The High Court (HC) on Sunday ordered the authorities concerned to construct a monument at the place in Salanga, Sirajganj, where British police massacred more than 4,000 Bengalis on January 27, 1922.
A High Court division bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice S M Masud Hossain Dolon passed the order and issued a rule.
“The court in its rule asked the authorities concerned to explain why it shall not direct them to take necessary steps to declare January 27 as a national day commemorating the Salanga massacre victims,” said Adv Asad Uddin, who moved a writ petition filed in
this regard. On January 27, 1922, in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and the Khilafat movement, hundreds of thousands of peasants, artisans and traders from the entire North and North-West Bengal gathered at a place called Salanga, now located in Bangladesh’s Sirajganj district.
Led by a firebrand, young leader named Abdur Rashid (later known as Maolana Abdur Rashid Tarkabagish), they were protesting against oppression of the local zamindars and trade monopoly of British goods in the local market. Their peaceful movement turned into a bloodbath when British-Indian police emptied their rifles at the unarmed protesters.
According to local people of Salanga and a rarely found account of Abdur Rashid titled ‘Shadhinota Shangramer Rakta Shiri Salanga (Salanga: The Blood Stained-Step to the Struggle for Independence), more than 4,000 Bengalis were slaughtered on that day. Many of their bodies were thrown into the river; the rest were buried in mass graves. However, the exact number of casualties could not be corroborated as there is hardly any written historical record of this incident. Although it happened only three years after the Jalianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, this tragic part of our history is about to be forgotten and survives only in local legends due to lack of research and preservation efforts.
