Why do we know so little about Isa Khan?
abu
Isa Khan was the last great independent sultan of Bengal. His son
Musa Khan lost independence being defeated by the Hindustani
Mughals.
>From the scattered references in travel memoirs, Mughal
writings, and mutilated local folk-literature, we know that Isa
Khan was a great and chivalrous king.
He was a King of Kings, Sultanus Salatin, of Bangladesh.
During the colonial period the history of non-Muslim landholders
in Bangladesh was promoted at his expense.
Great confusion arose when a poetic work claimed that a king of
Tripura ordered Isa Khan to provide laborers to work for the
king.
[See Rezaul Karim and Saikat Asgar ed. "Sonargaoner Itihas:
Utsa o Upadan" 1993]
We can see this theme of showing Isa Khan subordinate to the
raja of Tripura in the drama, "Mukut," written by Rabindranath
Tagore.
Tagore inherited a close connection with the raj family of
Tripura.
Actually there is a reason to suspect that Kailaschandra Singha,
the author of the poetic work mentioned above, and young
Tagore jointly ran a project.
One aspect of this project was to uplift the status of Tripura rajas at
the expense of great rulers of precolonial Bangladesh.
Singha was a member of the Brahmo sect founded by poet's
father. Singha also assisted editing a journal of the sect.
Tagore first wrote Mukut as a story which was published in
1885. It was published as a drama in 1908.
During the reign of Isa Khan, Tripura might had the opportunity
to maintain temporarily independence due to the crisis resulting
from the Mughal invasion of Bangladesh.
However it is by no means certain that the raja had the courage,
and means to bear enmity with Isa Khan.
In 1757 English occupied Bengal. A native official of the
Nawabs of Bengal, and who originated in what was Isa Khan's
capital territory, was given the family name Sen.
His name was Rajballabh. Sen kings ruled the bigger part of
Bengal before the Muslim soldiers of mixed ethnic background
arrived under the military leadership of the Turks.
Rajballabh's claim that he was a Sen had significance. As if
somebody had encouraged him that he was the rightful owner of
Bengal, Christians after recovering Bengal would hand it over to
him.
It is believed that Rajballabh belonged to the Vadya caste.
This incident resulted in the claim that earlier Sen kings were
Vadya. For example in 1874 J. Wise wrote that Lakkhan Sen,
last of the principal Sens, belonged to the Vadya caste.
Rajballabh's presumptuousness came into collision either with
the faithful Hindu officers in the Mughal service, or with the
emerging caste-concern of the Hindu society in Bangladesh.
Very soon one of the Hindu land-managing families started
accusing him of stealing the identity of another Vadya or Sen to
obtain the title of Raja.
It is natural to assume that in showing Isa Khan subordinate to
the raja of Tripura, Tagore was affected by the tradition
promoted by the Muslim-hating padrees.
This tradition started quite early in the missionary scholarship.
Vasco da Gamma was welcomed by Brahmans. He prayed with
them to an Indian goddess because the Brahmans shouted twice
Maria pointing to the idol.
Soon we hear the Hindus receiving the Roman Brahmans.
This type of indophilia was discouraged for a while by an
anglophile education policy resulting from the zeal of the
Chatham sect.
Macauley, the prodigy of the Chatham sect, came to India in
1834 and stayed for four years.
Bengali Hindus then felt the need of writing their own history
books.
As a reaction to the anglophile patronage, missionaries of other
dominions, and from countries other than Britain joined the
Hindus.
The practice of constructing an history for Bengali Hindus,
characteristic of the earlier Christian witness of India, resumed
vigorously after the failed mutiny of 1857.
Educated Bengali Hindus strongly opposed this mutiny. The
mutiny also took place in Bengal in the middle of an Islamic
resurgence, and peasant revolts against forced indigo planting.
One of the localized movements that erupted into an armed
conflict involved the weavers, artisans and mechanics of the
border region of Barasat and Nadia.
A general persecution of these so-called Wahabis, who were also
called Hedayatees, and with them possibly of any religious
Muslim, followed the killing of the rebel leader Sheikh Sayyid
Mir Nisar Ali Titu in 1831.
The persecution was led by the English magistrate of Nadia
working with the local Hindu landholders.
At one point the English lieutenant governor himself intervened to
restrain the magistrate.
[See "Wahabi and Farazi Rebels of Bengal," by Narahari
Kaviraj, 1982. Other references on Titu Mir:
"Titu Mir and His Followers," by Muin-ud-Din Ahmad Khan,
1980. "Shahid Titu Mir," Abdur Ghafur Siddiqi, 195?]
Like many non-Christians Tagore, who inherited the leadership
of a conservative religious sect, was aware of the limitations of
Christian missionaries.
Missionary Edward Thompson, about whom Tagore wrote, "...
being a Christian Missionary, his training makes him incapable
of understanding some of the ideas that run all through my
writings," writes
(some words are deleted here. For details of this interesting
passage see page 22, "Rabindranath Tagore Poet and
Dramatist."):
"There are two Bengals, nowise like each other. ... Right in the
heart of this region is Nadiya, seat of the old Sen kingdom : a
place which is Bengal of the Bengalis, .... Here you find the
purest Bengali spoken; it is the place where poets have lived and
sung."
Again referring to Lakkhan Sen Thompson writes (page 4),
"With him went into exile, till another handful of invaders
gradually brought it back, the nationality of Bengal."
Bangladeshi historian A. B. M. Zakariah has argued with
considerable strength that the Nadia of Lakkhan Sen was Naoda,
seven miles northeast of Raihanpur station, Rajshahi,
Bangladesh.
There are too many problems with this short passage of
Thompson which I think is trying to provide a theoretical
foundation for the separatism of the Hindu Bengal.
This has been done combining faulty geographical arguments,
with mythic language, and modern historical forgeries.
We shall comment briefly on what Thompson said on the
nationality of Bengal in his statement quoted above.
It is not clear to us whether the people referred to by Thompson
could even pronounce the word Bengal properly. We find they
preferred the form Banga, actually Vanga.
Nadia, now outside Bangladesh, can only be in the western
periphery whether we consider the whole of Bengal, or we
consider the portion of Bengal about which Thompson's funny
geographical characterization makes better sense.
A person who competed with Rajballabh to be the leading
member of the Bengali Hindus in European consideration was
Krishnachandra Roy, raja of Nadia.
Judging a report, which could be an interpolation, of an
encounter of one of his ancestors with Mughal emperor Jahangir
depicted by his court poet, one may suspect that these ancestors were
one of those Hindus who came to Bangladesh under Mughal service.
In the history by Mirza Nathan covering the period 1608-1624
this ancestor was nobody.
An alternative possibility is that the dynasty originated from a
local or South Rarhi tout who prospered doing agenting jobs for
European traders, and attracting attention of a corrupt Nawab.
These traders frequented Hughli and Murshidabad through his
locality.
Halhed in the preface to his Bengali grammar introduced Raja
Krishnachandra as "by much the most learned and able antiquary
which Bengal has produced within this century."
Halhed refers to the raja in support of the conjecture "that Egypt
has but a disputable claim to its long-boasted originality in
language, in policy and in religion."
Raja told Halhed that "he has in his own possession Shanscrit
books ... wherein the Egyptians are constantly described as
disciples, not as instructors; and as seeking that liberal education
and those sciences in Hindustan, which none of their own
countrymen had sufficient knowledge to impart."
Origin of the dynasty is as obscure as the place now called
Nadia. It is the Nadiya mentioned by missionary Thompson.
Obviously the place was intended to be the Nadia of Sen kings.
Krishnachandra's biography written by Rajeeb Lochun Mukharji
was published in 1805.
It was written under the guidance of Padree William Carey who
was the head of the department of Bengali at the Fort William
College, and was a missionary of Serampore.
The real heart of Bengal was Sonargao (Sonargao=F1), a division
which extended from Momenshahi to Sandip. At its center lies
Dhaka which Padree Carey had to leave in 1804 because his
presence created unrest.
We do not know why Sonargao, that is, Golden Village, is called
so. Golden fields of paddy and mustard that brought gold befitted
the name.
Sandip was also called Sonardip and Samandip.
In Barisal there was a region called Sondar kul. It appears that
Sondar kul denoted South Barisal east of which the Sundarbans,
famous for its Royal Bengal tigers, began.
The name possibly stood for seacoast, and could be a Sundanese
legacy elaborated elsewhere.
The name Sondar kul disappeared because of the tendency for
sanskritizing toponomy during the colonial period.
A swami sitting in India corrected a visitor from Sondar kul that
he came from the bank of a river called Sugandha
(Rohineekumar Sen's "Bakla").
Persian geographer Ibn Khurdadbih (d.885) and Arab
geographer al-Idrisi (d.c.1150) mentioned a trade-mart called
Samandar on the the seacoast.
[About Samandar see Abdul Karim's "Social History of the
Muslims in Bengal (Down to A. D. 1538)," 1985.]
Arab-Persian settlers possibly thought Sandip as an eastern
translate of Serendib (Sri Lanka) where many Muslims believe
Adam descended.
Usually ancient mariners immigrating from the west also brought
a Hazrat Khizr related story. In pre-Islamic time villages in
Bangladesh remembering Hazrat Khizr had names with the sound kt or ktr.
Near the Adam peak of Sri Lanka we have Kataragma. Similarly
in the Rarh we have Katwa and Ketugram.
It could be that due to Greek, Kushan and Saka influence the
name got Kartik (from Krittika, a group of stars in the Pleiades)
association.
We discussed on various occasions the ancient Lut connection of
Rarh.
It had a strong maritime component, although ancient Luts,
ancestors of Lodis, and Laks, a related people, spread East
through North India also.
Lata which was Gujarat's old name, Redin of ancient Maldive
("The Maldive Mystery" by Thor Heyerdahl, 1986), and possibly
the name of Lakkhadip (Lakshadweep) indicate this sea route.
One expects that like the Lut, Put of Sindh and Gujarat also had
a legacy in Rarh.
Rarh had two parts. Bajjabhumi (Bazrabhumi, Diamond Land)
and Subbabhumi (Suhma). The latter we suspected to be Sabian
Land in the article "Bengali Nath and Medianite Arab Nasiku."
While writing that article I did not know the report that ancient
Sibis (Sivi) had a kingdom in Rarh and its capital was called
Jetuttarnagar.
[See "Bardhaman jelar itihas o loksanskriti" by Akkari
Chattopadhyay, 2001, page 587, vol2.]
Though I am glad to learn this piece of information, I could
not make much progress on whether or not one can associate a
Sethian cult with Jetuttarnagar.
I believe that Sabians and their Ramuias from the west were
likely to bring a Sethian cult in Rahr. [Why it is important is
explained further in the "The Parthian Connection."]
There was at least one famous Ramai Pandit in Bangladesh.
Ramai Pandit was the author of Bengali Shunya Puran.
Shunya itself is comparable to Aramaic msunia from the root
SNA. Indian shunya (zero, void) too had the sense of infinity and
all-pervasion.
[See "Math of Nevada and Myth of India" under preparation.]
In Charayagiti, the word "soon" (soonaa, Sylheti shuin void) and
"suinaa" (dream, swapna) have philosophical sentiments attached
to them.
The name Bajja could be originally a Put legacy.
In West India the name Put is lost in manifold names such Bhut,
Pichas, and Braja. The last name is associated with a group of
people who settled in the Put country. They were not Put.
They spoke a debased language (Apabhrangsha), and was placed
in the lower class of the Indo-Aryan society.
Thus they could be result of cultural mixing between Ahirs and
Indo-Iranian Sakas (Satagydians, Chatu, Indo-Parthians and so
forth).
We do not have a clear idea to what degree Sankskritization of
toponomy, gods and stories affected West Bengal after the arrival
of the Christian missionaries who organized Hinduism.
Possibly some progress can be done from the study of speech and
history of Burdwan and Pipli.
Most important class of Brahmans living in Jessore region as
mentioned by Mirza Nathan were Cuttoki Brahmans. Earlier
records mentioned of Jajpuri Brahmans.
Thus we see a southern, that is Urissan, connection as opposed to
the Mithila connection seen later in Nadia Brahman story.
What really happened we do not know. There is a theory put
forward by some linguists that Bengali and Assamese language
became separated during the sixteenth century.
We believe that Portuguese occupation of Pipli caused an Hindu
migration to Bangladesh through Rarh. Then Hindus came with the
Mughals.
In total so many Hindus came to Rarh that the language of entire
people was affected.
This number was much larger in comparison to that of the earlier
traders and warriors of ultimately West Indian and New Aryan
associations mentioned in the article "Deshi People," for example
Saat and Qandabil-Ghandar related people, Surs and Sens, and
lower classes that accompanied them.
However number is not the whole story.
Regional dialects of Bangladesh, and the fact that the sound
value of the letters of alphabet do not faithfully represents the
sounds of spoken Bengali,
indicate that old Bengali died down slowly due to lack of
patronage of written literature, schools by new political orders,
and general poverty of people who spoke it.
How much of that happened due to Mughal occupation, and how
much happened because of European missionary patronage of the
Hindu culture of Rarh, is not clear to me from works of scholars
I read so far.
[See also "Search for Pir Gorachand Raji, Budhan, and
Chaitanya."]
Teachers at madrassas taught students more than one sound
value for Arabic letters.
Of these, Arabic and Persian demanded precision. Bengali
students had to struggle as hard as Khwarizmian speaking Al-
Biruni struggled to master them.
When the same teachers used Arabic letters for Bengali, were
they careless?
Similarly it is strange that only one general history book would
be written locally on the pre-Mughal sultans of Bangladesh. The
book called Twareekh-i Bangaalah is now lost.
[Not to be confused with Tarikh-i-Bangalah by Salimullah,
Munshi of Mir Jafar. Difference in transliteration of the names
could be due to my lack of knowledge of the first book.]
One recall the story of Umeshchandra Batbyal, magistrate of
Maldah, and the original copy of Shekh Shubhodayaa.
Hazrat Khizr was an important Prophet for Muslims of
Bangladesh. There was a festival at Dhaka called bera. It was
associated with his name.
In this festival people used to float lighted "velas" through the
river. It is sometime believed that Mughal Governor Mukarram
Khan (1626-27) introduced this festival.
Though Mukarram Khan was governor only for six months, he
worked in Bengal and Bengal periphery for a long time, and
cultivated friendship with Bengali nobles and political prisoners.
He was foujdar of Sylhet and Taraf for sometime, and was
overall commander when the Mughals following the Kuch rebels
annexed Manas region to Mughal territory.
Thus he must witnessed customs of divination before wars,
and possible games of chance by floating objects prevalent
among pagans.
That does not mean that he innovated the Bera festival. It is better to
believe that a pre-Mughal practice got patronage from Mughal officials
possibly about the time of his governorship.
Maritime traditions of the boatmen, Malay-Samoan, Sunda-
Munda, Majhis and Eastern Mallas, must have believed in a
friendly king or spirit in the sea during the pre-Islamic time.
I do not know any use of Pleiades in ancient seafaring.
It seems that an ancient story connecting Pleiades and the demon
on the sea such as Tiamat (often compared with Leviathan of
Psalms 74) was well-circulated.
There could have been other reasons for associating Pleiades
with sea and water such as found in Job 9:8-9 and 38:30-31.
For Muslims and other closely related Bani Sem tribes there
was Hazrat Khizr. As poet Farrukh Ahmad writes in his poem,
Dariyaay Sheshh Raatri (The Last Night in the Sea):
"Mora muslim dariyaar maajhi mouter naahi bhay, Khizirer
saathe peyechhi aamaraa dariyaar baadshaai,"
["We are Muslim, sailors of the sea; we are not afraid of death.
Along with Khizr we rule the sea." This was the situation before
the Portuguese took control of the sea.]
I would not be surprised if we do not see a maritime tradition in
Hinduism comparable to the Khizr story of Muslim boatmen. Hinduism has
Manu's injunction against sea voyages. Kautilya too was not that
enthusiastic about sea voyages.
Majhis and Mallas were defeated in Bihar before their large-scale
migration to Bangladesh took place.
I think that Katrabo was similar to Kataragama of Sri Lanka.
Katrabo and Khijirpur, two capitals of Isa Khan, were close to
the village of Sonargao. [In Bangladesh katra also meant quarters, and
could signify a garrison town.]
The history how most of the Hindu landholders in Sonargao of
early colonial period came into existence during 1757-1795 is
obscure.
One expect that many documents had been forged to claim
ownership retrospectively before the British documented its
official version in the, "Fifth Report."
Unable to overlook the forgeries accepted and promulgated by
the leading figures of the padree-induced Hindu renaissance of
Bengal, eventually the sober historians struggled to determine
whether there were two Isa Khan.
One was the great Isa Khan, and the other they called Isa Khan of
Sarail.
Some thought they were the same person. Then conclusion was
that these two Isa Khan must be different. The sets of their
reported achievements do not match in magnitude.
Where are the descendants of Isa Khan? Again there are two
groups of people. One group living on the west of the present
course of the river Meghna was in some partial sense never lost.
Being in the side adjacent to Murshidabad, they, like many
Muslims, suffered much during the earliest phase of the colonial
period.
But in this side leading members of four important generations of
the family lived, the stories of their exploits and romances
surviving in the folk-memory.
On the east side of the Meghna, away from the sea, Muslim
families fare better during the dark earlier phase of colonialism.
Sarail is situated on the east side. Lands in this side occupied by the
second group were close to Tripura.
In some historical notes of colonial period we find mention of the
belief that couple of Muslim families on the east side of the
Meghna were descendants of Isa Khan.
[See A. K. M. Zakariah's "Kayekti Ullekjogya Parganar Katha"
in Zakariah et. al. ed. "Comilla Zelar Itihas" 1984.]
>From 1757 two sides of the Meghna developed quite differently.
By 1838, Abdullahpur-Rampal area, then known as Bikrampur
for sometime, possibly from 1809, had become one of the
principal centers of Sanskrit study second only to Nadia.
Yet these villages were once in the Sonargao complex containing
the capital territory of Isa Khan, and was a center of medieval
Islam.
In 1874 J. Wise wrote that Sonargao swarmed with Pirs (Muslim
spiritual leaders) more than any other Indian city, and among the
ruins native claimed to identify at least 150 gaddis (seats) of
Fakirs.
Sanskritizers used to call the river Meghna by the name
Meghnad. Because of the survival of the authentic Bengali
culture in the east in a better form, this name did not stick.
In the west the river Poua=F1 became Padma (pronounced as
Paddaa), Jinai became Jamuna, and Luit became Brahmaputra.
The cultural transformation in Abdullahpur-Rampal region
referred to above was clearly connected with the rise of the rich
Hindu landholders after Isa Khan's descendants left this place.
One deserted place in Sonargao was Dewanbag, where Munuwar
Khan, a great grandson of Isa Khan, leader of the family of his
time, once lived.
What really happened to Dewanbag and other deserted places of
Sonargao is now matter of guesses.
Swarupchandra wrote about the mysterious tiger-women
devouring and driving away the the original population of
Dewanbag.
Some suspect that the area was deserted because of Magh pirates.
Sayyid Ghulam Mustafa, a descendant of Danishmand, showed
Wise a petition dated c.1623 submitted to Mughal Prince
Shahjahan. It says that all papers belonging to their land was
pillaged by the Maungs.
However we are interested in events that occurred after 1667.
This year we get the last definite notice of Munuwar Khan.
We find two obscure references in the literature to Munuwar
Khan after that year. Both are possibly due to mistakes by later
writers.
One is the statement that he completed the construction of Musa
Khan Mosque.
This mosque is now situated in the Dhaka University campus
(near Curzon Hall). It is believed to be completed during the
second governorship of Sayesta Khan (1679/80-88).
The other is a folk romantic story on the love between Munuwar
Khan and Sonaai, beautiful daughter of a Mughal noble at
Dhaka.
Prince Shah Shuja (gov.1639-60) also tried for Sonaai, while
Munuwar Khan was wanted by a friend of Sonaai. She was a
daughter of Mangat Rai, called also Mukut Rai, an exile Maung
prince.
Mangat Rai came to Dhaka with 9000 Maungs and Tilangs c.1639.
They became Muslim and were settled at Magbazaar (thus
giving the name) by the earlier governor (1635-39) Islam Khan
Mashadi before he left.
[On Mangat Rai see Syed Taifoor, "Glimpses of Old Dhaka,"
p146, 1965? ed.]
According to the story, which is baseless, Maung princess
became jealous, and conspired with Lala Rajmal, one of the
officers of Munuwar Khan, to kill the Khan.
Lala Rajmal was then killed by Gujran Ali another of Munuwar
Khan's deputies. [Nazir Hosain's, "Kingbadantir Dhaka," 1995]
Madnul Afzal Lala Rajmal left a Persian inscription on the
Chaapaatali bridge on the old road to Khijirpur from Dhaka. The
inscription is dated c.1690 (1102AH?).
[The inscription is possibly quoted in "Dhakar Itihas" by
Jateendramohan Rai, I forgot.]
What we see in the above story is that a Muslim author, reacting
to the new padree-induced Hindu communal feelings, has given
villainous characters to Hindu sounding names without knowing
details of history.
This story is therefore a story of the third layer, second layer
being the vicious propaganda that mutilated the real history and
offended the Muslims.
One asks whether the story of Sonaai was behind, or was inspired
from the story of Sonaabibi (Sonaamoni) whose name is
associated with the legend of the Sonakanda fort.
In the malicious propaganda of the second layer Sonaabibi is
Hindu Sonaamoni. Here great Isa Khan is pictured as eloping
with Hindu Sonaamoni, and wasting his valuable time fighting over
Sonaamoni, now called Sonaabibi, with people who were actually his
servants.
In Bradley-Birt's book we find Sonabibi/Sonamoni as a widowed
daughter of Chand Rai. In Purbabanga-gitika (Ballads of East
Bengal) collected by Chandrakumar De we find her as a sister of
Kedar Rai.
[Bradley-Birt, F.B., "The Romance of an Eastern Capital,"
1906.]
Actually Kedar Rai was the father of Chand Rai. Son died before
the father. Hence the confusion arose.
Both were servants of Isa Khan. They could also be paternal
relative as Isa Khan's father Sulaiman Khan alias Kalidas
Gajdani was a convert, and inherited a retinue from his father.
There is a story that one Purandar De fled to Purchandi because
Kedar Rai wanted to marry De's daughter.
Sonakanda (meaning where Sona cried) fort still exists.
According to local legends Sonaabibi died here fighting some
non-Muslim army.
She faught the army of her Hindu father/brother combined with
the soldiers of the king of Tripura. Hindu father/brother cannot
be accommodated with historical fact.
We arrive essentially at the same question we asked before:
Exactly when and why did Isa Khan's descendants left Sonargao?
Answer is not known. Though one feels a sinister aura haunting
the story.
They went to Jangalbari, Momenshahi, where one branch of the
family settled earlier. A branch later moved to Haibatnagar
where Isa Khan's descendants still live.
Sarail is in Comilla. Couple of families living in Comilla are
better known as descendants of Isa Khan at present, although the
question remains whether they are really related to Isa Khan, and
if so how.
Several authors say that Munuwar Khan had a son named
Allahyar Khan, and that Alor (Alur) bazaar at Dhaka was
founded by him.
In Mirza Nathan's Bahrastan-i-Ghaybi we see that Musa Khan
had an officer named Alu Khan Afghan.
One understands why all history of precolonial Bengal mostly
became oral.
During the events of 1769-1771 one-third of the population
perished. Other mishaps followed next twenty years.
Colonial officers seized manuscripts. Muslims lacked enough
resources, or lost mentality that could preserve manuscripts.
To guess the cataclysmic fate generally suffered by historical
works in the colonial period we must carefully note how history
was being constructed.
Let us recall what Thompson said on the nationality of Bengal in
his statement quoted above.
Attempts to present these people as the mainstream Bengali,
meant shreding or ignoring documents pointing to the contrary.
Generally local non-Muslim zamindars of the British Raj ruled
Bengali Muslims with gujarati viciousness.
Forgery in land records, change of calendar, teaching bogus
theory about the origin of this calender, festivity on tax collection
day,
effort to increase paganism among the Muslims by the padree-
supported land-owners in the name of culture are few of the
manifold reasons the history of Bengali Muslims got
discriminated.
History of Isa Khan is not the only part of Muslim history in the
mutilation of which Tagore took part.
History of Shah Shuja, and possibly also the history of
Sirajuddaulah's daughter provided inspiration to Tagore.
[Given Tagore's record of changing elements of Muslim history
of Bengal, I am a little doubtful about his, "Bouthakuraneer
Haat."
A king of likely Kushan ancestry can marry a princess of
possible Guhak Chandal ancestry more easily in padree's
imagination.
That is the reason I think Missionary Fonseca reminded
Ramchandra of Bakla that Chandican "is the kingdom of the
future father-in-law" of Ramchandra.
That is another long story we shall discuss elsewhere.]
A stone inscription on the Shuja Mosque of Comilla was thrown
(bisarjan) into the Gumti river by a servant of the estate of
Tripura in order to seize the land granted for the maintenance for
the mosque.
The raja of Tripura, like any other Hindu landholder, counted on
the English force.
In 1787 "Hullye" Fakir of Daudkandi and Paitkera district close
to Tripura, demanded that a raja named Devi Singh Hazari
release the family of one [R/S]adah who was a slave of the raja,
and who becoming Muslim took shelter with the Fakir.
Raja wrote to the English Chief of Dhaka for help against the
Fakir.
Young Tagore published his novel "Rajarshi" in 1887. He
dreamt the idea of the main plot. It was inspired by the conflict of
violent and nonviolent worship.
As such it was not necessary to bring Mughal governor Shah
Shuja, son of emperor Shahjahan, builder of the Taj, in the novel.
But Tagore was preoccupied with Tripura, Muslims of Comilla,
the stories he heard from Kailaschandra, and the task of
hinducizing the tribal kings by spreading his Brahmoism.
Poet dreamt blood. Ostensibly it was the sacrifice of a lamb in the
temple by Raghupati. Everybody knows that human sacrifice
was commonplace in that region.
People of Tripura used to sacrifice human quite late. Human
sacrifice was legally band in British India about 1835.
In 1835 kingdom of Jaintiya was annexed to British India for
sacrificing three persons to Kali. The king of Jaintiya was
arrested. He died in 1861 in jail. Tripura and Jaintiya were
virtually neighboring kingdoms.
Was 50 years enough to root out the practice?
Buddhist Chakmas worried about mijilik. They kept memory of
human sacrifice. Mijilik, moichhili or chheledhara (kidnappers of
little boys) were a community in Tripura. They procured people
to be sacrificed.
Bankim Chandra Chakma met a man sometime between 1962 to
1967 (page 281, "Chakma jati o samasamayik itihas").
That man saw guests being entertained at Kamakhya with the
meat of people rendered invalid by old age.
A recent news report say symbolic replica of man made of dough
is being used for sacrifice at Kamakhya.
It is said that Koch king Mala Gosai=F1 (Nachhma Narayan, also
called Nara Narayan) or his nephew Raghudev celebrated the
occasion of rebuilding his temple by sacrificing one hundred and
forty men, whose heads he offered to Kali on copper plates.
Willing victims were allowed freedom with every women they
liked before their death.
Willing victims of sacrifice of course do not capture the concept
of bali which is demonstration of bal or force.
In fact bali should not be called sacrifice. The concepts are
totally opposite. Satee can be called sacrifice if the woman
practicing it does it of her own accord.
A Jaintiya king married a Koch princess, and as dowry received
Jaintashwari Kali. For this goddess he built a temple in which
human sacrifice took place regularly. His reign is put at 1606-
1641.
Fascination with human sacrifice in the periphery of Bengal
coincided with the Jesuit and European missionary activities in
Bengal.
In the Bengali books written for the Fort William College we can
recognize an effort to popularize Kali.
In 1801 "Raja Pratapaditya Charitra" of Ram Ram Basu was
published from the Serampur Missionary Press.
This book is termed the "first prose book ever written in Bengali
language" and it was written at the request of Padree Carey to meet the
need of text book in the Fort William College.
In this book Ram Ram Basu extolled the virtues of Kali
attributing the glory of Pratap due to her favor.
Parents of a young shepherd sacrificed to Kali complained to
Pratap. When Pratap visited the temple of Kali to investigate,
Pratap found the divided body of the boy.
Kali resurrected the boy to life and returned him to Pratap.
Earlier Ram Ram Basu used to help the missionaries with their
propaganda in Bengali. Then a young widow gave birth and the
child was murdered. Hindus implicated Ram Ran Basu with it.
Padree Carey was forced to discharge Basu before people's
imagination could run wilder. Basu rejoined Carey sometime in
1800.
In the book of Rajeeb Lochun, Raja Krishnachandra of Nadia
informs the team conspiring against Nawab Sirajuddaula that the
Raja met the head of the English Company at Calcutta when
form time to time he visited the Kali's temple south of Calcutta.
Krishnananda Agambageesh who was the first to publish Kali's
appearance (shayamamurti) was from Nadia.
W=2E Hunter called Agambageesh a courtier of Raja
Krishnachandra. Hindu authors disagreed and claimed that he
lived c1450-1550.
The spread of the cult of Kali is related to Bengal's encounter
with Iberian, and in general, European mercenaries,
entrepreneurs and freebooters?
Too many men with a culture of recreational dramas were
hanging out in a society which, at least to an outsider, was
austere and puritan.
These people had experience of inquisitorial violence as well as
of profit-making slavery: slaves with pierced hands tied to the
oars of the ships.
In the absence of graphic videos, their only theater was the
temples where bali and jak murders took place.
[Jak murders were done so that the spirit of the victims guard
wealth stored underground. It is a form of muti murder.
Naturally we expect that jak murders were more frequent than
sacrifice of boys and people done for increasing the durability of
a big construction.
[Here is a scary article on muti murder:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,687588,00.html
"Goal of human sacrifice" by Jeevan Vasagar, April 20, 2002.
A murder is a murder muti or non-muti. Real God does not hang
his son to save his servants.]
Because of the presence of a check-post for boats carrying
saltpeter from Bihar, activities of subversive nature in Nadia
were not impossible well before 1757.
An European trader needed corrupt local agents. Alivardi, before
he became Nawab, and Khwaja Mikail Armani were such
insiders in saltpeter trade.
Nadia was not only the foremost center for the study of Sanskrit,
according to a local historian most of the native Christians in the
district were originally from Muslim families.
These happenings were also connected to the increased
concentration of Muslims in Kustia situated east of Nadiya.
[See more about Kustia in, "Boyale Qalandar, Boyalias and
Boyalmaris: A Note on Bauls before1831."]
The evolving clash of interest between European and Hindu
indigo planters provided some respite to the poor peasants who
were the victims of recurrent riots and famines.
Clearly a joint project was going on. Organizing the non-Muslim
elements against Muslims, and conversion to Christianity.
A Little Calcutta grew near Nadia and was named Sukh Sagar
(Ocean of Happiness).
It was a retreat for Christian colonists
form different background. But its history is obscure.
Broadly speaking before 1947 the missionary effort to increase
pagan activities in Muslim majority Bengal had two phases: the
early Catholic phase and the English phase.
Our knowledge of the Catholic phase is less clear.
With this background we come back to the discussion on Shah
Shuja and Tagore's novel Rajarshi.
There is a story regarding the foundation of the Shuja Mosque
that it was built by a king of Tripura in memory of Shuja. [See
pp142-145 Zakariyah edited. "Comilla Zilar Itihas."]
It appears that Tagore is lending credence to this information.
In 1890 Tagore wrote the drama, "Bisarjan," taking the main
idea of Rajarshi. Here at the end Raghupati throws the idol of his
goddess in the the river Gumti calling the idol "pashani" which
literally means made of stone.
We see only the one-ninth part of the floating iceberg over the
surface.
The throwing of the stone-inscription of the mosque in the Gumti
is only one example. We need to believe that destructions of
documents were wanton and rampant in the earlier phase of the
colonial period.
Padrees and their local non-Muslim proteges, under the
protection of the East India Company conspired freely to change
the history and demography of Bangladesh,
inventing stories and getting inspiration in dreams from the
rascality they had seen being committed while awake.
It is an irony that Ralph Fitch, who visited Bengal in 1585/86,
and later became a consultant of the East India Company when it
was form, called Isa Khan a great friend of the Christians.
Isa Khan's son Daud Khan was assassinated by Portuguese
pirates. This was one of the reasons that made Musa Khan to
surrender to the Mughals.
We see why today we know very little about Isa Khan, the last
Sultan of Sultans of Bengal,
a chivalrous Sultan who like Saladin, instead of hitting his
opponent presented his own sword when he broke the sword of
his opponent.
[NB. Various reports of Tagore's connection with Tripura is
exploited in anonymous, "Bhaanumatir Khelaa."]
abu
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