Last Armenian in Bangladesh Dies

AFP

 

Michael Joseph Martin, Bangladesh’s last Armenian, has died aged 89, bringing an end to the more than 300-year presence of the once thriving and powerful minority Christian community.

Martin spent decades as custodian of the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection which was founded in 1781 in what was once the heart of the Armenian community in Dhaka.

Armen Arslanian, the church’s warden who is based abroad, said Martin ‘was instrumental in maintaining the survival of the Armenian Church in Dhaka.

‘Without the many personal sacrifices and complete devotion to the church, the premises and the history of the Armenians in Dhaka would not have survived today,’ he added as he announced Martin had died on April 11.

Researching the Past: What Happened to the Once Thriving Bangladeshi Armenian Community?

Under the auspices of His Grace Bishop Haigazoun Najarian, Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Australia and New Zealand, the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is embarking on an exciting, ambitious and unique community and history project.

The church has existed in Dhaka for over 200 years and its community played an important mercantile role in the history of this wonderful city.

The Church wardens and committee have already completed an extensive refurbishment programme of the building and structure. This renovation process will continue to be ongoing to ensure the Armenian Church will maintain a presence in Bangladesh for many years to come. The committee now wishes to move to the next phase of the development, and it is hoped that it will be community driven.

The Merchant-Prince of East Bengal

 Waqar A. Khan

It was the Dhaka of 1970. Unlike today, it was then a laidback provincial capital city. I was a student at Notre Dame College. History was my forte. On a wintry Sunday, a weekly holiday in those days, I decided to take a leisurely heritage tour of Old Dhaka in the afternoon on a rickshaw. The traffic was sparse. Old Dhaka was easily accessible. I enjoyed looking at the array of century-old buildings that I slowly passed by in Nawabpur and Islampur—a curious medley of hybridised architectural styles. Finally, the rickshaw having skirted around the rabbit warren of Shankharipatti and, thereafter, a maze of circuitous, labyrinthine alleyways arrived at the big wooden gate of the Armenian Apostolic Church of the Holy Resurrection, built in 1781 in Armanitola. The postern gate was slightly ajar. I went in. The kindly, soft spoken elderly Armenian priest with a flowing white beard was ministering to his flock. The church service had ended in the morning, but a few elderly Armenians were still there. The priest spoke to me briefly about the history of the church in English with a heavy accent. There was an ineffable sadness in his rheumy eyes. Perhaps, he was worried about the fast dwindling Armenian worshippers at the church and with it—its ultimate fate! It seemed that he was gazing at a bleak future with grave concern.

In search of a community lost in time

Moyukh Mahtab

 

“Whenever forty or more of the Armenian Nation shall become Inhabitants in any of the Garrisons, Cities or Towns belonging to the Company in the East Indies, the said Armenians shall not only have and enjoy the free use and exercise of their Religion, but there shall also be allotted to them a parcel of Ground to erect a Church thereon …”

- From 1688 agreement between English East India Company and Armenian merchants

When we speak of the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection in Armanitola in Old Dhaka, it is almost always of the once prominent role the Armenian community here—their businesses, their zamindaris, and the impact they had on the development of the city. Yet, what is often overlooked, and what is now understood much better due to recent scholarship by historian Sebouh David Aslanian, is that the Armenians in Dhaka were part of a truly global network. They had bases in Surat, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chinsura, Calcutta and Dhaka to as far as Canton, Jakarta, Lhasa and Singapore. But this too was only part of the expansive network of settlements, connected to the central node of New Julfa in Isfahan in Safavid Iran. These merchants, trading all sorts of goods including textile, had settlements in St Petersburg, Moscow, Astrakhan, Istanbul, Venice, Livorno, Paris and Amsterdam, to name only a few.

Two Genocides, Two Peoples, and One Grievance: Armenians in Dhaka

Adnan Morshed

Turkey seems to have a burlesque history of genocide denial. On June 2, the German Parliament voted to recognise the 1915 killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "genocide." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's reaction was predictable: “Germany has no right to comment on genocide.” Ankara recalled its ambassador from Berlin.

Sounds familiar? Ankara's recent withdrawal of its ambassador to Bangladesh following the execution of an indicted “war criminal” reveals the Erdogan regime's grotesquely negligent attitude toward the genocide in Bangladesh during 1971.