Independent Researcher
[Article History: Received: 06 Feb 2024. Revised: 10 Feb 2024. Accepted: 18 Feb 2024. Published: 22 Feb 2024]
Abstract
This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of two distinct strands of popular literature within the Bengali Muslim literary and cultural milieu during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While most existing scholarship has attempted to categorize this community within simplistic divisions such as communal or syncretic, this study seeks to critically examine the sources underpinning such categorizations. To undertake such an inquiry, the paper delves firstly into “Islam Darshan,” a self-improvement text utilized by the new cohort of Mullahs to bridge the Atrap-Ajlaf cleavage that emerged in contemporary Bengal. It analyzes the historical context surrounding its emergence, delving into its content and rhetoric, and explores why it may be juxtaposed with ideas of communalism. A critical analysis of their content juxtaposed with their historical role (bridging an atrap-ajlaf cleavage and addressing bhadralok mistreatment) may provide how their promotion of a certain ethos i.e., self-improvement was aimed at challenging certain elites’ assumptions and at ameliorating their socio-economic condition. Further, the paper then moves on to examine Bonobibi Johuranama a localized Kechha (Bengali version of the Persian quissa) popular in the Sundarbans. Written in a mixed vocabulary referred to as dobhasi and published from the cheap presses of Bengal, these texts formed an important part of the non-standardized print culture of the Bengali Muslims. The paper attempts to elucidate how these texts propagated a ‘syncretic’ conception of Bengali Muslim identity through narratives of conflict with the ‘cultural’ other and the utilization of a mixed vocabulary.
Keywords: Dobhasi Literature, Musalmani Bangla, Bengali Muslim Literature, Modern Bengal