The news of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's passing on Tuesday resonated deeply in Dhaka and also in the quiet corners of Jalpaiguri, a town in north Bengal located nearly 434 kilometers away. For the residents of this Indian border town, the loss felt profoundly personal, as Khaleda Zia was once one of their own.
Roots in North Bengal: A Jalpaiguri Childhood
Khaleda Zia was born in Jalpaiguri in 1946 and spent her formative years there. Her father, Mohammad Iskandar, worked as an agent at the local tea trading firm, Das & Co., owned by Nilanjan Dasgupta's father. The family lived in their Nayabasti house in the town, which remained their home even after the Partition of 1947. They eventually moved to what was then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, only in the 1950s.
Her early education began in Jalpaiguri. According to local historian Umesh Sharma, Zia first studied at Jogmaya Primary School in Nayabasti up to Class III. She was then admitted to Sunitibala Sadar Girls' School in Samaj Para. "By then most of their relatives had moved to East Pakistan, and Zia's father migrated there," Sharma added.
Enduring Bonds and Shared Memories
The family's departure followed a formal property exchange. Iskandar swapped properties with a man named Amarendranath Chakraborty before leaving. The Chakraborty family continues to reside in that Nayabasti house to this day. Despite the move and the passage of decades, emotional connections remained strong.
Nilanjan Dasgupta, former proprietor of Das & Co., recalled the close friendship between Khaleda Zia and Siyon Mandal, who later became a teacher. "I remember how Siyondi was elated when Zia came to office in Bangladesh. The news of her demise has left people who knew her sorry," Dasgupta said.
A Legacy That Crossed Borders
The sense of shared history persists among neighbours as well. Suhrid Mandal, a neighbour of the Zia family in Jalpaiguri, revealed that Zia's niece visited the town just a couple of months ago to see her aunt's birthplace. "We talked about how good it would have been if the country was never partitioned. Her loss is mourned by people in Bangladesh as well as here," Mandal stated, highlighting the transnational grief.
The story of Khaleda Zia, who rose to become Bangladesh's first woman Prime Minister, thus finds its humble beginnings in a West Bengal town. Jalpaiguri's remembrance of her early life stands as a poignant testament to the personal histories that often lie beneath the surface of major political narratives.
