Vivek Bald, documentary director and assistant professor of writing and digital media at MIT and the author of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America, reveals the little known history of early South Asian immigrants, from Tremé to Harlem.
→explore the Bengali Harlem website, including an excerpt from Aladdin Ullah's one-man show here.
Comments [4]
the Bengal region was the capital of India before British rule
NatouCBS, some were proud of Bangladesh (created in 1972), and identified as Bengali-speaking people, but the country they left was India, so they called themselves Indian.
My understanding of the term "Hindu" is that the concept of actual Hindu religion emerged from the term being used as a catch-all for non-Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. While the religious practices and beliefs of what we call Hinduism today had been around for many thousands of years, they were not consolidated into a single religious identity until the 19th century.
Since this is before independence and partition, did these early Bengali Muslims ever come to self identify as Indian? Bangladeshi?
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