Not surprisingly, people who make this accusation against people like Ashutosh Mukherjee or Rabindranath Tagore did not answer my questions.
Q. A. Rahman has addressed some of the questions, with a declaration that he does not consider himself as an accuser. However, his answers and analyses were either plain wrong or typical of the two-nation theorist imbeciles.
Dr. Kamal Das has also made some comments. He reasoned that Muslims were not up to education, and were not expected to have a large share of teachers and students at Dhaka University during its early years.
Now let me make some comprehensive points.
Pakistan or not, if Hindus did not face the kind of discrimination, hatred, and barbaric atrocities that they did in East Bengal since 1947, if they did not leave East Bengal, the academic circle of any Bangladeshi university that would be worth calling "the Oxford of the East" would be dominated by Hindus over the Muslims even today. Let me give a few examples: 1) in my B. Sc. Honors class at the Dhaka University Chemistry Department, graduating in 1980, four students got the first class, and two of them were Hindus, 2) two years before us no one got the first class in Chemistry honors program from the university proper; only one student, a Hindu, got the first class from BM College in Barishal, 3) in our honors batch, the most distinguished scholar in the Science Faculty (the Kalinarayan Scholar) was a Hindu student from Physics. These are in spite of all the migration of mostly the elite class of Hindus from East Bengal beginning in 1947. The most sudden drop in the quality of Dhaka University was probably in 1947, when Hindu professors left en masse for India, and their void filled with unqualified and poorly qualified Muslims.
Of course, Pakistan was not in the horizon in 1921. Thus, the establishment of Dhaka University in reality had nothing to do with higher education for the Muslims; because the Muslims were not expected to be the principal components of the university. People who suggest that Rabindranath Tagore opposed the establishment of Dhaka University because he was anti-Muslim have a hateful objective of dissociating the greatest Bangalee poet from Bangladesh.
Now let me address a side point made by Q. A. Rahman. His point was that Pakistan was needed for breaking the Hindu domination in East Bengal. His argument was utterly foolish and hateful when he was indifferent to the fact of the migration of Hindus due to discrimination, hatred and barbaric atrocities in their home of centuries. He was essentially saying that it was OK for displacing the Hindus for giving the Muslims some privilege.
No, Muslims had to get themselves interested in real education in order to break the Hindu domination. Hatred can give a short-term gain, which Pakistan did for the Muslims. But look, for example, the elite of Bangladeshi Muslims who have a significant health problem go to India for treatment. Aren't those Hindu doctors in India saving the elite Muslims of Bangladesh?
Talking in terms of political domination, I do not think the Muslims needed Pakistan. Without Pakistan, Muslims would be dominating all of Bengal today; because democracy was inevitable, and because to be a voter one does not need to be very scholarly or rich. Of course, if that political domination was combined with the wisdom of promoting education, Muslims would have had their fair share of power in all respects in due course without the help of hatred.
I would advise people like Mr. Rahman to wake up for progress for all people, especially for the Muslims. Sprouting madrasahs in Bangladesh like wild mushrooms in dirty soil, and promoting hateful religious stupidity will not help the Muslims; real education in humanities, science and technology will.
Sukhamaya Bain
