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How Bengali Harlem's lost history challenges America's immigration certainties
As immigration enforcement intensifies across the United States, Alaudin Ullah finds himself immersed in a history most Americans have never heard about. The New York-based comedian-turned-actor and playwright has spent over 25 years documenting the forgotten story of his father and thousands of other Bengali Muslim seamen who jumped ship at American ports in the late 19th and early 20th century. Facing exclusion laws similar to today's deportation drives under President Donald Trump, these sailors embedded themselves in New York's Black and Latino communities in Harlem, opened some of America's first South Asian restaurants and rubbed shoulders with participants in radical political movements that would reshape the US. What Ullah discovered challenged everything he thought he knew and formed a new conception of South Asian immigration to the United States: it placed Bengali Muslims from present-day Bangladesh and India's West Bengal as the central protagonists in the narrative. An unknown chapter Ullah knew none of this history when he was growing up in an East Harlem housing project in the 1980s. Like many rebellious second-generation immigrants, he spent years rejecting his Bengali identity and distancing himself from the world of his father Habib Ullah. But in 1998, a decade after his father's death, Ullah began sharing fragmented stories of his father's arrival in New York with the academic and filmmaker Vivek Bald. Bald, whose own family had arrived after the 1965 Immigration Act opened doors for educated South Asian professionals to move to the United States, realised they were uncovering an older and unknown chapter of South Asian immigration. If Habib had arrived in the 1920s, he would have entered America when immigration from most of Asia was banned in the country and when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Asians were 'not free, not white'. Yet thousands of men like Habib found ways around the ban. When his ship docked in Boston, Habib stayed behind and eventually made his way to New York, where he found a job as a dishwasher in upscale hotels like The Commodore (a former name for the Hyatt Grand Central). 'He worked in the kitchens of these hotels alongside Black and Puerto Rican workers,' explained Alaudin Ullah. Habib Ullah's story and the history of other Bengali Muslim men like him is the focus of the documentary In Search of Bengali Harlem, completed in 2022 by Vivek Bald which features Ullah as the narrator. Play Habib Ullah married a woman named Victoria Echevarria, an immigrant from Puerto Rico. After Victoria's untimely death, Habib raised their son, Habib Jr, but sent their daughter to live with her mother's relatives and friends. In the 1960s, Habib returned to his village, Noakhali in present-day Bangladesh, for the first time in 40 years. It was no longer under British colonial rule. Partition had made Noakhali a part of East Pakistan. Habib married a young Bengali woman named Mohima. The two moved to Harlem and had two sons. The younger of the two, Alaudin Ullah was in his early teens when his father died. 'I had known little of him and blamed him for abandoning my half-sister,' said Ullah. 'And I didn't get a lot of answers about our past from my mother.' Mohima was isolated in the public housing complex they lived in, and struggled to raise her sons, said Ullah. Unlike neighbourhoods like Jackson Heights in New York today, where it is possible to live surrounded by people from your home country, Mohima was living in ethnically diverse Harlem where her family was among the only Bengalis in a Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood. In the early 20th century, Harlem became a hub for African American communities arriving from the American South, as well as immigrants from the Black, Hispanic and Asian diasporas. Bengali seafarers such Habib Ullah moved from the Lower East Side, where they initially worked, to Harlem, where undocumented immigrants like him could blend in and stay undetected by authorities. By the 1950s and '60s, many of those families had moved to other parts of New York or even farther away. The stories of these vibrant communities have faded in New York today. Perhaps, that process was accelerated by a 1965 change in US immigration law that drove a new wave of South Asians, particularly highly educated people, to the United States. These immigrations were often perceived as 'model minorities' who overshadowed undocumented working-class immigrants from the subcontinent. Stories like Habib Ullah's were largely unheard of when Bald and Ullah began their research. They dug up newspaper clippings, ship records and cross-checked marriage certificates to discover waves of Bengali immigration going back to the 1880s. By the 1940s, Habib Ullah and Victoria Echevarria ran the Bengal Garden restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, a precursor to the South Asian restaurants that would later dominate New York's Sixth Street. One thread running through the documentary is Ullah's search for a dimly remembered family photograph. It was said to show Ibrahim Choudry, a Bengali immigrant, standing with Malcolm X, the African-American leader who was prominent in the civil rights movement, surrounded by African American and South Asian Muslims. The photograph has acquired near-mythical status – a missing link that could cement the presence of Bengali migrants firmly in Black American history. Ullah is still hoping to find that photograph one day. 'What we do know is that Malcolm X and other contemporaries like Felipe Luciano from the Young Lords [a radical 1960s group led by Puerto Rican youth] would often eat at South Asian restaurants run by my father and his contemporaries,' said Ullah. These Bengali-owned establishments served some of the only halal food available in the city, drawing African American converts to Islam. Choudry and his contemporaries, including Ullah's father Habib Ullah, maintained an interest in subcontinental nationalism, forming social-cum-political clubs such as the Pakistan League of America. The League's membership – predominantly former seamen, along with their African American and Puerto Rican wives and children – embodied a very different model of community building from the other South Asian immigrant organisations that were to follow. In recent decades, New York's South Asian community has been transformed by newer waves of immigration settling in several parts of the city. It is easier for married couples to immigrate together, reducing the need to find partners in the US. 'Today's South Asian community has the luxury of numbers that my father's generation didn't have,' Ullah noted. 'But with that has come a kind of insularity. I think we've lost something important about what it means to be part of broader justice movements.'
Scroll.in
14-07-2025
- Scroll.in
‘Targeted assault': Bengali migrant workers in BJP-ruled states asked to prove they are Indians
On the morning of June 30, the Odisha police landed up at the home of Ismail Sheikh, a 34-year-old mason from Bengal's Murshidabad district. Sheikh had arrived in Odisha three days ago to work at a building construction site in Jagatsinghpur district, and was living with four other workers from Murshidabad. 'The police asked us where we were from and what our religion was,' Sheikh recounted to Scroll. 'I told them that we are from Murshidabad and we are Muslims.' The police officials then asked Sheikh to visit the Balikuda police station and submit his and his roommates' Aadhaar cards. He complied. The next day, the five workers from Bengal were summoned to the police station again. They went with their documents but were asked to go to the Paradeep police station, 65 km away, to verify their documents. 'They said we will be taken in a bus and brought back the same way. We agreed,' he said. At Paradeep police station, however, their photographs were taken and they were taken to a camp 2 km away. Sheikh saw that other Bengali Muslim workers in Balikuda had also been summoned to the camp. 'We were 36 people in all,' Sheikh said. It was at the camp that Sheikh realised why they had been called there. 'One official from the Jagatsinghpur district administration came to the camp and said: 'You all are Bangladeshi. You are speaking Bengali means you are Bangladeshi',' Sheikh said. 'He threatened to take us to the border and hand us to the BSF [Border Security Force].' Sheikh recounted the official saying: 'Don't talk too much, or we will send you to Bangladesh.' Sheikh and 35 other workers spent six days at the camp. They were released on the morning of July 5 after the intervention of the West Bengal government. Others were not as lucky. On June 20, two families were picked up by the Delhi Police from a slum in Rohini – 29-year-old scrap dealer Danish, his wife and son, and 33-year-old Sweety Bibi and her two minor sons. Six days later, they were 'pushed' into Bangladesh, according to a police statement. The police refused to accept that that they belonged to Birbhum district in West Bengal. 'She called us from Bangladesh, weeping and crying for help,' Lajina Bibi, Sweety's 50-year-old mother, told Scroll. Danish's other child, seven-year-old Anisa Khan, has been left behind in Delhi. She was hiding with her grandmother Josnra Bibi during the police raid. When Scroll met Josnra, she insisted that they were Indians, pulling out documents from a plastic carry bag to make her case. She said she last heard from her daughter and son-in-law when someone called from Bangladesh offering to help them cross the border and return to India in exchange for Rs 35,000. 'But I don't have the money.' Trinamool Congress's Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam, too, vouched for the families. 'They are from my home district Birbhum and live 40 km from my home. They are Indians.' Islam has helped the families file habeas corpus petitions in the Calcutta High Court. These are not isolated instances. Over the last two months, Bengali-speaking migrant workers like Sheikh and Danish have been rounded up by the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and asked to prove that they are Indian citizens and not Bangladeshis. Most of those being detained are Muslims. In Gujarat, days after the Pahalgam terror attack, hundreds of Bengali migrant workers were paraded on the streets of Ahmedabad and rounded up as a part of a drive to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants. In Mumbai, too, Muslim families from West Bengal were forced out of India and taken to Bangladesh, without being given adequate time to prove that they are Indians. They were brought back once the West Bengal government raised the issue. 23 workers from Mirzapur village Panighata GP in my constituency are being illegally detailed with 421 other Bengali workers at interrogation centre by Orient Police Station in Jharsuguda, Odisha despite full documentation @DGPOdisha @SecyChief @Naveen_Odisha — Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) July 9, 2025 'A targeted assault' On July 7, when Sheikh spoke to Scroll, he said he was returning home to Bengal, even though he had not been paid for his work and his bike was still in Odisha. 'If we don't have security, we will not come [back],' he said. Three days after Sheikh was released, the police in Odisha's Jharsuguda district rounded up 444 'suspected foreign nationals', who were then taken to a centre to verify their documents. 'We are doing this verification under the Foreigners' Act and guidelines from the home ministry,' a senior police official in Jharsuguda told Scroll. However, migrant workers representatives from Bengal denied that the detained people were foreigners. 'All are from Malda, Birbhum, Murshidabad and other districts,' Mohammad Ripon Sheikh, who heads the migrant labourer organisation, Parijayee Shramik Aikya Mancha, told Scroll. 'They are being detained even if they have no police records,' Samirul Islam, who is also the chairman of the state's Migrant Welfare Board, told Scroll. 'The police officers of the BJP-ruled states are detaining migrant workers for over 24 hours, without producing them before the court. Which law allows them to do so?' On July 3, Bengal chief secretary Manoj Pant wrote to his Odisha counterpart, flagging instances of Bengali-speaking migrant workers being detained without 'due process' in regions around Paradip and across coastal districts of Odisha. 'It is deeply distressing to learn that many of them are being targeted solely because they speak Bengali, their mother tongue, and are being unjustly labeled as Bangladeshi infiltrators,' Pant said. A migrant workers' platform from Malda estimates that over 120 Bengali workers have returned to the Bengal district 'in fear, abandoning their jobs and livelihoods'. Mohammad Rafik Ahmed, coordinator of the Malda Sromik Pokkho, told Scroll: ' After the tragic Pahalgam attack, we have received over 170 distress calls from workers in Rajasthan, Odisha, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and other states. More than 500 Bengali workers have been assaulted, evicted, or threatened. At least 300 have been detained – many without any legal basis, particularly in Odisha and Rajasthan.' He added: 'This is not merely a law-and-order issue, it is a targeted assault on the identity, livelihood, and dignity of Bengali workers.' 'Pushed into Bangladesh' Bangali Basti is a settlement of Bengali migrants in Delhi's Rohini. In the last month or so, the residents of the slum told Scroll, the police had carried out several raids to 'identify illegal immigrants'. In one such drive on June 20, the police picked up Danish, his wife Sunali Khatun and five-year-old son. According to two police statements seen by Scroll, the three were held in a detention centre in Rohini's Vijay Vihar. On June 23, they were produced at the Foreigners' Regional Registration Office in Delhi. Another family was detained along with them – 33-year-old Sweety Bibi and her two minor sons, one of whom is five years old. A deportation order against all six was issued by the FRRO office the same day. Scroll has seen the order. According to the police, they were tipped off by an informer, who identified Danish as 'a Bangladeshi national'. The police also claimed that Danish had 'confessed' to being a Bangladeshi citizen. On June 26, they were 'pushed' into Bangladesh, according to a statement of the station house officer of KN Katju Marg police station in Delhi's Rohini district and an order of the Foreigners Regional Registration Office in Delhi. Scroll has seen the police statement and the FRRO order. Sweety's 50-year-old mother Lajina, who also lives in Delhi, said they had shown their Aadhaar and voter cards to the police but those were not accepted. She claimed that Sweety Bibi, like Sunali, was from Paikar village in Bengal's Birbhum district. A relative of Danish, Roshini, confirmed to Scroll that he was in Bangladesh. 'We submitted our documents and Aadhaar cards to the police in Rohini but they threw them away, saying you are Bangladeshi and we will send you to Bangladesh,' she said. Roshini claimed that they had submitted land documents and voter cards of their family members. 'Even the police from Birbhum district talked with Rohini police but they were not released,' she said. When Scroll visited the Rohini slum on July 10, it wore a deserted look. Most residents had made their way back to their native villages in West Bengal. Danish's mother-in-law Josnra Bibi had not left. Following her around was Anisa Khatun, his seven-year-old daughter. During the police raid on June 20, Josnra Bibi said she had hid in another hut with Anisa. Josnra Bibi alleged that everyone in the slum is 'terrified' .'The police treat us like stray dogs,' she said. 'They came to our hut and said, 'Why are you Bangladeshis not leaving this place?' They say that Bengali-speaking means Bangladeshi. But only Muslims are being picked up.' Sandeep Gupta, Rohini's additional deputy commissioner of police, denied allegations of harassment. 'We act as per law,' he told Scroll. 'If anyone has any grievance related to any such matter, they can send a representation to us.' Bhodu Sheikh, Sunali Khatun's father, and Amir Khan, the elder brother of Sweety Bibi, have filed separate habeas corpus petitions before the Calcutta High Court. On Friday, the court sought a report from the Union home ministry by July 16 on the deportation of Danish, Sunali, Sweety and their three children. In June, seven migrant workers from Bengal were similarly picked up by the Mumbai police, who refused to believe they were Indian citizens. They were then flown to Bengal and forced across the border into Bangladesh. Fajer Mandal, a 21-year-old mason from North 24 Parganas who was picked up with his wife, told Scroll that he submitted a bunch of documents to the police, from his 'polio vaccination card to his Aadhaar card and land documents from Bengal'. 'They said these were duplicates, that I had paid for them. They said I am a Bangladeshi and I don't have anyone here in India,' he said. The case of Mehboob Sheikh from Murshidabad district was no less striking. The police pushed him out in four days despite intervention from the Bengal police, the state migrant welfare board and submission of necessary documents to prove his Indian citizenship. All seven were later brought back from Bangladesh with the help of the Bengal police, Samirul Islam, chief of the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board, told Scroll. 'They are asking for birth certificates' West Bengal's leaders and officials have also flagged the fact that the police in these states have been insisting on documentary proof that is hard to access for people from rural areas. 'They are refusing to accept genuine Aadhar cards, voter cards and ration cards as identity proofs,' Samirul Islam, the Rajya Sabha MP, told Scroll. 'The authorities are not even contacting the state government to verify their citizenship.' Family members of workers held in Odisha's Jharsuguda district told Scroll that the police had asked for birth certificates in order to release them. Liptan Sheikh, a 40-year-old mason from Birbhum district, is being held in a camp in Odisha's Jharsuguda district on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi. His nephew Moijuddin Sheikh said the police have detained him for over four days, and insist on a birth certificate to prove he is not an illegal immigrant. 'But he does not have a birth certificate. We have submitted his school certificate, voter ID card and Aadhar card. But they have not accepted any of these.' The senior police official from Jharsuguda told Scroll on Friday that the 'primary' documents to ascertain the nationality of the migrant workers are birth certificates and passports. 'The supporting documents include Aadhaar, voter cards and land records. When they are able to produce those, we are letting them go,' the official said. 'This is not detention, but verification.' Several migrant workers released from detention told The Indian Express and The Hindu that their phones were checked to see if they had any contacts in Bangladesh. In his letter to the Odisha government, Bengal chief secretary Pant pointed out that 'in many instances, the [detained migrant workers] are being asked to produce ancestral land records dating back several generations, an unreasonable and unjustifiable demand for migrant workers.' Attacks in Odisha While Bengali-speaking migrant workers from Bengal and Assam have been targeted in the past as 'Bangladeshis' in Delhi and Mumbai, many have been taken aback by the hostility they have faced in the last 12 months in Odisha. 'There was peace when Naveen Patnaik was the chief minister,' said Sabirul Sheikh, a 36-year-old mason from Murshidabad, who was detained at the camp in Jagatsinghpur district with Ismail Sheikh. 'The harassment started after the BJP came to power last year,' said Sheikh, who has worked in Odisha for 16 years. The Pahalgam terror attack in Kashmir, where 25 tourists were killed after being singled out for their religion, triggered a wave of hostility and attacks against Bengali workers in Odisha, several workers said. A day after the attack, a group of 40 construction workers from Malda were attacked in Sambhalpur, Odisha. They had been hired last year by a private firm to build a flyover at Ainthapali Chowk in Sambalpur. Rafikul Islam, one of the workers who faced the violence, said a group of men allegedly belonging to the Bajrang Dal came to their work site and asked whether they were Bengalis. 'When we said yes, they attacked and beat up us,' he told Scroll. Two days later, 56-year-old Alkesh Sheikh was peddling his wares on the streets of Dhenkanal district in Odisha on his two-wheeler when he was attacked by a father-son duo. The video of the violence became viral. Alkesh Sheikh, who is from Madhupur village in Murshidabad, has been selling plastic goods, kitchen utensils, clothes, in Odisha for the last six years. 'They came up to me and asked me where I am from. As soon as I said that I am from Murshidabad, they started to beat me and asked me to leave.' He left the state soon after. This round of attacks led to an exodus of Bengali workers from Odisha. On May 2, Trinamool Congress MP Yusuf Pathan in a letter to Union home minister Amit Shah said that workers from his Baharampur constituency, faced 'targeted attacks' as they were 'robbed', 'looted' and intimidated to vacate their accommodations and workplaces. According to the MP, approximately 20,000 workers fled Odisha in the following days. Alkesh Sheikh blamed the attacks on Bengalis in Orissa on misinformation and rumour-mongering about communal violence in Bengal following the protests against the new Waqf bill. 'There were rumours in Orissa that Hindus in Murshidabad are being slaughtered,' Sheikh said. 'This contributed to attacks on Bengali Muslims in Orissa.' On April 11 and April 12, protests against the Modi government's Waqf Amendment Act turned violent in parts of Murshidabad district. Three people d ied in the violence. Difficult choice The detentions and attacks pose difficult choices for the out-migrants from West Bengal. Many workers from Odisha said they were worried that the police had not assured them of any protection. 'We spent five days in police custody even after submitting the documents. And even after releasing us, the police did not say that nothing will happen to us,' said Sabirul Sheikh. Seven workers he had taken to Balikuda have returned because they 'fear being arrested.' Not all can afford to return home. Imdadul Sheikh, a 44-year-old mason-cum-contractor who was detained for five days with Sabirul, said he cannot leave without being paid Rs 4 lakh he is due. 'I know it is unsafe here but we are poor people and this is a huge amount of money for me.' Josnra Bibi, who is distraught at the thought of her daughter in Bangladesh, rejects any suggestion that she should leave the Delhi slum and go back to Birbhum. 'How will we earn our living in the village?' she said. 'We are not begging or stealing here. We were working hard to make ends meet.'
Scroll.in
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Sarmistha Dutta Gupta
Stories written by Translated fiction: An anthology of short stories by Bengali Muslim writers An excerpt from 'The Merchant of Sagar Island' by Abdul Jabbar in 'Stayed Back, Stayed On: Short Stories by Bengali Muslim Writers', edited by Epsita Halder. Abdul Jabbar , Sarmistha Dutta Gupta & Shambhobi Ghosh · 7 minutes ago What were Rabindranath Tagore's views on the proposal of a memorial at the Jallianwala Bagh? An excerpt from 'The Jallianwala Bagh Journals', by Sarmistha Dutta Gupta. Sarmistha Dutta Gupta · Apr 22, 2024 · 08:30 am
Scroll.in
01-07-2025
- Scroll.in
‘Has he been deported?': A UP Muslim family searches for man ‘detained' in post-Pahalgam crackdown
On April 26, four days after the Pahalgam terror attack, Liyakat Ali was sleeping at his home in Ahmedabad's Chandola Talav slum when a posse of policemen knocked on his door. It was 4 am. Ali and five other members of his family were asked to step out. For the next four hours, they were made to sit in a football ground nearby. Hundreds of other residents in the neighbourhood had been similarly rounded up as a part of a drive to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Around 8 am, the women were let go. The men were paraded on the streets and made to walk to a police station 3 km away. That was the last time Hamida bano, Ali's sister-in-law, saw him. The 51-year-old native of Uttar Pradesh's Barabanki district has been missing since. Ali's family members fear that he might have been deported to Bangladesh as he has not turned up in two months. On May 8, as Scroll had reported, around 78 undocumented migrants from Bangladesh, all detained in Ahmedabad, were allegedly flown out of India in a military aircraft and then 'pushed' across the water into Bangladesh, a police report in Bangladesh's Satkhira town claimed. 'He is mentally ill and keeps to himself,' said Muzaffarali Shaikh, his elder brother. 'We fear he may not have been able to identify himself [as an Indian] before the police.' On May 5, Liyakat's elder brother Muzaffarali Shaikh filed a habeas corpus petition with the Gujarat High Court, seeking information from the police on his whereabouts. But a single-judge bench dismissed the plea on June 24. The court based its decision on an affidavit submitted by police that they 'never detained or arrested' Ali. However, the family submitted news footage from TV9 Gujarati news channel, dated April 26, that showed Liyakat Ali as one of the detainees sitting on the ground. Scroll spoke with two eye witnesses who last saw Ali at a police station. The police produced a video in court, showing a man walking out of the crime branch office in Gayakwad Haveli on May 1, five days after Ali was detained. The police claimed that the man in the CCTV footage was Ali – and it was on this basis the court struck down Shaikh's plea. However, Shaikh's advocate Aum Kotwal contested the claim. He told Scroll that the police had not submitted the footage to the family and that the prosecutor merely showed Kotwal the video in court. 'We don't know if he is still detained, or in Bangladesh or wandering on the streets in Ahmedabad,' said Shaikh. If he had been released from the police station, Shaikh said, Ali would have made his way back home. The family will now approach the Supreme Court against the Gujarat High Court's order. When contacted, Ahmedabad police commissioner GS Malik told Scroll he 'does not know much about this case'. Since the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor, Indian authorities have carried out a nationwide crackdown on alleged illegal immigrants. In a recent anti-foreigner drive in Mumbai's Mira Road, seven Bengali Muslim men from West Bengal were branded Bangladeshi and 'pushed out' of India. They were then brought back. Many have been summarily 'pushed back' into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force, or in the case of Rohingya Muslims, forcibly cast into international waters, in contravention of international law. A migrant from UP Ali is a native of Krishnapur village in Uttar Pradesh's Barabanki district. He moved to Ahmedabad 20 years ago to live with his elder brother. At first, he took up a job at the Jay Bharat Textiles mill but had to quit because of his mental health challenges. He was unemployed and spoke very little with others, his family said. 'He would mutter to himself,' Shaikh said. 'His mental health worsened after his wife left him.' The family took him to various dargahs or shrines to find a cure but a medical diagnosis of his condition was never done. On April 26, Shaikh said he was in Barabanki when the police turned up at their door. 'My wife, daughter-in-law and my granddaughter were also picked up but they were released in four hours,' Shaikh, an auto rickshaw driver, said. 'They were asked to submit identification proof while the men, including my two sons and Ali, were detained.' According to Ali's nephew, Akbar Ali, they were first made to sit in the open ground near their home till 8.30 am. 'Then we were asked to walk for about 3 km to the Behrampura police station,' he said. 'No food or water was given to us till then.' Hozefa Ujjaini, activist and advocate from Ahmedabad, alleged that the manner in which the police carried out detentions was illegal. 'People were paraded in public, including children,' Ujjaini said. 'This is a violation of human rights.' From there, the detainees were driven less than 2 km away to the crime branch office in Gayakwad Haveli. 'We all sat there till 2 pm. Then they began to shift us to different police stations in groups,' Ali said. 'My brother and I were taken to Juhapura police station. I saw my uncle at the crime branch before I left. He was quiet and kept to himself. We did not get a chance to convince the police to let us take him with us.' Shaikh's wife Hamidabanu said that on April 26, after being released she gathered all the documents of her family members and went to the crime branch office. She waited there until 2 am before returning home. The next afternoon, both her sons were released by the police. 'We looked for my uncle, but we had no idea where he was,' Ali said. According to his family, Ali was last seen – sitting by himself – by their neighbour Mohammed Shah, who was released by the police on April 28. 'He was in the Gaikwad Haveli crime branch office. I was amongst the last to leave from there,' Shah told Scroll. Houses demolished The detention of the family's members was followed by the demolition of their home. On April 28, the family was told by municipal officials to remove all their belongings from the hutment in Chandola. The next morning, Shaikh's house along with hundreds of other homes were demolished by the Ahmedabad municipal corporation. The officials claimed that they were targeting illegal encroachments made by suspected Bangladeshi immigrants. 'It was chaotic,' Akbar Ali said. 'We were running around to look for my uncle and our house was getting destroyed.' The family moved to a relative's house for the next three days. Ujjaini, the activist, said that several families, including the Shaikhs, received no notice before their houses were demolished. On May 1, Shaikh returned from Barabanki. With him, he brought land papers in the name of Liyakat Ali, and his ration card. 'We went to the Gayakwad Haveli crime branch. There, the police told us to check with Juhapura police. The Juhapura police asked us to go to Sahibaug police. We kept running from one station to another,' he said. The family visited at least six police stations, where those detained had been kept. A week later, the family finally filed a habeas corpus petition in the high court. On June 10, the public prosecutor showed a video in court claiming that Ali was released on May 1. Shaikh said they did not get to see the video. 'All we know is that the police took him from his home,' Shaikh said. 'If he is mentally ill, it is their responsibility to ensure he returns back safely.' Shaikh said Ali remembers where he lives and would have come home on May 1. 'Others whose houses were not demolished would have told him where we went,' Shaikh said. 'We all know each other. But he never came to Chandola.'
Indian Express
13-06-2025
- General
- Indian Express
Bhorta is not bharta: A guide to Bengal's boldest mash; and a recipe
Many moons ago, I remember watching a Nigella Lawson show where she said she would make a fish finger bhorta. My ears perked up, because bhorta – not to be mistaken with bharta – is a uniquely East Bengal preparation. It's a simple, dry mash of vegetables (sometimes just their peels), occasionally with fish or shrimp, mixed with mustard oil, raw onions, fresh coriander, and dried red chillies roasted in mustard oil. Think of the texture as that of mashed potatoes, and it is eaten with rice. Lawson's version (I understand fish fingers were added for their ubiquity in England) was surprisingly close to the real thing. She learnt it from a journalist's X feed and her version, too, had onions cooked till translucent, mashed with garlic, ginger and chillies, some mustard oil and crispy fried fish fingers mashed into the pan with some coriander, spinach and lime. Bhorta is popular in Bangladesh. While bharta, especially baingan ka bharta – made of cooked and mashed brinjals – is popular across Indian cuisines, the Bengali Muslim or Baangal bhorta repertoire is more expansive. The base remains the same: mashed vegetables, fish or prawns paired with mustard oil, garlic, onions and dried red chillies. But never ginger. The most common bhortas include brinjal, potato (Bengal's favourite vegetable), vegetable peels, prawns, hilsa, and other fresh or dried fish. It's quick, tasty, needs minimal prep, and very few utensils. It's also a vegetarian's dream, just switch out the fish for a range of vegetables or peels. At home, we never really made bhorta. Alu maakha – a version of bhorta made with mashed potatoes with mustard oil and green chillies – yes, but nothing else. Panta bhaat, a dish of rice soaked overnight in water and eaten with fried vegetables, was also rare, made occasionally for a Punjabi school friend of mine. My grandfather, from West Bengal, considered these peasant foods – meals for those without easy access to meat or high-quality fish. I used to think this was snobbery. But bhorta is, at its heart, simple peasant food from rural Bengal. Bhorta finds mention in the folklore of undivided Bengal as early as the 8th century, with references to jute-leaf mash. In the 17th century, Portuguese missionary Friar Sebastian Manrique recorded that the common people in Bengal ate panta bhaat, salt, shak (spinach), and mashed vegetables. The elite, meanwhile, indulged in ghee, butter, milk, chhana, and lots of mishti. As I've grown older and started cooking and experimenting, I find bhorta preparations incredibly delicious and easy to prepare. The ingredients, like I mentioned earlier, are basic. You can steam, grill, or roast your core ingredient, and then mash it all together with your hand or a fork. While bhorta is believed to have originated with Bengali Muslims, it's now central to Baangal cuisine. I got so distracted by a recipe I found while researching this piece that I made a masoor dal bhorta for lunch. I also came across another recipe that shows the versatility and inclusiveness of bhorta, ensuring nothing goes to waste in the kitchen – coriander bhorta. This is a mash of fresh coriander leaves, fresh green chillies instead of dried red ones, a few spices, sautéed in mustard oil and mashed together. Where I differ from most recipes is that I rarely use raw onions. Instead, I roast sliced onions with dried red chillies until slightly brown. This sweetens the onions, takes away the pungency, and acts as a good foil to the spice of the red chillies. You can make bhorta with pumpkin, potato peel, lauki peel, bhindi or okra, roasted tomatoes, banana blossoms, and spinach. Bhorta is even made with kathal or jackfruit seeds – these are dried, boiled and then mashed. Baangals would make them with shutki (dried or fermented fish). They can even be made with a spice as the main ingredient. I've had one with nigella seeds or kalo jeera, another with mustard seeds, and another with poppyseeds or posto. You'd add these to a larger meal as the flavour can be quite strong. Village-made bhortas are another level altogether. The ingredients are fresher, and they're mashed by hand using a sheel nora – a stone slab and roller that grinds ingredients slowly, releasing oils and flavour in a way no food processor can match. Today, bhorta has all but become Bangladesh's national dish. An entire meal of different bhortas is not uncommon, and not at all boring. Here's my version of masoor dal bhorta. Try it. Taste the food of my people, or at least, some of them. Masoor Daal – 1 cup Onions – ½ an onion, sliced fine Garlic – 2 cloves, sliced fine Turmeric powder – ½ tsp Salt – 1 tsp (to taste) Coriander Leaves – 2 tablespoons, chopped Mustard Oil – 2-3 tbsp Dry Red Chilli – 2 to 4 Author of The Sweet Kitchen, and chef-owner of Food For Thought Catering ... Read More
