You guys have such a Hindu culture!

"You guys have such a Hindu culture!"

The above was said to me by a Pakistani acquaintance just as we were discussing the 3-0 drubbing that Bangladesh handed out to Pakistan in the recent cricket ODI series. He wanted to know if our player Soumya Sarkar was a Hindu. 

"Honestly, I don't know." I replied. "I was curious about it as well. Sarkar is a last name common to both Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh, and Soumya is just a first name."

That's when he said it. 

"You Bengalis are so much like Hindus!"

"Please explain." I asked him, in the mood for a good argument.

He struggled, of course.

"I ... don't know exactly," He said. "Your names. I knew a Bengali Muslim called Bijoy. That's a Hindu name. Your dresses ... Your culture ... You guys celebrate holidays like new year that is un-Islamic."

In a calm (so unlike me!) and logical manner, I tackled all his arguments (but of course he wouldn't budge from his opinion).

Typical Arrogance

Realize the statement "Bengali has a huge Hindu influence", no matter it's validity or lack thereof, comes from a base of arrogance. There is a huge arrogance amongst speakers of Urdu (and sometimes Farsi) - that they are somehow more Islamic, just by virtue of their language and lineage.

In 1952, the ruling West Pakistani elite viewed support for Urdu as support for an Islamic identity, and support for Bangla as being a traitor to "Islamic" Pakistan. Jinnah actually had the audacity to say, "Urdu embodies the best that is in Islamic culture and Muslim tradition and is nearest to the languages used in other Islamic countries." His arrogant nature was at its peak when he asked a few Bengali students, on a visit to then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), whether Bengalis could boast of any great men of letters in their history.

Pakistanis also uniquely believe Pakistan is an "Islamic" country, and therefore anyone who is Muslim should support Pakistan (and anything Pakistani, like the Urdu language). Thus Shoaib Malik infamously thanked all Muslims for supporting Pakistan in the first World T20 final when they played against India, ignoring the man of the match award which went to an Indian Muslim. Anything not seen as "Pakistani", such as the Bengali language, must therefore be non-Muslim, or Hindu.

Pride of Lineage

Urdu speaking Muslims of the South Asian subcontinent are almost always proud of their heritage. They see themselves as more Muslim, or more authentic Muslim, while the dark skinned Bengalis are seen as recent converts from Hinduism and therefore less pure. Nothing of course, could be further from the truth. Islam came to the subcontinent at roughly the same time, and whether you are a Muslim from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Bhutan - all of your ancestors were likely Hindus or Buddhists. The Arabs who conquered and settled in the Indian subcontinent viewed everyone as from "Hind". Yet, look what Ayub Khan, the President of Pakistan, once said.

Bengali Islam was the religion of the indigenous depressed peasant convert; in West Pakistan, Islam was the faith of the conquerors, the rulers, the courtiers. Bengali Islam was a faith associated with the "downtrodden races".

You say Hindu influence like it's a bad thing

It is obvious, undeniable and academically incorrect to say there is no Indian influence in the South Asian culture. From Peshawar to Chittagong, we have similar food, clothes, mannerisms, and so on. We all watch the same Bollywood movies and dance to the same Bollywood songs. We also have our regional variances, and thus you have Pashto, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil etc. - multiple languages and cultures. And all these cultures have some common elements, and some variances - and within them you have people of many religions.

Where Bengali Muslims have differentiated from Urdu speaking Muslims is that even by adopting Islam, we have not lost our culture or language. In Pakistan (especially) there is a drive to Arabize themselves - seeing it as more Islamic. This was prominent under the Zia regime. When Bangladesh was part of Pakistan, they tried it on the Bengalis (and failed). In 1949 the government of East Pakistan (an Urdu speaking governor) set up a East Bengal Bhasha (Language) Committee which said Bengali should be written in Arabic script. The government saw the whole language as "corrupt" and tried to change it. The report actually stated, ""Sanskritization of the language should be avoided" and it was to exclude the Sanskrit words from Bengali and replace them by Urdu, Arabic or Persian words to “conform to the Islamic ideology”."

Bengalis reject such false standards of "Islamism".

The small stuff - cultural, not religious

So when an Urdu speaking person complains we Bengali muslims have a lot of Hindu influence, all what I said above is what is really going on. Arrogance, a false pride of lineage and Islamism, and an attempt to be Arab. Yet, of course they can point to the small stuff like our names, our dress and our celebrations. Let's get to that.

What is wrong with a name like Bijoy?

It means victory. Same as Fatih. And it has the same roots as say Nasr. Yet, is Fatih and Nasr more "Islamic", simply because it's Arab? What about the names of the famous Tabiyeen who lived during the Prophet's time, whose name was As-hum? You know him better as the Najjashi. Those are not Arabic names. Neither is Bilal. And we know Salman as a Persian name. It is a good meaning and being Muslim that makes your name Islamic, not just Arabic. And may I remind you, of the 25 prophets named in the Quran, only 4 were Arabs. The rest all had non-Arab names.

Is there anything wrong with celebrating Boishakhi?

No, not really. Depends on what you do when you "celebrate". There is nothing really Islamic, or un-Islamic, about a holiday. It's just a day with an interesting history.

However, as I said, those are the small stuff. Undeniably, we have commonalities with people who lived in our lands for centuries and share the same culture and food. No, a statement like that is not about the small stuff. It has darker roots.

And the ironic tragedy is that such arrogance, coming from a supposedly "Muslim" culture, is what broke up the largest Muslim state of the twentieth century.