Taj Hashmi
What Indian nationalist Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915) once quipped, “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow” is no longer applicable to what is left of Bengal today, Bangladesh and the Indian state of Paschim Banga. Bangladesh in particular is at the receiving end of all traits of culture – material or immaterial. While most of the acquired behaviour is benign, some are infested with debilitating “flesh-eating” bacteria, which have already infected the body politic of Bangladesh without being considered dangerous by many.
The rapid, mindless adoption of alien culture is reflected in the language, literature, music, attire, manners, social etiquette, food habit, and most importantly, in politics and political culture of Bangladesh. As the quarter-century of Pakistani hegemony substantially moulded the political culture, so has expatriate workers’ exposure to Arab culture since the 1970s profoundly impacted the popular culture in Bangladesh. Thus, civil-military authoritarianism; state-sponsored and hypocritical Islamization programmes; and persecution of freethinkers, women, and minorities have almost become normative across the country.
The Pakistani “debacle” I’m referring to is state-sponsorship of Wahhabism, pre-modern Sharia code, and the infringement of human rights, especially of minorities and women. Thanks to its unabated growth, political Islam has already destabilized the country, and has spilled over beyond its borders. It’s no exaggeration that the country’s criminal justice system – to a large extent – has broken down, and its leftover is comparable to what prevails in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the age-old tribal honour system, “blood money”, and the so-called Blasphemy Law reign supreme.
Am I an alarmist for believing elements of the Pakistani “debacle” might eventually trickle down to Bangladesh? I don’t think so. Before I elaborate why I think the Pakistani “debacle” is potentially dangerous to Bangladesh, I cite just one example from Pakistan, in this regard. Recently, the whole world witnessed mammoth mass protests by tens of thousands of Pakistanis in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad against the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, a convicted killer of Salman Taseer, a former Governor of the Pakistani province of Punjab. Qadri, the Governor’s bodyguard, gunned him down in January 2011 for his public sympathy for Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman, convicted to death in 2010 for allegedly committing blasphemy against the Prophet of Islam. Interestingly, Qadri didn’t belong to any Islamist extremist group but a Sufi order.
Are the killing of Governor Taseer and people’s support for his killer among millions of Pakistanis relevant to Bangladesh? Possibly yes. Bangladesh has already adopted the soft version of Blasphemy Law to placate extremists who have terrorized secular writers and intellectuals, and have already killed scores of them for their alleged blasphemous writings against Islam. Ominously, there are people and groups in the country who favour killing for blasphemy. Some of them are persistently asking for the Blasphemy Law – with the provision of death penalty for blasphemers – proscription of “anti-Islamic” books, organizations, and declaration of the tiny Ahmadiyya Muslim community “non-Muslim”, a la Pakistan.
As an eyewitness to the metamorphosis of the relatively liberal and secular Bangladeshi society into an illiberal, dogmatic and intolerant one during the last four decades, I think the complacent people and Government are collectively responsible for the rot. What was once unthinkable, is a reality today; and what we think will never happen in this country, might be in the pipeline, will give us an unpleasant surprise, one day! What our rulers once considered harmless or even necessary – trading secularism with Islamism – have become a big liability and threat to secular democracy in Bangladesh. I refer to the unwise rehabilitation of Islam-oriented political parties, and very similar to Pakistan, the quixotic decision to make Islam as the “State Religion” in Bangladesh.
Since Pakistan and what is Bangladesh today started their postcolonial journey together in 1947, and have inherited the state-sponsored “soft” Islamism introduced by the first Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in 1949, they have a common legacy with regard to the Islamization process. Very similar to General Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, two successive military rulers of Bangladesh – Ziaur Rahman and H.M. Ershad – also legitimized political Islam in their own ways. Meanwhile, thanks to state patronage, ruling elite’s political expediency and hypocrisy, and pressure from Islamist parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami, “soft” Islamism has become crystallized, and posing a threat to liberal democracy and secularism in both Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Ever since the Liberation, the fate of civility, democracy and secularism in Bangladesh is in a state of entropy. While the gradual decline of order into disorder has become the norm, unless democracy and secularism get a breathing space, the re-staging of the Pakistani tragedy remains a not-so-distant possibility in Bangladesh. I know Bangladeshi analysts, scholars, and politicians might disagree with me. “Bangladesh is very different from Pakistan” – albeit hyperbolic and hollow – has been the common thread of their argument. I wish the argument were convincing!
The reality in Bangladesh is somewhat very different from the elite perception. Despite the Supreme Court decision of August 1, 2013, which declared the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami illegal, ruling that the party was unfit to contest national polls, the Islamist party is yet to be officially proscribed. And despite what we got from media reports early this month that Bangladesh Supreme Court could drop Islam as the country’s State Religion following a string of attacks on minority communities, one has reasons to believe no executive decision is in the offing, in concurrence with the judiciary. Once the genie is out, it’s almost impossible to put it back into the bottle.
Islamist extremism does not drop from the heavens or sprout up from the ground. Secular leaders – over the years – prepare the groundwork for Islamist takeover, terrorism, or insurgency through corruption, despotism, hypocrisy and opportunism. This has happened in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Bangladesh can’t remain immune to Islamist extremism, for an indefinite period. Since Islamism is an ideology-driven extremist ideology – not a law-and-order-problem – even highly efficient police and military are no match for Islamist extremism. Pakistan’s experience should be an eye-opener. Bangladesh must realize neither opportunistic politics nor political hypocrisy, but democracy and the rule of law are the only anti-dotes to Islamist extremism.
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