“This war began 200 years ago.”
That line is not rhetorical flourish. It is historical recall; precise, intentional, and ideological.
It does not point to nationalism, colonial resistance, or the birth of modern states.
It points to early-19th-century Bengal and to a largely sanitised episode of history: the Farizi Movement; the first organised Islamist attempt to impose Islamic political sovereignty in Bengal.
This was not a social reform movement as people would claim.
Around 1818, Haji Shariatullah returned to Bengal after nearly two decades in Mecca, during a period of intense consolidation of puritanical Islamic thought. What he brought back was not merely religious discipline, but political theology.
Colonial judicial and revenue records document his central declaration:
British-ruled Bengal was Dar-ul-Harb; a land where obedience to non-Islamic authority was religiously illegitimate. British courts were invalid, revenue payments sinful, Hindu customs unacceptable, and even syncretic Islam corrupt (Bengal Judicial & Revenue Proceedings, 1831–32).
That single declaration matters more than anything else.
Because once a land is declared Dar-ul-Harb, rebellion is no longer political.
It becomes religious obligation and holy war.
This is classical caliphate doctrine; where sovereignty (hakimiyyah) belongs only to divine law, and plural civil order has no legitimacy.
After Shariatullah’s death, leadership passed to his son Dudu Miyan, under whom the Farizi project lost all ambiguity.
British administrative files repeatedly describe Dudu Miyan exercising parallel sovereignty across eastern Bengal:
a) British courts rejected (which is fine)
b) Land revenue to “infidel” rulers refused
c) Religious conformity (sharia) enforced
d) Dissent punished according to Sharia
(Judicial Proceedings, Bengal Presidency, 1843–46)
This was Islamic governance in embryo.
What emerged was a shadow administration rooted in mosque authority, clerical enforcement, and theological legitimacy; exactly how early Islamic polities historically formed before formal caliphates crystallised.
One uncomfortable fact runs through primary district and revenue reports:
“Hindu society was not collateral damage. It was the obstacle.”
Hindu peasants, zamindars, festivals, and social practices were systematically targeted because they represented a plural civil order incompatible with Islamic sovereignty. Reports from Faridpur and neighbouring districts record coercion, intimidation, and forced suppression of Hindu religious life (Revenue Consultations, 1839; District Magistrate Reports).
This again aligns perfectly with caliphate logic:
“non-Muslims may exist only under Islamic supremacy, never as equals within a shared civil framework.”
By the late 1840s, British suppression dismantled the Farizi movement militarily. But colonial intelligence issued a clear warning: the organisation was broken, the ideology survived.
It continued through mosque networks, clerical instruction, and generational memory (Home Department Intelligence Notes, 1851).
That continuity explains something many still fail to grasp.
When contemporary Islamist rhetoric invokes a “200-year war,” it deliberately bypasses:
• 1947
• 1971
• modern borders
Because those dates are irrelevant to the grievance.
The timeline they are recalling:
A) 1818 — Bengal declared Dar-ul-Harb
Objective — Sharia supremacy
C) Method — Parallel religious authority
D) Enemy — Plural civil society
E) Model — Caliphate logic
So when we hear “this war began 200 years ago,” we must not read it as anger or symbolism.
It must be read as ideology remembering its own point of origin.
…
