Restaurant boss’s book - Faruque Ahmed on 'Bengali Journals and Journalism in Britain 1916-2007'

Published: 21 May 2010
by JOSH LOEB

BY night, he oversees the cooking of lamb balti and tandoori chicken and makes sure his customers are kept happy in the much-loved Archway Road curry house Bengal Bertie’s. 

But by day Faruque Ahmed is a devoted writer and historian whose books include A History of Islam in Golapgonj and Reminiscence of the Liberation War.

Now, as his latest offering, Bengali Journals and Journalism in Britain 1916-2007, wins worldwide acclaim, Mr Ahmed is working on a magnum opus tracing the story of Bengali immigration to east London, which he is researching from his “office” – a table in ­Bengal Bertie’s.

Mr Ahmed, who worked as a journalist in his birthplace of Sylhet in north-east Bangladesh, before moving to the UK in 1989, says that while most Londoners associate British south Asians with the East End, Islington connections with the region are strong. 

Just across the road from Bertie’s is a house once inhabited by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a nationalist who campaigned for Indian independence in the early 1900s.

“It is an historic site,” said Mr Ahmed. “It is the first place where Indian people gathered and it was there that they established the Indian Home Rule Society.”

And how many people know that 148 Liverpool Road, N1, was the offices of monthly Islamic gazette Dishari, an influential Islamic newspaper in the 1960s?

“Alongside various writings on Islam, the paper published articles criticising anti-Islamic sentiments,” said Mr Ahmed. “During the Bangladeshi War of Independence, Hafiz Nesar Ahmed, its editor, was allegedly associated with editing the anti-independence weekly Mukti, causing the suspension of publication of Dishari.”

Mr Ahmed’s new book is based on exhaustive research and contains photographs and biographical sketches of more than 50 prominent Bengali journalists. 

It also details over 100 Bengali journals published in the UK since the first such publication, Satyabani (True Word) appeared in 1916 as part of the government’s First World War propaganda drive.

“Bengali people in the UK have always been political and they love newspapers,” said Mr Ahmed.

Through editorials, features and news stories, Mr Ahmed’s book traces the integration of South Asian immigrants into British society and political fractures within Bengali community.

“One of the first mosques in Britain was built in 1940 in Surrey,” he said. “They published a weekly Bengali newspaper that was edited by a Hindu – an example of cooperation between the two religions. It published news of how the war was going, the latest political developments in India and the British government’s development plans for the Subcontinent.”

• Bengali Journals and Journalism in Britain 1916-2007. Lulu Press, £18.