One of the Indian subcontinent’s enduring and treasured illusions is shattering before our eyes. The illusion is that Bangladesh street values language above religion.
NEW DELHI: Islamism had been Bengal’s Achilles Heel long before the Indian subcontinent was partitioned, and it is easily forgotten today that the first ever partition that occurred in India was the split of Bengal in 1905. Six years later, the divide was removed but the differences between Muslims and Hindus remained.
Only four decades later, the demand to include the city of Calcutta (Kolkata) in Pakistan was strident, and opposition to this incredible demand was one of the reasons for the relentless violence and bloodshed that Calcutta saw right before, and after, partition. The Muslim League and its supporters could not get Calcutta, but that did not mean that other hardliners like the Jamaat-e-Islami got a consolation prize with partition—not only the Punjab, but Bengal was also divided in the service of Pakistan. The two-nation theory was validated, even though groups like the Jamaat always saw the entire subcontinent, and especially the whole of Bengal, as their ideological lebensraum.
These groups never stopped trying to change the demography of Indian Bengal, and Calcutta, and never prevented widespread illegal migration to India. Some of this migration has been a by-product of unceasing atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh, including through the infamous Enemy Property Act to takeover Hindu property, which was a legacy from the time Bangladesh was East Pakistan (before independence in 1971), and which was corrected in 2011 through the Vested Properties Return Amendment Bill (2011). The Islamists in Bangladesh have always had two major and near-term goals—eliminating Hindus from Bangladesh, and capture as much land as possible from neighbouring Bengal through demographic change using the porous border.
Their biggest challenge came from the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971 when a revolution for language-based nationalism (Bangla instead of Urdu) and against the oppression of the Pakistani army led to the independence of the Bengali-speaking nation. This was catastrophic in many ways for Islamism in the subcontinent. In one fell swoop, the formation of Bangladesh proved that Islam alone was inadequate to hold a nation together, and other national attributes, like language, preceded any simplistic religious unity. The liberation war saw both Bengali-speaking Muslims and Hindus fight for freedom of Bangladesh, but the Islamists did not give up easily. The genocidal atrocities of the Bangladesh liberation war were in fact a collusion between radicalized foot-soldiers of the Jamaat working with the Pakistani military. Choosing Indian Bengali poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s Amar Sonar Bangla as its national anthem, the newly independent nation sought to build an identity beyond religious strife.
But that was not to be, the Islamist strain in Bangladeshi politics never went away, though Bangladesh managed to keep the façade of elite secularism with an underbelly of religious oppression and violence for a long time. The maintaining of this façade is the Indian subcontinent’s greatest illusion. Bangladesh was evidence, or so we always believed, that radical Islam could be defeated by a deeper civic nationalism based on commonality of other cultural traits like language, the arts, even food. This façade is now crumbling. The chickens have come home to roost. The latest arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das Prabhu, who was protesting peacefully against the rampant attacks on Hindus and Hindu properties that have continued ever since Sheikh Hasina left the country, and the interim government of Muhammad Yunus was installed. It was widely speculated, including in the pages of this newspaper, that while Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, would be the face of the government, and help raise money for the economically-troubled nation, the streets, and real politics, would be run by the Islamists. The violence against Hindus were first denied, then ignored, then lied about. At the very least, it was suggested by various members of the new Bangladeshi government that some of it was connected to attacks on Hindus who had been supporters of Sheikh Hasina. But Hasina left Bangladesh in August, and the violence still continues. One of the most egregious abuses has been the continuing removal of school teachers and principals from their positions because of their Hindu faith by Islamist mobs. One of Yunus’ first decisions was to release from prison the notorious terror-accused Islamist radical Jashimuddin Rahmani, head of Ansarullah Bangla, a group affiliated to Al Qaeda. And things have gone progressively from bad to worse.
It is now obvious that there has been a strategic powershift within Bangladeshi society and the much-vaunted secular resistance to Islamism has, in a sense, disappeared, after Hasina left the country. Many of Bangladesh’s intellectuals know better than to object to the Islamist reign, or de facto support a deeper Islamisation of Bangladesh which brings them closer to Pakistan with an ambition to create a kind of “eastern Pakistan” with support from allies in the West, and in China. It is a mistake to think that present-day Bangladesh wishes to reunite in any manner with Pakistan. Bangladesh’s politicians have no desire to give up any power. But what might, or in fact is, happening, is a reaffirmation of the two-nation theory, as the Islamists have always wanted, a clear demarcation of territory based on religion. One of the first steps in this direction would be the progressive elimination of the remaining Hindus in Bangladesh, exactly in the manner that the Hindus in Pakistan have been eliminated. The second step would be to establish some kind of overt, or covert, Sharia-rule complete with blasphemy laws (one of the easiest ways to harass and eliminate a minority population is using blasphemy laws) in Bangladesh. Once this is complete, the illusion of civic nationalism countering Islamism in the subcontinent would crumble, and the logic of the partition of India, as seen by Islamists, would be reaffirmed. This is why Islamists wish to change the national anthem of Bangladesh—it talks about the love for the motherland, Bengal—and they would prefer something far more Islamist. They also desire to change the Bangladesh national flag which does not have the Islamic crescent (which the Pakistan flag does) but a round red dot against a rich green backdrop, depicting the rising sun against the tropical foliage.
Some still deny that Bangladesh is on this trajectory, but with each passing week, as the list of atrocities grow, even major Bangladeshi newspapers like “The Daily Star” and “Prothom Alo” have started reporting about the rapid rise of Islamism and its takeover of power-centres. For this, these newspapers have come under attack. The rising tide of atrocities have also propelled the Hindu minority to take to the streets in a manner never seen before with Hindu monks, always extremely reticent in Bangladesh, leading the charge. Chinmoy Krishna Das Prabhu emerged from these protests as a leading organizer against the violence faced by Hindus.
Some of this violence was always present in Bangladesh, even in Sheikh Hasina’s time in office, despite her support for Hindu rights, and festivals, the main autumn religious festival Durga Puja of the Hindu community, faced some of the most-deadly attacks from radical Islamists, including instances mirroring what happens in Pakistan, where rogue elements would purposefully place torn copies of Quran at Durga Puja sites, and then lead mobs to attack the “blasphemers”. Fears of this kind of attack have grown exponentially in Bangladesh among the Hindu community. For many Islamists, who hate India for its role in helping the Bangladesh’s war for independence succeed, Hindus living in the country are seen as loyal to India rather than their homeland, to be rebuked as traitors at every given opportunity. Recent instances of Indian flags kept outside doors for people to stamp on them, or bringing in major arms shipments from Pakistan reflect the broad mindset of the government and those who control the streets in Bangladesh towards India.
Tragically, the Yunus government and most of global media are still in denial about what is happening in Bangladesh, and what the arrest of this Hindu monk means. More arrests no doubt will follow. Relations between Hindus and Muslims are becoming ever more edgy in Bangladesh. Islamist mobs regularly march the streets seeking to attack Hindu religious organisations.
Already repercussions of this constant violence against Hindus are having an impact across the border. In Indian Bengal, where a feeling of bonding of “epar Bangla, opar Bangla” (this side of Bengal, that side of Bengal) bonhomie had grown in recent years, is seeing a backlash against Bangladeshis. A prominent doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Kolkata has put out a video saying he will refuse to treat any Bangladeshi at his hospital. More than 400,000 Bangladeshis have travelled to India for medical reasons each year in recent times—a clampdown on this will have a grave impact on the healthcare of many ordinary Bangladeshis. Bangladesh also depends on India for the export of a very wide-range of goods and services including basic food and medicines, and even electric supply. Any disruption to these would be devastating to the Bangladeshi economy already reeling from the impact of the global slowdown and civil unrest which led to Hasina’s exit.
Perhaps even more troubling in the long-run is the collapse of the last resistance to Islamist logic in the Indian subcontinent. If Bangladesh falls to the Islamists, and changes its constitution, and its flag, and continues attacks on Hindus, India faces the problem of a nuclear-armed, 200 million-strong Islamist neighbour in the north, and another 200 million-strong, volatile Islamist neighbour in the east, which, even though it does not have nuclear weapons, has a porous border to exploit and cause perpetual problems in India’s Northeast. This sort of speculation, including of retriggering insurgency in Assam, is already happening about Islamist groups in Bangladesh. It is extremely unclear what kind of political authority Yunus has, or what control he had over radical groups within the Bangladeshi military (such groups have in the past tried to kill Hasina), to stop this kind of conspiracies.
India must be prepared to face this eventuality. The chances of Hasina being able to return to Bangladesh are slim, and there is no other even mildly pluralist political faction in Bangladesh. Along with India’s own pluralist conception of nationhood, Bangladesh’s national movement for freedom was a critical pillar of beating Islamist logic in the subcontinent, and we are now faced with the abysmal failure of this project. This will have deep long-term ramifications.
* Hindol Sengupta is professor of international relations at O. P. Jindal Global University, and co-founder of the foreign affairs platform, Global Order.