Bengalis

Thank you for that question, because that brings me back to my science.

So Bengalis is a community that's in Bangladesh, as well as a state right next to it in India called West Bengal.

But the Bengal province, when India was not divided yet, the British, when we were colonized by them, includes some other states, too.

Under Churchill's leadership, the Bengal famine happened very similar to the Irish famine.

And I gather there, you know, that Gogol is a...

You know, not a common pet name for Bengalis, but it's, you know, not exclusive to, I don't think it's exclusive to the one little boy I knew of.

But I just didn't think, I just, I don't know, it was, it took some time for me, even for me to accept the name as the name of my character,

you know.

Newspapers were loud in their complaints until the Press Act of 1908 muzzled them.

Bombs were mysteriously exploded and officials murdered, not by ordinary criminals, but by determined young Bengalis of good education and family.

An Explosive Substances Act enabled the government to check the bomb throwing to some extent, but the populace seethed with dangerous ferment, and even the arbitrary imprisonment of political agitators availed little.

Repression failing, the British used concession.

In March 1971, the Pakistani government launched Operation Searchlight, intending to gain control of all major cities in East Pakistan, then gradually crush all Bengali opposition.

What came next is widely considered as the Bangladesh Genocide, in which between 300,000 and 3 million Bengalis and at least 150,000 binary East Pakistan's Muslim minority were killed.

Roughly 10 million Bengalis poured across the border into India as they fled the violence.

India soon intervened, and another full-scale war quickly erupted in both the East and West regions.

The fighting lasted just two months, with the Pakistani armed forces taking a real beating, leading to 93,000 soldiers surrendering in East Pakistan, a humbling experience the nation would take some time to recover from.

Right, and then as so many were coming from British India into Burma when the British controlled it, when we look at Rangoon in particular, colonial Rangoon's Indian origin population, It was actually extraordinarily heterogeneous.

You know, there were Tamils and Bengalis, Gujarati, Memon, Hindu, Muslim.

There were those that were coming from different backgrounds that were wealthy or poor that were coming for seasonal work or permanent types of work.

Just extraordinary diversity that was there.

They've been struggling to get recognized by Pakistan for their citizenship, even though they're born in Pakistan, which by law should entitle them to citizenship.

But because they're Bengalis, when they try to go to the office to get their birth certificate or get their passport, there's just so much discrimination and red tape that they don't end up being able to obtain it.

And as a result, they're essentially stateless, even though by law, they're supposed to be able to get their citizenship by being born in Pakistan.

An inflection, a really interesting moment in the film is when this costs one of the three main characters by the way kieran sonia anwara who are in this little fishing set bengali fishing settlement right by like karachi's harbor and here they are in this situation here as you mentioned it they have bengali background there which is maybe a source of discrimination that's going on there.

Newspapers were loud in their complaints until the Press Act of 1908 muzzled them.

Bombs were mysteriously exploded and officials murdered, not by ordinary criminals, but by determined young Bengalis of good education and family.

An Explosive Substances Act enabled the government to check the bomb throwing to some extent, but the populace seethed with dangerous ferment, and even the arbitrary imprisonment of political agitators availed little.

Repression failing, the British used concession.

Newspapers were loud in their complaints until the Press Act of 1908 muzzled them.

Bombs were mysteriously exploded and officials murdered, not by ordinary criminals, but by determined young Bengalis of good education and family.

An Explosive Substances Act enabled the government to check the bomb throwing to some extent, but the populace seethed with dangerous ferment, and even the arbitrary imprisonment of political agitators availed little.

Repression failing, the British used concession.