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 1 of this interview.
The subject of genocide and ethnic cleansing is a difficult one to approach and to face. What kind of emotional journey did you go through as you read Noakhali 1946 and prepared to translate it?
This was an extremely difficult journey. Most modern Indians grow up with the stories of partition horrors, the genocide, and stories of millions of refugees, and the stories from the medieval torture of Islamic invasion, and the stories of Jwahar (An act that Hindu women of the North Western states did of mass self-immolation together to resist sexual assault and sexual slavery of the Islamic invaders of which the most important story is the story of the invasion of the fort of Chitor by the invaders from Turkmenistan, led by Alauddin Khalji; Khalij’s aim was to subjugate Chitor and abduct the beautiful Hindu Queen Padmini. The king Rana Ratan Singh was killed in a battle, and Queen Padmini with 12,000 women performed the Jwahar).
Nonetheless, when the actual stories of killing were coming live via the translation of Noakhali 1946, it was very hard. This was aggravated by the latest news of the continuous attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh trickling in via the news and social media. The same stories as Noakhali 1946 were happening in Bangladesh as I was planning to translate this book: attacks on Hindu festivals, desecration of Hindu temples, killing, abduction of Hindu girls, using various methods to prohibit them from performing their festivals. There were times when I thought I needed a break from this and go and do something else. Nonetheless, I kept telling myself that I owed it to my people and other people who have gone through similar experiences and to the future generations indeed to bring this out, for a lot of our past and how people responded to these past incidents will determine our future. If we as a human community with our diverse way of thinking and acting and our diverse belief systems must survive and thrive, we must recognize our past, our failures, our successes and how what people did to each other in the past can affect our relationship with each other in the future. So, it is not just a story about Hindu genocide and oppression, but a story about humanity and about our global future.
Interesting, for the first time, I starting to connect with some family members whose parents (or grandparents) fled East Pakistan during or after the partition. Many of their stories were like well-preserved family secrets. When I was growing up, I felt that whenever people started talking about the days of their refugee status, they tried to suppress it. Now I know they felt ashamed and guilty talking about their victim status. I am finding out that it is globally true.
People who have been victims of colonization and genocide feel guilty and ashamed to talk about it, although, they were never at fault for their suffering! For generations they built a life by getting education and wealth. Many in the second generation had well off sophisticated lives and did not wish to talk about this. In fact, their refugee past was an embarrassment. When I started asking them questions, some of them opened up and this gave me a sense of anchorage and a reason to follow through the translation despite the mental agony. It also gave me a chance to investigate some of the intergenerational issues with my mother, who is usually more intolerant of Muslims than I am. I could slowly understand her pain and the reason for her intolerance. I called my mother, who lives in India, to talk about her memories when they had to leave East Bengal (now Bangladesh) to come to a more secure place in West Bengal, the bordering state of India, before the partition of India. She said that my grandfather knew that bad days were coming for Hindus, and they had to leave their homes. Interestingly, she said, that they were lucky that they left Bangladesh before the partition of India; in 1947, 14 million people were fleeing and there was no place in trains or boats to flee. I connected with others who have worked on this and some groups who support Hindu refugees.
What sustained me through this journey of translation was my decision to visit Bangladesh and my ancestral home. It was a difficult decision as my family was scared for my safety; nonetheless, something told me that I had to do this. This journey was very important for me to go back into the past and visit some of the Hindu pilgrimages in Bangladesh, that my mother and grandmother always talked about. I visited several Temples and even those that were destroyed and rebuilt. I visited a Buddhist Monastery built in ancient India that was destroyed and rebuilt. I spoke to many people, both of Hindu and Buddhist faith, who were persecuted and still feel unsafe. They gave me important insights into how they negotiate this daily. With this journey, I felt anchored and empowered to continue my translation work. I felt I was not alone in the world struggling with specters of the past in bringing the past to light, there were thousands of others who were living with these memories but never talked about them.
When did the idea to translate the book first come to you? What was the impetus to finally get started?
I came to know about the book via a message from a friend on social media. The idea to write something on the historical colonization of Bharat is not new for me. I was thinking of it for a long time and doing my research on this issue. When I read Noakhali 1946, I decided to start by translating this book. The Hindu genocide in Noakhali is a watershed that brings the past, present, and future of Islamic colonization of Bharat, and of Asia in general; reading this, one gets a sense of a seamless history of the brutality of forced conversion, the breaking of the Temples, and the taking of millions as slaves to the Middle East.
The issue perhaps that is most important here is the phenomenon of forced conversion as part of that invasion. For often Muslims in the Asian nations like Afghanistan, the Indian sub-continent, Malaysian, Indonesia, etc. are negotiating their present Islamic identities and their Hindu and Buddhist past from which they often derive many of their cultural practices. This is possibly the case in Africa where Islam came in first with the merchants and then via the sword. Often Muslims in the sub-continent are not regarded as “pure” Muslims by those in Arabia, because they have retained some of their past cultural practices. Efforts are made to transform their identities into strong Muslim identities. This process is not just something on the local or personal level but will have a global impact on inter-faith communications, relations of nations in many parts of the world and indeed the entire global politics. So, when I read this book, I had the idea immediately to translate it for a global audience and use this as a platform for further research and writing.
The impetus was the continuous trickling in of the news from Bangladesh of harassment of Hindus, the killing, the burning of Hindu homes, the iconoclasts, the desecration of their temples and festivals. Again, this is not merely political, but personal for me, for Bangladesh, a place that passed through two identities. In 1947 it was a state in India, Bengal, and then a state in Pakistan, East Pakistan, and then an independent nation, Bangladesh. Again, all this is personal for me, as this is where my forefathers were from and where they overnight became Kafirs or unbelievers and had to leave. Furthermore, the impetus came from the ongoing conflict of Hindus and Muslims in the sub-continent. The hatred of Muslims towards the Hindus and vice versa form a background narrative of the daily lives of people in the Indian sub-continent and round the globe. All these conflicts are rooted in the past and the Noakhali 1946 genocide was one of these moments and a vital confluence of the past, present, and future.
In addition, another impetus was my interest in the philosophy of Ahimsa of Gandhi, something I also talk about in my classes. To fight against the British Raj, Gandhi used the method of Ahimsa, loosely translated as nonviolence. This is also the same method he tried to use in Noakhali in the face of extreme brutality faced by the unarmed Hindus. As I did my research on Ahimsa, I realized that Ahimsa was not merely nonviolence, as most believe. It is a complete transformation of the Self. It involves an acknowledgement of the existence of the other in the fullest sense. In its purest form, Ahimsa is a type of Yoga that must be practiced continually. The more I read about how Gandhi advised the victims (Hindus in Noakhali, especially Hindu women), the more I was intrigued and felt I either did not understand the philosophy of Ahimsa or Gandhi was completely wrong in his approach in dealing with extreme brutality and oppression. I wanted the world to judge this philosophy for themselves by reading about its application in Noakhali and thinking if in the present world Ahimsa is a viable form of resistance. This gave me a further impetus to translate this book.
Do you have a favorite quote from Unspoken Hindu Genocides and Ethnic Cleansing that you’d like to share? Or one that gets to the heart of the whole?
I think my favorite quote from the book is a lecture from Pir Golam Sarwar, as it summarizes the reason for the killings and is the pillar on which the past, present and future Hindu genocide is based.
“Sarwar took the microphone and started speaking. He said, “Alhamdulillah! We are Muslims, we have two types of countries. Dar Ul Islam and Dar Ul Harb. In 1803 when the British captured Delhi then the famous Alim Shah Haji gave a fatwa that the nation is now a Dar Ul harb. It is not of a Muslim to accept Dar Ul harb. It is said in the Quran. Now the Europeans will leave this nation. In their places will come the Musrik (h)indus…. Muslims can never live under Musrik (H)indus. (H) can never live in Pakistan. Only Jews and Christians can stay there as dhimmis paying Jiziya tax. But Musrik (Hindus) are dirty, and profane. They have no place in Dar ul Islam. We will not accept their idolatry. Our Prophet broke all the idols after occupying it, so that no one can make idols, it is your duty to destroy all the idols, and the Monasteries and Temples. If we break their temples, it will break their guts. Then everyone must read the Kalima (or the five pillars of Islam), and they must be fed beef. We must do this work together. But not everyone will accept your words. A spear must be pointed at their chest. If they refuse, then a couple could be killed. …As the Sura Anfal says, In the booty, the wives, and daughters, of the (H)indus are also yours… you can do whatever you wish…But yes you must give all the booty to the Amir…” (Unspoken Hindu Genocides and Ethnic Cleansing, pp. 28-29).
This is not only my favorite quote but also historically and politically the most important quote that bring history to the present. This quote shows that it was not a one-time killing of Hindus in a place called Noakhali, now in Bangladesh at that time part of India. It is a planned annihilation of an entire civilization, called Jihad. The word “Jihad” comes from the Arabic word Jahada meaning “strain,” “exertion,” “endeavor” on behalf or for the sake of something. Jihad is translated by E.W. Lane as “the using, or exerting one’s utmost power, efforts, endeavors, or ability, in contending with an object of disappropriation… namely a visible enemy, the devil, and one’s self.” There are three senses of the term Jihad:
∙ Jihad bi al-nafs: Jihad against one’s sinful inclinations.
∙ Jihad Al qwal: Preaching of the tongue.
∙ Jihad bi al-sayf: Jihad of the sword.
∙ The last is the greater Jihad as opposed to the first, which is the lesser Jihad.
∙ Most mainstream Sunni tradition takes Jihad in the last sense.
This is important for us globally to be how some systems of colonial power work. It wants to bring the entire world under one faith, one law, and one State with no diversity, no pluralism. It is important to note that in the Islamic Jurisprudence there are two main types of lands, Dar Ul Harb, the ungoverned land, and Dar Ul Islam, the governed land with (Islamic) laws. There are “in between” lands, like the Dar Ul Sulk and Dar Ul Ahd, these are the lands of covenant or truce. A Muslim is not allowed to live in an ungoverned land or Dar Ul Harb, but momentarily can live in Dar Ul Sulk and Dar Ul Ahd, until a Jihad is declared and then society is transformed into Dar Ul Islam, the Utopian land governed by Islam and everyone submits to Islam. In this sense, parts of Africa, India, Europe, and other continents are all Jahiliyas, that is pre State lands that have to be transformed to “civilized ones.” Jahiliya is much like Hobbes’s State of Nature and have to be eventually transformed into a civilized land. This idea is not much different from other colonial mission of “civilizing the natives.”
The entire idea from the first Islamic invasion in a military campaign led by Muhammad ibn Qasim al-Thaqafi in 711 CE. was the establishment of the Dar Ul Islam. So the Jihad or struggle to annihilate the last ancient civilization is the real aim and Noakhali 1946 is only a symptom. We cannot understand Jihad as terrorism, but a highly structured and organized system of power that makes it a moral duty of every Muslim, as prescribed by their faith. Of course, one could say that it all depends on how one interprets the scriptures. Nonetheless, we as Kafirs see the playing out of violence on our lives via colonization and genocide and that is what makes sense of us. Via the use of the word “Musrik” and (H)indus, cutting of the “H”, the Pir is already “othering” a group of people, who can then be annihilated and that it is the moral duty of Muslims to do so.
Tell us how the book came together.
My publisher, Community Publishing, published a poetry book prior to this. It took me over a year to translate Noakhali 1946. A student, who is interested in Hindu genocide, helped me with some of the editing. Prof. Lakshmi Bandlamudi wrote the foreward. The actual publication took longer than expected as the printer had some issues with the formatting and the cover. Nonetheless, it was solved after a six week delay and Unspoken Hindu Genocides and Ethnic Cleansing was published in October 2024.
What writing projects are you working on now?
I am writing on the Hindu Genocide in Kashmir, Sindh (now in Pakistan), and the genocide in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), with special emphasis on forced conversion and occupation of Hindu women’s womb. I am specially focusing on how Kashmir, the seat of Hindu civilization was Islamized over 700 years and now how slowly the last of the Kashmiri Hindus who were forced to leave in the 1990s are trying to rebuild some of their past. I am also trying to research on Muslim identities in Asia, who have been converted a couple generations ago and follow many Hindu and Buddhist traditions and how they negotiate some of the conflicting features of their identities, and what it means for them to be a “Muslim.” I am also building communities with Yezidis of Iraq and some of the African people who have kept memories of their pagan pasts alive via research into the trans-Saharan African slave trade, the brutal castration of African slave boys, and the history of eunuchs. This feature is specific to the Islamic colonization. My research interest is, what was the life of these eunuchs once they were castrated? Did they have any pleasure after castration? How did they negotiate their identities and sexuality?
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Both Noakhali 1946 as well as my research have implications for the future of our earth. The conflicts between Jews and Christians and Muslims are, I believe, a political conflict; the conflict between Hinduism and Islam, on the other hand, is an ontological one and it is the ultimate conflict. In fact one of the Hadiths in the Quran says that the last Gazwa or raiding will be the land of the infidels, India or Bharat. Why? If we go through the history of Islam in Arabia, we will see that the Prophet of Islam was neither a Jew nor a Christian, although there were minority Jews and Christians in Arabia at that time. The Prophet belonged to the Quraysh tribe who prayed in the Temple of Hubal (now the Ka’baa, the most Holy site of Islam) to Hubal and the three Goddesses, Al Manat, Al Uzzat, Al Lat. Then, after his marriage to Khajida, a local wealthy widow, the Prophet was influenced by Waraqah ibn Nawfal, an elderly cousin of Khadija, who converted to Christianity, and inspired the Prophet to follow monotheism. The Prophet went to meditate on Mount Hira and heard some voices and revelations about a new faith. He related this to Waraqah ibn Nawfal who told him to rely on what he heard. The revelations said that the Prophet was born to teach a new religion, following the teaching of Prophet Abraham, and reform Prophet Abraham’s teachings. Interestingly, there was a monotheistic system in Arabia at that time, Hanafi, which was adopted as one of the Jurisprudences in Islamic law, apart from Hanabali, Salafi, and Maliki. The Prophet was not very successful in spreading his new religion, he was persecuted for it. Some of the new converts fled to Christian Ethiopia. The Prophet with his followers performed a Hijra or migration to Medina. Then after several Gazwa or raiding on Meccan caravans, of which the Battle of Badr is decisive, he was able to win over Mecca and the Temple. After one unsuccessful attempt, the Prophet with an army of 10,000 went to capture Mecca and converted the most influential person, Abu Sufiyan, destroyed all the idols of the Temple and converted it to the Ka’baa.
The above history is important for us, for it shows that the primary antithesis of Islam was the polytheists, his tribe Quraysh and their Gods and Goddesses, very similar to Hinduism. It is also important to note, that the Hubal, probably a descendent of the Canaanite God Baal, was a God of fertility with a crescent moon and whose mound was a bull. This is what the Hindu God Shiva is. He is the Supreme destroyer, who wears the crescent moon on his head, and rides the bull. Probably, both Gods symbolize fertility which is why the bull is the mound. Hence, ontologically, Hinduism is the primary antithesis of Islam. The call of Gazwa I Hind or the Gazwa Tul Hind, the battle for Hindustan or Bharat (India) will be, according to one Hadith, the last most bloody battle, after which a world Caliphate will be established. All these are of course part of a story, like in all scriptures, nonetheless, we cannot take these lightly and brush it aside, for many take this as the coming history of the world. This is important for us in the present scenario of world politics and conflict and who will take which side and how the future of the world will be settled.
Noakhali 1946 (Untold Hindu Genocides and Ethnic Cleansing) is not just a genocide of Hindus and the danger of Hindu existence. It is a historical document about the future of humanity and global peace. I hope this book will encourage readers to do more research on the origin of Islam, the meaning of Jihad in Islam, and how those who dream of a global Caliphate via Jihad, think. It is a book that should make us curious about the days and how in a world that is fast globalizing and transforming. I was brought up where culturally there is belief amongst people in rebirth and cyclic time. In feminist theory, too, we talk about cyclic times. If rebirth is true, then it is possible we will all be back again in a different form in a different place, maybe as a tree or an animal. In whatever form, in whatever race, ethnicity, or faith we come back, one thing is certain, our lives, including those of nature and animals are interconnected and we cannot ignore each other or our past, however brutal that is. It is our connection to each other, friends or foes, in this or past lives, that shapes our identities. This is why, these stories have to be told and retold. They are the glues like the Vedas, Ramayana and the Mahabharata, that binds us, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians, whites, Africans, Natives, mammals, birds, plants, or trees. Our future lies in our effort and intention to create a space where we can live with differences and talk of past injustices and still be at peace and harmony with each other.
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.
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