TONGI  - More than a million Muslims gathered on the banks of a river in Bangladesh on Friday to pray and listen to religious scholars at the start of the world’s second largest annual Islamic congregation. The streets of Dhaka were largely deserted as devotees flocked to the River Turag at Tongi, some 40 km north of the capital, where the Biswa Ijtema (World Muslim Congregation) is being held over the next three days. Nurul Islam, one of the chief organisers, said canopies stretching for more than a kilometre, erected on open ground on the banks of the river, were already filled and tens of thousands more were reaching the site every hour. BD is the world’s third-largest Muslim-majority nation.