Bharat Bhushan: Bangladesh's dysfunctional secularism
NB: I have just one comment to make on this issue, communalism of every hue thrives on state support whether open or covert. This is the ideology of choice for the ruling classes of South Asia. It has led to the criminalisation of state structures and the near-complete erosion of justice. It remains to be seen if civil society awakens to this ideological disease; or continues to tolerate it. DS
Despite Islam being declared as its state religion since 1988, Bangladesh’s nationalism has been primarily defined in a cultural and linguistic idiom and it sees itself as a secular nation. The ruling Awami League claims a commitment to the secular values on which the republic was founded and is considered “minority friendly”. As Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her party have had an uninterrupted tenure since 2009, one would think that secularism would have strengthened under her regime. Yet secular voices have become somewhat muted in Bangladesh.
The recent communal
violence during Durga
Puja is not unprecedented. A study by the human rights group Ain O
Salish Kendra of Bangladesh records
as many as 3,679 attacks on the Hindu community between January 2013 and
September 2021 prior to the latest events. In these 9 years, 559 Hindu houses
and 442 businesses were torched and there were at least 1,678 cases of
vandalism and arson affecting Hindu temples, idols and places of worship. This
is a disturbing statistic during the tenure of a government that has
monopolised the minority vote.
More disconcerting is
the fact that the government’s response to the current violence is less
solicitous compared to its actions in 2012 when Buddhist monasteries were
attacked in Ramu Upzila in Cox’s Bazar district. Prime Minister Sheikh
Hasina had then ordered the Bangladesh Army
to rebuild the 12 Buddhist temples and monasteries destroyed, allocating Taka
200 million for the project. She herself visited the affected areas. Two years
later, the then Bangladesh President, Abdul Hamid, visited several rebuilt
temples and made it a point to inquire about the wellbeing of the Buddhist
community.
While there was a
protest at the historic Shahbagh demanding stern action against those who
attacked the Hindu minority, it did not last more than one and half hours.
Moreover, the protestors were mostly Bangladeshi Hindus with little visible
social support.
Sheikh
Hasina has announced that the culprits will be “hunted down” and
several arrests have been made. The communal violence in Bangladesh has been
reduced to a law and order problem, ignoring its political nature. Successive
governments have failed to take on the Islamists so that radical Islamism of
the period before Partition has only grown with the rise of political Islam
from West Asia to Afghanistan and foreign funding for Wahabi madrasas.
Political parties across the spectrum have also made use of political Islam for electoral ends. The Awami League government may have decimated the most prominent Islamist grouping the Jamat-e-Islami, but organisations such as Hefazat-e-Islam and Islami Andolan Bangladesh are allowed to function with the connivance of the State. The Awami League has had an opportunistic relationship with Hefazat-e-Islam in the past which wants Sharia law to be implemented in the country.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, on the other hand, has had an
electoral alliance with the Jamat-e-Isalmi. Because of political patronage,
Islamist preachers, religious groups and militants have managed to raise the
ambient religious temperature in the country. In this milieu any perceived
insult to Islam sets off violence targeting not only minorities but also
liberal bloggers, atheists and secular intellectuals.
Yet the discrimination
against minorities is neither as deliberate, nor systemic as the Indian Hindu
right makes it out to be. The minority population is 12 per cent of the total –
of these 9.6 per cent are Hindus, 1 per cent Buddhists, 0.5 per cent Christians
and less than 1 per cent other ethnic minorities. Their share in government
employment is not insignificant - 5 to 7 per cent in the administration and
about 10 per cent in the police force. In the higher echelons of the administration
and the police, minority share is estimated by some to be much higher. For
example, in Pirganj Upzila in Rangpur district, where 65 Hindu homes were
torched in a village, the sub-district officer was a Hindu as was virtually the
entire police chain of command.
However, there is
undeniably a growing suspicion of the minority community that is new. Even
those who hold secular views are not happy when delegations of Hindus and
members of temple committees interact with the Indian High Commissioner in
Dhaka in the aftermath of communal riots and he then meets Bangladesh officials
with their complaints. It is seen as an infringement of national sovereignty
and interference in their internal affairs. It may well be within the mandate
of the United Nations to act on its “right to protect” but can India take up
the violation of human rights of minorities in Bangladesh peremptorily? It
increases suspicion about the allegiance of Hindu and they get seen as India’s
Trojan horse.
This belief is fuelled
further by statements from Indian Hindutva leaders who view Hindus across
national boundaries as their natural constituency. India’s own treatment of its
minority population has also sharpened anti-Hindu feeling among Islamists in
Bangladesh. Indeed, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina indirectly said as much when
seeking the cooperation of India in fighting communalism. She cautioned the
“neighbouring state” that “they must make sure that nothing is done there which
affects our country and hurts our Hindu community.”
Yet Hindutva
organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have upped the stakes by asking
the UN “to send a peacekeeping force to Bangladesh” in the wake of the communal
violence and compared the attacks to “the brutality of the Nazis”. The BJP has
been quick to use the violence in Bangladesh to political advantage in the
by-elections due in four state legislative constituencies– Shantipur in Nadia
district, Dinhata in Coochbehar district, Khardah in North 24 Parganas and
Gosaba in South 24 Parganas - on October 30. Three of them are within a 10 to
20 km radius of the border with Bangladesh. The BJP’s election propaganda for
the by-election predicts that Hindus in West Bengal would face violence similar
to their co-religionists in Bangladesh if they did not mobilise against Chief
Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Such short-sighted
communal propagandising by Hindutva ideologues has had a deleterious impact on
Bangladesh. However, the larger blame still lies with Bangladesh’s
dysfunctional politics which is the cause of a continuous slide in its secular
ideals.
P.
B. Mehta - Violence and communalism: South Asia’s disturbing commonality
Pakistan's
First Law & Labour Minister, Jogendra Nath Mandal's Resignation Letter, October
1950
BANGLADESH
- In Defence of David Bergman: Statement by Concerned Intellectuals
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Books reviewed - Deb Mukharji: 1971, Bangladesh and the Blood Telegram
An Open Letter to the world on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971
Deb Mukharji - A Himalayan lesson, and about time
Bengal Imam who lost son to communal clashes calls for peace // Students Across India Rise Up To Protest Citizenship Act And Police Brutality
Former Civil Servants Protest Selection of Terror
Accused as Lok Sabha candidate by BJP
Safoora Zargar: Why did India jail a pregnant
student during Covid-19? By Geeta Pandey
‘Am glad I went’: Ramachandra
Guha explains why he joined CAA protests
