2
Context
Human beings are said to be social animals associating with others in private and political spaces. The fear of loneliness and love for companionship create the context for institutions of private space such as the family and the community. It is not that concerns of security and transaction are absent from private space, but the primary purpose of association in private space is emotion—love, affection, attachment and respect. Frustrations over contestations and conflict in familial relations can be immensely destructive. But such quarrels need a larger structure to become devastating. They have to enter into the arena of political space.
Political space emerges as the site of contestations, conflicts, negotiation, cooperation and coexistence. Where interests are commercial, transactions usually resolve the conflict. For example, ‘A’ wants a stone axe but does not know how to build it; and ‘B’ has a spare but won’t give it to ‘A’. Worldly-wise ‘C’ suggests that if ‘A’ helps ‘B’ carry quality stone from a certain quarry, ‘B’ can make more axes and barter his creation for fish and yam. ‘A’ gets his axe, ‘B’ gets fish and yam, and ‘C’ probably ends up with everything—axe, fish and yam. Using innovation and enterprise to resolve conflicts of interests over possessions have given rise to trade and commerce.
Collective efforts to create common facilities also occur in political space. Maintenance of water sources, construction of protective fences around hutments and erection of tree-top platforms to keep watch required the effort of more than one person. They were probably the earliest civil society. Once the person, the family, the community and the society began functioning, the need for their proper management and defence against competing systems must have been acutely felt, for it gave rise to one of the most complex organizations known to humanity—political authority.
In all probability, the earliest political authority was claimed by either the strongest or the wiliest. It is also possible that the wiliest tricked the physically powerful into cooperating or the strongest threatened the crafty into submission and they joined hands to lord over everyone else. The way such cooperation in primitive societies emerged is a matter of conjecture—initiatives may have occurred differently in different societies. But the end result was almost similar—emergence of a vertical order, a hierarchy of power.
Invocations of supernatural forces that gave rain, sunshine and saved tribes from forest-fires were probably designed as methods of exercising control, but the elderly, the worldly-wise, or the wily old fox of yore managed to claim top of the hierarchy as oracles, shamans and priests. All authority requires the threat of coercion to enforce its will. Even though priests managed to frighten the meek with the wrath of nature, an occasional resort to brute force may have been necessary that gave birth to professional soldiery. Priests and soldiers are intimately connected and tribal chiefs often embodied both the authority of the priest and the power of the warrior. The earliest form of political organization was that of a tribe, which consisted of interdependent families. Tribal ties, in the name of castes, communities, extended families, religious orders, club memberships or even cooperatives are the strongest of all links in most societies.
It is quite possible that favoured by nature—higher productivity of land, larger population due to leisure and fertility, easier access to natural resources such as better stone to make axes or stronger sticks to craft arrows, more innovative entrepreneurs capable of adding value through transactions and stronger chiefs to enforce their will—some tribes grew to be too big to be able to remain confined within their territories. They expanded and subsumed neighbouring tribes. The emergence of kings and emperors was a process of natural progression; they were merely more complex forms of tribal chiefs—the bigger the tribe, the greater the stake of the chief and higher the complexity. Most early ‘emperors’—from Dhritarashtra in the mythology of the Mahabharata right up to the pharaohs of Egypt were essentially some of the greatest tribal chiefs of their time who waged war or constructed pyramids for the glory of their families and gods in that order.
Empires formed by conquest and commerce emerged out of the necessity of certain tribes that could no longer sustain themselves by remaining in the same place. They ventured out on foot, on horseback, in dugout canoes and established contact with other tribes. Sometimes, the association may have been consensual. In other instances, conflicts occurred. The sealing of alliances through marriage might also have been employed. The establishment of tribute to the stronger or more influential party was another option. It probably kick-started the process of empire-building—the bigger an empire got, the more its ambitions to acquire new territories and the higher its capacity to acquire subservience from smaller tribes.1
From the evolution of tribes to territories ruled by kings and empires the process appears to be a natural process of increasing complexity of social existence. However, the difficulty in understanding the concept of nations persists. The notion of nation inspires people to fight and die for fellow beings mostly unknown to them. Such an idea of sacrifice originates in religion. The crusades and jihad come naturally to mind when Christendom or Islam are mentioned. In the Indian subcontinent too, Buddha’s teachings somehow had the backing of Emperor Ashoka’s formidable army. Even though Devanampriya Ashoka (Favourite of Gods—that is how Ashoka describes himself in a stone inscription at Lumbini, in Nepal, the birthplace of Prince Siddhartha who later became Buddha) isn’t known to have used brute force to spread the influence of the Sangha; such a possibility probably speeded up the process of dispersion of the imperial religion. Revival of Hinduism through the efforts of Shankaracharya might not have been as peaceful as is commonly made out because all signs of Buddhism, once the major religion of the region, had almost disappeared from the Ganga plains much before the ascendance of the Islamic empire. Violence in some form or the other is always an integral part of any religion. The reason it is attributed more to the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb is probably because of his transparent religiosity and his hidden design of keeping the loyalty of the influential Muslim clergy and the powerful nobility.
The concept of nation appears to have emerged in opposition to the suffocation of organized religion. The declaration of the English Republic was made in the name of God,2 but the intent of the statement was the denial of the religious tenet of the divine right of kings. The nation was the people. Voltaire, who had been in exile for much of his life, had opined that the Bible was a book, ‘what fools have written, what imbeciles command, what rogues teach, and young children are made to learn by heart.’ Citizens without breeches in the streets of France accepted his interpretation and refused to mention His name in their cries of freedom: liberty, equality and fraternity. Nietzsche declared that God was dead; and German nationalism was born. Even in the United States of America, nationalism of the masses carried a whiff of antireligiosity. ‘As to the book called the Bible’, thundered Thomas Paine, ‘it is blasphemy to call it the word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book.’3
Nationalism
There are important differences in the way nationalism was propounded in England, France, Germany and USA. The Great Rebellion in England was for sovereignty over the Church and the State, while the French Revolution was all about fraternity. In Germany, Bismarck embarked upon his state-building spree for supremacy and the American Independence was basically for property rights. Religion was not an important element in any of these explanations of nationalism.
According to the English definition, nationalism is ‘the desire by a group of people who share the same race, culture, language, etc. to form an independent country’. The ethnocentrism of the definition made a scholar of Yugoslav studies observe: ‘It is interesting that most British people do not distinguish between citizenship and nationality’.4 In effect, the subject status of the British Queen may be made or acquired, but the true British are the ones born so to bona fide parents of historic ancestry. It is almost the same in Germanic tradition: belongingness to ‘volk’ is a privilege that can’t be bestowed upon anyone else. The French too apparently believe that the very idea of equality implies some form of uniformity and insist upon assimilation as a precondition of citizenship.5 In the melting-pot assumption of USA, at least three preconditions of acceptance are imminent: capitalism as the sole ideology, English as the only worthwhile language and inevitability of US supremacy in world affairs.
Various efforts have been made to intellectualize the phenomenon of nationalism. Ernest Gellner’s contingency theory and the ‘imagined community’ explanation of Benedict Anderson are widely quoted in almost every discussion on nation and nationalism. In essence, both explanations are rationalist. But emotions and religious beliefs may have some role to play in frequent outbreaks of patriotic frenzy. The Soviet nationalism was centred upon the premise of emancipation, but when push came to shove during the Second World War, doctrinaire communists and commissars had no hesitation in invoking the glory of Peter the Great.
Wider discussion upon the issue of nationalism is necessary to imagine Southasia for four reasons. First, the modern idea of nationalism is relatively new to the subcontinent where other markers of identity such as clan, caste, locality, province or religion are still very strong. The introduction offered by someone from Southasia would probably run something like this: Me, Chand Muhammad, Son of Hazi Saheb of Suga Village, Post Jaleshwar, Mahottary District or something similar. Second, religion has always been a strong component of political mobilization right from the uprising of 1857, through the Quit India Movement, Independence in 1947 and almost all subsequent contestations in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The fanatically religious Taliban and the US-supported regime in Kabul continue to be at loggerheads. Bangladesh emerged as a secular state and acquired Islamic status subsequently but the debate about its relevance continues, as Nurul Kabir reflects in the accompanying essay.
De-Secularisation of Bangladesh: On the Creating of a Democratic Future
by
Nurul Kabir
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. The time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Martin Luther King Jr, Letter from Birmingham Jail, 16 April 1963.
It was just past midnight on 19 November 2003 at Sadhanpur, a small village in Banshkhali upazila, about 25 kilometres south of the port city of Chittagong. An armed band of about 25 men stormed into the two-storey earthen house of Tejendra Lal Shil. Twelve members of the landed family, who had retired to different rooms on the upper floor a few hours ago, woke up with a start. They locked the doors from inside as the intruders tried to break in. Denied entry, the criminals locked the doors from outside, doused the ground floor with a petroleum product and set the house on fire. All but one of the residents, including seven women and a newborn, were burnt alive. As the screams of the dying shattered the silence and the flames dispelled the darkness and people came out of the adjacent houses, the criminals fired several gunshots and left the place. ([Daily] New Age, Dhaka, 20 November 2003.)
Only Bimal Shil, son of Tejendra, survived the carnage. He had jumped out through a window and broken a leg in the process. The victims of the horrific incident belonged to the minority Hindu community and the alleged perpetrators to the majority Muslim community. ‘The mortal remains of the charred bodies of an entire family reminded many of the vicious killer episodes of “Mississippi Burning”, the celebrated Hollywood film on Ku Klux Klan carnage,’ wrote a Dhaka-based English-language daily (ibid.).
A Dhaka-based Bangla daily reported in October 2003 that a politically influential member of the local Union Parishad had forcibly occupied 4.5 acres of cultivable land of a Christian family at village Mirzapur of Itail union in Jamalpur. Again, the alleged encroacher, Munser Ali, is a member of the majority Muslim community. ([Daily] Janakantha, Dhaka, 27 October 2003.)
Another Dhaka-based Bangla daily reported in September 2003 that a group of local political activists had forcibly encroached on some land of the Buddhist vihara (monastery) of the Rakhaine community at the coastal Kalapara upazila in Patuakhali. Once again, the perpetrators were Muslims ([Daily] Bhorer Kagoj, Dhaka, 17 September 2003).
The Ahmadiyya community, a small sect of Islam, came under repeated attacks from an overzealous group of the Sunni sect at Tejgaon in the capital, Dhaka, on 21 November 2003 ([Daily] New Age, Dhaka, 22 November 2003). The Sunni dogmatist group, which claims that Ahmadiyyas are kafirs (heretics) and demands that the state declare them non- Muslims, tried violently to make their way into an Ahmadiyya mosque in the area. The government provided protection to the Ahmadiyya mosque this time.
Later, on 19 December, the anti-Ahmadiyya religious bigots threatened to paralyse the country, if the government did not evict the Ahmadiyyas from a Nakhalpara mosque [in Dhaka] by 3 January 2004. ‘We will go there [the Ahmadiyya mosque] on 9 January [again] and we will not return until we have driven the kafirs out of the area’, the media quoted the amir of Hifazate Khatme Nabuwat Andolon Coordination Committee, an anti-Ahmadiyya alliance, to have announced at the gathering ([Daily] New Age, Dhaka, 20 December 2003).
The government did not drive out the Ahmadiyyas from the mosque but entertained one of the orthodox mullahs’ irrational demands before the expiry of the deadline. A ban on ‘all kinds of publications, sale, distribution and retention of all books and booklets on Islam published by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat’ came on 8 January 2004. Meanwhile, the administration had turned a blind eye to the reported intimidation of the Ahmadiyyas in some other parts of the country over the period in question. Dozens of incidents of repression, intimidation and exploitation of members of the religious minority communities—be they Hindus, Buddhists, Christians or Ahmadiyyas—took place in 2003. The media, especially the print media, covered the incidents as and when they unfolded.
One need not prepare a list or a chronology of such incidents to prove that the religious minority communities in Bangladesh have valid reasons to suffer from a sense of insecurity. What one, however, needs to do is examine whether the majority Muslim community regards intimidation and oppression of smaller religious communities as their divine responsibility or whether such intimidation and oppression are tools of vested groups of Muslims who use religion to secure earthly gains. Should the latter proposition be true, one needs to determine why the majority of Muslims allow or, for that matter, tolerate the repression of religious minorities by smaller vested groups of Muslims in a country that emerged as a nation-state through years of secular democratic movements of the people only 33 years ago. The formulation of any resolution to such repression of minority communities depends largely on the answers to such questions.
Not a Clash of Religious Ideologies, Yet
The first three instances of minority oppression mentioned above clearly follows a pattern, with material interest the prime motive and the governing political party providing the oppressors with the socially required patronage. Perpetrators of the Banshkhali carnage had reportedly intimidated Tejendra and his family on several occasions with a view to grabbing some land adjacent to their house before they carried out the arson. Reports also have it that the arsonists had, and still do, enjoy the patronage of a local member of the parliament, an influential central leader of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party. In the case of the encroachment of 4.5 acres of land of a Christian family at Mirzapur, the alleged encroacher is an influential member of the local government. According to media reports, he, too, belongs to the BNP. Also, the encroachment of the monastery land at Kalapara was designed to set up the local office of a political party none other than the ruling BNP.
The fourth instance can be construed to have its root in ideological conflict, especially since a section of Sunni leaders brands Ahmadiyyas as kafirs and has long been pressing the government to declare them non-Muslims. Ironically though, there was a report in the print media that ‘a dispute over the construction of an 18-storey commercial building was behind the attack on the Ahmadiyya mosque’ ([Daily] Janakantha, Dhaka, 23 November 2003).
Evidently, therefore, most of the incidents of exploitation or repression or intimidation, however one puts it, of the religious minority communities do not stem exclusively from religious bigotry, even though the perpetrators belong to the majority Muslim community. It is important, however, to note that a certain section of Sunni Muslims feel inspired and entitled to intimidating the Ahmadiyya community whenever Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh shares, directly or indirectly, the state power in Bangladesh. Jamaat asserts, at the ideological level, that the Ahmadiyyas are non-Muslims and argues, at the political level that the government should declare them non-Muslims. Abul A’la Moudoodi, founder of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, declared in 1953 that members of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat are non-Muslims and demanded that the government should declare them kafirs. The Pakistani government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto conceded to the Jamaat demand and declared the Ahmadiyyas non-Muslims in 1974. In Bangladesh, a small section of the Sunni bigots attacked the headquarters of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat at Bakshibazar in the capital Dhaka in October 1992 when the BNP was in power with the parliamentary support of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. They have become active once again since Jamaat secured its share of the state power in 2001, courtesy an electoral alliance with the BNP.
Noticeably, as evident in the aforementioned instances of the repression of religious minorities, the perpetrators enjoy the support, explicit and implicit, of influential political parties, especially the one in power. Needless to say, mainstream political parties outside power, play no lesser a hand in the repression or exploitation of the minority communities. Reports have it that immediately after the general elections in 1996 and 2001, the minority Hindu community in some constituencies had to face the wrath of the losing candidates belonging to both the power-contending political parties, the Bangladesh Awami League and the BNP.
The findings of a methodical ‘inquiry into causes and consequences of deprivation of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act’ point to the involvement in the repression of the religious minority communities of all the major political parties, especially when in power. The study by a group of professional researchers, led by Professor Abul Barakat of Dhaka University, has shown that 925,050 or 40 per cent of the total Hindu households of the country have been affected by the unjust ‘enemy property’ law of the Pakistan era, which continues to exist in independent Bangladesh under a different nomenclature—‘vested property law’ (Inquiry into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act: Framework for a Realistic Solution, ed. Abul Barkat, PRIP Trust, Dhaka, 2000, pp. 36–37). Out of 9,25,050, all of 7,48,850 were dispossessed of agricultural land; 2,51,085 of homesteads; 48,455 of garden land; 79,290 of ponds; 4,405 of commercial land; and 1,14,530 of other categories of lands (ibid., p. 37). The total amount of the dispossessed land was estimated at 1.64 million acres, which is 53 per cent of the total land owned by the Hindu community and 5.3 per cent of the total land area in Bangladesh (ibid.).
As of 1997, according to the study, 44.2 per cent of the individual occupiers of the dispossessed Hindu property belonged to the Awami League, 31.7 per cent to the BNP, 5.8 per cent to the Jatiya Party, 4.8 per cent to Jamaat and 1 per cent to other political parties, while the political identity of the remaining 10.6 per cent was ‘difficult to ascertain’ (ibid., p. 63). The scenario as regards the political identity of the occupiers was quite different in 1995—11.5 per cent belonged to the Awami League, 71.6 per cent to the BNP, 4.9 per cent to the Jatiya Party, 3.7 per cent to Jamaat and 1.2 per cent to other political parties. Again, the political identity of the remaining 6.2 per cent could not be ascertained (ibid., p. 63).
When one takes note of the fact that the two different situations in two different times, 1995 and 1997, were marked by the subsequent rules of the two major political parties, the BNP and the Awami League, one cannot fail to see a pattern: exponents of the ruling party possessed the greater share of the land dispossessed by the Hindus under the vested property law. When managing the affairs of the state, the Awami League, the BNP, the Jatiya Party of Jamaat has understandably found the perpetuation of communal disparity quite convenient for its translation into material dividends for the leaders and activists. It is unrealistic, therefore, to expect the government, regardless of whichever of the parties is at the helm, to ensure rule of law or, in other words, equal distribution of the state protection and criminal justice between majority and minority communities.
On the other hand, when observed dispassionately, it becomes clear that the number of Muslims grabbing the landed property of the minority communities, sometimes legally, courtesy of an unjust law such as the Vested Property Act, is not very high, given the size of the Muslim population in the country, which is more than 100 million out of a total of over 114 million.
Evidently, therefore, the majority of the Muslim population, who are neither communal nor beneficiaries of religious communalism, are insensitive to a sustained exploitation of the minority communities. The question is why. More so because it was the entire populace that rose in the 1950s and 1960s against the communal state of Pakistan and made enormous sacrifices to make Bangladesh emerge on a secular democratic political line in 1971. Is it that the same people are becoming communal as well? If so, why? What is the role of the ruling elite? What is the role of the state machinery, which the elite use to perpetuate its rule, in the regressive changes of the national psyche?
Non-secular Elite and Gradual Islamization of State, Politics and Education
After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the popular aspiration for a secular democracy apparently found adequate expression in the constitution of the new state. It rightly proclaimed ‘secularism’ as a ‘fundamental principle’ of the state, and avowed ‘elimination’ of ‘communalism in all its forms’, ‘granting by the State of political status in favour of any religion’, ‘abuse of religion for political purposes’, and ‘any discrimination against, or persecution of, persons practicing a particular religion’ (Article 12, ‘Authorized English Translation’ of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, which was passed by the Constituent Assembly of Bangladesh on 4 November 1972 and authenticated by the Speaker on 14 December 1972. The Constitution came into force on 16 December 1972).
Besides, while guaranteeing ‘every citizen’ the democratic right ‘to form associations or unions’, the constitution had prohibited formation of any group with an objective of advancing politics based on any religion.
… no person shall have the right to form or be a member or otherwise take part in the activities of, any communal or other association or union which in the name or on the basis of any religion has for its object, or pursues, a political purpose, …
said the constitution (Proviso, Article 38, ibid.).
There could not be a better beginning from the point of view of the secular democratic aspiration of a politically organized people wrestling out national independence. For a newly emerged state to retain its secular aspiration in society, flourish it further and sustain the ideal, it essentially needs certain ideological apparatus, such as compatible public education and mass media, to ensure secular democratic hegemony over any non-secular cultural trends; and to do so the state requires certain legal instruments. The couple of constitutional provisions in question had provided the government of the day with the adequate legal instruments to begin its secular journey.
But, it soon proved to be a false dawn. The government of the founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman quickly introduced rather a multi-theocracy in the name of secularism, both at the political and ideological levels, in running the affairs of the state. Immediately after the independence of Bangladesh on 16 December 1971, ‘some of the secular intellectuals from the University of Dhaka took the lead of discontinuing the practice of Pakistan days in opening the programmes of the State[-run] Radio and Television with recitations from the Holy Qur’an and substituted a programme of “Speaking the Truth” based on secular ethics’ (Talukder Maniruzzaman, Politics and Security of Bangladesh, University Press Limited, Dhaka, 1994, p. 9). But after the return of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from Pakistan’s prison on 10 January 1972, his government of the Awami League adopted ‘the policy of equal opportunity for all religions and ordered citations from the holy books of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity at the start of the broadcasts’ by the state-run electronic media (ibid.). The policy is absolutely inconsistent with the principles of secular democracy, which considers ‘faith’ as a matter of personal ‘belief ’ of the individual citizens, and subsequently disapproves endorsement of, or aid to, any religious doctrine by the state or the government of a state.
The government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman also failed to ensure ‘separation of religion from [public] education’, although such separation is the sine qua non for the growth as well as sustenance of secular values in a society, without which construction and perpetuation of a secular democratic state becomes an impossible proposition in any country. Bangladesh’s first education commission, headed by Dr Kudrat-e-Khuda, recommended, in the beginning, that ‘instead of creating blind allegiance to the external aspects and formal rituals of religion, the curricula and textbooks should inculcate in the students a refined and well integrated system of secular ethics to produce a new generation of citizens for secular Bangladesh’ (Bangladesh Sikkah (Education) Commission, Interim Report, 1973, p. 8).
The recommendation was absolutely compatible with the idea of secular democracy. ‘Plants are fashioned by cultivation, man by education’, observed the French educationist Jean Jacques Rousseau. Naturally, it is education, particularly primary and secondary education that shapes the political and cultural future of a populace. A society aspiring to be democratic in its political and cultural psyche, therefore, needs to formulate its education curriculum in a way that helps shape the psyche of the thousands of individual children in a democratic mould. Secularism is inherent in the concept of democracy, since democracy as an original idea emerged in the West through political struggles against feudalism backed by religious ideologies. That which is not secular is not democratic.
But Dr Khuda was to be disappointed, thanks primarily to the non-secular elite. The Khuda Commission had circulated among members of the most educated section of society—vice-chancellors and professors of universities and degree colleges, principals and professors of medical colleges, principals of higher secondary colleges, headmasters of high schools, members of associations of school and college teachers, and superintendents of madrasahs, educationists, essayists, poets, novelists, playwrights, newspaper editors, toplevel civil servants and members of parliament—a set of identical questionnaires for their opinions on the nature of education necessary for Bangladesh. As many as 2,869 persons responded, and 74.69 per cent of them said that ‘religious education should be an integral part of general education’ (Talukder Maniruzzaman, op. cit., p. 11).
The government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gave in to the desire of the non-secular elite, and the Khuda Commission gave up its secular approach, leaving behind the democratic aspirations of the millions, who had brought about the nation’s independence for, along with other things, a secular society and state. The commission eventually recommended papers on religions, as optional courses, for students of grades IX and X in the humanities groups (Bangladesh Sikkah (Education) Commission, Interim Report, op. cit., pp. 15–24).
So, the kind of religious syllabi that the Pakistani rulers had adopted for the majority Muslim students in the primary and secondary education with a political view to perpetuating Islamic cultural hegemony in society remained almost intact, and with that remained the religious syllabi for the non-Muslim students. Besides, the government adopted the policy of financially sponsoring hundreds of madrasahs, educational institutions that cannot but sow the seeds of religious and, therefore, parochial world view among students.
This was how the ruling elite of a newly emerged state failed to separate public education from religion in the early days of the country’s independence, leaving the scope for thousands of impressionable school and madrasah children to grow with a parochial world view, who would in the future stand in the way of building a truly secular society in Bangladesh.
The government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was overthrown by a military putsch in 1975, and all the governments that followed, except the one headed by Sheikh Hasina between 1996 and 2001, harshly criticized the Sheikh for his various undemocratic actions. However, all the successive governments, including that of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League, only carried forward vigorously the non-secular programmes of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, giving a fillip to the process of backward movement of the society in general.
To begin with, the military government headed by Justice Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem took away from the constitution, by a martial law proclamation in May 1976, the provision that prohibited the use of religion for political purposes (The proclamation was eventually ratified by Parliament through the Constitution through the Fifth Amended Act in1979). The proclamation was eventually ratified by Parliament through the Constitution (Fifth Amended Act, 1979). Then came another proclamation in 1977, which struck out Article 12 of the constitution that proclaimed ‘secularism’ as a fundamental principle of the state and inserted into the book new provisions, professing ‘absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah’ and pledging that ‘absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah shall be the basis of all activities’ of the state. The same proclamation inserted Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar Rahim ‘in the beginning’ and ‘above the Preamble’ of the constitution (The Proclamations [Amendment] Order, 1977, published in the Bangladesh Gazette Extraordinary, 23 April 1977, Office of the Chief Martial Law Administrator, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh). Later, all these political misdeeds, from the point of view of secular democratic values, were ‘ratified’ by the Parliament in 1979, with Lieutenant General Ziaur Rahman heading the undemocratic state machinery as its president (The Constitution (Fifth Amended) Act, 1979).
The negative changes in state principles, albeit from the point of view of secularism, found reflection on the education system as well. The committee on curricula and syllabi, which was constituted by Ziaur Rahman’s administration, asserted: ‘Islam is a complete code of life, not just a sum of rituals. A Muslim has to live his personal, social, economic and international life in accordance with Islam from childhood to death. So, acquiring knowledge of Islam is compulsory for all Muslim men and women.’ (Report of the Bangladesh National Syllabi and Curricula Committee, Part - II, Ministry of Education, Peoples Republic of Bangladesh, 1977, p. 149.) Subsequently, the syllabi and curricula committee in question recommended compulsory Islamic courses for Muslim students of all grades from I to VIII, and as an elective course for grades IX and X. Similar courses on other religions were recommended for students belonging to non-Muslim faiths (ibid.). The government of Ziaur Rahman quickly implemented the recommendations of the syllabi and curricula committee.
Then appeared in the political scene Lieutenant General H. M. Ershad, in 1982, and drove the last nail in the coffin of secular ideals at the state level. His regime had the constitution amended in June 1998 to declare that ‘the state religion of the Republic is Islam’ (Article 2A, Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, which was inserted into the constitution through the Constitution [Eighth Amendment] Act, 1988). While the separation of ‘divine’ religion/s from the earthly affairs of the state remains one of the major components of classical democracy, the Ershad regime mingled the two. The immediate political implication was, however, the relegation of members of the minority religious communities to second-class citizenry.
The height of insensitivity of the so-called democratic elite to the rights and dignity of members of the religious minority communities became evident, once again, when an influential group of the elite went to the court against ‘decentralization of the high court’, which was part of the autocratic constitutional amendment in question, ignoring the other part that relegated members of the minority religious communities to the status of second-grade citizens. (See the constitution’s 8th Amendment case judgement with summary of submissions, Bangladesh Legal Decisions, Special Issue, Volume IX (A), ed. Mahmudul Islam, Bangladesh Bar Council, Dhaka, 1989.)
After the fall of the Ershad regime in 1990, following some eight years of movement for democracy, the BNP, headed by Khaleda Zia, came to power through general elections in 1991. Notably, one of the central focuses of the BNP’s entire electoral campaign was Islam—the ‘need of defending Islam’ from the ‘un-Islamic’ political forces. The propaganda infected the electoral campaign of other political parties contending for state power. Sheikh Hasina, chief of the Awami League which occasionally claims to be a secular party, presided over her party’s entire electoral campaign, wearing a hijab (head scarf ) and carrying a rosary.
The government of Khaleda Zia adopted and implemented a policy for primary education in 2002, and the first of its 22 objectives was ‘indoctrination of students in the loyalty to and belief in the Almighty Allah, so that the belief inspires the students in their thought and work, and helps shape their spiritual, moral, social and human values’ (National Education Policy—2000, Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of Bangladesh). Indoctrination of ‘belief system’ of any kind is irrational, in the first place. Belief obstructs the believers from questioning the status quo—be it political or ideological, virtually relegating the thinking human to the non-thinking animal. And such a situation always helps the establishment to perpetuate the existing reality, which is, in the present case, a non-secular Bangladesh.
Then came the turn of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League, which came to power in 1996. The AL government formed another education commission, headed by Professor Shamsul Haque, in 1997, which found the ‘madrasah education an integral part of the national education system’ (Report of the Education Commission, 1998 Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of Bangladesh) while bringing in no changes to its syllabus that manufactures in hundreds of poor young boys a mediaeval world outlook, plagued by a deep sense of intolerance for opposing ideologies—political or religious. One of the major political agenda of the government of Sheikh Hasina was to prove, by means of patronizing various Islamic organizations/institutions, both politically and financially, that the party in no way lags behind the BNP in terms of detesting secular ideals.
Before the last general elections in 2001, the power-contending political parties had shed even the last string of secular ideals. The BNP’s election manifesto proclaimed that the party, if voted to power, ‘will not enact any law in contrary to Islam’ (Election Manifesto of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, 2001). The Jatiya Party, headed by H. M. Ershad, went a step further. ‘Shariah laws will be followed, the existing laws will be brought in line with the principles of the Qur’an and sunnah, special laws will be made for punishing those making derogatory remarks against Allah, the prophet and shariah, while religious education will be made compulsory at all levels’, announced the Jatiya Party (Election Manifesto of Jatiya Party, 2001). The Jamaat announced in unambiguous terms that the party, if voted to power, ‘will convert the Peoples’ Republic of Bangladesh into an Islamic Republic’ (Election Manifesto of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh, 2001). Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League decided not to lag behind. ‘If returned to power,’ it announced in its election manifesto, ‘no law will be enacted, which will be inconsistent with the dictates of the Qur’an and Hadith’ (Election Manifesto of Awami League, 2001). The proposition inherent in the announcement is absolutely inconsistent with the concept of classical democracy that finds the ‘general will’ of the people, instead of the will of divine God ‘revealed’ through religious scriptures, as ‘sovereign entity’ to govern the earthly affairs of a modern state. The AL announcement reminded many, secular and anti-secular alike, of a fact of history that the party was born in 1949 with the name Awami Muslim League.
Only the 11-party alliance, a conglomeration of the left and liberal democratic parties and groups, pledged that they, if voted to power, would work for ‘restoring’ secular ideals (Election Manifesto of the 11-party alliance, 2001). This alliance, however, failed to realise that that there had hardly been any ‘secular ideal’ ever practised by the state that could be ‘restored’ as such. Rather, Bangladesh needs to construct afresh a secular democratic state that will consider all its citizens as equal human beings, without considering their personal faiths.
Khaleda Zia’s BNP, which had forged electoral alliance with some Islamist fundamentalist parties and groups like Jamaat (a party that does not hide its political agenda to set up a theocratic state in the country), won the parliamentary polls in October 2001. Khaleda Zia’s government (of the four-party alliance) set up in January 2003 a national education commission, headed by Professor Maniruzzaman Miah, to ‘identify problems in the education system’ and to recommend measures to ‘improve on the system’. The Miah Commission found the system faulty, particularly as regards ‘uniformity’ of education required to build up a ‘unified’ nation. The commission, then, ‘identifies’ certain ‘problems’ in making reforms in the education curricula, particularly in the madrasah. ‘With Islam being the religion of the State, it is highly sensitive, and consequently timeconsuming, to bring in the [required] reforms in madrasah education’, observed the commission in its report (Report of the Jatiya Sikkah Commission—2003, Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of Bangladesh, p. 59).
The commission, therefore, found it ‘unnecessary to bring in any changes’ in, or amendments to, the ‘objectives’ of the primary education’ adopted in 2000 and approved by the government of BNP in 2002 (ibid., p. 9). Notably, the first of the 22 objectives, set in the policy in question, aims at, as said earlier, ‘indoctrination of students in the loyalty to and belief in the Almighty Allah, so that the belief inspires the students in their thought and work, and helps shape their spiritual, moral, social and human values’ accordingly (ibid.).
The result was obvious. The Miah Commission’s proposed curricula for the primary level (grade I to V) includes compulsory religious teachings and viva voce examinations on religious teachings for students of grade III to V. Students of grade IV and V will study, along with other courses, physical education, music and fine arts, but they will not have to take these subjects as seriously as religious teachings, as they will not be required to sit for any examination on these subjects (ibid., pp. 53–56).
Again, when recommending courses for the junior secondary (grade VI to VIII), the commission proposed a 100-mark course on religious teachings, 200-mark course on ‘history–geography–sociology’ and 50-mark course on physical education; there are no marks at all for courses on fine arts and music (ibid., p. 82).
At the secondary level (grade XI-X), the commission proposed 100 marks for religious teachings, and only 50 for history and 50 for geography, with no marks for fine arts and music. Courses like the history of science and philosophy, ethics and health– food–nutrition have been kept ‘optional’ (ibid.).
The accent remains, palpably, on religious teachings—an unfailing ideological instrument of producing and reproducing unthinking citizens that help to peacefully perpetuate undemocratic governance.
Jamaat, a partner in the BNP-led four-party government, have genuine reasons to boast of ‘foiling conspiracy’, if there was any, to secularize the education system. ‘There was a conspiracy to secularize the country’s education system. But we have foiled that conspiracy’, Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid, a Jamaat leader and social welfare minister of Khaleda’s cabinet, told a party rally in the capital city ([daily] Prothom Alo, Dhaka, 31 March 2004)—the day before the commission submitted its report to the Prime Minister on 31 March 2004.
Still, an unhappy Sheikh Hasina complains that ‘the BNP-Jamaat came to power in the name of religion’ but the coalition ‘have so far ignored Islam a lot’ ([daily] New Age, Dhaka, 12 September 2003). ‘It is an irony that the Awami League was branded as an anti-Islamic party, although my government worked tirelessly to establish the religion in the country’, the media quoted Hasina as saying when addressing a group of mullahs at her residential office in Dhaka on 11 September 2003 (ibid.).
The Jatiya Party, on the other hand, submitted a ‘private member bill’ in 2001, seeking compulsory state intervention in making sure that all Muslim citizens of the country pray to Allah five times a day, and providing a maximum financial punishment of Tk 10,000 for any Muslim citizen violating the provisions of the proposed law. (Jatiya Party lawmaker Golam Mohammad Kader, who finds ‘enforcement of namaj the only way of generating morality’ among citizens, submitted the bill called Namaj Kaem Ain in 2001. The proposed law seeks all offices, shopping malls, educational institutions, etc. to keep closed during every prayer time and the passenger transports lacking adequate space for offering prayer to stop by the nearest mosque. The bill also proposed the formation of monitoring committees at every administrative unit of the state, from the districts down to the municipal wards, to supervise enforcement of namaj five times a day.) Thank god, the bill has not been passed yet.
The brief almanac of the non-secular—rather anti-secular—legal, political, ideological and economic schemes implemented so far by the elite, active under various political platforms of the day, perhaps, provide adequate clues to why the once secular Muslim population of Bangladesh are gradually getting insensitive towards various kinds of exploitation of the religious minority communities by the politically backed vested quarters.
The more important point to note here is that the ruling elite’s deliberate implementations of the carefully crafted series of undemocratic, legal, ideological and economic programmes over the decades have already desensitized quite a significant section of the people about the de-secularizing process of society and state. The section of the people in question even includes many of those who once consciously fought for secular democracy.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
In the midst of many a regressive social, cultural and political development, there are still positive instances in which ordinary Muslims rose against repression of the minority communities–religious or ethnic. A ‘fact file’, prepared by a Dhaka-based human rights organization, Odhikar, shows that local Muslims, led by a sub-inspector of the Tomaltala police camp, carried out an attack on some Hindu households on 2 June 2003, following a deliberate propaganda by the ‘lawman’ in question that Bishwambar Das Babajee, a priest of a local ashram, had defecated on the Qur’an. At a point of the vandalism, a local Muslim asked the sub-inspector to produce evidence of the charge brought against Bishwambar Das (Daily Star, Dhaka, 17 August 2003). The policeman failed and it eventually came out that he had engineered the attack against the Hindu families in the locality because he was refused bribe that he had demanded of some Hindu people the day before. ‘Then the agitated [Muslim] mob, being repentant of their own misdeeds, cordoned the police camp and demanded punishment of the sub-inspector’, Bishwambar Das Babajee was quoted to the Odhikar investigators (ibid.).
The incident of mass resistance against the repression of the Hindu community is not an isolated example of civil society’s support to the genuine cause of the religious minority communities. When a group of fanatic Muslims of the Sunni sect threatened in October 2005 to take the Ahmadiyya base, the Dhaka-based South Asian People’s Union against Fundamentalism and Communalism called for civil society resistance to the uncivil move. Civil society, including left-wing political parties and individuals, actively stood by the Ahmadiyya community. The government was also forced to take actions against the Sunni bigots. ‘Police action and civil society resistance kept at bay religious fanatics who threatened to capture the Ahmadiyya headquarters’ in Dhaka on 27 October 2005 (Daily Star, Dhaka, 28 October 2005). The top leader of the Ahmadiyya community, Meer Mobashwer Ali, ‘thanked civil society’ for the democratic resistance, and observed that ‘the secular people of Bangladesh possess a strong power, and the dream that attended Bangladesh’s birth will come true if they join hands to this end’ (ibid.).
It is also important to note that the mass media, particularly the private-sector media, both print and electronic, has hardly failed to stand against any kind of communal gestures displayed by any extremist Islamist groups. A large number of human rights groups and non-governmental organizations are also quite active across the country in defending the democratic rights of the religious minority communities.
Still, if the political process of Islamization of the country’s education and state machinery continues, without immediate and effective political, ideological and cultural intervention by truly democratic forces of society, one can safely predict that the Muslim population in general will get ‘indoctrinated’ to a degree when democratic voices against intimidation, exploitation and oppression of the minority communities will get further subdued, if not muted. In such a possible scenario, it is not only the minority communities that will be affected adversely, the rationally thinking members of the majority Muslim community will also be a major victim of a theocratic polity which never tolerates rational views in general and dissenting opinions in particular.
Democratic Future To Be Created
The future is not merely to be predicted, it is also to be created. The construction, and perpetuation, of a secular democratic society calls for a series of politically conscious simultaneous actions at different levels, especially including education and culture—not to mention the obvious need for organizing perpetual protests, at the political level, against the formulation and implementation of non-secular policies and programmes by the communal elite.
As regards democratic intervention at the cultural and ideological level, fighting for the formulation and implementation of secular democratic curricula remains one of the most important responsibilities. Because, a secular and scientific education generates among children, who are the future citizens, a sense of demystification of the universe, which automatically encourages them to constantly question and review all structures, processes, institutions and situations of society from the point of view of democratic ideologies.
One, however, should not have any illusion that the much-required democratic intervention at the cultural and ideological levels will be welcome by the establishments of the undemocratic ruling elite, which has deliberately created over the last few decades the ‘existing order’, primarily to perpetuate their social political and economic interests. It is, therefore, only expected that the undemocratic establishment will offer stiff resistance at every possible level, while the non-secular intelligentsia that is, in the words of Antonio Gramsci, ‘organically bound’ to the establishment will be the first group to react. The political repressions by the coercive machinery of the state, controlled by the ruling elite, might well follow after the failure of the non-secular intelligentsia to face, at the social level, the stronger arguments for secular democratic culture of education and politics.
Still, the lesson of the history of the civilizations is that the forces of regression get eventually defeated to the ones of progress. There are people even among liberal democrats who believe these days, especially in the context of the United States and France, the motherlands of secular classical democracies, turning to be fundamentalists, that secular democracy is a political ‘utopia’ in this age! This is absolutely nonsense.
‘Utopias are often only premature truths’, as Lamartine put it long ago. Today’s utopia may well become the realities of tomorrow, because, every historical event is an ever-renewed deliverance from a topia (existing order) by a utopia, which arises out of it. Only in utopia and revolution is there true life, the institutional order is always only the evil residue which remains from ebbing utopias and revolutions … the road of history leads from one topia over a utopia to the next topia, etc. (Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, Harcourt, Inc., USA, 1936, p.198).
Hence, now is the time for the democratic forces to take up the difficult task of fighting back the non-secular social, political and cultural adversaries to construct a democratic state in Bangladesh, and thus defend the human dignity of members of the minority communities. This is the only way to defend the sense of dignity of members of the majority community.
A gigantic political task, indeed, but it remains, unquestionably, an achievable agenda.
(The essay was first published in the weekly, Holiday, Dhaka, on 11 November 2004, under the title ‘De-secularizing Bangladesh: Will the Weak Voice of the Minority Plunge into the Thunder of the Majority?’)
In Bhutan, an ostensible reason for the expulsion of Lhotshampas has been the challenge to Druk culture, but obviously religion has played some part in the conflict: most Lhotshampas are Hindus and Druks are predominantly Buddhists. Similar is the case in Sri Lanka where the role of religion in conflict between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu or Muslim Tamils often does not get the attention it deserves. Even though Hinduism is the religion of the majority in secular Nepal, Islam is the state religion of the predominantly Muslim Pakistan and Buddhism the prime religion in Burma and Tibet, religion in some or the other form is the integral part of nationalism in all these countries—minorities have to constantly prove their fealty. But the most important reason for the proper understanding of nationalism in Southasia is also the most complex: why is it that almost every country in the region has to live with the challenge of possible fragmentation even after over six decades of independence? Revisiting the tumult of the early days of the independence struggle in India can perhaps offer some explanation.
Religion has always played an important role—if not the most important role— in Southasian life. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. From Rajendra Chola (1012–44) who controlled parts of Indonesia from the southern part of India, through Akbar (1542–1605) of the Din-e-ilahi synthetic religion experiment to Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) of Raj Karega Khalsa premise, all great rulers of the last millennium have relied on religion to run their empires. It was the recognition of the traditional role of religion rather than enunciation of any new principle that made Mahatma Gandhi accept it as the primary force of his politics. But Gandhi’s rendition of religion was based on multiplicity of faiths coexisting in harmony. He told the Federation of International Fellowship in January 1928 that ‘After long study and experience I have come to these conclusions that: (1) all religions are true, (2) all religions have some error in them, (3) all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism. My veneration of other faiths is the same as for my own faith. Consequently, the thought of conversion is impossible … Our prayers for others ought never to be “God give them the light thou has given me!” but “Give them all the light and truth they need for their highest development!”’6
The third factor that affects the issue of nationalism in Southasia is language. Kashmiri poet Somdeva Bhatta in the eleventh century, the Tamil writer Kamban in the twelfth century, the Marathi versifier Gyandeva in the thirteenth century, Urdu lyricist Amir Khusrau in the fourteenth century who first wrote Hindustan is like Heaven, Telugu author Vemana of the fifteenth century, philosopher Kabir in early and Mirabai in the late sixteenth century, right up to the great Bengali bard of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Rabindranath Tagore—scores of litterateurs in Southasia—have left rich repertoire that are parts of everyday lives. This is the attachment that makes a student in Lucknow rejoice that Urdu is the state language of Kashmir. Bangladesh accepts the creation of Tagore as its national anthem with pride. Language divides, but it also unites. Language-based nationalism is an integral part of Southasian existence.
The fourth important component of the discourse on nationalism in Southasia is the paradox of identity and belongingness. Most Bangladeshis will probably find it hard to see any contradiction in laying claim to the heritage of the struggle for Pakistan on the one hand and liberation from Pakistan on the other. Punjabis, Tamils, Maithilis, Nepalese, Bengalis, Kashmiris or Tibetans across international borders in Southasia belong to the same cultural family and yet are members of different political communities. On the face of it, such cultural linkages across borders appear to be advantageous for better relationships between states. But it also complicates the status of linguistic minorities: what to make of a Nepali-speaking Indian in Uttarakhand, a Bengali Muslim in Assam or a Tamil from Sri Lanka in Kerala? Southasia is home to immense diversity, yet some form of unity is felt by the people of the region that remains unarticulated.
These four distinct features of nationalism—primacy of clan, relevance of religions, importance of language and perceived unity in diversity—will have to be kept in mind in imagining a new Southasia.
Sociology of Control
Deliberating upon the importance of power and authority in a slim but important volume on political sociology in India,7 Dipankar Gupta concludes that Western theories about nation-state and tradition and modernity needed to be adapted in view of somewhat different ground realities of the place. This view is in line with the conventional wisdom that measurable truths and generalized theories belong to the realm of physical sciences; humanities require close attention to the particular. This is what Kabir said when he placed the Akhan Dekhi experience above the Kagat Lekhi wisdom of the written word.
Tradition and modernity coexist in Southasia like seldom seen elsewhere. Traditionalism in Japan is a construct of maintaining identity in the face of contemporary challenges to its distinctiveness. Chinese modernity has proven to be shallow—the supposed modernity of its economy and defence has yet to penetrate into the system of governance or social practices. But the complexity of modernity and tradition overlapping each other makes the task of understanding Southasian society and polity extremely complex.
It is difficult to pigeonhole the production of political power and exercise of coercive authority in Southasia in the constructs of Max Weber. Governance systems in the region oscillate between the traditional, rational-legal and the charismatic. Karl Marx’s conception of class solidarity is even less relevant in India where Ram Manohar Lohia, a critic and contemporary of Jawaharlal Nehru, famously observed that caste was perhaps the more important determinant. However, there are certain important features of political power in Southasia that need to be kept in mind.
A visible characteristic of Southasian politics is the dynastic succession of leadership—the most prominent of them being the Nehru-Gandhi family where a fifth-generation scion was anointed as Secretary General amidst speculations of snap polls in September 2007. From Motilal Nehru down to Rahul Gandhi, the dynasty has produced three prime ministers—Jawaharlal, Indira and Rajiv—and scores of members of parliaments, ministers, party functionaries and diplomats. The Koirala family holds a record in Nepal where all the three sons of Krishna Prasad—Matrika, Bishweshwar and Girija rose to become prime ministers. The Begums of Bangladesh and Pakistan owe more to their lineage in politics than anything else. Similar is the case with Bhandarnaike in Sri Lanka.
Authoritarian trends in politics can partly be attributed to dynastic succession. In India, where procedural democracy repeatedly sends clannish politicians to power—Mishras and Yadavs in Bihar, Karunanidhis and Ramchandrans in Tamil Nadu, Raos in Andhra, Karunakarans in Kerala, Pawars and Thakares in Maharashtra, Scindias in Madhya Pradesh, Mirdhas in Rajasthan, Abdullahs and Sayeeds in Kashmir and Patnaiks in Orissa; the list is endless—elected leaders often behave like feudal lords. Oligarchic cliques built by dynastic politicians elsewhere in Southasia are hardly different.
To be sure, there are certain advantages in having elected leaders from established families. They are known quantities and voters can make a fair guess about their attitude. Existing networks of supporters make dynastic regimes relatively stable. It’s not for nothing that from North Korea to Singapore and from Japan to USA, dynastic succession continues to thrive. But risks of elected scions are no less compelling.
Most leaders from established political families are essentially in favour of maintaining status quo. They find it easier to live in peace with the military,8 commercial or administrative elite. But what really makes dynastic succession dangerous is the tendency of elected hereditary leaders to concentrate political power in their own hands. Since they thrive because of the politics of patronage, centralization of all authority ensues. Constitutional procedures fall by the wayside as invincible leaders begin to perceive themselves as indispensable. Sadly, this gives rise to submissive tendencies among their followers. One of the ways of countering this trend can perhaps be an effective devolution of power at the provincial level and empowerment of local government units at the grass roots.
The social structure that emerges out of Southasian nationalism is inherently susceptible to manipulation by the middle class. In Nepal, it has been argued that the ‘Five M’ of military, mandarins, merchants, meddlers and mediators sustained the sixth M—absolute monarchy. In India, the bourgeoisie loves to deride the system that benefits it the most. The Sinhalese chauvinism in Sri Lanka is largely a middleclass phenomenon and most of the supporters of General Parvez Musharraf ’s powergrab were from the comfortable classes. The anti-politics hysteria in Bangladesh that resulted in the cancellation of elections and suspension of democracy was ratcheted up by the bourgeoisie. According to classical theories, the middle class is a bulwark against populist tendencies and a protector of freedom. Southasian experience has been to the contrary.
Fortunately, wherever there are periodic elections, the poor go out and vote in large numbers, yet again contrary to the realities of Western societies, where it is the middle class that sways election results. In Southasia, the comfortable class is hesitant to queue up out in the sun to vote, so they stay home while the poor want to make the best use of their right. Willingness and the ability of the poor to vote out the powerful have given rise to three kinds of reactions among the members of the traditional elite. In Pakistan, the response has been military takeovers with an unfailing regularity. The defence forces of Pakistan consider themselves to be the guardians of the state and step into the civilian sphere whenever they feel that their intervention has become necessary.
In India, the established elite respond to the voters’ yearning for change by making appeals to the baser instincts of voters. For Nehru, it was grandeur; Indira Gandhi maintained her grip with the slogan of Garibi Hatao (remove poverty). Democracy was the word that the Janata Party experiment in the late 1970s established in the popular discourse. The Bhartiya Janata Party, Shiva Sena and a few other communal parties pander to the religiosity of the masses. But the recent development has overtaken all previous trends. Regionalism is the new arbitrator of destinies of political parties. Coalition building is a compulsion for any political party aiming to get into power in New Delhi. Populism is the vehicle of political power in the republic of India. In countries like Bangladesh and Nepal where the international community—read donors and lenders—have considerable influence, NGOs sometimes push political parties into the background. Guardianship, populism and manipulation are aberrations of democracy, but they are the realities of social control systems in Southasia that cannot be wished away.
Regionalism, however, has its saving graces as far as formation of integrated Southasian identity is concerned. Tamils, Punjabis, Bengalis, Sindhis and Maithilis bond so well across international borders that politics often fails to keep them perpetually divided. The fundamental unity emerges as soon as instigating factors of enmity disappear. Perhaps this is the reason that centralized states of Southasia fear devolution of power and federalism and want to maintain the hegemony of the centre through what is often called ‘de-centralization’. Empowered cultural units within the boundaries of sovereign states will probably help allay the fears of central governments and initiate cross-border linkages of people’s unity. It is a timeconsuming process, but the unity achieved through this ‘bottom-up’ approach will be much more lasting than the one created by amity between elites of capital cities.
Separated Economy
One of the unfortunate fallouts of studying the history of the divided people in Southasia9 through the Western lenses of nationalism has been that undue attention is given to personalities (Mohammad Ali Jinnah versus Jawaharlal Nehru), religion (Hindu versus Muslim) and disintegration after independence (disciplined rulers and anarchic population). The economic rationale that created conditions for partition and which may lead to eventual integration is often ignored.
British colonialism, especially after the uprising of 1857, destroyed the resilience of the feudal mode of production and distribution in Southasia. The relationship between land, capital, enterprise and labour has always been in decreasing order of importance in feudal Southasia. Merchants of the British Empire made it worse by putting capital above everything else. It turned feudal zamindars (patrons and protectors) into self-centred talukdars, traditional seths (trusties of wealth) into sahukars (moneylenders), adventurous paikars (entrepreneurs) into banias (petty shopkeepers) and karigars (craftsmen) into kaamdars (workers). Zamindars, seths, paikars and karigars benefited differently from the collective, but their relationship was based on recognition of each other’s importance and consequent mutual respect, the exception being the ‘untouchables’ of the Hindu society. But interactions between talukdars, sahukars, banias, and kaamdars had to be mediated by the state; each of them recognized their dispensability and lacked the confidence to respect each other. Once this animosity became widespread, nominal control of the centre that had existed from the days of the Mughals could not hold together. The human tragedy during Partition notwithstanding, perhaps it needs to be kept in mind that had the British rule continued any longer, the acrimony and hostility building up in Indian society since 1857 could have led to even bigger horrors than the displacement, destruction and death of 1947.
Discussing history and memory in his classic tract on The Idea of History, R. G. Collingwood argues that memory need not be experience of the self.10 What one has heard also goes into the repertoire of personal memory. In fact, such a memory has always played an important role in the formation of ideas about the ‘self ’ and the ‘other’ in Southasian societies. One such memory is about the exploitative castes in the Indian mainland. The role that the British rule played in institutionalization of this memory is seldom examined for the fear of being branded as reactionary. However, it is possible to argue that the surplus economy of pre-British India that soon degenerated into a deficit one must have had some saving graces. It needs to be recognized that the antagonism against co-existence of castes—its predecessors have been religious hatred and linguistic hostility—couldn’t have been as strong as it is now without some help from the formation of memory inimical to traditions.
In Muslim households of Uttar Pradesh, bania is almost a term of abuse. Many Hindus, on the other hand, still consider Muslims to be unreliable. If this is the state of affairs after 60 years of organized state effort of creating unity, the situation that existed prior to 1947 can only be imagined. The Kashiram–Mayawati combine created an electoral alliance of what they called Bahujan (the majority) out of a provocative slogan: kanta, kalam aur talwar, inko maro jute chaar. The allusion is to the stranglehold of a weighing balance, pen, and sword signifying banias, Brahmans and Rajputs. Clearly, the inter-relationship that had made the caste system work had lost all relevance and a necessity of manufacturing new bases of association is acutely being felt.
Modern economy that came into existence after the Industrial Revolution in Europe is not based on trust; it functions on the basis of contracts that require the authority of the state to back them up. When the state is elitist, as in colonies, monarchies, military dictatorships or plain majoritarian democracies, those without access to power have very little control over their destinies. The deficiency of political power manifests itself in the emergence of dependent peripheries around prosperous centres. Under the cover of what has been called the ‘competitive advantage’—do only that which is easily possible—regions have been pushed into the shadow of centres of political power. Thus, when Jinnah was told that creation of Pakistan will not work in Bengal because jute farming was done in the eastern part while all the mills to process the agricultural produce were located in the western part which was then traded through Calcutta, Qaid-e-Azam reportedly thundered that it was all the more reason to separate both to let them develop independently. Ironically, when Jinnah’s Pakistan gave continuity to the same colonial policy—East Pakistan as the producer and West Pakistan as the processor, trader and governor—the creation of Bangladesh became inevitable.
The post-modern economy, however, has the potential of reactivating the premodern coexistence with specialization brought about by modernity. When trade between India and Pakistan became a victim of military confrontations, enterprising merchants got around the barrier by re-routing supplies through Singapore, Dubai and even South Africa. Relationships developed in Silicon Valley. London Hospitals had professional entrepreneurs, coming from a region, working together. The postmodern economy is likely to help people rediscover old ties of language, caste, culture and clan across borders and cement them through social networks, international institutions and professional associations rather than government guarantees. Separated economies of Southasia can then work together without imposition of instruments of transactions from the top such as South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA). This bottoms-up approach is slower than the imposed functionality of international agreements and covenants, but will perhaps be much more integrative and sustainable in the long run.
Despite relentless effort of the British to wipe out traditional craft of the Indian subcontinent and replace it with modern industrial products, mostly imported from Europe, skills that have evolved over the millennia still survive in different parts of the region. They have been travelling around the landmass for generations for livelihood and recently created political boundaries are merely hassles in their movement. Awareness of rights and contestations of state-imposed conditionalities need to be seen in the light of interdependence built into the very system of Southasian economy. In Kathmandu, some of the best masons are from East Bengal, the most efficient plumbers are from Orissa and the finest carpenters belong to North Bihar; and no fencing of borders is going to stop their movement. Freeing of the labour movement in Southasia is perhaps more important than all the free-trade agreements that regimes of the region can think of.
Petrified Polity
All wars are fought out of fear; and the persistence of armed conflicts in the subcontinent shows that the states of the region are extremely frightened. The establishment in New Delhi perhaps fears that Jawaharlal Nehru’s invention of India—that’s what his Discovery of India is all about—may not survive. According to all the Western theories of nation-state, India is too heterogeneous to be a single country. The guardians in the garrisons of Islamabad are unsure of the two-nation theory that has already created three states. The Dhaka intelligentsia is apprehensive of its own theory: can language alone hold a country together? The dread in Colombo is different. The spectre of marginalization of Sinhalese ‘land, race and faith’ prompted populist rulers of Colombo to enact Sinhala-only official language legislation of 1956. Nearly half-a-century later, the condition in the island had become so serious that the founding chair of political science at the University of Ceylon, A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, made the grim prediction in the preface of his book The Break-up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict: ‘Ceylon has already split into two entities. At present, this is a state of mind; for it to become a territorial reality is a question of time.’11 Reluctance of unrepentant traditional elite to usher in inclusive policies created conditions for the Madhesh Uprising in the plains of Nepal in the winter of 2007, but its aftershocks has merely hardened the fear of disintegration in Kathmandu. Despite enormous resources spent in the name of defence, Southasian regimes are terrified. The fear psychosis of the ruling elite in the capital cities of the subcontinent lies at the root of most armed conflicts. This also signifies the failure of institutional mechanism—constitutions of independent countries—to establish grounds of peaceful contestations.
The very origin of the word ‘constitution’ says everything that it means. According to the dictionary definition, the word comes from ‘constitution’ in Middle English (denoting a law, or a body of laws or customs). It claims its root to Latin constitutio(n-). This in turn evolved from constituere meaning establish or appoint which is a combined form of con (together) and statuere (set up). It is believed that the concept of rule of law in Greece in 461 BC enshrined ISONOMY (equality before laws), ISOTIMY (equal right to hold public office) and ISEGORY (liberty of expression) as its basic features. Those tenets continue to be the fundamental faiths of constitutionalism. But even in societies that lay claim to Greek heritage, the struggle for constitutional order has been long and arduous. To take the British example, the beginning of their unwritten constitution perhaps started with the Magna Carta (The Great Charter on Human Rights) of 1215, Petition of Rights in 1629 (end of the Divine Right Theory), and the Bill of Rights (unquestioned supremacy of Parliament) of 13 February 1689 and continues to evolve even now. The persistence of people’s desire to create a just society has been a common feature of all struggles for constitutionalism.
From the ancient Manusmriti, ‘Vidur Niti’ of Mahabharata and Kautilya’s Arthasastra to Ain-e-Akbari of Mughal rulers, supremacy of the written law has always existed in some or the other form in Southasia. Jung Bahadur Kunwar Rana of Nepal is acclaimed to have been the first eastern potentate to set foot in Europe. Upon his return, he enacted the Muluki Ain patterned after the Napoleonic code. But these records can hardly be cited as practice of constitutionalism. A yearning for living under a constitution made by the people is an inalienable part of the modern definition of constitutionalism. This is where experiences in Southasia widely differ.
The constitution-making exercise in India is essentially a consensus-building process. That is perhaps the reason it continues to evolve to this day. A major aberration to the evolution of constitutional rule in India has been Indira Gandhi’s experiments in authoritarian rule in the name of internal Emergency in the mid-seventies, but the country got over it within a relatively short period. However, its lingering legacy—the concept of enshrining duties of citizens in addition to their rights in the constitution itself—continues to empower India’s judiciary and other non-elected institutions into making laws that bear little relation to the concerns of the people.
The Constitution of Pakistan is a product of negations between competing power groups that held sway in the newly formed state in the 1940s and 1950s. The trials and tribulations of the constitution-building process between the adoption of the Objective Resolution of Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan in March 1949 and the final enforcement of a proper constitution on 23 March 1956 include the decision of the Chief Justice Muhammad Munir that gave birth to that peculiarly Pakistani invention: Doctrine of Necessity. This archaic principle has since been used by almost every usurper to justify patently unconstitutional takeovers. Another much-misused instrument in Pakistan is something called the Legal Framework Order issued by various military dictators from time to time to introduce convenient legal innovations.
The ‘contribution’ of Bangladesh and Nepal to the collection of aberrations is similar—reinterpretations of constitutional provisions by ‘useful idiots’ of the legal profession to justify repeated transgressions by authorities. In Sri Lanka, the constitution is used as a tool of institutionalizing discrimination rather than guaranteeing minority rights and establishing rules for fair play.
The petrified polity of independent states in Southasia has created constitutions in their own image—documents for exercising control rather than enabling citizens. In this situation, even if covenants of regional integration were to evolve, their implementation would not be easy. Only people’s movements for the coexistence of states within Southasian plural unity can bring about substantive changes under these circumstances.