasa structures, and religious sentiments survived. Proponents of Islamic nationalism remained in the background, waiting for an opening."
That opening arrived indirectly through Bangladeshi nationalism. "The focus moved from cultural Bangalee identity to a territorial Bangladeshi identity centred on citizenship... Bangladeshi nationalism gradually came to be viewed by many as a softer cover for Islamic nationalism...Islamic parties, including a relegalised Jamaat, spoke in the language of Islamic nationalism, turning grievances about secular elites, global politics, and war crimes trials into a call for a more openly Islamic state."
Asif Bin Ali concludes: "All three nationalisms are real, with genuine constituencies, histories, and grievances. None of them can wipe out the others, though it has been tried..."
I thank him for giving me hope in the nation of Bangladesh. Nationalism is but an "ism", like "liberalism", "socialism", "communataarism, and "communism". Isms come and go, borne on or drowned by the waves of change. By contrast, people go on forever. I, a Bangalee although not a Bangladeshi, shall survive my quest for a Bengal that survives the lifespans of isms.
West Bengal
In this context, it is reassuring to come across an article that appeared in the Dhaka Tribune in 2020 but is available online. Author Sarwar Jahan Chowdhury writes that "there is a catch to the Bengali nationalism that grew in East Pakistan, as there already was an old Bengali identity" originating in West Bengal that included the Bengali Hindus of East Pakistan. The modern pan- Bangalee identity was created in the 19th century by the high culture of educated Hindus based in the colonial metropolis of Calcutta. That culture made "a few half-hearted attempts" to include Muslims but failed. "Most educated Muslims of West Bengal have accepted this version of Bengali identity today", but they retain "key features of their Bengali Muslim culture".
The difference between the two sides of Bengal, whether one lives in Dhaka or Kolkata, is this, in Chowdhury's words: "While Bangladeshis consider their Bengali nationalism as a nation state ideology, West Bengalis, as of now, consider it a sub-nationalism under the rubric of Indian nationalism. Now, BJP (India's ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party) has come up with Hindu nationalism...Hindi language and culture is seeping into the domain, with Indian state and corporate backing..."
So, even Bengali Hindu high culture is being co-opted into Hindu Hindi high culture in Hindustan. Observers point to nativist ethnolinguistic groups such as Bangla Pokkho that seek to push Urdu-speakers in Bengal into the margins of collective Bengali existence. Ismail Salahuddin and Mohammad Aaquib write in the magazine Caravan: "This reveals a dangerous paradox: in resisting Delhi's Hindi-Hindu supremacy, they reproduce its very logic. The BJP's idea of a Hindu India that speaks Hindi is conveniently repackaged in Kolkata as the idea of one Bengal, with one tongue, and one identity." The "ground is being prepared for a future where the plural heart of Bengal is silenced".
The echoes of contemporary Bengali history are unmistakable. The agency of Bangalitta, or Bengaliness, is inclusive: It does not require the erasure of complementary identities, be they Bihari Muslims in East Bengal/East Pakistan or Urdu-speakers and Hindi-speakers in West Bengal. Religion connects people to the hereafter: It is language that defines their existential proximity in the here-and-now.
As I prepare to leave Dhaka in two days, I wish Bangla well eternally - at least.
The writer is the Principal Research Fellow of the Cosmos Foundation. He may be reached at epaaropaar@gmail.com
