"Bengal in the Great War” is the final panel of Alliance Française’s two-day conference, titled War & Colonies, taking place at Senate Hall, University of Dhaka, today from 2:20-5:30pm.
Four scholars from Bangladesh and India will present their papers, followed by a debate chaired by Professor Imtiaz Ahmed of the University of Dhaka.
“In effect these are lost histories,” panelist Sqn Ldr (retd) Rana Chhina of USI Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research in New Delhi told the Dhaka Tribune. “Because it is part of colonial history, after we became independent, we did not want to talk about it. But it is unhealthy to ignore such an important part of our history.”
India played a significant role in both world wars. “The Indian army in WWII, with 2.5 million men, was the largest volunteer army in history of human conflict. In WWI we sent 1.4 million men.”
Rana’s panel “Bhadralok Warriors: The Bengali Military Experience in the First World War,” is the first talk of the panel, and he looks at the role played in the war by the Bengali elite, who applied political pressure on the British to be allowed to participate.
“The British by then were very firmly entrenched in the ‘martial races theory,’ which believed that only certain classes of people were warlike and competent to become soldiers.” Rana explains.
“The one class they were very sure they didn’t want as soldiers were Bengalis, because they had a very high level of political consciousness, and of course because of the 1857 uprising.”
Rana was enthusiastic about presenting this topic to a Dhaka audience, commenting: “Bangladesh is living proof, if proof was required, that the entire British myth of the non-martial Bengali was rubbish.”
Bengali volunteers served in the 49th Bengali Regiment, and with distinction in other arenas, which are explored in the subsequent panel discussions.
The second talk is “Captain Kalyan Kumar Mukhopadhyay, A Bengali Officer in Mesopotamia.” Dr Kaushik Roy from Jadavpur University in Kolkata will present a translation and commentary on the only available biography, compiled from letters he sent home from the front, of an officer in the specialised Bengali Indian Medical Service unit that served on a floating riverboat hospital.
“Bengali Volunteers of Chandannagar in the French Army” by Lt Col Muhammad Lutful Haq, advisor of research and archives at “Prothom Alo,” details the history of Bengalis living in the French colonial enclave of Chandannagar who were recruited into the French army, and served with distinction.
The final talk is “From Warfront to the Front of National Liberation: The Impact of WWI on Kazi Nazrul Islam.” Mofidul Hoque of the Liberation War Museum will examine the formative impact military life had on Nazrul, who joined the British Indian Army in 1917 and served for 2.5 years, exposing him to the multiculturalism and anti-colonialism that inspired his dreams of national liberation.
The event is organised by Olivier Litvine, director of Alliance Française de Dhaka, to commemorate the centennial of WWI 1914-1918. The preceding panel “The Uses of the Colonies: From Propaganda to Memory” begins today at 10am.