Religion and after: Bangladeshi identity since 1971

Secularism was one of the cornerstones of Bengali nationalism, but its spirit was enforced only by pen and paper. How can demands to ban religion from politics be satisfied?

The United Nations categorizes Bangladesh as a moderate Muslim democracy. Meanwhile, the current Foreign Minister called Bangladesh a secular country. She defined Bangladesh to be a "non-communal country” with a “Muslim majority population”. The Foreign Minister further added that the concept of a moderate Muslim democracy cannot be applied in the case of Bangladesh because it fought its war of independence on basis of the ideal of secularism. For Bangladesh, embracing religion or creating a secular identity has been a major contestation in the creation of its national identity. Identity questions for Bangladesh still stand: is it a country of secular Bengalis or Muslim Bangladeshis?

This split personality of Bangladesh confounds the international observer. For an outsider, it makes perfect sense to call it a moderate Muslim democracy as a Muslim majority population lives in a country that recognizes Islam as the state religion. Since the Shahbag movement has erupted with the demands of the death penalty for the war criminals, international media remains substantially silent about it. Perhaps one of the reasons could be their inability to comprehend why a population of Muslim origin are angered over using religion (read Islam) for political purposes? As we look at the issues brought forward by the Shahbag movement, we need to analyse it from a historical perspective. We are not talking about redressing the wound that was created 42 years back; rather how it was ‘silenced’ to maximize narrow political gains for the major political parties of the country.

'Secularism' in independent Bangladesh

Many point to the 1947 division of the subcontinent on the basis of the Two Nation theory with ‘religion’ at its core as the principle factor that tied religion to politics in this region. It was primarily the overwhelming support of the Muslims of Bengal in the 1946 election that decided the fate of the Two Nation theory. But does this mean that people of East Bengal supported the Two Nations theory with a religious fervour? The answer is quite the opposite. Historians have shown that support in East Bengal was mobilized with the aim of economic emancipation from West Bengal. The people of East Bengal gathered under the umbrella of Fazlul Haque’s leadership, who provided a non-communal approach to the issue of Hindu-Muslim relations and brought the economic issues to the forefront. As research shows, the massive support coming from the rural areas of Bengal for the dream of Pakistan was aimed at resolving their basic ‘dal-bhat’ (rice-lentil: considered Bengali people’s basic food at that period) problem. Islam was not the primary political mode of thought in Bengal nor was able to present itself as an ‘ideological’ alternative to the existing political thoughts.

However, the Two Nation Theory, formulated on the basis of Hindu-Muslim division, turned out to truly be a theory of two nations as it depicted East and West Pakistan as inherently different from each other. They do not understand why we subaltern Muslims do not agree to speak Urdu. They do not understand why we Muslims are mesmerized with the Hindu poet Tagore. While students protested Jinnah’s proclamation that, “Urdu, and only Urdu shall be the national language of Pakistan”, the seed of a new nation was sown as early as 1948 on the campus of the University of Dhaka. The Bengali Language Movement gave birth to the idea of a new nation, within the geographic border of former East Pakistan.

While secularism was one of the cornerstones of Bengali nationalism, its spirit was enforced only by pen and paper but not in practice - apprehension that secularism could be easily misinterpreted as atheism. Even while secularism was preached in the pre-1971 period, Article 2 of the Awami League’s election manifesto in 1970 stated that no law would be enacted against the dictums of the Quran and the Sunnah. Similarly, political leader Maulana Bhashani declared, “we want food and we want clothes but we do not want them excluding Allah”. Such contradictions extended far. Upon his return from Pakistan via London in 1972, at the one hand, Sheikh Mujib declared himself as a Muslim and Bangladesh as the second largest Muslim country as secularism was embedded as one of the four principles of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.

Secularism versus religiosity

History shows that there was a public fear and rejection of secularism back in 1972. A public procession was carried out against it on the streets of Dhaka that chanted “Joy Bangla joy-heen, Lungi chere dhuti pin” on the day of the formal acceptance of the constitution. This particular slogan stated that the traditional Awami League slogan of Joy Bangla, i.e., victory to Bangladesh, became meaningless in independent Bangladesh and would be devoid of ‘victory’. Moreover, the traditional Bengali Muslim men’s attire lungi would be replaced by traditional Hindu men’s attire dhuti due to adoption of secularism as a state principle. The ultimate failure of the government, alongside rampant corruption, was to give in to these Islamic emphases by the regime of the Awami League in an attempt to regain its lost popularity. Simultaneously, as a reaction to the Awami League’s pen and paper commitment to ‘secularism’, the alternative was to embrace ‘religion’ in its fullest form and was manifested in Bangladeshi nationalism.

While the Shahbag movement is asking for a fair trial of war criminals, it cannot remain confined by only banning Jamaat-e-Islami’s politics or overall politics based on religion. Rather, the whole issue of secularism versus religiosity has to be taken into consideration to redress the way politicians have misused religion. We have not forgotten the electoral slogan of the Awami League, BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami during the 1996 election: La ilaha illallha, Naukar malik tui Allah (There is no God but Allah, and Allah is the Owner of boat); La ilaha illalha, Dhaner shishe Bismillah (There is no God but Allah, and Allah willing, vote for the paddy sheaf); Vote diley pallay, Khushi hobe Allah (Allah would be pleased if you vote for scale). It is a country where an electoral campaign still starts from Sylhet, by visiting Islamic shrines and seeking blessings of the Pirs for a good result in election.

We have changed our traditional age-old greetings from ‘Khuda Hafiz’ to ‘Allah Hafiz’ with the excuse that ‘Allah’ is Arabic while ‘Khuda’ originates from Persian. We do not even know or probably do not even care about the fact that ‘hafiz’, an original Persian word and etymologically derived from Arabic ‘hifz’, remains attached with the phrase. But we are happy to replace Khuda with Allah with an aim to prove ourselves as true Muslims. Is that a true representation of Bangladesh, of our national culture? .. read more:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/lailufar-yasmin/religion-and-after-bangladeshi-identity-since-1971

comment by Salamah Mahdi

This Op-Ed piece is one of its kind in being as fair as it is possible to be without opening a hornet's nest with a pen or typing fingers. In 1946 I was a 4 year old Bihari Muslim. In that year Bihari Muslims were massacred by the thousand by Hindus in revenge for the killing of hundreds of East Bengali Hindus in Noakhali. Primarily to fear of more massacres at the hands of Hindus, a year later when India was partitioned, Bihari Muslims fled to the same East Bengal, now East Pakistan in 1947. This was a huge mistake which Bihari Muslims made because no major anti-Muslim pogroms followed Partition courtesy that Great Man, Gandhi. There were sporadic incidents, large and small during the four decades which followed but they were works of Maharashtran & Gujarati Hindu fundamentalists like the RSS and not of Bihar Hindus. With the coming to power of the lower caste Yadavs and their lower and lowest class of Hindus in Bihar, Bihari Muslims have suffered less and have been allowed into mainstream Bihari politics. This is exactly what my late father had predicted would happen. This is exactly why he did not 'escape' to East Pakistan by opting not to. Those Biharis who ran away to Bangladesh in 1947-48 in large number and in lesser numbers in the 2 decades which followed did this out of mortal fear and can not really be blamed for it. Times were different and horrendous massacres were taking place in divided Punjab, on both sides of the newly created West Pakistani - Indian border with Muslims massacring Hindus & Sikhs on the Pakistani side & Sikhs and Hindus massacring Muslims on the Indian side. It was total madness. That it finally came to a stop was again due to great soul Mahatma Gandhi and other like minded Hindus in the Indian National Congress. The Bihar Muslim Refugees (immigrants) to both West & East Pakistan have lived to regret it ever since. Proof? They ended up as MQM in West Pakistan & worse in East Pakistan during its secession from Pakistan in 1971 during which they, the Bihar Muslims made another mortal blunder by siding with the losing Pakistan Army thus making them targets of massacres during and after the Civil War which ended in the creation of Bangladesh in blood. And in what is going on now in Bangladesh are all results of what began in 1946 in Moakhali, followed by the massacres in Bihar, the widespread Indo-Pak massacres in 1947 and the masacres 1971 on both sides of the Civil War in East Pakistan which created Bangladesh with Indian help, political, financial and military. Was it all, all worth it? Wasn't this a madness? How much of this was British created, at least in the two decades precedimg the Partition of India?