Crossing Divided Bengal

Scenes from the Bengal countryside


Ruth and I recently traveled to Bangladesh with a group of eighteen MCC India staff and project partners to participate in a workshop on development planning, monitoring, and evaluation. We traveled to the border by bus and were picked up on the other side by MCC Bangladesh staff. Our route took us through much of what had been Bengal before it was partitioned when colonial India achieved its independence from Britain.

I was especially eager to make this overland trip because of my interest in the beginning of MCC service in India in 1942. MCC first arrived in response to the Bengal famine that killed as many as 3 million people between 1943 and 1944. At one point MCC was supporting 8,000 starving people through disaster relief.

The famine was followed be the partition of Bengal along religions lines at the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Predominantly Hindu West Bengal became part of India. Predominantly Muslim East Bengal became East Pakistan, and then Bangladesh after the war for independence from Pakistan in 1971.

After the partition, thousands of Hindu refugees from East Bengal were camped out several blocks away from the MCC office in Kolkata. They had nowhere to go but the city eventually absorbed them. More arrived during the Bangladesh war for independence in 1971. Still more continue to come from poor villages in West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Bangladesh. MCC has been helping these immigrants in various ways for many years—especially through educational scholarships for their children.

Crossing the guarded border between India and Bangladesh was a two hour ordeal of checking and rechecking documents in oppressive heat. We were soon drenched in sweat as we waited in front of immigration counters. The Indians in our group were worried that immigration officers would find some minor mistake in their papers and use it as an excuse to demand a “facilitation fee.” There were no major hitches and we were eventually on our way.

Both sides of the border are part of the vast fertile delta created be the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. People on both sides are ethnically Bengali and speak the same language. They share literary and culinary traditions. Both revere Tagore as their world renowned Bengali poet. Both absolutely love hilsa fish.

So why does an ugly, guarded border run through the middle of their homeland? One reason is religious. In the twelfth century, Muslim traders and missionaries spread Islam throughout the Bengal region that has more ancient Hindu and Buddhist roots. These religious identities became tied to the imperial ambitions of the Muslim Mughal Empire in India and then the British Empire. That sordid story cannot be told here but a toxic mix of religion and nationalism eventually led to the partition in 1947.

Culturally and economically, the border makes absolutely no sense. And it makes little religious sense because many Muslims and Hindus still live on both sides. So why do people just accept this ugly border as an unquestioned part of their world? Why do our nationalist and religious imaginations create such divides? Why is it so easy to distrust and fear those who live on the other side of the borders we have created?

What will it take for us to imagine differently? What religious and political traditions can inspire efforts to gradually dismantle our walls? Our decision to drive to the border and walk across, rather than fly across, was one little effort in creating a different world. Our workshop in Bangladesh involved Indians, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Americans, and Canadians working together to enhance our community development practices. Another little piece of our national divides dissolved during our time together.

When enough of us start doing such things we will eventually realize how dysfunctional the border dividing Bengal—indeed all national borders—really are. Such growing awareness is one indication of the coming reign of God.