Born
in 1781 in the village of Bandorkhola in Faridpur1 district, Haji
Shariatullah2 went onto a pilgrimage to Mecca and stayed
there for 20 years. There he was trained by a famous religious personality Shaikh
Tahir Sombol3. After returning from Mecca he observed that
the Muslims of Bengal had been degraded and called on them to give up all non-Islamic
practices. At the same time their movement was also concerned with the British tyranny
upon Muslims and he demanded for social justice.
After
the death of Hazi Shariat Ullah in
1840 his son Dudu Mian4 took over the charge. Under his
leadership the movement became more important and spread all the areas over
East Bengal. He attempted to establish a parallel Muslim government within East
Bengal. The British tried to dominate him by a prosecution for theft and murder
but failed to prove due to lack of evidence. He was under the arrest in the
period of mutiny of 1857 and released in 1860. He died in 1886 and his dream of ‘a state within state’ remained
unfulfilled. After his death the movement became slower and lost its glow day
by day.
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