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| Angry Islamist demand for Islamic state governed by controversial Sharia law, which subjugates women |
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 Pirsfor
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? On a similar note, in any public gathering, it is
excruciating to see how the sari, the traditional Bengali attire for women, is
disappearing and is being increasingly replaced by salwar-kamiz. While the
younger generation have embraced the latter with the excuse of it being more
manageable and convenient, the older generation is much more direct in
expressing how the sari is ‘unIslamic’ dress that reveals significant female
body parts while salwar-kamiz does not.
Our
whole national culture is in transition. Otherwise why is YouTube still banned
in Bangladesh?
Why is it necessary for the editor of a renowned newspaper to apologize to the
Khatib of Baitul Mukarram over the publication of a cartoon that allegedly
insulted religious sentiments? Not so long ago, Facebook was also banned in the
country under the same accusation. Scholar Rafiuddin Ahmed indeed pointed it
out very succinctly, “a Bengali Muslim may have seen himself primarily as a
‘Muslim’ the other day, as a ‘Bengali’ yesterday, and a ‘Bengali Muslim’ today,
depending on objective conditions, but on none of these occasions did his
thoughts and his idea of destiny become separated from his territorial
identity”.
Secularism
as a top-down approach
The
fact remains that secularism cannot be imposed from the top, merely as a state
directive. The term secularism itself was coined and introduced in the English
vocabulary in 1851 by George Jacob Hollyake in order to create a conscious
difference between secularism and atheism. It is the same tension that we face
in our country right now. Moreover when secularism is imposed as a top-down
approach, it looks like nothing short of an attempt to ‘catch up’ with the West
or try to prove to the West that “look, we have denounced religion; we are modern too!” This is a typical crisis that
non-Western societies face: how to define themselves as modern so the West
understands. But what is overlooked here is that secularism cannot just be
imposed as an ‘add and stir’ method, for non-Western societies have their own
uniqueness to add both to the concepts of modernity and secularism.
There
is no singular way to be modern; there is no singular way to be secular,
especially not by incorporating it into the Constitution while ignoring the
drastic changes in the social fabric of a country. Moreover, countless research
shows that while a non-Western society is being modernized, it does not shake
off its religious legacies and historical experiences. Rather its own values,
culture and religion formulate the core of a resistance identity in response to
the intrusion of Westernization. Secularism therefore cannot be perceived from
only mainstream and liberal conceptions as it is presented through the Western
lens.
As one
scholar has put it, 1971 shows that Bangladesh
rejected the Pakistani interpretation of fundamentalist Islam but this did not
mean that Bangladesh
has rejected Islam from its own identity. The inability of the elites to
understand this fact has trapped them into the secular-religious divide.
Schendel has rightly pointed out that the post-independent, or first leaders of
Bangladesh
failed to deliver the dreams of nationalism, secularism, socialism and
democracy based on a vernacular cultural model. Such failure essentially led
towards creating the dichotomy between the religious and the secular and
between anti-1971 and pro-1971.
There
is no legal way to tackle the rise of religiosity in Bangladesh. Instead, the failure to
acknowledge these silent ‘religious’ transitions, where political parties are
interested only in the bigger share of the pie using religion, will only add to
the existing tension and divide the unity of the country further between the
religious and the secular. Instead we must continue to implore why we are
rapidly turning more religious than before, and why consider it a solemn duty
to continuously project this religious identity.
Lailufar
Yasmin is a doctoral student at Macquarie
University, Sydney,
Australia and teaches in
International Relations at University
of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Her research interest includes secularism, IR theory and Islam
