The manner in which a small group of radical Islamists pulled down a baul monument at the airport roundabout last week speaks volumes about the path we are treading today. It is instructive to note that the government immediately backed away from taking a stance on the issue – continuing its policy of appeasement of the religious right. This is not surprising though, since both the major parties would have perhaps done the same, whatever rhetoric we were force-fed on the local TV networks. What is far more significant is that powerful sections of the intelligentsia, the academia, and civil society have remained silent on the issue. While truncheons fall hard on the backs of garments workers demanding their back pay or students demanding restoration of their fundamental rights, the religious identity of these bigots was enough to grant them a sweeping immunity. Yes, Bangladesh is country where the dominant culture is deeply secular despite the religious fault-lines triggered by the partition some sixty years ago. And in the same breath it must be said ‘no, it will not matter, unless we pit that ideology with the one that the bigots preach.’ If we allow this depraved cabal of religious clerics to corner us over and over again, be it on the state’s women’s development policy or a sculpture ‘any sculpture ‘ we are ceding valuable public spaces in which we express diversity and dissent. In the week that has passed, a great number of people from the country’s mainstream have expressed their distress over what they see as an insult to Lalon Shah. Many say they are surprised at the ‘audacity’ of the bigots that they could attack such a potent and universal symbol of our culture and tradition. Don’t be surprised, this is the new milepost. When a women’s rights group attempted a public protest, the government was suddenly all too eager to enforce the Emergency Powers Rules, and they were denied a public platform. Once again, there was a murmur of protest, but those whose call to arms to defend the constitutionally guaranteed equality of the sexes would have mattered often stayed silent – for fear and for convenience. Now, Lalon Shah is just the new milepost.The reality that is emerging is that those who have a stake in power, or are beneficiaries of the existing power structure, will not take the lead in speaking up – and they have too much invested to make a choice that may prove politically unpopular. There are those, however, who have spoken up. A broad spectrum of artistes and cultural activists banded together on the Dhaka University campus for much of the past week and campaigned against what they saw as an invasion of the cultural space by the religious right. The numbers of people this programme attracted was a heartening testimony to the mass appeal of the counterargument to religious radicalism and intolerance.
by Mahtab Haider
TODAY, more than ever, we have become a society too cocooned in the comfort of wishful thinking, to recognise the reality we are living in. Afghanistan was not Talibanised in a day. It took years, even decades of Cold War indoctrination against the Soviet invasion, during which the culture of tolerance and diversity that characterises most rural populations by default was dismantled piece by piece. And as with Bangladesh today, throughout this process, Afghanistan’s general public had ceded what had seemed to be tiny spaces to the religious hardliners, until eventually they found themselves cornered by a cabal of depraved clerics who saw fit to slice off women’s thumbs when they painted their nails, or publicly whipped taxi drivers because a female passenger had failed to cover her face.
There are two lessons from Afghanistan. That the radicalisation of an entire populace rarely happens overnight. and the mileposts for such radicalisation are often token concessions of public spaces which seem too insignificant to matter. And that it is not a requirement for a whole nation to believe in extreme ideology for an extreme ideology to become the dominant one. Often, as was the case with Afghanistan, the public whose collective endorsement is sought and secured for the practice of violent ideologies are also the victims of it at an individual level. In Afghanistan, as in Iran after the ‘Islamic revolution’, it was a small gang of clerics who seized the mantle of state power and morality and perpetrated the most tragic violence on the populace who were held hostage by their fear. The problem was not that a majority of the country believed in hard-line Islam, it was that a majority of the country were cowed into silence, with no leaders to stand up for rights and justice.
The manner in which a small group of radical Islamists pulled down a baul monument at the airport roundabout last week speaks volumes about the path we are treading today. It is instructive to note that the government immediately backed away from taking a stance on the issue – continuing its policy of appeasement of the religious right. This is not surprising though, since both the major parties would have perhaps done the same, whatever rhetoric we were force-fed on the local TV networks. What is far more significant is that powerful sections of the intelligentsia, the academia, and civil society have remained silent on the issue. Some of them because party politics dictates a wait and watch policy for now, some because it will hurt their business, some because they remember what happened to Humayun Azad or Shamsur Rahman, and all of them because it is more convenient to say nothing.
While truncheons fall hard on the backs of garments workers demanding their back pay or students demanding restoration of their fundamental rights, the religious identity of these bigots was enough to grant them a sweeping immunity. Yes, Bangladesh is country where the dominant culture is deeply secular despite the religious fault-lines triggered by the partition some sixty years ago. And in the same breath it must be said ‘no, it will not matter, unless we pit that ideology with the one that the bigots preach.’ If we allow this depraved cabal of religious clerics to corner us over and over again, be it on the state’s women’s development policy or a sculpture ‘any sculpture ‘ we are ceding valuable public spaces in which we express diversity and dissent.
In the week that has passed, a great number of people from the country’s mainstream have expressed their distress over what they see as an insult to Lalon Shah. Many say they are surprised at the ‘audacity’ of the bigots that they could attack such a potent and universal symbol of our culture and tradition. Don’t be surprised, this is the new milepost. Three years ago when the four-party alliance under Khaleda Zia banned Ahmadiyya publications after Islamist bigots demonstrated Friday after Friday in Dhaka’s Tejgaon area, that was a milepost too. Ahmadiyya mosques were ransacked in many places across the country, followers of the faith were beaten up, and the bigots wanted the government to declare them ‘non-Muslim’. At the time, many who are outraged today felt no need to defend the rights of the followers of a small Muslim sect, because the attack was on what was sacred to ‘them’ and not ‘us’.
In May this year, when the military-controlled interim government announced a draft Development Policy for Women, religious hardliners poured onto the streets of the capital after Friday prayers at the national mosque, asking for the policy to conform to the Qur’an. Under orders from the government, the police showed incredible restraint as the mob blocked the streets and damaged public and private property, beating up a surprisingly docile police force with their own truncheons. The following Friday, the leaders of the movement announced after Friday prayers that the government had given in to their demands, amid cheers and chants. When a women’s rights group attempted a public protest, the government was suddenly all too eager to enforce the Emergency Powers Rules, and they were denied a public platform. Once again, there was a murmur of protest, but those whose call to arms to defend the constitutionally guaranteed equality of the sexes would have mattered often stayed silent – for fear and for convenience. Now, Lalon Shah is just the new milepost.
The German poet Martin Niemller who witnessed the Nazi Holocaust as German intellectuals remained tragically silent captured the perils of that apathy and fear in words that have now become immortalised:
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
‘Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
The reality that is emerging is that those who have a stake in power, or are beneficiaries of the existing power structure, will not take the lead in speaking up – and they have too much invested to make a choice that may prove politically unpopular. There are those, however, who have spoken up. A broad spectrum of artistes and cultural activists banded together on the Dhaka University campus for much of the past week and campaigned against what they saw as an invasion of the cultural space by the religious right. The numbers of people this programme attracted was a heartening testimony to the mass appeal of the counterargument to religious radicalism and intolerance. The problem, of course, is that those sections of society that do believe in democracy and tolerance are content to exist as a counterargument ‘a reaction to a threat’ rather than the argument itself. Over the past four decades, since former president Ziaur Rahman rehabilitated the discredited stalwarts of religion-based politics, and another military strongman HM Ershad amended the constitution to make the state religion Islam, and with the dawning political reality of both major parties courting Islamist parties, the secular fabric of our mainstream has been soiled and stamped upon by venal power politics. But just as that is the case, we must recognise that radical Islamists are singling out adversaries at their own time, on their own terms, and jostling for greater influence in the national mainstream. We are all engaged in what is essentially a political battle against intolerance and violence, but we are each of us fighting alone, as cultural activists, as writers and poets, as women, or as Ahmadiyyas. Not as citizens who are united in a belief that respect for diversity, ethnic, cultural, religious, philosophical, to name a few, together constitute the foundation for a healthy society.
‘Notice has been given: this is just the beginning,’ wrote Arundhati Roy in 2002, in the wake of the riots in India’s Gujarat state, when Muslim neighbourhoods were raided by armies of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, Muslim women raped, babies impaled on tridents, and men doused with petrol and set on fire. ‘Is this the Hindu rashtra that we’ve all been asked to look forward to? Once the Muslims have been ‘ shown their place, will milk and Coca-Cola flow across the land? Once the Ram Mandir is built, will there be a shirt on every back and a roti in every belly? Will every tear be wiped from every eye? Can we expect an anniversary celebration next year? Or will there be someone else to hate by then? Alphabetically- Adivasis, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Parsis, Sikhs? Those who wear jeans, or speak English, or those who have thick lips, or curly hair? We won’t have to wait long. It’s started already.’
In Bangladesh too, notice has been served. The baul monument was a milepost.
Bdintell's Weblog 