Bengalis

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Bengalis (বাঙালি [baŋgali]), also rendered as Bangalee or the Bengali people, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia. The native population is divided between the independent country Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam's Barak Valley. Most of them speak Bengali, a language from the Indo-Aryan language family.

Quotes[edit]

  • “I believe that the Bengalis have never at any period held sway over a particle of land. They are altogether ignorant of the method by which a foreign race can maintain its rule over other races.”
  • Perhaps the most striking Indian policy was something that it did not do. India did not stop masses of Bengali refugees from flooding into India. Unimaginably huge numbers of Bengalis escaped into safety on Indian soil, eventually totaling as many as ten million—five times the number of people displaced in Bosnia in the 1990s. The needs of this new, desperate population were far beyond the capacities of the feeble governments of India’s border states, and Indira Gandhi’s government at the center. But at that overcharged moment, the Indian public would have found it hard to accept the sight of its own soldiers and border troops opening fire to keep out these desperate and terrified people. Here, at least, was something like real humanitarianism. As payment for this kindness, India found itself crushed under the unsustainable burden of one of the biggest refugee flows in world history—which galvanized the public and the government to new heights of self-righteous fury against Pakistan.
    • Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and A Forgotten Genocide (2014)
  • "At this time our nation is in a bad state in regards education and wealth, but God has given us the light of religion and the Quran is present for our guidance, which has ordained them and us to be friends. Now God has made them rulers over us. Therefore we should cultivate friendship with them, and should adopt that method by which their rule may remain permanent and firm in India, and may not pass into the hands of the Bengalis... If we join the political movement of the Bengalis our nation will reap a loss, for we do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the "people of the Book..."
    • Syed Ahmed Khan in KUMAR, S (2000). Educational Philosophy in Modern India. Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd. p. 60.
  • The aspirations of our friends the Bengalis have made such progress that they want to scale a height to which it is beyond their powers to attain. But if I am not in error, I believe that the Bengalis have never at any period held sway over a particle of land. They are altogether ignorant of the method by which a foreign race can maintain its rule over other races. 191
    • Sir Sayyid Aḥmad K̲h̲ān̲_ Sir Syed Ahmad Khan_ Shan Mohammad (ed.)_ Ram Gopal (foreword) - Writings and Speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan-Nachiketa Publications (1972)
  • I do not think the Bengali politics useful for my brother Mussalmans. Our Hindu brothers of these Provinces are leaving us and are joining the Bengalis. Then we ought to unite with that nation with whom we can unite.... If our Hindu brothers of these Provinces, and the Bengalis of Bengal, and the Brahmans of Bombay, and the Hindu Madrasis of Madras wish to separate themselves from us, let them go, and trouble yourself about it not one whit. We can mix with the English in a social way. We can eat with them, they can eat with us. Whatever hope we have of progress is from them. The Bengalis can in no way assist our progress. 192-3
    • Sir Sayyid Aḥmad K̲h̲ān̲_ Sir Syed Ahmad Khan_ Shan Mohammad (ed.)_ Ram Gopal (foreword) - Writings and Speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan-Nachiketa Publications (1972)
  • Of course the Bengalis have been extremely difficult to govern throughout their history.
    • Henry Kissinger, quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.
  • The Bengalis aren’t very good fighters I guess.
    • Henry Kissinger, quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.
  • “The term ‘selective genocide,’ you had an army crackdown on one set of people,” says Butcher. “There was a racial prejudice between Punjabis and Bengalis. You’d hear snide remarks that these people are less religious, our little brown brothers.” Some West Pakistanis scorned Bengalis—even the Muslim majority—as weak and debased by too much exposure to Hindus among them. As one of Yahya’s own ministers noted, the junta “looked down” upon the “non-martial Bengalis” as “Muslims converted from the lower caste Hindus.” In similar terms, Sydney Schanberg reported in the New York Times on the “depth of the racial hatred” felt by the dominant Punjabis of West Pakistan for Bengalis.43
    • quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.
  • The Hindus among the Bengalis were as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that [should] best be exterminated.
    • R.J. Rummel, DEATH BY GOVERNMENT, by R.J. Rummel New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994
  • Needless to say that most of the refugees into Assam from East Pakistan were Bengali Hindus – the persecuted religious minority in Islamic Pakistan ruled by modern and politicised armed forces. The partition made their position extremely vulnerable. ...[T]heir existence with dignity, both actual and perceptional, propelled their movement across the border.
    • Hussain, Monirul. ‘Refugees in the Face of Emerging Ethnicity in North-East India: An Overview’. Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences II, no. 1 (1995): 123–29 quoted in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India)188
  • There is a general uneasiness among scholars to talk about the plight and rights of the Bengali Hindus.
    • Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India)307
  • They [East Bengal Hindus] played a conspicuous role in social, economic and political activities of the province of undivided Bengal. Partition has ruined this virile , dynamic and creative community . They are dehumanised, demoralised, and degenerated human beings, having been denied the rights of citizenship and elementary human rights to live a peaceful social life . Day in and day out they live in constant fear and terror. Worries are writ large on their faces. ...
    • Lahiry P. C. (1964). India partitioned and minorities in pakistan. quoted in Kamra A. J. (2000). The prolonged partition and its pogroms : testimonies on violence against Hindus in East Bengal 1946-64. pp. 189
  • The East Bengal Hindus have been reduced to the position of hostages and condemned to destitution and slavery. They are cursed people, living in an accursed country , with none to call them their own.
    • D. R. Sen ‘Beggared And Outraged Humanity’. quoted in Kamra A. J. (2000). The prolonged partition and its pogroms : testimonies on violence against Hindus in East Bengal 1946-64. pp. 232
  • Its population consists almost exclusively of Hindoos: a quiet, inoffensive, industrious, submissive people, possessing little energy, less courage, and no ambition; concerning themselves not much about their own government, and not at all about the government of any other country; more frugal and abstemious than any other nation, and perhaps equal to any other nation, not in enlightened acquirements or refined precepts of philosophy, but in natural capacity and practical morality; attached, above all things, to their religion, which is always before them, from the uprising of the sun to the going down of the same – it enters into all the concerns of their daily life, it regulates the minutest detail of their domestic affairs. They feel, not an impetuous, ostentatious enthusiasm, but a quiet yet deeply profound sentiment of passive devotion, which excluding, unhappily, the light of reflection and reason, perpetuates from age to age, and from generation to generation, the errors and extravagances of a primeval superstition. But multiplied and impenetrable as seem to be the defences which thus encompass and preserve the prejudices of the Hindoos, there can be no doubt that these will at last give way to the persuasive influence of Christian communication and instruction, if duly seconded by the effect of Christian example; provided that this great and desirable work, this best result of our dominion in the East, be not frustrated by acts of impatient zeal or offensive interference.
    • , Thomas Twining Twining, Thomas, Travels In India A Hundred Years Ago (preserved by his son T.T. Twining and edited by Rev. William Twining, James R. Osgood, MciLvaine & Co., 1893.quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume IV Chapter3

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