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The Print
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Print
Bengal had a real chance at Hindu-Muslim unity before Partition. It was Syama-Huq govt
Such depictions are not totally correct. They tend to ignore the actual context of Syama Prasad's views and politics, and the fact that he was essentially a secularist who believed in sectarian harmony, but not at the cost of the majority. As a prominent leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, he vociferously opposed the politics of the Muslim League, the principal mover behind the creation of Pakistan. This has been taken to indicate that he mirrored the communal politics of the League. The dominant narrative on the Indian nationalist movement, both in India and in Western academia, has been to portray Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee as a communalist. This is due largely to the fact that after 1946, when the Partition of India was beginning to look more like a reality than before, he vocally called for the separation of the Hindu-dominated areas of undivided Bengal into a separate province of India. A relook at Bengal's last secular government before Partition is required. Also Read: Syama Prasad Mookerjee — the BJP ideologue whose political ideas find echo even today Syama-Huq alliance Recent interest in the politics of pre-Partition Bengal largely revolves around the tragic killings and riots of Direct Action Day (August 1946), and the increasing communal polarisation that accompanied the rise of the Muslim League, which ultimately led to the Partition of the province. Yet, an often overlooked aspect is the effort at communal unity through the formation of the Progressive Coalition government in December 1941. Syama Prasad Mookerjee's coalition government with AK Fazlul Huq, formed that same month, was the last combined Hindu-Muslim provincial government in undivided Bengal. It was a sincere attempt to dilute the hate-filled politics of the Muslim League and its Bengal leadership—particularly that of HS Suhrawardy, later infamous for his role in the Calcutta riots of 1946. Popularly known as the 'Syama-Huq ministry', this alliance—formed while the Second World War was raging in Europe and had reached Southeast Asia—comprised five Muslim and four Hindu ministers. Headed by Huq as premier and with Syama Prasad holding the finance portfolio, it was a genuine effort at communal harmony. Functioning as a loose legislative assembly bloc, the Progressive Coalition prevented the complete vacating of administrative and political space to the divisive politics of the Muslim League. Though Huq also had earlier ties with the Muslim League, his own Krishak Praja Party (KPP) served as an effective secular counterpoise to its vigorous sectarian activities. A secular push against odds While Huq was not without his shortcomings, joining his government was the last chance Bengal had at Hindu-Muslim governmental unity without the League's divisive politics. The League was set on an agenda of communalising the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, as well as Calcutta University, and on dominating the educational, governmental, and administrative apparatus to Islamise Bengal and steer it on a separatist track. In Bengal, the growth of communal Muslim politics was mainly owing to an alliance between elite landowning groups and a vast Muslim peasantry. The Congress, meanwhile, represented the professional middle classes and the largely Hindu zamindari landowners. From the 1930s onwards, however, the rise of Huq's Krishak Praja Party, which championed the interests of rural Muslim peasants in eastern Bengal, brought a new twist to the political paradigm. At the forefront of Huq's agenda was the abolition of zamindari landholdings, which made his tie-up with the Muslim League difficult to sustain. Though the League and KPP formed the first provincial government in 1937, the internal contradictions of class interest quickly made the alliance turbulent. Although elected as a Congress member to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1929, Syama Prasad was independent-minded and increasingly diverged from his party's line, especially on Bengal politics. A pragmatist, he had possibly realised that the only way to prevent the ceding of legislative and administrative space to the Muslim League was to ally with Huq when the League-KPP government collapsed in 1941. He was also determined to stymie the increasingly divisive role played by the colonial British rulers, who pandered to the Muslim League. Measures such as the Communal Award of 1932—which ostensibly sought to expand electoral rights by granting separate representation to different Indian communities— ended up deepening fissures on religious lines. In a province like Bengal, where elite landowners and the urban professional class were predominantly Hindu, while the Muslim population was mostly agrarian, this had serious ramifications for communal unity. At a time when Congress had officially resigned from government, it was Syama Prasad's prescience that ensured at least an effort was made to build a non-League political formation. In an assembly of 250 seats, this alliance commanded a sizeable majority. The Bengal Congress did not oppose the government, but stayed neutral. To his credit, Syama Prasad had recognised the League's long game. With Congress absent from governance, he played a major part in keeping the non-League coalition alive and ensured Hindu interests were not overlooked. However, the Muslim League, led in the Assembly by Khwaja Nazimuddin but directed behind the scenes by Suhrawardy, launched a campaign accusing Huq of 'betrayal of the Muslim cause'. 'Doctrine of benevolent trusteeship stands exploded' The government did not last beyond a year, brought down by the shrill opposition of the Muslim League, aided by the tacit support of the British colonial governor, JA Herbert. With his help, the League started a mass offensive to discredit the Progressive Coalition. Suhrawardy, in particular, tried to turn Muslim students against Huq and stir communal hatred through 'Kafela' tours , according to contemporary sources as well as academic works like Muslim Politics In Bengal (1937-1947) by Shila Sen. League mouthpieces like The Star of India, Azad, and The Morning News upped their inflammatory rhetoric, branding Huq a 'ghaddar'—traitor. Despite the unrest being created by the League, Governor Herbert refused to heed warnings from even senior British ICS officers in the districts, reportedly saying, 'It would be inexpedient at present to restrain Suhrawardy'. Increasingly frustrated by British policies and disregard, Syama Prasad resigned from the government on 16 November 1942. In his resignation letter to Herbert, he stated in unequivocal terms: 'You, as Provincial Governor… have interfered with the work of the Ministry and have rendered so-called provincial autonomy into a meaningless farce. The doctrine of benevolent trusteeship stands exploded and you can no longer throw dust into our eyes.' Also Read: Lion of Bengal AK Fazlul Huq eclipsed Jinnah, fought for tenant farmers What history forgets Revisiting this period of Bengal's history is important for several reasons. Firstly, a rebalancing of historiography is essential. While it is true that academic histories are often rooted in what EH Carr designated as the 'historian's craft' to cherry-pick historical facts, present-day researchers need to take into account the entire context of tumultuous events. Secondly, ordinary readers must also make greater efforts to understand the entire backdrop before arriving at conclusions. For this, an exhaustive reading of a variety of sources presenting diverse views is required. Thirdly, instead of creating artificial binaries between 'academic' and 'popular' histories, the quest should be to refer to as many records and documents of an era as are available. If popular history is able to do so, and also bring greater ease and clarity to mass audiences in understanding complex events, it should be encouraged rather than denigrated. There could be no better way to honour a stalwart nationalist leader like Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee than by diligently searching for the whole historical truth, not fragments of it. As India stands on the cusp of 80 years of independence, it needs to confront its past with confidence, and not treat history as a mere project. Sayantani Gupta Jafa is a writer and policy analyst. She has served as a civil servant with the Government of India in cross-functional areas, including environmental sustainability. Views are personal. (Edited by Asavari Singh)
Mint
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Can AI solve the content-moderation problem?
Anyone who spends time on social media knows that it's hard to avoid abusive misinformation, abusive language and offensive content. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube have content moderation systems designed to keep obnoxious material in check, but a 2021 Cato Institute survey found that just one in four users think platforms apply their standards fairly. 'Content moderation is one of the crucial issues of our day and it is essentially broken," says Carolina Are, a researcher at the Center for Digital Citizens at Northumbria University in the U.K. One major difficulty is that different users have different ideas about what should be prohibited online. Are swear words fair game? Nudity? Violent imagery? In the Cato survey, 60% of users said they wanted social-media platforms to provide them with greater choice to pick and choose what they see and what they don't. Soon this kind of personalized content moderation may become a reality, thanks to generative AI tools. In a paper presented this spring at the ACM Web Conference in Sydney, Australia, researchers Syed Mahbubul Huq and Basem Suleiman created a YouTube filter based on commercially available large language models. They used four AI chatbots to analyze subtitles from 4,098 public YouTube videos across 10 popular genres, including cartoons and reality TV. Each video was assessed on 17 metrics used by the British Board of Film Classification to assign film ratings, including violence, nudity and self-harm. Two of the chatbots, GPT-4 and Claude 3.5, were able to identify content that human checkers assessed as harmful at least 80% of the time. The system isn't perfect, and so far it can only assess language in videos, not images. It's also expensive: 'To filter every video [on YouTube] would cost trillions of dollars at today's prices," Huq said. But the demonstration model points to a future in which social media users are able to choose exactly what kinds of content they see. 'If the parent of a child thinks it's suitable for their child to see content that's high in sexual scenes, but low intensity in drugs, they can adjust it," says Huq. With the cost of AI access rapidly dropping, 'we're not far away from when this will be possible." Maarten Sap, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, believes effective content moderation will require specialized LLMs, since off-the-shelf models are 'not built for nuanced tasks." For instance, recent research by Sap and his colleagues find AIs have trouble understanding 'relationship backstory," leaving them unable to distinguish between playful banter among friends and personal attacks on strangers. Still, he agrees that LLMs offer an 'opportunity" to develop more finely-grained moderation tools. Customized social-media filters could raise problems as well as solving them. Zeerak Talat, a computer scientist studying content moderation at the University of Edinburgh, notes that users could fine-tune their feeds to see more hate speech instead of less: 'If everyone has personalized moderation, we have no way of controlling illegal content." One option could be to tailor AI content moderation to the laws and preferences of different countries, rather than to individuals: Sexual or political content that would be normal in Silicon Valley could be offensive or illegal in a conservative, religious society. Still, some critics worry that by giving individual users the power to filter what they see, tech giants would be letting themselves off the hook for problems they created. 'I'm reluctant to see the onus of everything being put on the user," says Are. 'I don't want to be told that I deserve to get raped, and I have to be the one putting it in the feed." Talat agrees, noting that customized moderation may protect an individual user, but it doesn't stop hateful or offensive content from spreading to others. 'It defends your stream," he says. 'But it does nothing about what is said about you." Chris Stokel-Walker is a journalist and author based in the U.K. His latest book is 'How AI Ate the World."
Hans India
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Hans India
Former Bangladesh Law Minister placed on two-day remand in illegal firearms case
Dhaka: A Bangladesh Court on Monday ordered a two-day remand for former Law Minister Anisul Huq over alleged possession of illegal firearms in a case registered under the Arms Act. Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Md Minhazur Rahman passed the order following a hearing on a police remand plea, according to Additional Public Prosecutor of Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge's Court, Azizul Haque Didar, reports leading Bangladeshi daily Prothom Alo. Earlier, the investigating officer of the case produced Huq before the court seeking a five-day remand to interrogate him in connection with the case filed under the Arms Act with Banani Police Station in Dhaka. The defence, on the other hand, requested the court to reject the remand petition filed by the police. Later, after hearing both sides, the court ordered a two-day remand. Huq was arrested on August 13, 2024, after the fall of the former Awami League government in a violent uprising. Reports suggest that the courts have approved a total of 58 days of remand for the former Law Minister in different cases until now. Last month, the Dhaka court ordered a five-day remand for the former Law Minister following a police application in connection with a murder case filed at Shahbagh Police Station. Earlier this year, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed a case against Huq on charges of amassing alleged illegal wealth worth Bangladeshi Taka 1.46 billion (Tk 146 crore). The ACC claimed that he acquired illicit assets by abusing his authority. In the continuing crackdown on the Awami League, several leaders of the party were recently placed under police remand for interrogation by the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government in Bangladesh. Analysts reckon the developments as a major political vendetta being pursued by the interim government, as several cases were filed against the former PM and her supporters on frivolous grounds, immediately after her ouster in August 2024. The unceremonious exit of Hasina last August was globally seen as a major setback to the democratic set-up in the country.
The Independent
03-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Labour MP: VAT charge on private schools could make elitist system more elitist
The amount of VAT imposed on private schools should be based on turnover, to prevent smaller schools getting 'caught in this trap', a Labour MP has said. Rupa Huq raised concerns the Government's policy to apply 20% VAT to private school education and boarding fees could make an 'elitist system more elitist'. The policy, which came into effect earlier this year, is aimed at raising money to fund state schools. During a debate on the VAT changes, Ms Huq, who attended a private high school, said parents with 'genuine concerns' should not be demonised. Speaking in Westminster Hall, the MP for Ealing Central and Acton said: 'As a parent, I would never dream of going private, but I can understand and accept that people do do this.' She added: 'I can completely appreciate that people like my own parents at the time, make – and (Labour MP Alison Taylor) mentioned this as well – enormous sacrifices to send their children there. 'And I've heard this on the doorstep, you know 'we have the worst car, we never go on holiday', that was me in the 80s.' She continued: 'These are people who consider themselves working people, so again, the strap line of the Labour manifesto was no taxes on working people. So I think we should be careful with our rhetoric sometimes.' Ms Huq went on to say: 'The problem is the word private school implies a whole load of things, they are not all Eton. And some of the comms around this I think hasn't been done very sensitively.' Get a free fractional share worth up to £100. Capital at risk. Terms and conditions apply. 'You get your smaller Send school, you get your smaller faith school, those kind of people, they're not all Eton is what I'm trying to say, and I think some of these comms are based on a caricature.' Ms Huq said there could be 'unintended consequence' from the change and the policy will 'hand schools like Eton money back from Treasury coffers'. She added: 'These elitist private schools, Eton, they've actually done quite well out of this, because they can cash in on windfalls from these new VAT rules.' Intervening, Conservative MP for Windsor Jack Rankin, who has Eton in his constituency, said some of the points on Eton were 'a little bit unfair' because they 'do a lot in my community'. Ms Huq replied: 'It's interesting to learn that, but they are still are going to be quids-in after this.' Also intervening, Liberal Democrat MP Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) said: 'Will you give it up all this stuff about Eton? I speak as the mother of two old Etonians. 'I was a single parent, I worked three jobs. When (Damian Hinds) said there's more money from the old Etonian parents, there certainly aren't, not from this one. 'Eton hands out 100 boys plus a year completely free fees, they don't even have to pay for their pencils.' Earlier in the debate, Conservative former minister Damian Hinds said 'there is probably plenty of VAT to be had from the parents of boys at Eton' but the Government has 'ignored' the concerns of low-fee faith schools or schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Ms Huq later said: 'My worry is it will just make an elitist system more elitist.' Intervening, Conservative MP Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) said: 'What does she expect her Government and party to do then?' Ms Huq replied: 'What I would suggest is possibly doing it on a turnover basis. So for your enormous schools that can afford it: yes. But then for the smaller ones that have been caught in this trap: no.' Treasury minister Torsten Bell said: 'No one during this session is judging other parents' choices … the best education for children is also what motivates the Government to break down barriers to opportunity, ensuring every child has access to high-quality education. 'Every child includes the 94% of children that attend state schools. The reforms we debate today, to VAT and business rates, will raise around £1.8 billion a year.' Mr Bell said the argument that private faith schools should be exempt is 'not compelling'. He added: 'An exemption would reduce the revenue available for pupils in state schools, including those of faith.'
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Kentucky-made products could be impacted by potential tariffs
KENTUCKY (FOX 56) — Over the weekend, President Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. Although the tariffs intended for Mexico and Canada have been suspended for at least a month, Kentucky could still see potential impacts. Legislature limiting governor pardoning power moves forward in Frankfort Petition emerges to remove all London City Council members following hostile meeting Lawmaker wants to prevent 'sanctuary cities' in Kentucky We previously reported how Bourbon could be impacted by these tariffs, but that's not the only thing we produce in Kentucky that could be affected. 'The auto industry is a big exporter,' said KYPolicy executive director Jason Bailey. 'We export peanut butter; we export post-it notes. You know, there are just certain things that Kentucky produces that are bought all over the world.' But what exactly are tariffs? Tahsin Huq, assistant professor of finance at EKU 'A tariff is essentially a tax imposed on imported goods and services,' assistant professor of finance at Eastern Kentucky University, Tahsin Huq, said. 'So if you're importing, let's say, car chips, to us, essentially you're giving a tariff or you're giving customs duties that are essentially taxes on that import product or service.' Lexington ranked 10th worst large city for football fans: WalletHub Kentucky receives failing grades in tobacco control report Kentucky ranks as 2025's worst state to retire in: WalletHub When companies import goods, they pay the tariffs to the U.S. government. However, experts warn those costs eventually get passed on to American consumers through higher prices. 'We are expecting that initially might go very high or relatively and doesn't necessarily mean it will always stay that high because there are other factors in the economy that can also bring the factors down,' added Huq. One of those factors would include bringing back manufacturing into the U.S. economy. 'Because in the long term, if you're able to bring back manufacturing, then you are creating the product within you, right? So now there's going to be more competition within the domestic firms themselves,' Huq said. 'And that itself can also create a healthier competition within the US economy, and that can bring our prices down as well.' Latest central Kentucky weather forecast Bailey said the Commonwealth is among one of the most vulnerable states because of the amount of manufacturing we do. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
