The Holiday
M. Serajul Islam
Before
Shahabag, the country with all its imperfections and problems was managing well
on all fronts except politics. Even in politics, there was hope that the two mainstream
parties would reach and understanding and move the country forward. Thus the
Hefazat phenomenon is nothing less than a very bad nightmare that the Shahabag
Movement (SM) and the secular forces have gifted the country. The million plus
Islamic fundamentalists that Hefazat brought to Dhaka’s Shapla Chattar despite
the determined efforts of the Government and the activists of the ruling party
and SM to stop Hefazat activists from coming to Dhaka, dwarfed the SM in terms of
numbers that had earlier led the media to term the latter’s gathering as the
largest in Bangladesh for a long time. Although the Hefazat did not resort to
violence, not yet, the 13 demands they made and the manner in which they made
it, there is apprehension in minds of the majority of the people that the
Hefazat nightmare is a real one.
The
spokesman of the SM, Imran Sarkar, now at odds with the Government that has
arrested some of his close comrades, has called the Hefazat “hyenas”. He probably
does not have the sense either to comprehend what is happening around him or to
realize that the that the movement he has led has unleashed forces that have
the potentials to take a nation that had for centuries kept the Islamic
fundamentalists (the hyenas by the term he has used; hyenas he had tried to
negotiate with but was spurned) away from any major role in politics by liberal
Islam, towards a major catastrophe. Our fathers and our forefathers
successfully kept the Islamic fundamentalists at bay without the need of the
constitution, the laws of the land or the government. Tampered by Sufism and
other liberal traditions, they did not allow the Islamic fundamentalists any
role in society other than those that they voluntarily gave them.
Thus
while we have historically allowed our personal lives to be guided by the
Maulanas, Maulvis and the Imams (even among these religious peoples, there are
many who do not hold rigidly fundamentalist
views), we have kept other facets of our lives, for instance our political and
socio/economic relationships, out of the influence of religion and the
religious leaders, not deliberately or
by force, but by the way these relationships have evolved. When a child is born
in the house of a Muslim family, the tradition is to find a Maulana or Maulvi
or an Imam to recite “Allah hu Akbar” into the newborn’s ears. Our liberal traditions
allow us to recite this call to Allah in Arabic into the newborn’s ears by an
elder in the family where a Maulana or a Maulvi or the Imam is unavailable.
We
need the “services” of these Maulanas/Maulvis/Imams in many other activities of
our personal and social lives on a regular basis that to argue that Islam can
only be a private matter in the life of a Muslim is irrational in a predominantly
Muslim society such as ours or any society for that matter because a great deal
of the culture of any people is deeply embedded deeply in religion. We thus hold
milad mehfils and other religious functions at our homes to which we invite our
relatives/ friends/neighbours to observe/celebrate many events in our lives
such as the death anniversary of someone in the family or a happy occasion, etc
and in such events, we also invite the Maulanas/Maulvis/Imams and their
associates to our homes with a great deal of respect because without them we
cannot hold these events. We pay them, give them plentiful sweets/food and send
them away with great respect. But when the same Maulanas/Maulvis/Imams want our
votes for a political office, we have seldom obliged.
This
is how we have for centuries kept our society and ourselves from falling into
the stranglehold of the Islamic fundamentalists. Since the final days of the
British Raj when various political groups were vying for political power in a
post-British South Asia, the Islamic fundamentalists did not lag behind. The
Jamat-e-Ulema –e Hind, the precursor of the Jamat of Bangladesh and the Jamat
in Pakistan, used religion/Islam to get a piece of the cake of political power after
the departure of the British. In secular India, the Jamat-e-Ulema-e-Hind still
exists but has changed its stance to adjust to secular India. It now believes
that Muslims and non-Muslims have entered into a contract in the post-British
India to establish a secular state. In Pakistan, the Jamat has gone to
political power using Islam and is still a major force in the politics of the
country. It, together with other Islamic fundamentalist groups, is also a major
reason for the country being just a step away from being a failed state.
The
people of Bangladesh have rejected Jamat comprehensively every time the party
has participated in elections based on the legacy of liberal Islam that
Bangladesh inherited. Thus, although Jamat as a party is older than even the
Awami League and in a society where the people are poor, where religion is to
them a social insurance against their daily miseries, where people still go to
the Maulana to bless water in the name of the Allah that they take as
alternative to medicine because they cannot afford to buy it, the Jamat and the
religious fundamentalists have never found political favour. In fact, only in
2001 when Jamat allied with the BNP, it won 14 seats in a 300 seat parliament.
Otherwise, Jamat, despite the country being overwhelming Muslim and having
other characteristics that should have favoured fundamentalist Islamic parties,
has never won seats more than in the lower single digit in each of the
elections in which it has participated.
Thus
in Bangladesh, Islamic fundamentalist forces have been successfully contained
politically and the country did not suffer the fate that has befallen Pakistan
or Afghanistan. The Shahabag Movement has given a body blow to this legacy and
gift of liberal Islam from generations that have gone to the present
generations of Bangladesh, a legacy that countries being destroyed by Islamic
fundamentalism would have considered an answer to their dreams. It is this legacy,
this gift that the Shahabag Movement has ruffled very badly and pushed
Bangladesh towards the path that Pakistan has followed with disastrous
consequences. It would of course be not fully fair to put the blame entirely on
the Shahabag youth among some of the bloggers among them are the immediate cause of the rise
of the Islamic fundamentalist forces such as Hefazat as a consequence of the
anti-Islam postings on their blogs. The share of blame must fall more forcefully, on the so-called
secular groups that were there with the SM from the very moment the youth
landed in Shahabag.
These
leaders of the secular forces have been active in the country for a long time.
They are mostly from the politically defeated communists who have joined the AL
as late comers and part of the civil society/cultural activists with links to
the ruling party. The discredited left used Sheikh Hasina’s distrust for the
so-called reformists in the party like Tofael and his colleagues to move close
to the centre of political power. These erstwhile left forces with the part of
the civil society and cultural activists (who have a strong pro-Indian bias)
used their closeness to political power to further their favourite agenda,
namely secularism. They worked from the Marxian belief that religion is “the
opium of the masses” and hence had to be separated from public life if not
altogether banished. To further this objective, they made the restoration of
secularism in its pristine glory the very essence of patriotism and
pro-liberation sentiments and did not show any inclination to allow Islam a
space in the Constitution or in public life. They thus demanded the removal of
the Islamic provisions placed in the Constitution after 15th August
1975 to restore the sanctity and glory of the 1972 Constitution that they
thought had been contaminated by insertion of “Bismillah” and mention of Islam
as the state religion. They refused to accept that these two provisions that did
not in any way affect the secular and non-communal nature of society we
inherited. They also refused to accept that once placed there, their removal
would affect the sentiments of the majority of the people of the country.
These
groups (in fact it would be a misnomer to call them groups because they eventually come down to an amalgam of
individuals with well known public faces but no public following) went public when the Government refused to
accede to their demand for removal of the Islamic provisions after the 13th
amendment. On Islam as a state religion , the ruling party refused to remove it
from the Constitution but added a
sentence to give all other religion the same
standing as Islam that failed to appease these groups. Looking at this
provision objectively, this is no more
than just a sentence that was placed in the Constitution after 15th
August 1975, albeit with intent not honest, but political that did not in any way give
Islam any special status vis-à-vis
the other religions.. It is in fact the
most benign use of Islam in politics. As far as “Bismillah” is concerned, it is
the equivalent of “In God we trust” which is the official motto of the United States
since 1956 and appears in all its currency notes as a public commitment to the
Christian religion against the opposition of some secularists in a country that
is officially secular. Is there an issue with Islam here for the secular forces
of our country who cannot tolerate two benign insertions on Islam in the Constitution?
Perhaps there is.
These
individuals have also brought to the public domain the view that curiously went
unchallenged that secularism is the most important of the principles for which
Bangladesh war of liberated. In doing so, they deliberately switched non-communalism
(oshamprodaeek-ota) for secularism, two concepts that are fundamentally
different. In oriental societies such as ours, it is just not possible to keep
religion and politics apart. In fact, it is impossible in any society. The citizens
of United States faced this reality when President George Bush unashamedly used
Christian fundamentalism and Evangelical Christianity to reach the voters and
succeeded in defeating his democratic/liberal/secular opponent. He did not let
the constitutional necessity to keep the state and religions apart bother him. In
next door India, despite the emphasis of secularism in its Constitution, the
Hindu fundamentalist BJP, the Hindu Mahashabha and the RSS are not only allowed
political role, the BJP was in government between 1999-2024 and again promising
to return to power with no less a Hindu fundamentalist as Narendra Modi as the leader,
a politician who is still denied US visa because of his direct involvement in
the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002.
These
individuals who think that the true spirit of 1971 is embedded in secularism thus
misrepresent history of our liberation by switching oshamprodaik-ota
(non-communalism) for secularism. They also do not properly explain what they
actually mean by secularism. A casual reference to secularism as
described/explained in text books would reveal that it is a hugely complex
concept that has existed in history from as early as the ancient Greek and
Roman and can be traced in the writings of the Islamic philosopher Ibn Rusd. In
modern times, secularism has emerged as a consequence of the Renaissance where
the conflict has been between the State and the Christian Church and hence of no
consequence to Muslims and Islam. British
writer George Holyoake, an agnostic himself, first used “secularism” in 1851,
in his writings that today has adherents from diverse backgrounds and includes
agnostics and atheists. The essence of secularism is knowledge “founded in this
life, which relates to the conduct of this life, concludes to the welfare of
this life, and is capable to being tested by the experience of this life.” Thus,
secularism as knowledge or practice of a principle contradicts Islam at its
very core because in Islam, the life in
this world and the life hereafter are inseparable; in fact that the life in
this world is temporary and the real life is after death is the fundamental
belief of Islam, Christianity and Judaism .
The
insistence of these individuals to force the Prime Minister to delete any
mention of Islam in the Constitution suggests that they have an issue with
Islam and those who uphold and speak of Islam in pubic and in politics. The
Prime Minister did not relent but that did not stop these forces from speaking
in various forums about the contradiction between the state principle of
secularism and the two Islamic provisions in the Constitutions. These are the
individuals who saw in Shahabag their golden opportunity to further their view
of secularism minus Islam. So focussed were they on defeating Islam that they
did not see the dangers of the anti-Islamic blogs. At first, they blamed it on
Jamat but even when it became evident that some of the Shahabag bloggers were
the culprits, they failed to see what was coming and did not either alert the
Shahabag to deal with the matter seriously or they themselves did not acknowledge
anything wrong in such postings!
The
government/ruling party, overawed and worried out of their wits by the Hefataz
phenomenon, made gestures to this extreme fundamentalist forces in utter
disappointment of the secular forces. It
even assured Hefazat that it would look sympathetically into its 13 demands
that could not have been more an anti-thesis to secularism as understood by the
secular forces! Thus forced by the power of Islam, the ruling party has taken a
stand directly against Shahabag and the secular forces. Unfortunately the SM and
the secular groups are still in denial about the problems they have
created for the nation. One leader whose hanging has been demanded by
the Hefazat (under Hefazat’s pressure, even he has been heard on TV quoting
verses from the Quran to pacify the Islamic fundamentalists!) attacked the government’s law enforcing
agencies for not protecting his life against the Hefazat activists. He said in
the media angrily that had the Shahabag activists not helped him run away from
the Hefazat activists while opposing their Long March, he would have been killed!
The SM and these secular forces still believe the best way to tackle the
Hefazat is the strong arm tactics; only now the Government is no longer obliging to treat them with any
degree of importance.
Shahabag
was only a small section of the country’s Projonmo. The media deliberately led the
nation to believe it is the entire Projonmo that would revive the lost spirit
of 1971. The Hefazat too is only another
section of the nation. In between Shahabag and Hefazat, there are the
overwhelming majority of the Muslims of Bangladesh who are liberal minded
Muslims who fear the Islamic fundamentalists who believe that these forces are
too few to de-stabilize the liberal Bangladesh they have inherited. It is the duty of all, the mainstream
political parties, the civil society and the media to reach to them to set back
the fundamentalist forces that have now landed at the centre of our politics
with nightmarish prospects. Side by side, all right thinking people of the
country who want Bangladesh to come out of its present predicament must take a
serious look at the mistakes at Shahabag and the real intentions and agenda of
the secular forces (individuals) that helped the fundamental forces to
telescope time and land at the centre of politics and hold them responsible for
trying to destroy the liberal, non-communal but Islamic Bangladesh that is our
pride.
The
ruling party has a more important reason to look seriously at SM and the
secular groups because they have landed
it into a l predicament that could be politically more disastrous to it than
the issues of the Padma Bridge, Hallmark, Destiny and share market scam. It has
the powers to restore the country to its pre Shahabag status to tackle the
dangers from the Islamic fundamentalists. A free and fair election to help the
nation choose its next government would go a long way to restore the nation’s
position vis-à-vis the Islamic fundamentalist. A failure to do so will create
more instability and would be the natural breeding ground for the fundamental
forces that SM and the secular groups have unleashed.
He writer is a
retired career Ambassador
