'Joy Bangla': How This Bengali Slogan Masks Bangladesh's Islamist Core

The 'Joy Bangla' Deception: Bangladeshi Islamism under the Facade of Bengali Nationalism. Kausik Gangopadhyay and Devavrata. Garuda Prakashan Pvt. Ltd. Pages: 352. Price: Rs 449.

When millions across the Indian subcontinent hear the words “Joy Bangla,” what often comes to mind is the spirit of a people rising against oppression. It evokes, especially for Indian liberals, the idea of secular nationalism rooted in language, not faith; progress, not persecution.

But as The 'Joy Bangla' Deception by Dr. Kausik Gangopadhyay and Devavrata argues with clinical precision, this romanticism is a dangerous myth. It is a slogan that has, over the decades, masked a slow-moving but systematic project of Islamic imperialism. One that has ejected Hindus and Buddhists from the heart of Bengal, Arabised its language, rewritten its history, and whitewashed its genocidal past.

This deeply researched, disturbing, and necessary book is divided into four analytical sections, each building upon the last to expose how the Islamic identity of Bangladesh has co-opted, distorted, and weaponised Bengali culture to serve its exclusionary goals.

The authors do not mince words. “Joy Bangla,” far from being a secular rallying cry, was always a slogan of Muslim dominance. One that conveniently disguised its roots in the Awami Muslim League’s majoritarian Islamism, and which continues to provide moral cover for ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh.

For Indian readers, especially academics, policymakers, and civilisational thinkers, this book is essential. The fate of Hindus in Bangladesh, and the ideological construction of modern Bangladeshi identity, are not peripheral issues. They strike at the heart of India’s geopolitical and cultural security. As such, this book is both a warning and a call to action.

Language as Myth, Not Identity

The first section, Busting the Myth Around the Language Movement, interrogates the foundational claim of Bangladeshi nationalism: that the 1952 language movement was a secular, mass uprising to preserve Bengali cultural identity. The authors peel back this narrative with forensic clarity. In their telling, the movement was less about Bengali and more about political opportunism within the Islamic framework of East Pakistani elites.

The chapter Who Really Started the Language Movement? reveals that it was not a Hindu-led movement, nor a pan-Bengali one, except for the one leader Dhirendranath Dutta, who was never recognised. The authors demonstrate how, even at this stage, the Muslim religion remained the dominant axis of Bengali identity.

The section’s centrepiece, February 21, 1952: The Narrative versus the Reality, questions why, despite a significant past, the Bengali language was tried to be rewritten in the Arabic script by the leaders of East Pakistan. The section ends on a story familiar to me: the language riots in Assam’s Barak Valley where many Bengali Muslims hijacked the Assamese language movement to inflict injury upon Bengali Hindus living in the valley.

Largely, the manipulation of the language movement reveals a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Bangladesh. The nation’s supposed linguistic foundation has always been subordinated to an Islamic political project. The authors set the stage for the rest of the book by showing that even the earliest myths of “secular Bengali nationalism” were carefully manufactured tools of Muslim majoritarianism.

Joy Bangla and the Invention of a Lie

In The Propaganda of ‘Joy Bangla’, the book’s most explosive and insightful section, the authors reveal how a religious slogan was dressed in the garb of ethnic nationalism. This section traces the emergence of “Joy Bangla” as a tactical invention of East Pakistani Muslim elites, particularly within the Awami Muslim League, to consolidate power while maintaining the outer shell of secularism.

Chapters like Awami Muslim League: Religion at the Heart of East Pakistan Politics and Electoral Compulsion and the Invention of Bengali Nationalism show how the removal of the word “Muslim” from party names and the adoption of inclusive language were pragmatic moves. The ideology remained rooted in the Lahore Resolution of 1940.

As Sheikh Mujibur Rahman himself put it, he was a devout Muslim Leaguer. Another telling quote illustrates this: a soldier who told Yvette Claire Rosser he “didn’t mind killing Hindus but killing Muslims was against [his] religious beliefs.” The book contextualises this chilling admission in the broader pattern of selective outrage and systematic persecution.

Chapter 4, Bhasani and the Dream of Greater Bangladesh, explores how early Islamists like Maulana Bhasani openly articulated the goal of expanding eastward into Assam, Tripura, and Bengal. A goal that has never been formally abandoned. The idea of “Bengali nationalism” becomes, in this section, a tool of soft imperialism. It is couched in culture, but driven by theology.

This section demolishes the notion that the formation of Bangladesh was a break from Islamic identity. Instead, it argues that Bangladesh is the continuation of Pakistan by other means. Pakistan 2.0, but more insidious because of its successful use of progressive rhetoric.

The Idea of Bangladesh is a Beautiful Lie

This third section serves as the moral centre of the book. It argues that the ideological structure of Bangladesh was never about liberation or secularism, but the replacement of one Islamic order with another. It is less overtly Pakistani, but just as intolerant. The slogan changed, the script changed, but the persecution remained.

From secular rhetoric to Islamic state, the chapter titles say, and the authors show exactly how that transformation unfolded. Mujib’s message to the nation on independence captures this best. While Bangladesh may not be an Islamic state, it is a Muslim state nonetheless. Bangladesh’s post-1971 trajectory was not a betrayal of secular ideals; it was the logical consequence of a state built on communal lines.

The authors cite amendments, interventions, and educational reforms that gradually reinstated Islam as the defining basis of Bangladeshi identity. Chapter 9, From Pogroms to Economic Deprivation, documents not only the episodic violence against Hindus (from the 1960s to the 2001 post-election riots), but the more silent, structural forms of discrimination that decimated Hindu economic power, property rights, and representation. One telling anecdote shows how Bangladeshis considered Hindus to be Indians and not their own.

Especially powerful is the chapter Not Just the Hindus But the Buddhists Too, which expands the lens to include the plight of Chakmas and other indigenous groups in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The authors draw from official reports, survivor testimonies, and demographic data to show how a slow-moving genocide, aided by state policy and Islamist militancy, has pushed these communities to the margins of national consciousness.

Together, these chapters dismantle the comforting delusion that Bangladesh is a secular, pluralistic democracy. The so-called “idea of Bangladesh” is, as the authors argue, a beautiful lie. It is a cosmetic narrative that conceals one of South Asia’s longest and least acknowledged civilisational cleansings.

Neo-Bengaliness: is it Hindu?

In the final analytical section, the book turns its gaze to the cultural battlefield—language, memory, and historical imagination. Here, the authors trace the evolution of what they call “neo-Bengaliness”, a modern, Islamised identity that claims the Bengali legacy while carefully excluding its Hindu roots.

The section opens with The Identity Crisis of a Bengali-Speaking Muslim, a compelling exploration of how East Bengali Muslims, after Partition, struggled to reconcile their language with the pan-Islamic identity that Pakistan had tried to enforce. Instead of returning to their civilisational Hindu past, they began to rewrite it.

Chapter 12, Rewriting History in the Service of ‘Muslim Bengaliness’, shows how the textbooks, cultural festivals, and popular histories in Bangladesh were gradually purged of Hindu saints, rulers, and Sanskritic roots.

Tagore, perhaps the most towering symbol of Bengal’s literary and spiritual glory, becomes a tragic figure in this narrative. Chapter 13, Tagore’s Outburst Against the Arabisation of Bengali, quotes his biting critiques of early efforts to inject Persianised and Arabic words into Bengali. “It will be even sadder if the origins form of the Bengali language is made miserable by abuse.” The authors argue that what Tagore feared has come to pass. Not organically, but through deliberate state policy and intellectual suppression.

The final chapter, ‘Joy Bangla’ Is Not a Slogan of Hindus, But of Muslims, returns full circle to the book’s title. It argues that the slogan, often brandished as inclusive, was never meant to include the Hindus who formed the intellectual bedrock of Bengal. Instead, it became a password of dominance. A way to signal allegiance to a majoritarian, Muslim-centric vision of Bengal that leaves no room for its civilisational soul.

Key Takeaways

At the heart of The 'Joy Bangla' Deception lies a brutal but necessary thesis. Bengali nationalism has always been Islamic in essence, not secular or inclusive. The removal of the word “Muslim” from party names, such as the Awami Muslim League becoming the Awami League, was not a sign of ideological transformation. It was cosmetic, a tactical shift meant to placate and confuse, not reform. The ideological roots remained tied to the Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution of 1940, which envisioned an Islamic polity carved from India, bound by religious rather than linguistic unity.

The numbers themselves tell a story of relentless erasure. In 1951, Hindus made up over 33 percent of East Pakistan’s population. Today, in independent Bangladesh, they form less than 8 percent. This is not the result of economic migration or intermarriage. It is the direct consequence of seven decades of religious cleansing, a combination of targeted pogroms, property theft through the Vested Property Act, economic exclusion, and psychological warfare.

The book highlights one of the darkest expressions of this strategy: the 2001 post-election campaign of targeted rapes, where over 18,000 Hindu women were raped as part of a punishment-cum-intimidation programme executed with political sanction.

The authors also argue that Bangladesh’s long-term ideological project is not peace or prosperity but Islamic imperialism. From Moulana Bhashani’s dream of a Greater Bangladesh to the silence over Islamist infiltration into Assam and Bengal, there is a consistent irredentist logic at play. “Joy Bangla” is not just a slogan. It is, in this reading, a password for this deeper project.

Equally disturbing is the Arabisation of Bengali, a cultural deracination that severs the language from its Hindu-Sanskritic moorings. Tagore had warned of this as early as the early twentieth century. The book shows how his fears have come true in the form of script changes, vocabulary replacements, and historical distortions. What was once a language of bhakti, syncretic poetry, and philosophical subtlety has increasingly been refashioned into a vehicle for majoritarian Islamic self-assertion.

This carefully constructed myth of a secular, tolerant Bangladesh survives only because it is enabled by global academia, including prominent figures like Amartya Sen and Richard Eaton. The authors critique how these intellectuals either downplay or actively whitewash the ongoing persecution of Hindus, framing it instead as isolated aberrations or retaliatory politics.

A Book Indian Intellectuals Cannot Afford to Ignore

One of the most urgent arguments the book makes is directed not at Bangladesh, but at India’s own intellectual class. The blindness, or worse, the deliberate evasion of the Bangladesh problem, has cost India strategically, demographically, and ideologically.

For decades, Indian liberal and strategic discourse has refused to acknowledge that Bangladesh is not merely a developmental neighbour but a civilisational and ideological adversary. The default mode of engagement has been sentimentality whether invoking shared struggles in 1971 or the “Bengali connection.” But the authors demonstrate that this softness has emboldened an expansionist Islamic nationalism masquerading as subaltern resistance.

This book stands as an urgent corrective to this liberal complacency. The 'Joy Bangla' Deception shows that religious ideology, not linguistic justice or class struggle, is the fuel of partitioned states.

It also demands a paradigm shift in Indian policymaking. Instead of viewing Bangladesh as a source of cheap garments, friendly Muslims, or export opportunities, India must understand it as an ideological challenge on its eastern frontier. A state whose very self-definition undermines Indian pluralism and Hindu survival.

If Indian academia continues to ignore this, it will be complicit in a second partition. This time not on maps, but in culture, consciousness, and civilisational narrative.

The 'Joy Bangla' Deception occupies an important space in the emerging genre of post-Partition Hindu memory literature. While most narratives of Partition, especially those written in English, either focus on Punjab or Pakistan, this book brings the spotlight to Bengal. The other half of Partition, which remains far more under-examined.

What makes the book particularly important is that it gives a systematic, evidence-based voice to Hindu trauma in Bangladesh. It moves beyond nostalgia or grievance and provides data, ideological analysis, and archival evidence to reconstruct the slow dismantling of Bengal’s Hindu core.

But more than a work of history, Gangopadhyay and Devavrata have presented a manual of civilisational diagnostics. It raises fundamental questions. What happens when language is hollowed out by religious majoritarianism? Can syncretism survive without sovereignty? What does it mean when the cradle of India's literary and reformist modernity is allowed to fall into the hands of those who reject its very roots?

The book is unafraid to critique both internal deracination (that is, Hindu complicity or silence) and external appropriation (that is, the Islamist hijacking of Bengali symbols). In doing so, it charts a civilisational map of loss, but also a path of recovery.

It is indispensable not only for strategists or historians, but for those working in cultural revival, regional studies, and Indic civilisational thought.

Bengal Must Not Become Another Kashmir

The final warning, not of the book but of this review, is this.

Kashmir was India’s intellectual crown, a land of saints and scholars, lost not in a single moment but over decades of neglect, betrayal, and ideological surrender. What happened to Kashmir was not inevitable. It was the result of allowing a civilisational space to be redefined by an alien ideology.

Bengal is next.

Once the birthplace of India’s modern renaissance, Bengal gave the world Chaitanya, Bankim, Vidyasagar, Tagore, Aurobindo. It birthed the very language of freedom, reform, and spirituality that would guide India out of its mediaeval shadows.

Today, that same Bengal teeters on the edge of cultural Islamisation, especially across the border in Bangladesh. If we lose this Bengal—philosophically rich, intellectually fertile, spiritually resonant—we lose not just a state, but a civilisational anchor.

The 'Joy Bangla' Deception is more than a book. It is a warning, a manifesto, and a civilisational call to arms.

It urges us to reclaim Bengal. Not with borders or bombs, but with memory, narrative, and civilisational clarity.

For in this century, the battles that matter most are not fought on frontiers, but in the mind and memory of a people. And unless we narrativise Bengaliness on Hindu civilisational terms, we may wake up one day to find that it too has joined Kashmir in the annals of civilisational defeat.

Let that day never come.