by IKHTISAD AHMED
Are we burying all the secular voices?
Atheism has become a derogatory word
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina knows the pain of loss better than most. She has lived with it since the slaughter of her family on August 15, 1975. Her promise to bring the murderers of Rajib Haider — an architect and atheist, secular blogger killed in Dhaka for his views February 15, 2013 — to justice, had the honesty of someone who deeply empathised with his family, whom she was visiting to offer her condolences and grieve with in person. Three years later, Bangladesh still awaits fulfilment of that promise.
Two days after Bangladesh turned 45, the High Court took two minutes to dismiss a petition that had been a nuisance to the country’s fiercely independent judiciary since 1988.
Following the same court’s ruling in October 2010, secularism, enshrined in the constitution as one of the four founding principles of the nation, was revived when the document was amended for the 15th time by a legislative branch committed to keeping the nation and its laws from becoming archaic.
The compromise of retaining Islam as the state religion, however, meant that the constitution was rendered incongruent and toothless due to its inherent contradictions.
The March 28 decision upheld Islam’s standing, thereby allowing Awami League’s version of a Bangladesh built on the solid foundations of compromise to continue unabated.
The trouble with compromise is that it allows those in power to garner support from diametrically opposite views as required to remain in power, with devastating consequences for average citizens. Nazimuddin Samad, a secular activist who was one of the few voices to take issue with the baffling legal ruling, was butchered by Islamic fundamentalists on April 7.
Vast swathes of conversations on the day and the one after centred on the impending Pohela Boishakh celebrations being anti-Islamic, while the government investigated whether Nazimuddin had hurt religious sentiments.
The government concurred with the loud vitriolic voices of intolerance in looking to blame the victim and make murder acceptable, legal.
In her Pohela Boishakh address after Nazimuddin’s murder, the same prime minister who had so passionately showed solidarity with Rajib, secularism, and the oppressed secularists, chose to be on the wrong side of history.
Dictated by perceived realpolitik, she denounced indecent statements about religion and declared the government could not take responsibility for their heinous consequences. It matters little what else she said since she had expressly endorsed censorship, intolerance, and the violent vigilantism of narrow-minded fundamentalists.
A correct version of Bangladeshi history does, indeed, show Awami League’s claims of military dictators, Zia and Ershad, introducing the scourge of Islamism in independent Bangladesh to be true.
The claims of Jamaat’s historic fundamentalism and violence also hold water. The party in government is less candid about contemporary history, however.
Dhaka Tribune for more