people-from-bangladesh

"This time, any attempt to present Hinduism and Indian culture by creating sculptures in the name of the New Year's procession of fine arts will be discouraged."

"I would like to give a piece of advice to politicians including Dr Yunus, to get the love of the people of this country, you have to be an enemy of India. The more the party that is tougher against India, the more popular that party will become. So the decision is yours."

"I am not responsible for any party's benefits. I only belong to one party, that is the Anti-Indian Party, if you attack here, you have no time to watch the ball."

"Indigenous people mean traitors, Indigenous people are the project of Prothom Alo and India. The ownership of this country (mountains, plains) is equal for everyone."

"Show me what happened to my country after separating from Pakistan. This is the Parliament building that many people say Pakistan did nothing to us, this (Parliament building) is theirs."

"With the aim of creating good relations between the people of Bangladesh and Pakistan, Pakistani journalist Sadia and I have created the "Pak Bangla connect" YouTube channel. Everyone is requested to subscribe to the channel."

"Countrymen, don't be too Islamist. A few days ago, you couldn't run a madrasa, you were in jail. Nora Fatehi came to this country and danced naked, and today, is it a problem if girls play football next to your madrasa?"

"I support the position of Jamaat-e-Islami as it was in 1971. I have done so before, I still do, and I will do so throughout my life."

"I don't like to talk about these things, but I have to say it. I don't consider Ilyas as a journalist, he is nothing more than a click bait character. And if you meet him, you are nothing more than an idiot. His pen has no power. He has a YouTube channel and that is his only asset. He has never worked for any international media outlet in his life, let alone any local newspaper. Seeing this status, he will burn himself, he will make a lot of jokes about me. But it won't even make my hair stand on end. I will never let such a view-seeking, dangerous person ruin the victory achieved through the mass uprising of my country. Thousands and thousands of people did not give their lives to see these speculations."

"I saw many people start a fight about whether 24 is big or 71. I will compare the numbers. 71 is big because it was a big war. A 9-month-long war between 2 big countries like India and Pakistan. And 24 was our own war, it was fought by the people of our country themselves. There was no universal participation of the people of this country in 71, but everyone jumped in to liberate the Awami League in 24. That is why even though it is small, it is our own product, so we are very proud of it."

"When did , in the greed of coming to power and fear of India, say, "We were the power in favor of the liberation war, 71 is our consciousness and Sheikh Mujib is the ribbon of our nation." Why is there a problem in saying that we are anti-India? If political parties in Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives can come to power by directly opposing India, then where is the problem in our country's political parties to directly oppose India. If winning the election is the real issue, then most of the people of Bangladesh want to see us openly opposing India. Brothers of BNP-Jamaat, even if you sit by your ears and say that you are not anti-India, India's first choice will be the Awami League. So what is the problem in saying that we are anti-India by showing grandeur?"

"Polygamist Jamaat-e-Islami's new patner is India."

"It has been confirmed that the Army is still under Indian control. The Army has been deployed in front of the Prothom Alo office. The Army will have to pay the price for going against the people. InshaAllah, the Army will be freed from India through the trial of the BDR killings."

"All the roads, houses, and institutions across the country that still have statues of Sheikh Mujib should be demolished by tonight. Everyone come out."

"Fine arts should be banned, it is of no use to Bangladesh except for smoking marijuana and holding inauspicious processions."

"The 4.5 billion dollars demanded from Pakistan for compensation will be made into coins and inserted behind Foreign Secretary Jasimuddin. - Bani in Hamgere Pinaki Da. If there is room for Dada Jasim there, he will insert it."

"As a journalist, I consider it a sacred duty to present all the brave warriors of 75 one by one to the nation. After the nation's sun child Major Dalim, I am going to present another patriotic and fearless brave warrior to the nation, InshaAllah."

""The Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned and an interim government will be formed to run the country." (5 August 2024)"

""I promise you all, we will bring justice to all the murders and injustice. We request you to have faith in the army of the country. I take full responsibility and I assure you to not get disheartened." (5 August 2024)"

""I request you all to be a little patient, give us some time and together we will be able to solve all the problems, Please don’t go back to the path of violence, and please return to nonviolent and peaceful ways." (5 August 2024)"

"How can Bangladesh deny its Hindu heritage? We were originally Hindus. Islam came later."

"The bishop's house is the external sign of the living cell of the local Church."

"After Bangladesh's birth, the first few years the new nation was not recognized as a separate sovereign entity by many of the Arab nations, notably Saudi Arabia which insisted that Bangladesh should adopt an Islamic constitution first"

"Bhutto... harangued about Muslim Bengal having been betrayed, and predicted that one day it would return to the fold. This is a philosophy that is subliminally still nurtured by many in Pakistan, not least the military - the ISI still plays its war games accordingly."

"They [East Bengal Hindus] played a conspicuous role in social, economic and political activities of the province of undivided Bengal. Partition has ruined this virile , dynamic and creative community . They are dehumanised, demoralised, and degenerated human beings, having been denied the rights of citizenship and elementary human rights to live a peaceful social life . Day in and day out they live in constant fear and terror. Worries are writ large on their faces. ..."

"“I believe that the Bengalis have never at any period held sway over a particle of land. They are altogether ignorant of the method by which a foreign race can maintain its rule over other races.”"

"Perhaps the most striking Indian policy was something that it did not do. India did not stop masses of Bengali refugees from flooding into India. Unimaginably huge numbers of Bengalis escaped into safety on Indian soil, eventually totaling as many as ten million—five times the number of people displaced in Bosnia in the 1990s. The needs of this new, desperate population were far beyond the capacities of the feeble governments of India’s border states, and Indira Gandhi’s government at the center. But at that overcharged moment, the Indian public would have found it hard to accept the sight of its own soldiers and border troops opening fire to keep out these desperate and terrified people. Here, at least, was something like real humanitarianism. As payment for this kindness, India found itself crushed under the unsustainable burden of one of the biggest refugee flows in world history—which galvanized the public and the government to new heights of self-righteous fury against Pakistan."

"At this time our nation is in a bad state in regards education and wealth, but God has given us the light of religion and the Quran is present for our guidance, which has ordained them and us to be friends. Now God has made them rulers over us. Therefore we should cultivate friendship with them, and should adopt that method by which their rule may remain permanent and firm in India, and may not pass into the hands of the Bengalis... If we join the political movement of the Bengalis our nation will reap a loss, for we do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the "people of the Book..."

"The aspirations of our friends the Bengalis have made such progress that they want to scale a height to which it is beyond their powers to attain. But if I am not in error, I believe that the Bengalis have never at any period held sway over a particle of land. They are altogether ignorant of the method by which a foreign race can maintain its rule over other races. 191"

"I do not think the Bengali politics useful for my brother Mussalmans. Our Hindu brothers of these Provinces are leaving us and are joining the Bengalis. Then we ought to unite with that nation with whom we can unite.... If our Hindu brothers of these Provinces, and the Bengalis of Bengal, and the Brahmans of Bombay, and the Hindu Madrasis of Madras wish to separate themselves from us, let them go, and trouble yourself about it not one whit. We can mix with the English in a social way. We can eat with them, they can eat with us. Whatever hope we have of progress is from them. The Bengalis can in no way assist our progress. 192-3"

"Of course the Bengalis have been extremely difficult to govern throughout their history."

"The Bengalis aren’t very good fighters I guess."

"“The term ‘selective genocide,’ you had an army crackdown on one set of people,” says Butcher. “There was a racial prejudice between Punjabis and Bengalis. You’d hear snide remarks that these people are less religious, our little brown brothers.” Some West Pakistanis scorned Bengalis—even the Muslim majority—as weak and debased by too much exposure to Hindus among them. As one of Yahya’s own ministers noted, the junta “looked down” upon the “non-martial Bengalis” as “Muslims converted from the lower caste Hindus.” In similar terms, Sydney Schanberg reported in the New York Times on the “depth of the racial hatred” felt by the dominant Punjabis of West Pakistan for Bengalis.43"

"The Hindus among the Bengalis were as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that [should] best be exterminated."

"Needless to say that most of the refugees into Assam from East Pakistan were Bengali Hindus – the persecuted religious minority in Islamic Pakistan ruled by modern and politicised armed forces. The partition made their position extremely vulnerable. ...[T]heir existence with dignity, both actual and perceptional, propelled their movement across the border."

"There is a general uneasiness among scholars to talk about the plight and rights of the Bengali Hindus."

"The East Bengal Hindus have been reduced to the position of hostages and condemned to destitution and slavery. They are cursed people, living in an accursed country , with none to call them their own."

"Its population consists almost exclusively of Hindoos: a quiet, inoffensive, industrious, submissive people, possessing little energy, less courage, and no ambition; concerning themselves not much about their own government, and not at all about the government of any other country; more frugal and abstemious than any other nation, and perhaps equal to any other nation, not in enlightened acquirements or refined precepts of philosophy, but in natural capacity and practical morality; attached, above all things, to their religion, which is always before them, from the uprising of the sun to the going down of the same – it enters into all the concerns of their daily life, it regulates the minutest detail of their domestic affairs. They feel, not an impetuous, ostentatious enthusiasm, but a quiet yet deeply profound sentiment of passive devotion, which excluding, unhappily, the light of reflection and reason, perpetuates from age to age, and from generation to generation, the errors and extravagances of a primeval superstition. But multiplied and impenetrable as seem to be the defences which thus encompass and preserve the prejudices of the Hindoos, there can be no doubt that these will at last give way to the persuasive influence of Christian communication and instruction, if duly seconded by the effect of Christian example; provided that this great and desirable work, this best result of our dominion in the East, be not frustrated by acts of impatient zeal or offensive interference."

"Is it not something, also, that you all—our Arian friends—should be told, intensely as it may disgust you, that this Arian Bengali—whom, uncivilly and un-ethnologically, you have been in the habit of calling a "Nigger,"—is, stubbornly as you may kick against the conviction, your Elder Brother:—one who, much as you may glory in being descended from certain pig-herding Thegns or piratical Norse Vikings, is, in very truth . . . the representative of the pure Arian stock, of which you are a mere offshoot . . . whom it is your duty to treat with mercy, justice, and forbearance;—as you will have to answer for your dealing with him to the God and Father of us all."

"We face threats to freedom of expression if we are unable or unwilling to rise to the challenge of freedom of expression, when that freedom is exercised. We are all of us—especially those who gather at a book fair—quick to announce to the world that we’re champions of freedom of expression. But when we regard someone’s expression as offensive, why do we seek to silence them? Why is it not enough simply to condemn what they say as offensive and leave untouched their right to say it?"

""...And tell me what could be more humbling than to be lying in bed at two in the afternoon, without a shower in twelve days; to look across the room you live in and see in the corner a pile of pizza boxes; to be afraid of undrawing the curtains and opening the window, so removed from people so as not to even wonder who would care if you did or if you didn't do this or that; and to find that the day's only scintilla of hope flickers in the moment you reach for the television remote control"."

"Perhaps the elites run to a different beat of time."

"When we encounter a face, we view it as a whole, by a process of integration of the parts, which takes place, as some scientists and physicians understand it, in the optic nerves long before any transmission reaches the brain. The otherwise dizzying abundance of information that hits the retina is distilled in this tract of fibers behind the eye into a sign that our intelligence can absorb. When we see a strip of letters, a billboard slogan, for example, we cannot help but read the word; we do not see each letter separately, but rather, instantly, we grasp the whole word and, moreover, its meaning."

"Spread along the platform was a mass of bobbing black hair like a long wave of silk. Suddenly I felt the first stirrings of what I would later come to recognize as kinship, a feeling that alarmed me, a sense that I was of a piece with a group of people for the most basic reasons, simple to the senses and irrational. They all looked like me."

"I think of the whole of the city, the people who inhabit its halls, who sleep now and breathe its recycled air and whose activities by day animate this strip of land on the rim of the desert, and I remember — because this thought is always a memory — that they will all one day be gone, that everyone of them will be taken outside and pushed into the sand, that in a hundred years, or two hundred years, to be certain, every human being here, every lover and loser, every captain of industry and every hotel cleaner, every mother and father and every child will be no more and that these buildings will stand, not all of them, but enough will persevere without them. Its a thought that stills me, that brings a moment of calm. And I walk and walk, and amid the concrete, steel and glass, under lights burning brighter than the noonday sun, it is the knot of anxiety, always tightening and turning, for which, above all else, I resent her"."

"'An exile is a refugee with a library!'"

"We shore up our prejudices with selected facts..."

"Life can only be understood backward; the trouble is, it has to be lived forward."

"...Britain has a hugely inflated sense of self. ..."

"...there is a virtue attached to intelligence, but lets suppose that we are all intelligent enough to know that intelligence is not a virtue; that the people who made the atom bomb were very intelligent, and that really virtue resides in how we conduct ourselves..."