“Mukti: Free to Be Born Again” is a history-based fictionalized non-fiction created on four decades of fieldwork in Muslim-majority Bangladesh and Hindu-majority India. Many strands of real-life drama have been weaved together with 1947 Hindu-Muslim, Secular-Islamic, and 1971 Islamic-Secular, ruling minority vs. oppressed-majority partitions of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Because of precarious plight individuals and villages, names have been fictionalized. The story focuses on transformation of a society by the oppressor, oppressed, Islam, Hinduism and Leftism of elites who chose not to live in Muslim-majority homeland. The story ties Indian and Bengali history, views of Muslims and Hindus, role of Bangladeshi Hindu refugee elites in India, pogroms, devastation of minority communities, role of anti-Hindu Islamism and anti-tradition Communism, life of poor oppressed-caste Hindus left behind in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, and more. Dastidar is the first to break a taboo by writing in 1989 about the poor, oppressed Hindu Minority left behind by the Hindu-refugee elites.
Mukti is a commonly-used term in Hindu-Buddhist philosophies meaning freedom from rebirth, and liberation from oppression.
