‘Arakan gained independence from Britain’

University Grants Commission Chairman Prof Abdul Mannan on Friday said Arakan is an independent state, and the Rohingya people living there gained their independence from Britain. He made the statement while speaking as the chief guest at the inaugural session of a two-day international conference titled “Refugees in the Public Imagination: Discourse on (Dis)location and (Dis)placement” at  the University of Liberal Arts (ULAB) in Dhaka. The university’s department of English and humanities organized the conference. “Arakan is an independent state that achieved its independence from Britain. The Rohingya people, despite being an independent nation, are being deprived of basic rights in their own country,” he said. Prof Mannan added that the ongoing Rohingya crisis is a global problem, and Bangladesh has shown the highest level of humanity by letting the persecuted Rohingya in its territory despite numerous challenges facing the country. He commended the organizers and the university authorities for hosting the conference on such a pressing issue. Dr Anjali Gera Roy, a professor of humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology in West Bengal, presented the keynote paper titled “Migration, Mobility, Immobility.” Her paper discussed the prolonged struggle of Gurjit Singh and passengers aboard the Komagata Maru in 1914, as they sought to establish an identity of their own in then predominantly white Canada. Dr Roy used evidence from various colonial archives, personal diaries and other documents to compile the material. The paper also reflected on how the idealistic notion of a world without borders continued to be neglected due to the dystopic experiences of refugees across the world. Following the inaugural session, panel discussions were held on various issues, under titles such as “Donors Working with the Rohingya,” “Partition Matters,” “Women and Migration,” and “Refugees: Then and Now.” The topics ranged from transnational diaspora to racial-cultural hybridity. Distinguished professors and researchers from home and abroad, including Dr Devjani Sengupta, Dr Fakhrul Alam, Dr Niaz Zaman, Dr Perween Hasan, Dr Razia Sultana Khan, Dr Firdous Azim, Prof Afsan Chowdhury and Dr Syed Manzoorul Islam, attended the discussions. Similar panel discussions and parallel sessions will also be held on Saturday, the second and concluding day of the conference. Dr Debjani Sengupta, an associate professor of English of Indrapastha College under the University of Delhi, will present a keynote paper tiled “An Enclave’s Marginal Lives: Selina Hossain’s Bhumi O Kusum (2010).”