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X-WR-CALNAME:On Being Bengali: Abul Mansur Ahmed’s Politics of Language
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada)
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DTSTAMP:20260810T202523Z
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DTSTART:20250929T161500Z
DTEND:20250929T171500Z
DESCRIPTION:Talk by Ahona Panda (History\, Claremont McKenna College)\n\nTh
 e talk explores the entwined political and literary lives of the Bengali p
 olitician and writer\, Abul Mansur Ahmed (1898-1979)\, and studies him as 
 a person who lived through the political articulations of three nationalis
 ms: Indian\, Pakistani\, and Bangladeshi. From his early involvement in th
 e Indian National Congress\, to his shift to the Muslim League and formati
 on of Pakistan\, and later his role in shaping the Awami League and modern
  Bangladesh\, Ahmed’s life reflects the deep contradictions of his time.
  In this talk\, I explore how\, for Ahmed\, “Muslim” was not merely a 
 religious category\, but a social class formation produced through colonia
 l agrarian structures and shaped by Hindu cultural and linguistic hegemony
 . Language\, then\, became both a site of resistance and a battleground fo
 r Muslims and Hindus: who controlled Bengali? Who spoke for its future? Ah
 med’s suspicion of Hindu-Muslim unity stemmed from a trenchant critique 
 of elite Hindu appropriation of language and culture. And yet\, Bengali–
 – and language itself–– remained a terrain of unresolved tension and
  closeness between the two communities. \n\n \n\n I situate Ahmed alongsid
 e literary friends like Kazi Nazrul Islam\, political figures like Chittar
 anjan Das\, A.K. Fazlul Huq and H.S. Suhrawardy\,  as well as humanists li
 ke Ahmed Sharif and Anisuzzaman\, who held out hope that the Bengali langu
 age could transcend nation-state divisions. As India-Bangladesh relations 
 continue to worsen\, the talk rethinks whether language is the site of irr
 econcilable difference\, or the elusive site of what binds us beyond the i
 njustices of class\, race\, and history. \n\n \n\nAhona Panda is a histori
 an of South Asia and Assistant Professor of History at Claremont McKenna C
 ollege. In 2025-2026\, she is a Visiting Scholar of South Asian History at
  Cornell University. Her research focuses on the intersections of language
 \, land\, and politics in Bengal from the colonial period to the postcolon
 ial present. She is currently completing a book titled Language and its Co
 mmunitas: The Life of Bengali\, 1793–1971\, which explores the political
  and emotional life of the Bengali language\, and the material\, national\
 , and literary histories that shaped it. Her broader scholarly interests i
 nclude philology\, economic and environmental history of the Bengal delta\
 , and the long history of Hindu–Muslim relations in South Asia.
GEO:42.447296;-76.482254
LOCATION:Uris Hall\, G08
SUMMARY:On Being Bengali: Abul Mansur Ahmed’s Politics of Language
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.cornell.edu/event/on-being-bengali
CATEGORIES:Lecture
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