As Bangladesh slides into a communal cauldron, the foundational promise of ‘secularism’ as proposed by its tallest leader of independence movement i.e., Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, seems a forgotten dream.
Mujibur Rahman’s nuanced insistence in 1972, “Secularism does not mean the absence of religion. Hindus will observe their religion, Muslims will observe their religion, Christians will observe their religion, and Buddhists will observe their religion. No one will be allowed to interfere in others’ religious beliefs” would seem like cruel joke as the news of the heartless lynching of a minority Hindu minority man pours in. Frankly, it wasn’t just a case of uncontrolled mob frenzy, but one of an official and deliberate acquiescence to perpetuate such heinous crimes by the dispensation of the day.
The last few months have seen the violent desecration of Mujibur Rahman’s 32 Dhanmondi house, defacing of his murals and sculptures, dramatic toppling of his Statue (a la Saddam Hussein’s) in Bijoy Sarani, to even removal of his photo from currency notes.
There seems to be a concerted effort to reshape the national narrative, symbols, and identity – where the principal casualty has been diminishment of ‘secularism’ in the national consciousness. The new rallying cry of nationalism is inextricably conflated to the majoritarian religious denomination with the demonizing (and lynching) of minorities, becoming natural outcomes.
The country which slapped the small-spirited and regressive underpinnings of Two-Nation Theory in 1971, is seemingly in the throes of rescripting, renaming, and reimagining history, along with the other Sub-Continental countries.
Ironically, even the only country in the world to have been created in the name of religion i.e., Pakistan (the ostensible ‘land of the pure’), had a schizophrenic relationship with ‘secularism’ to start with. The father of the nation or Qaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was a ham-eating, whiskey-drinking, cigar swigging and dandy anglophile who wore bespoke Saville Row suits with twin-shade shoes. Hardly the poster boy for the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan” (officially became “Islamic” in 1956, declaring that the sovereignty belonged to Allah!). However, it became imperative to carefully invest in Jinnah’s photographic image in his classic sherwani and Karakul cap to look the part of an adherent Muslim-Statesman.
More importantly, what was conveniently “lost” was the original recording of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s controversial Constituent Assembly speech on 11th August 1947. There are good reasons for “misplacing” and never recounting that speech officially as the text went, “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship… You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Such secularism hardly sits well with the leadership instincts of today, where even the once-secular ethos of its Armed Forces now march to the new motto of “Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah”(Faith, Piety, Struggle in the Way of Allah).
The man who calls the shots in Pakistan, Field Marshal Asim Munir, has no qualms in digressing from Jinnah’s mealy-mouthed preference for secularism. If for Jinnah religion was a personal matter and not for the state – for the Field Marshal, religion is inseparable from the workings of the state. As a Hafiz-e-Quran (one who memorized the entire Quran), the Field Marshal has openly reinforced the two-nation narrative that insists on religious and cultural distinction. He infamously said, “Our religion is different. Our customs are different. Our traditions are different… That was the foundation of the Two-Nation Theory”.
But Field Marshal Asim Munir is not the principal architect of removing secularism – that dishonour is reserved for his-fellow General, and equally bigoted, Zia-ul-Haq. Slammed as the “Martial Law Jihadist” for his Shariazation of Pakistan, Zia had brazenly disagreed with Jinnah’s secular hues by brazenly countering, “We are following the Quran and Sunnah in governance, which Jinnah may not have fully implemented”.
Pakistan has never really recovered from the dark alleys of religious extremism that were sowed, nurtured, and reaped by Zia-ul-Haq, and is generously adopted and misused by Field Martial Asim Munir, as the inheritor of that spirit.
The brave but lost voice of the Pakistani human rights champion, Asma Jahangir, that “When the state allows religious extremism to flourish, it undermines its own citizens’ rights and freedoms” is prescient, as Pakistan finds itself in a war with itself and with its own creation of toxic religious forces. Now unleashed owing to the amoral shortsightedness and political one-upmanship, the genie of religious extremism is killing Pakistanis (and people across its borders) as it is imbued with State-support. Today, it simply refuses to return back to the proverbial bottle.
Like in the case of Bangladesh, in Pakistan too, the definitive idea of nationalism has got conflated with religion (the majority religion) and the resultant state of affairs in both the countries, is only consequential. The idea of religious-inspired supremacism when conjoined to the national identity may seem seductive, and winsome, when viewed from the electoral calculus – but the end-result of playing with the fire of mixing religion with the nation/governance, is always highly inflammable.
Even as a pacifist religion, Buddhism, was used politically to justify violence by supposed “nationalist groups” in order to protect Buddhist and Sinhala and Myanmari identities. In both countries, Buddhist monks promoted anti-minority rhetoric to target minority Hindus and Muslims.
Fearmongering, mobilising identity, and cherry-picking from history to frame violence as a defensive or righteous act, was normalised. The more self-proclaimed “nationalistic” the government in Sri Lanka and Myanmmar were, the more insecure and targeted were the minorities. Importantly, both Sri Lanka and Myanmmar turned more religious in latter years as Article 9 of the 1978 Constitution proclaimed “The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana”, whereas the revised Constitution of Myanmmar (2008) noted, “The Union recognizes the special position of Buddhism as the faith professed by the great majority of the citizens of the Union”.
This brings to question the inevitable fate of the most significant and impactful country in the subcontinent, India. Are we abiding and valouring the secular and constitutional values of our founding fathers who fought for freedom – or are we reinventing history that seeks grounding of India in a narrow-religious frame that imposes assertions beyond the constitutional magnificence of the “Unity in Diversity”?
Are we also succumbing to tell-tale signs of renaming, erasing, and reinterpreting history by conflating a religion to the sovereign, just as neighbouring countries sought to do? Is it enough to believe that the imposition of a certain religion is inherently more pacifist and therefore not posing threat to others, just as majority Sri Lankans and Burmese may have presumed, similarly?
History is instructive that the countries progress best when they segregate the State from the proverbial Church. This is not to suggest appeasement of any minority or a majority, but to insist on constitutional parity for all, without fear or favour to any – the consequences of pandering to majoritarism are playing across all sides of the Indian border. Why would we be different?
The founding fathers of all three major Indian Sub-continental countries i.e., India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, had promised secularism.
Lt General Bhopinder Singh retired from the Indian Army. He is former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.