Sher-e-Bangla, the pioneer of Bengali nationalism

Dr. Forqan Uddin Ahmed :

A K Fazlul Huq, known as Sher-e-Bangla, was a prominent Bengali Muslim politician in pre-independence India.

He was a leader of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, a Muslim political party which was a key player in the Indian independence and Pakistan Movement.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Huq played a major role in the Bengali Muslim political scene, advocating for the rights and interests of Bengali Muslims within the British Indian government and pushing for greater autonomy for Bengal.

He was also a vocal critic of the British Raj and advocated for Indian independence. In 1940, Huq was elected as the President of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, and in 1941, he became the Premier of Bengal.

He is remembered for his role in the Bengal famine of 1943, where he tried to mitigate the disaster by importing food and increasing the supply, but he was criticized for the lack of aid provided to the victims.

During the 1940s, Huq played a key role in the Pakistan Movement, which sought to establish a separate Muslim state in British India.

He was one of the key leaders of the Muslim League, the political party that ultimately succeeded in creating the state of Pakistan in 1947.

Despite his role in the creation of Pakistan, Huq was not in favor of the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.

He believed that a united India would better serve the interests of Bengali Muslims.

In the late nineteenth century, most Hindu leaders were led by the Hindu middle class.

As a result of their narrow view, Muslim communities accept religion as the main source of nationalism rather than geographical and linguistic nationalism.

As a result, the main element of nationalism, the indigenous freedom is not developed among the Muslims.

Even they were indifferent to mother language. Cunning English helped to create a Muslim League against the Congress to counter the nationalist movement. Muslim leaders capitalized religious and communal politics.

The basic foundation of nationalism is the consciousness among the people. If there is not a great sense of unity in them, then the beginning of nationalism is not possible.

A K Fazlul Huq believed that awakening among backward Muslim communities was possible through education.

The expansion of education creates a strong foundation for nationalization by accelerating social progress. He created a strong educated middle class and wanted to create genuine nationalism by removing the lack of separation, deprivation, and state work of the Muslims.

There was so much enthusiasm that Sher-E- Bangla sparked among the peasants. He was an icon among the Bengali Peasants and rising ‘jotdars’ who joined him in his institutional mission – all for the ordinary peasants.

Being ‘a full blooded Bengali, the friend of peasantry’ he was frustrated to see the termination of the Floud Commission without any commensurate results and had to ‘wait until 1950 to see his dream of ending landlord elitism-feudal over lordship in other words.

Bengal under colonial rule presented a desolate scene. From the very start of the colonial rule the peasants were seen to have been protesting colonial intervention affecting peasantry.

Due to rack-renting and persecution of peasants by the rent receiving agents of East India Company and money lenders there happened to be the fast deterioration of the peasant economy. Bengal was treated as the hot-bed of anti-British rebellion with rising militancy of peasant movements against the oppression of the Hindu landed class.

Muslim leaders successfully organized Muslim peasants in the region and formed a government under the leadership of Fazlul Huq, who in 1937 became the chief minister of Bengal.

He and his Krisak-Praja Party committed to an anti-zamindar and anti-mahajan economic programme, as reflected in the election manifesto of Krisak-Praja Party that formed a government in April 1937 with Muslim league.

Sher-E-Bangla represented the upper peasantry (jotdars). Several Muslim jotdars joined him to espouse a peasant and anti-landlord programs on the eve of 1937 election.

Huq’s message in 1954 was unmistakable. Pakistan’s Bengali Muslims were not willing to subsume their cultural heritage and their political ethos to an increasingly communal Muslim League interpretation of history.

It was a message which Sher-e-Bangla reiterated, with greater emphasis, on his visit to Calcutta after the 1954 election. This trip to Calcutta must have brought back for him fond memories of happier days. It was in Calcutta where all his friends and political disciples, Hindu and Muslim, still lived.

And Calcutta was the place that had been his launch pad in politics. And so Huq waxed eloquent in remembrance of bygone times. The dismissal of the Jukto Front ministry under Section 92-A was effectively the end of Sher-e-Bangla’s political career.

And yet Huq was reluctant to call it a day. The fall of his government in May 1954 was followed by his taking on roles which left Bengalis in a state of bewilderment about the veteran leader’s motives.

He served as central interior minister in a government which only a short while earlier had accused him of treason over his Calcutta expression of emotions in Calcutta. That was followed by his assumption of office as governor of East Pakistan. All of this was to be his swansong.

It was in Calcutta where all his friends and political disciples, Hindu and Muslim, still lived. And Calcutta was the place that had been his launch pad in politics. And so Huq waxed eloquent in remembrance of bygone times.

For the Pakistani establishment, already in the grip of the civil-military bureaucracy that was eventually to push it to incalculable ruin, it was sedition. Huq was a born-again Bengali who, for Ghulam Mohammad, Iskandar Mirza and a discredited Muslim League, was in dangerous intrigue with Hindus.

An ageing Sher-e-Bangla was yet a magnetic force and in alliance with his former rival Suhrawardy and Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani routed the Muslim League in East Bengal.

It was a blow from which the Muslim League was never to recover, despite all later moves by successive Pakistani military rulers to revive factions of it and lay claim to them in their narrow political interest. Huq’s message in 1954 was patent.

Pakistan’s Bengali Muslims were not willing to subsume their cultural heritage and their political ethos to an increasingly communal Muslim League interpretation of history.

In fact, Sher-E-Bangla occupies the foremost place among the leaders ceaselessly fighting for the emancipation of Bengali peasants. Indeed, he was matchless and had only a few equals well known in history as humanists and philanthropists.

By dint of his extraordinary genius, he created an era. In fact, he was a versatile talent making remarkable marks in public life as politician, peasant leader, teacher, lawyer, administrator, statesman, freedom fighter and a person with incredible physical strength and guts.

He ’emerged from the heart of rural Bengal, stormed the bastions of elitist Calcutta and showed his downtrodden community a way to economic freedom, educational skills and political ascendancy’.

He was a symbol of peasant vision articulating peasants’ point of view with all their cognitive orientations and rural ethos.Finally, we can say that Sher-e-Bangla was a leader of undivided Bengal and adorned with a prestigious position of Prime minister-ship.

During his time, he founded many educational institutions. Many infrastructural organizations have been setup after his name only to pay respect and tribute to this great leader. Again, Sher-e-Bangla was the real spokesman of the peasant community.

(The writer is former Deputy Director General, Bangladesh Ansar & VDP.)