The Sufi Embrace - Hans Harder

Bengali literary history and popular culture gives ample testimony of plenty of cultural convergences in the Ganges Delta between traditions we retrospectively label as Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or in-between. Nonetheless, the alleged cohesion between various confessions did not prevent Bengal from being caught by much political agitation along communal lines ever since the early nineteenth century, and the frictions that occurred in the region being badly and lastingly affected by the Partition and its aftermath. Numbers of Hindu population in East Pakistan and subsequent Bangladesh have dwindled from a solid 30% before 1947 to some 10% these days.

However, the ethos of cohesion still survives in one brand of Bangladeshi nationalism, as well as in parts of popular religious culture. In this presentation I want to demonstrate how such an ethos is but a thin covering of deep, shared roots which, though many times almost forgotten, still play out in manifold negotiations of religious identity.