Christopher J Lloyd

Bengal Politics in Britain: Logic, Dynamics and Disharmony

How did Bengal politics spread to Britain? The best account to date is in Faruque Ahmed’s new book Bengal Politics in Britain: Logic, Dynamics and Disharmony.

The book also gives a succinct chronology of historical events occurring from 1765 to 2010 A.D. (in appendix 3).

The reader will learn about the East India Company, Lascar sailors, India, Pakistan, and turbulent political incidents like the brutal killing of Bengali Language Movement supporters in Dhaka in February 1952, the mass upheaval leading to independence of Bangladesh in 1971, and the protest in Brick Lane in East London in 1978.

Starting with the arrival of Bengali intellectual Raja Rammohon Ray in England on 8 April 1831 as an Emissary of Emperor Akbar II, who first spoke of Bengal politics in Britain, the book appropriately closes with the 6 May 2010 General Election when the first Bengali-British woman MP was elected to the House of Commons (Rushanara Ali, Labour Party, Bethnal Green and Bow constituency).

This is a thoroughly researched work which will become a standard academic text for many years to come for students of the subject.

The author was born in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, and his book fills a noticeable gap in historical understanding of the presence of the Bengali population in Britain. During his 8-years of research, Faruque Ahmed interviewed many writers, politicians and members of the community (listed on page 274-5); an invaluable bibliography of the English and Bengali language works is cited on pages 266-273.

The author is a journalist and community historian, with an intimate knowledge of language and the expanding Bangladeshi newspaper industry in Britain. He examined the Bangladeshi newspapers collected at the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives since the 1980s, the British Library and other repositories.

The book reproduces photographs of such historically significant personalities as Tasadduq Ahmed (p.50) and Ayub Ali Master (p.34) from private sources (listed in appendix.2), and documents, a signed letter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to Gaus Khan, permitting him to form a branch of the Awami League in London (p.114), and a useful list of Bengalis in British Politics (Appendix 1).