One of the best solutions to keep control over a newly acquired state is to establish colonies therein. If this cannot be done, it is necessary to station a large army therein. Colonies do not cost much. Without expense, they deprive a few locals of their possessions and thereby show the majority of the population that they would get deprived in a similar fashion in case of any rebellion. It also firmly establishes a population of your people of your choosing among the newly acquired territory.
- Niccolo Machiavelli, Il Principe.
That is precisely what Mamata is doing in Bengal. Ever since Narendra Modi’s victory in 2014, Bengal has been one of the most polarized states in India. It is ever since then that this sentiment of polarization has been reflected in both Bengals – West Bengal and Bangladesh. A series of attacks on Hindu bloggers, riots across, 2013 Canning riots, 2016 Kaliachak riots and even the ongoing Dhulagarh pogroms – all have happened in less than 3 years of Modi’s rule in India and even in public, it is pretty easy today to find either a right wing Bengali or a leftist. The neutral Bengali is an extinct species today.
When an electorate or a region gets this polarized due to both historical circumstances as well as recent policies of religious favouritism, there comes a time wherein the ruling political class must choose sides. And Mamata Banerjee has chosen the side of Islamism completely in accordance with Niccolo Machiavelli’s philosophy. But if we take a brief detour into Bengali history, we will notice that this is not anything new – that the rulers of Bengal always practised population importing and colonizing.
A brief background:
The first person to spread Islam in Bangladesh was Shah Nasir Uddin who was a Kurdistani Iranian who came here during 8th century. According to Bengali Islamic chronicle 12 Sufis arrived in Bengal different time to preach Islam which is also known as ‘Twelve Awliyyas’.
In 1205, the invasion of Bengal by Bakhtiyar Khilji which saw the destruction of Nalanda, was followed by a wave of foreign Muslim immigrants. Among them Shah Jalal is the most notable. This converted man came from northern Iran to modern day Sylhet in Bangladesh. He also brought many Iranian disciples along with him. He managed to brainwash a large number of people and he ultimately managed to kill the then ruler of the region of Gaurgavinda and thus he became the most influential man in the area. The immigration of Persians, Arabs and Turks into the region resulted in a large part of the economy going into their hands.
Right after the defeat of Raja Lakshmana Sena at the hands of the Khilji army, Bengal’s Hindu sovereignty was permanently compromised. Ever since, successive Muslim ruled cantons rose up and indulged in warfare with one another. But none of the eras of Bengal were as tragic as the era of the Ilyas Shahi dynasty in the 14th and 15th centuries. This dynasty of Iranian Sunni Muslims was founded by a Ghazi – a holy warrior who had vowed to destroy all traces of paganism in the land. In their era, Sufis from all over the Middle East flocked into Bengal with their followers. A tradition that had started in Bengal by now was the rampant conversion of temples into or dargahs, and often, Hindu gods over time became into malevolent spirits in an Islamized Bengal’s newly evolving mythology. Gods such as Shiv and Kali became demonized as evil spirits of the forest in Bengali folklore.
In the Ilyas Shahi era, we witness how a Hindu nobleman named Ganesha – a land owner from Dinajpur, tried to liberate Bengal from the clutches of Muslims who happened to be completely foreign noblemen. In the same era, Ganesha’s son Yadu converted to Islam and killed his own father. Under the name of Sutlan Jalaluddin, Yadu extensively indulged in campaigns of economically and militarily coercive conversions across Bengal.
Bengal was a traitorous snake pit throughout the middle ages down to the Maratha era. The affluent Bengali banking family – the Jagat Seths for instance, were financiers of every major side warring over Bengal – be it the Marathas, the Mughals or the Nawabs of Bengal. Their financial muscle was so potent that Mir Qasim – the Prime Minister of the Nawab of Bengal himself had the entire Jagat Seth family beheaded. In this way, we notice how Bengal’s entire political and financial class were filled with place hunters and traitors whi had no qualms in backing outright Wahhabi style Islamization.
Bengal today:
Down to the modern era, Bengal was a land that was easy to divide. The British inherited a land that had been beaten into a pulp by the Mughals, the Nawabs and the wars they fought with the Marathas who repeatedly tried liberating Bengal. Over time, as Bengal’s trading regions shifted more to the east, it was to the east of Bengal that much of its Muslim majority migrated – a trend that started in the Ilyas Shahi era itself.
The Maratha wars in Bengal saw a further shift of Muslim population to the east as the Marathas controlled the west of Bengal with an iron grip for a while. In fact, this was the era in which the Hindu majority was concentrated in West Bengal. The British on the other hand just need a vital tool to partition the land and leave it more impoverished than they found it – an orchestrated famine in the late 1800s and in 1943. Millions of Bengalis were swatted out of existence in these famines orchestrated by the British. Ever since the partition and the 1971 war, Bengal has been a land which saw two fatal errors on part of the India:
- After liberation in 1971, it was left ignored by the Indian government to the extent that by the 1990s, Pakistan backed Madrassahs made their way into Bangladesh, giving the Islamists there enough muscle to orchestrate riots – from the time of the Babri Masjid demolition, down to present day.
- The Indian government extracted no guarantees nor any binding treaties to ensure that the Hindu minority receive special attention despite the knowledge that a huge genocide had occurred against the Hindus in the 1971 war.
Knowing that most of the governments in India at this time were Congress led, the latter of the above two points is not in the least surprising.
Mamata’s Bengal:
Seeing the above trend, it only seems obvious that Mamata Banerjee is following centuries of inherited traditions – of incentivizing and deliberately encouraging foreign Wahhabi migration into West Bengal in order to enhance her own power base in the face of an increasingly Modi-centric polarization of Bengal – in complete accordance with Niccolo Machiavelli’s principle of establishing colonies in order to skew the regional demographics in your political favour.
To quote Kapil Routray (a writer on The Frustrated Indian):
“The vote share of the TMC in Bengal is roughly only slightly more than 42%. Out of this, almost 28% comes from one single massive consolidated Vote Bank alone- Bengali Sunni Muslims. Thus- 75% of TMC’s support comes from ONE Vote-bank.
Between 2001 and 2011, Bengal’s population grew by 1.1 crore people, one of the highest increases among all States of India. Out of this- only 58% of the increase was among the Hindu population and the rest 42% among Muslims. In contrast, in the previous decade, Hindus contributed to 67% of the increase while Muslims contributed 33%
Thus- the Muslim 28% of the population has provided 42% of the population increase while the Hindu 72% of the population has only provided 58%.”
What we observe is an attempt to take over and possibly separate Bengal from the rest of India by demographically skewing the region beyond recognition.
Is it any surprise at all that the Dhulagarh pogroms even happened? To most Hindu it is, because Hindus have the worst track record of remembering their own history – and mind you, this is even without the presence of Alzheimers on a population-wide scale. As to what Mamata gains – voters, supporters and muscle. Just the way the failed leftist governments of Bengal used communist muscle power to mow down any and every opposition, Mamata is using a Wahhabi strong arm. As more immigrants get Indian citizen status by hook or crook, and as more of them get favouritism from the government of Bengal, they will soon form a class that is immune to the law. Once Bengal’s immigrant Bangladeshi Muslim population reaches about 40% of its total population, that would be the critical mass needed to win an outright civil war.
We can then kiss Bengal goodbye. Permanently.
