Religion and History in Bangladesh

Islam came to Bengal mainly through teachers rather than armies, and the shrines of the men credited with it, Shah Jalal at Sylhet above all, remain places of pilgrimage rather than merely of memory. The result is a Bengali Islam with a strong devotional and Sufi character, most visible in the Bauls, wandering singers who reject caste and orthodoxy alike and draw on Sufi, Vaishnava and tantric material; their tradition was inscribed by UNESCO and its best known figure, Lalon Shah, is a national one.

Bengal was partitioned in 1947 on religious lines into East Pakistan, and then in 1971 the eastern wing fought a war of independence against West Pakistan in which the decisive issue was language and Bengali identity rather than religion, since both sides were overwhelmingly Muslim. That war is the reason the founding constitution of 1972 named secularism as one of four state principles. It is also why the trials conducted from 2010 by the International Crimes Tribunal, directed largely at leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami for collaboration in 1971, were simultaneously a reckoning with war crimes and a confrontation with political Islam. Buddhism preceded both: the Pala emperors ruled Bengal as the last great Buddhist dynasty of the subcontinent until the twelfth century, and the ruins of their monastery at Somapura in Paharpur are a World Heritage site.