An Interview with Dr. Rinita Mazumdar, Part 1

Rinita Mazumdar, PhD is an author and poet and one of the leading feminist scholars in the Southwest. She has taught Philosophy for over 30 years in different locations across the U.S., including the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College. Her nonfiction book Unspoken Hindu Genocides and Ethnic Cleansing is a translation of Sandip Mukherji’s Noakhali 1946 and was released by Community Publishing in October 2024. Look for Dr. Mazumdar on her blog and podcast, as well as on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and Amazon. To read more about Unspoken Hindu Genocides and Ethnic Cleansing, go to Part 2 of this interview.

When you began translating Noakhali 1946, what did you hope to accomplish? By the end of the journey, do you feel you were successful in your goals?
By translating this book, I hoped to bring to the global audience an intensely personal story that is also 100% political, based on the shared experiences of millions of people on this planet for over eight hundred years. Noakhali 1946 (the original Bengal title of this book, which is how I will refer to the book in the rest of this interview) is a watershed in the history of the Indian sub-continent and indeed the human history of a people’s tragedy, horror, resilience and survival.

Little does the outside world know the story of the Hindus and Hindu civilization. The Hindu journey, covering 6000 years, spatially stretches from what is now Afghanistan (depicted as Gandhara in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, the world’s longest poem), Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, stretching to Khamboja (Cambodia) and Indonesia is not only a history of the Vedas and the millions of philosophical sutras and art and architecture, but also one of persecution, forced conversion, genocide, iconoclasm, abduction, humiliation, culminating in modern time in the brutal partition of a land considered sacred by millions, India, that they know as Bharat (I will refer to India both as India and Bharat subsequently; India is also called Hindustan, the land of the Hindus) into India and Pakistan (West Pakistan and Bangladesh) in 1947; a division where 99% of the people had no choice and almost no Hindus had consent. I wanted to tell that story as it is unique in world history for its civilizational continuity. It is a story of my people who showed tremendous resilience, an unwavering faith in their own belief system, and their strength to sustain a wounded civilization and reconstruct it from time to time.

According to anthropologist Levi Strauss, myths give structure to absurdity; probably it is the millions of stories and myths passed from generation to generation that maintained the continuity of this culture despite numerous invasions, conquests, and brutalization. It is a story that the world needs to know how sacred text, epics, and tales constitute the glue and backbone of this continuity. In this long civilizational history, Noakhali 1946 has an important place as it marked the history of the past, present, and future in a moment by being the catalyst to India’s independence in 1947 and her entry into modernity at the same time, creating two nations out of one, a land of believers, Pakistan, and a land of Kafirs or unbelievers, India. It is a trauma of not only lost homes and of displacement and killing but also of realizing that despite their numerous deities and long philosophical traditions, they are Kafirs, unbelievers, and “others” with whom the followers of one true faith, Islam, cannot live in the same space. It was not only a history of partition, but also a history of the largest movement of human beings, refugees, across borders.

An estimated official record says that 14 million people were displaced and were refugees in 1947 during India’s independence and the partition. A legacy of this brutal partition was carried on again in 1971 when Pakistan was further divided into Pakistan and a new nation Bangladesh after a decisive war between Pakistan and India when India helped the Bangladeshi Mukti Bahini, the guerrilla freedom fighters to win their freedom against a brutal oppressive Pakistani regime. This time an estimated 10 million refugees moved into India from East Pakistan. This also is an important event in global history. India won the war led by Mrs. Indira Gandhi standing against the U.S. continuous support of Pakistan and its army by supplying weapons and logistics by President Nixon. The wound of 1947, the partition, was partially healed when India won the war and made Bangladesh into a free nation. The historical Noakhali genocide foreshadowed the coming war of 1971, the biggest after World War II.

I hoped by reading Noakhali 1946 people in the West would get a sense of how an ancient civilization was brutalized and yet how the world still has not recognized that brutality and how despite resistance from religions like Islam and Christianity, the Hindu faith is still the third largest in terms of followers in the world.

On the personal side, I wanted to tell my story and hoped to build bridges with others whose stories of civilizational memory are still hidden. I wanted to build a bridge with colonized people whose stories are being told, or had never been told, by telling our stories of invasion, forced conversion, and genocide. After 1947 each family in Bharat had a story that is different nonetheless, woven in a thread of loss, trauma, and the realization that they could never return to their place of birth. My mother’s family, landowners and wealthy, had to flee the Hindu genocide happening in 1947 in the Eastern part of Bengal, where Noakhali was situated, a continuation of the Noakhali 1946, and which eventually became East Pakistan after August 1947. Except my mother’s uncle (my grandfather’s older brother) and his wife, the entire family fled to India. Overnight, wealthy landowners became penniless refugees, surviving on the small stipend from the Indian Government. Those who were not that lucky got killed or had to convert to Islam.

Noakhali 1946 had an additional interest for me. My paternal uncle was in Noakhali in 1946 with Gandhi. Gandhi called upon young men and women to participate in assisting the victims of Noakhali. My uncle joined him and spent a year in Noakhali, worked with Gandhi’s team. We grew up hearing some of his experiences, although looking back, I realize that he did not give up a full picture of how Gandhi used his philosophy of Ahimsa, loosely translated as nonviolence and did not fully succeed. In addition, in Calcutta, where I grew up and went to college, a metropolis in the Eastern part of India, bordering Bangladesh, where once were open fields was completely inhabited by Hindu refugees who fled during the Noakhali genocide. The trickling of Hindu refugees did not stop once partition happened in 1947. Hindus, Buddhists, and all other persecuted minorities fled East Pakistan and Calcutta, and the rest of India gave them shelter during and after Noakhali in 1947, 1950s, and 1960s. Then came another shock wave of ten million fleeing during the Bangladesh liberation struggle in 1971 that saw one of the world’s most brutal genocide and mass rape with Hindus as specific targets of the Pakistani army. Even after the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the story remains the same, Hindus were coming in from the neighboring Bangladesh in 70s, 80s, 90, 2002, 2021, 2024….

All this formed the background of my growing up and shaped my consciousness. These also are my reasons to translate Noakhali 1946. I hoped to build a community with similar personal stories of persecution, loss, and brutality around the world by translating this book. I hoped that others who are in this situation now, evicted from their land, persecuted, facing ethnic cleansing and genocide will slowly tell their stories. For it is only our personal stories that can create a sense of community. I am in touch with the Yezidis of Iraq, with similar histories, and some other native communities in Central America, but Africa, with similar histories, must work harder to reach out to more people. I am talking about this book getting translated into other indigenous languages so that more people can see how our communities are connected.

I cannot say that I have fully accomplished my aim in either making the world aware of the brutal history or our resilience nor building cross cultural communities with similar histories, nonetheless, I think it is a start. Hindu genocide, as, unlike other genocides, is an ongoing process.

According to Raphel Lemkin, “… the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group… generally speaking genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is extended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundation of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

Noakhali 1946 is just a symptom. The aim of Hindu genocide is to completely eradicate the Hindu civilization. To make that clear to the reader is a daunting task. With the publication of this book and many articles coming out, I am hoping that slowly the past genocide and the aim will become clear to the global audience. I am not alone in this effort. Across University campuses in North America and other places the Hindu Student Council is trying its best to pass on this history onto the next generation. I hope one day this will be a part of the public discourse in the West and we will be able to accomplish the task of building global communities with shared experiences and proceed in our healing process.

In every language certain words, phrases, or concepts don’t translate well. How often did you encounter this dilemma with Noakhali 1946, and what are some examples?
This was one of the biggest challenges in translating this book. I did my best to translate the book as it is given. When there were words that needed to be explained, I put a footnote so that readers can read those. There are several footnotes in the book, not only of words but also of cultural events and cultural icons, deities, so that the readers are able to put them in context. For example, this genocide started after Pir Golam Sarwar, an Imam, gave a call to annihilate all the Hindus in Noakhali. This happened in the first week of October and he said that the Prophet called for an action against the idolators of Arabia in Badr in the same month of the calendar of that time in Arabia. This battle was decisive in Islamic calendar as it eventually led to the Prophet’s army to capture Mecca and the Temple of Hubal and the Goddess, Al Manat, Al Uzaat, Al Lat, and convert the polytheists of Mecca to Islam and turn the Temple in the Qa’baa. Interestingly, as per the Hindu soli lunar calendar, this is the month that Hindus celebrate their largest festival, the festival of Goddess Durga, the demon slayer spanning nine days and culminating in Diwali, the festival of lights. Also, about a week after the festival of Goddess Durga comes the festival of Goddess Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth and prosperity. The mayhem and destruction of Hindu households and temples started on the night of the festival of Goddess Lakshmi. To explain the significance of these events I put elaborate footnote in the battle of Badr in Arabia and the Hindu festivals of Goddess Lakshmi, including her image.

What are some surprising facts you discovered while doing research for this book?
One surprising fact is Gandhi’s reaction to the Noakhali Hindu genocide. We who grew up in India knew from our history lessons about Ahimsa that Gandhi taught. It was more a lesson in theory than praxis. In translating this book, I was amazed how Gandhi applied this. In Noakhali 1946, we read about Sucheta Kripalani, an activist, who later became the Chief Minister (Governor) of Uttar Pradesh, a state in Northern India. She was in Noakhali in 1946 and worked with the victims, especially women. She recounted the absolute degradation of Hindu women and her own life during this time. Her husband, Professor Kripalani, was a politician and activist, and he said in an interview that Gandhi advised Sucheta to carry potassium cyanide and consume it if she was sexually assaulted by a Muslim mob! Is this the kind of Ahimsa resistance that Gandhi was preaching? Also, even when Hindus were being forcibly converted and babies were thrown into fire and killed, Gandhi told them to maintain calm and harmony! This was very surprising, for I thought Ahimsa was a general practice of nonviolence, but did not include this complete passivity on the part of the victim.

I did more research on this issue and saw that Gandhi did the same thing in the Moplah genocide in Southern India in 1922. Moplah is a place in the Malabars, along the coast of Southern India, where in the 12th century some Arab merchants and their families settled. Under their influence many Hindus converted. In 1922, some of them revolted and wanted the Hindus who owned land to convert or leave. When they did not, they were killed. Gandhi said it should be seen as part of the class struggle against landowning Hindus and should be forgiven! He had no explanation of why only Hindu landowning people and not Muslim landowning people were killed! Throughout, he only gave advice to Hindus to be patient, especially Hindu women, who had suffered most and said they must practice Ahimsa, even when they see their children being butchered. Translating this book showed me the irrationality of the entire philosophy of Ahimsa. Nonviolence is certainly, I believe, a better option than violence as a form of resistance; nonetheless, it is also a duty to preserve oneself. I wonder how Gandhi reconciled it in his philosophy of Ahimsa.

Another fact is the number of forced conversions, and the method used to do it. The method was the same everywhere, in Sindh and in Kashmir: First they force fed a Hindu beef, a prohibited meat for Hindus, then they made him read the Kalima, the five pillars in Islam, break an idol, and be declared a Muslim, usually by an Imam. Also, another thing that is surprising is the gendered nature of this conversion. The above type of conversion was/is for men only. For women, it is either rape or forced marriage with a Muslim man, and the process of conversion was complete.

What was the most rewarding aspect of putting this project together?
According to psychoanalytical theory, when the ego is overwhelmed by painful memories, usually, a mechanic called repression works and that memory is repressed. Later sometimes the memory returns covertly in the form of a metaphor. In the gaps and silences when talking about the partition, genocide, forced conversion, and iconoclasts, I felt that people in my family were often silent and there were gaps. Now, when the stories are coming out and when several of my family members have read the book, they are starting to talk about it openly. This has been rewarding for me and for the family in general. Another rewarding thing is that people from outside the Hindu communities with similar past histories are coming out and reading the book. This is a global issue, and one needs to reach out in order to overcome the feeling of guilt, shame, isolation and loneliness that these painful memories bring.

What did completing this translation teach you about yourself?
It taught me that as a person I am very resilient. I have gone through ups and downs in my life and have come out of them. Working on this book and doing all the research for this book, I realized that I am, like my people, strongly resilient. Many of my extended family who suffered forced eviction and terror in 1947 and in 1971 fled to India, struggled to bring up their children, and now the third or fourth generations are very successful here in the United States and in many places round the world. What sustained them was a strong faith and belief in their own community and in humanity. I also realized that I have strong faith in human beings, despite all the tragedies and conflicts that surround us.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
First, while translating this book, I researched on Jihad, as I described above, as a colonial process in the African continent and the Indian sub-continent. Although my research is in no way fully comprehensive, I have reached certain tentative conclusions about this process which I would like to share with the readers. Jihad, as portrayed by the popular media, is not terrorism, but a highly organized network of power, a colonial system that aims at establishing global hegemony. In this sense one could compare it to other global hegemonic powers, like global capitalism or global communism, who want total domination of the globe. Jihad is also intricately linked to racism and the idea of a supremacist philosophy that aims at bringing the entire world under a Caliphate via violent means. Although, it is a utopia at this moment in history, nonetheless, it is possible that it will infiltrate our everyday lives and will change many things we take for granted.

KL Wagoner loves creating worlds of fantasy and science fiction. Her current work in progress is The Last Bonekeeper fantasy trilogy and short stories in the same universe. A member of SouthWest Writers since 2006, Kat has worked as the organization’s secretary, newsletter editor, website manager, and author interview coordinator. Kat is also a veteran, a martial art student, and a grandmother. Visit her at klwagoner.com.