The Hijli kingdom flourished in eastern India between 1687 and 1886. Hijli, said to be have been founded by Mansingh, was initially a small island-village on the Rasulpur River which runs into the Bay of Bengal. It later became a port town. The kingdom was ruled for some years by Taj Khan, a disciple of Guru Peer Mackdram Sha Chisti. It was also ruled sequentially by Kushan, Gupta and Pal dynasties and also by the Mughals.
Not far from Nandigram is the Hijli Sharif, about 10 km from Khejuri. As can be established from what has been said at the outset, Muslims have been living in this area for hundreds of years. One lesser known detail about the 2007 Nandigram incident is that a mammoth share of the people who were killed, attacked, and displaced, were Muslims. Though not a communal incident, this uncomfortable truth rattled the Left Front government— known to have always safeguarded the interests of the state’s minority groups —back in 2007.
The only good thing for Muslims is that, in the last 30 years of the Left rule in West Bengal, they were safe. What happened in Nandigram puts question mark on that too.Manzoor Alam, General Secretary, All India Milli Council in 2007