¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·

A FEW days after the fall of Ershad, Ahmed Sofa, a thinker, novelist and cultural activist, at an informal gathering quipped: ‘When Awami League rises, only the leaders and their cronies derive all the benefits. But when it falls, it takes the Bengali nation down with it.’ He could not be more prophetic. That is partly because the Awami League had a very confused idea of Bengali nation that triggered a contested polity and partly because the Hindu-Muslim divide of the subcontinent played a role.

Besides, as the Muslims across the world are still jostling to find a balance between Islam and modernity, Bangladesh is not exempt. Here, too, the Awami League’s baffling role made matters even worse. Moreover, the despotic, corrupt and inept AL regime seeking legitimacy in the name of the spirit of the liberation war has put the war on the dock. It is upsetting because without it, there is no Bangladesh. So many contradictions have accumulated since 71 that unless we resolve them carefully, we may slip into uncertainty once again that may well push us into a black hole.

Ìý

How did we reach this point?

BESIDES the collaborators, there was rock solid unity during the glorious liberation war in 1971. How did it dissipate? No one is more responsible than the Awami League as a party and Bangabandhu as an individual. Yet, the liberation war and Bangladesh are just unthinkable without him. Here lies the paradox that we have been writhing with ever since. It is time to demystify that puzzle. ÌýÌýÌý

A people or a society unites based on certain shared belief and value systems. Such values emerge from a long sharing of culture, faith, ethnicity and economy. The longer the sharing, the more solid the unity. But there is an inherent problem with such unity. It it has a shelf life. It dissipates once the collective effort to achieve a goal reaches the fruition point. So, many conditions such as class, faith, region and gender start to stir from within, eroding unity. Bangladesh is no exception. Several important laws by the first post-liberation government may reveal how and when the solid unity of 1971 began to wither. Two especially need mention.

TheÌý Ìýliberation war was a joint effort of all parties except the pro-Pakistani ones. But the Awami League ignored this fact and convened a constituent assembly only by elected members of the national and provincial assembly elected under the previous administration in 1970. There was neither any representative from other political parties/groups nor any from the freedom fighters, the ones who actually fought the war. As a result the spirit and unity of the battlefield was absent in the chamber. This denial sowed the seeds of discontent and the consolidation of power by a single party — the first step towards autocracy. Additionally, it also enabled the continuation of the semi-colonial administrative state structure of the Pakistan era.

Second, Bengali nationalism was declared the basis of our nationhood because that is what we strove for during decades before 1971. But when Bangabandhu was declared the father of the nation, it indicated that the Awami League could not either differentiate between a nation and a state or it was harking back to the original Lahore resolution of 1940. It had stated creation of independent Muslim states in provinces of the undivided India where Muslims were a majority. But Jinnah had deleted the ‘s’ of the states in 46 that created scope for the West Pakistanis to exploit the Bengali Muslims after partition. Maybe, the Awami League thought that 1971 had fixed Jinnah’s error of 1946, thus Bengali Muslim Nation becomes the logical outcome and Bangabandhu its natural father. But no, the Awami League claimed Bengali nationhood. It became the root of all sociopolitical conflicts we have suffered from ever since. Difference between Bengali and Bengali Muslim nation needs to be untangled.

The idea of nation is one of the products of the European enlightenment. It took Europe by storm in the 18th century but grew into a practical sociopolitical unit in the 19th century. Until then, ie pre-modern era, most people were either serfs, petty traders or drifters. They were also part of a society that developed a common language and culture over many centuries in a given geographic location. Some were ethnically English or French or German and so on. But they were all exploited by the nobility and the church. Moreover, long religious wars exhausted them to the bone. So, when the same people seized power by revolutionary means, they called themselves a ‘nation’ without a temporal master. And, as the exploitation was carried out in the name of religion, the post-revolutionary societies made sure that state and religion were split — the state to take care of worldly affairs and religion to care for spiritual needs.

The new society would be governed by laws based on human reason and not the scriptures. This was at the heart of the enlightenment and by extension, modernity. It also had other key elements like giving rise to rival classes; but, that is another story. How this European experience was replicated in the rest of the world depended, and still depends, on many conditions of history, culture and religion in non-European societies. It is a subject of study.

Former colonial states tried to find balance between modernity and their own traditions. A few did the catching up well, some struggled, yet some are in deep trouble. How did Bangladesh fare? In its middle age of 53 years, it sadly finds itself in the last group. There are various reasons for that that cannot be covered in a single op-ed.

The state of Bangladesh, its birth, history and geography are intrinsically connected with that of the subcontinent. It did not fall from the sky one fine day. It is the cumulative result of historical dynamics of the entire subcontinent. By the late first millennium, many regions of then India slowly began to develop their distinct regional ethnic identities. Bengal was one of them. It was still a nascent geopolitical entity. It took nearly millennia to grow a modern political life by the late 19th century by combining cultural and political ambition of the growing middle classes. But it still failed to unite the entire Bengali-speaking people.Ìý

Meanwhile, a far stronger pull of all Indian nation took the subcontinent by storm. On the face, it called for a modern nation in the European mould but had a subtext that appealed to India’s ancient past of Brahminic supremacy in the Vedic age — a long held aspiration of a good number of the higher caste intelligentsia. The two currents were hard to separate in the national movement. Consequently, it was unworkable for most Muslims to integrate in this vision. This impasse resulted in the birth of the Pakistan movement. It was more of a response to a hostile external condition than an aspiration based on its own organic merit. How could the Muslims of India abruptly become a nation while all other Muslims across the world remained rooted in their respective geoethnic identity? It is difficult to make any sense without at least a peek into Islamic civilisation. Another aspect of the Indian national movement needs mention. It ignored a key historical fact of the past three millennia of being a multi-national, lingual, religious, regional and cultural entity except for just a few decades under Asoka. It was a tapestry of multiple identities instead of a single dominant one.

Ìý

Is Islam and modernity Incompatible?

WHY is it that Islamic societies nearly everywhere are at war with itself? They differ in so many ways how to define the role of Islam in sociopolitical life. While they suffer hostile Islamophobia from a great number of people from other faiths at varying scales, they rarely ask themselves why. Some of the radical outfits create havoc and spill blood in the name of religion but fail to understand the misfortunes of the polity and, instead, blame modernity. They hardly realise that their crimes harm Muslims far more than others. The doctrinal schools instead of introspection prefer to stay locked in anachronism. Their views have a striking similarity with Christianity in the dark ages of Europe. What s the remedy? Is there any? For that, it is vital to take at least a cursory look at the contour of Islamic civilisation.

From the 8th to the 18th century, despite sectarian rifts and bloody power struggles in every region, an ‘Islamic world system’ prevailed from Spain to Indonesia. Yes, over time, lots of regions were lost or gained, but the rest of the world, nevertheless, had to come to terms with this system. Like any other civilisation or empire, it, too, had its share of attributes and faultlines and, in course of time, became complacent and imagined the sun would never set in their empire. Although some of the key ideas of the Industrial Revolution were born in the Islamic world in its heyday, they were advanced in Europe from the 18th century onward. It led to modernity. The balance of power rapidly started to shift to Europe. Muslims were justifiably baffled, frustrated and angry. They never fully recovered from the shock.

Unable to cope with the capitalist onslaught of the colonial project and the violence that came with it Muslim societies, like other traditional societies, buckled all right but held a deep grudge against modernity and, by extension, one of its core values — the separation of the state and religion. Europe embraced modernity by ridding itself of feudal order and control by the church and nobility through a series of revolutions and reforms. But for the rest of the world, including Islamic societies, a similar transformation was yet far away. They still had to contend with their mediaeval past while suffering the colonial yoke.

Initially, the Muslim world ignored the colonial project and withdrew to nurse their injured pride. But over time, it was difficult to ignore the west’s incredible scientific development. Like other colonial people, Muslims, too, had to deal with its impact. Ever since, in a variety of ways, they have reacted and interacted in both positive and negative ways. Although the call for reform was widely shared across the entire Muslim world, the call for rigid orthodoxy was equally strident. While the first camp wished to modernise and, to some extent, adopt western governance in the sociopolitical arena while retaining Islamic faith and some of its cultural attributes, the latter was open to adopt modern technology but no other inroads in the sociopolitical domain. Both the currents appeared in various forms across all regions of the Muslim countries and societies from the mid-19th century.

So long as the colonial yoke was present, their influence was limited. Both the camps debated their opposite views mostly within the confines of drawing rooms of the elites or inside madrassahs. With the start of decolonisation, the long-festering tension between the two trends exploded. In the post-colonial decades, both became engaged in a stiff competition for the loyalty of Muslims across the world. While the reformist camp adopted the nation-state model with a mix of western legal systems and partial shariah, the conservative school supported retaining monarchy or autocracy in various forms with shariah for governance. An extremist section in this camp wanted to recreate the khilafat but had, and still has, few takers. Still, it does not stop them from trying to impose their worldview.

The roots of the opposing views go back to the early centuries of Islamic history when its civilisational attributes were cultivated. The more Islam spread in new regions amid new cultures and people of other faiths, assimilation and governance became hotly debated issues. Matters related to civil/criminal laws, faith and taxation had to be enacted in tune with Quranic injunctions and the prophet’s traditions. Thus, the authentic recollection of those traditions was of utmost importance; they could make or unmake authority. Vast fortunes were at stake. Stiff competition/rivalry even to the extent of strife and civil war between tribes/sects/regions even families ensued. Thus, there grew many theological and juridical schools of thought to guide the rulers how to govern in line with the Islamic laws.

The schools were broadly split in two main groups — the conservatives and the rationalists. Their key point of contention was the issue of ‘free will’. Both obviously differed on this issue but in the process, the intellectual horizon of the Islamic polity expanded to attract the existing knowledge from the Greeks, Indians, Persians and the Chinese. This was the time, say from 9th to the 12th century, when Baghdad grew into a centre of exploring frontiers of knowledge. But as the saying goes, nothing lasts forever, nor did this centre. Two main reasons can be credited for its decline. One was, for many reasons, the political decline of the khilafat that became irreversible because of internal rivalry, but the final blow came from the Mongols. The other was intellectual sterilisation. Even if both the schools had contrary views on most issues, they, however, had debated in the spirit of ijtihad (open scholastic debate). But once the political situation worsened, the schools, too, were affected, causing a deep rift in the intellectual life of Islam at the centre and, then, across the entire Islamic world system. Finally, by the 13th century, the arch-conservative school won the struggle. All the creative and critical thinking slowly got stifled. Over centuries, a dark age crept in the intellectual life of Islam similar to that of Europe after Rome’s collapse.

Although even after the Frankish wars (crusades) and the sacking of Baghdad, three large Muslim empires grew, thrived and also waned over centuries, the Muslim societies stayed moribund in an insulated world of decadence. Lots of arts and crafts were nurtured, but the intellectual curiosity in science and medicine of the earlier centuries lost all vigour. In so many ways, they are yet to come out of that stupor. Only the Sufi school offered a new trend of syncretic thought. This was the wide canvas when modernity struck Muslim societies as a lightning. The Muslims of the subcontinent were not free from its far-reaching impact. One encouraging fact in recent decades is that a great number of Muslim majority countries are trying to balance modern governance with Islamic faith and cultural inheritance.

Ìý

Focus: subcontinent

LET us refocus on the subcontinent. Once their political power was gone, the Muslims rudely realised that they were a minority in the sea of Hindu India. And by the time they found out that the colonial project was for real, they were at least 2/3 generations behind their Hindu compatriots in acquiring modern education — the key to modernity. What to do? They responded in the three following ways in tune with other Muslim societies. The first was led by the Aligarh movement. It was for collaboration with the British but to retain their faith and not submit to Brahminic supremacy. This line of thinking slowly grew into the Muslim League. The next one was led by the Deobandi group and later Jamia Millia Islamia. Both anti-British, they shared the idea of an Indian nation. They had joined hands with the Congress. The third school was led by Jamaat-i-Islami — an oddity. It rejected both nation and democracy. All the three had a deep impact on the Muslims of the undivided India and on the route of the national movement and how it developed and ended. Traces of all three, still, resonate across the subcontinent.

The more the national movement gained strength, the more the rift between the Congress and the League grew. Reasons were many, but the pertinent issue was that both had different visions of ‘nation’ and how it would work out in an independent India. Neither considered the historical fact of India being a collection of identities. Although the Congress recognised this diversity, it could not get rid of the majoritarian tilt that valued the Brahminic past. The league responded by inventing the idea of a ‘Muslim nation’. It not only negated the very idea of modern ‘nation’Ìý but had no validation in Islamic history either. In the heady days of pre-partition India, when passion was running wild, neither side cared to debate the finer points or merits of either of their adamantly held positions. Why? It needs a bit of scrutiny.

In ancient times, India was governed by the two higher castes ie, the Brahmins and the Kshatriya guided by the Brahminic doctrine. They exercised full authority over the toiling masses — an abusive governing edifice defined as providence. But from the 5th century BCE, organized resistance to this doctrine began to offer countercurrents. Buddhism and Jainism along with a few other growing sects also rejected caste and began to offer alternative socioreligious narratives. For the next millennia and more, Buddhism was the main contender of the Brahminic doctrine both in the sociopolitical and spiritual realm of the Indian polity. Large and small Hindu and Buddhist feudal states competed for power and influence all over India during the 1st millennium. But, by the end of this period, when Buddhism lost its political power and sociocultural influence as well, persecution of the lay Buddhists became quite common. Once again, Brahminic socioeconomic power was on the ascendance.

But that did not stop their rivalry. Multiple regional kingdoms were locked in a stiff race for supremacy. So, when the new invading forces again from central Asia began invading India from the early 2nd millennium, there was little resistance. Ancestors of the newcomers of a few different tribes invaded India between the 2nd century BCE and the 3rd century. They had in time slowly adopted local faiths and integrated with existing cultural norms. But, by the time their descendants arrived in India a thousand years later, they had converted to Islam. It was the rising faith in that region.

Over the next nearly six to seven centuries, Islam slowly became the countercurrent of the Brahminic order. India buckled all right but held a deep-seated grudge. Unlike their ancestors, the Muslims did not adopt Indian faiths and, instead, held onto theirs and developed a parallel cultural norm called Hindustani. So, when the national movement burst open in the late 19th century, it was surely anti-British but also had a trace of anti-Muslim bias. There were signs of Brahminic ascendancy. This was at the heart of opposite visions of a future Indian nation among Hindu and Muslim communities. It carried a baggage of so many grievances, emotions and diverse expectations that the gap grew too wide to bridge.

Ìý

Bangladesh conundrum

PAKISTAN was the brainchild mostly of the north Indian Muslim elite. But, they managed to gather support for their scheme in mostly Muslim-majority provinces in the east and west of India. Each had their own regional/cultural/class concerns to address and, hence, came together to realise their respective goals. Punjab in the west was worried that its feudal hold may wither if the Congress came to power. Bengal had the opposite reason. Its peasantry imagined that Pakistan would rid the oppression by the Hindu landlords while the north Indian elite felt very nervous at the prospect of being governed by the not so friendly Congress. Pledges of a secular polity in an independent India were vague, at best, and a veiled majoritarian tilt, at worst. This was the broad context that slowly but surely pushed the two communities led by Congress the and the League to drift apart. The British obviously would not remain silent spectators. They kept on pouring fuel to the raging fire. Parties were pitched against one other. Partition became inevitable.

Pakistan became a reality but never found stability even at the age of nearly eighty. It stayed locked in a perpetual battle of trying to define itself. The key reason for this paralysis lies in its duality of chasing an Islamic statehood and a modern nation state with all its given governing principles at odds with each other. The unavoidable conflict between divine and manmade laws took its toll. Besides, Pakistan had no claim to any shared organic ethnic bonding or an Islamic nationhood because the latter had never been there. It chose to merge the two and become a cross between modernity and medieval insulation. Therefore, neither theÌýsociopolitical benefits of modernity nor the imagined serenity of an earlier age of religious harmony could be attained. Without either, Pakistan became a state without a nation. But, it needed to create an artificial one or it had no entry in the community of nations. That is why it depends on not the will and resolve of its people but a mighty military machine.

This is precisely why it failed to honour the popular verdict of its people in the 1970 elections. It resulted in the birth of Bangladesh. But, sadly, the paralytic malady that plugged Pakistan made its way in the new country, too. A paradox? To explain why and how, we need to revisit the issues mentioned above. Why the liberation war at all? Having fought one and sacrificing so much blood, tear and toil, it may appear a fool’s errand to ask such a disturbing question but, nevertheless, a legitimate one. All great sociopolitical upheavals had to endure such heart-wrenching questions at some point in its post-revolution life, some early, some late. The French fought among themselves to justify the revolution for nearly a century; so did the Americans, Russians or the Chinese. Defining the Indian nation is still disputed. So revisiting and refurbishing the pledge with an open mind may be enriching.Ìý

There was a clear sense of direction and emotive appeal for independence on March 7 but not an explicit declaration. From then to March 25, Bangabandhu sought autonomy within the Pakistan state structure. Only when the Pakistanis unleashed the bloody carnage, he declared independence but a very few people heard the message. But when Major Zia declared independence on his behalf in the evening of the 27th and called for unity and resistance, the entire country became aware and joined the war. Independence from Pakistan was the main stated goal. We reacted to the imposed war like any other people would, but what the future had in store for us was unclear. We desired a lot but were naive of geopolitical and historical constraints. Philosophical basis for the liberation war was either absent or very vague. What is amazing is that we are still wrestling over it. Certainly, we all desire democracy but cannot agree on our nationality ie, our identity. This is the root cause of all our problems.

Bangladesh is sharply divided on this issue. Why and how so? For Pakistan, religion was a ruse to control us. The war at one stroke freed us of that burden as well as the two nation theory. At least, that is what we imagined. If we reject this premise, what is the rationale for waging the liberation war? Of course, there was enough political justification, but what was the philosophical basis? It could either strive for a Bengali nation or split Pakistan into two and create a Muslim Bengali nation. The latter was, perhaps, working involuntarily in the mind of framers of the first constitution. It had many positive elements like Bengali nationality and others related to democratic governance but ruined the spirit of the liberation war by stating Mujib as the ‘father of the nation’. How could he be? The Bengalis were not born in 1971. He could be the father of a Muslim Bengali nation. But that would revert to the two-nation theory. Like the English, French or the Chinese, the Bengalis do not need a father. They all evolved over centuries with contributions of so many through the ups and downs. India, Pakistan or America needed one because they were never ethnic or political nations.

This was his biggest folly. He failed to see beyond the present and trapped himself in the old Hindu-Muslim binary of the subcontinent. It would lead to extending the pre-modern age of religious rigidity and Bengali national identity would slowly lose primacy. Trailing his footsteps a few years later, secularism was discarded and a decade later, we got the state religion act. Many years later, secularism was re-enacted but meanwhile, society got immersed in regressive religiosity, partly in reaction to irrational global Islamophobia, partly by importing Middle Eastern culture and partly by seeking support of the Islamist groups by the mainstream corrupt political parties, especially the Awami League under Sheikh Hasina. There is also a desire by some Islamist parties to recreate the Islamic empire. It seems that we have lost our way in the world. Without striving for a secular Bengali nation, the liberation war cannot be defended and without it, there is no Bangladesh. Mixing the state and religion has not worked well at all in modern states, especially in the developing world. Pakistan and Afghanistan are two vivid examples and in recent years, Indian experience is not very inspiring either.

For more than two decades before 1971, we struggled to assert our Bengali nationality. Earlier, we were still ethnic Bengalis but our Muslim identity was more in focus — legacy of the Pakistan movement. But the liberation war provided us with the golden opportunity to take the leap and emerge as a modern nation state to be governed by human reason and not divine laws. Bangabandhu was the key figure of this transformation. He could readily relate to the emotions and aspirations of the Bengalis that led to the liberation war. Without it, there is no Bangladesh. It is a tragedy that he failed to see the conflict between Bengali nationality and the farce of being its father. His life, as rightly pointed out by Mahfuz Anam, can be marked by a specific date in the calendar ie, January 10, 1972. Before, he had the adored leader of 70 million Bengalis, after; he became a rudderless tyrant who had no vision at all. Perhaps, he was like so many other third-world leaders in the post-colonial world who tried to make ends meet within a global system that they did not create or had any influence or had little to offer.

His limited vision affected his party as much. The last 15 years of the Awami league rule can be defined in two broad categories of positive and negative impacts. There has been a general upliftmentÌýÌýof the economy, real wages have increased and the development work has been impressive. On the negative side, it imposed a despotic rule and jailed nearly all opposition parties/groups. It silenced all dissent, murdered many and politicised all separate wings of the government. It turned the country into a single-party state. And, the less we talk about elections, the better. Last but not least, it turned the state exchequer into a private bank of Awami League leadership and its cronies.

They definitely needed to be ejected. But now what? All Awami League leaders and activists who were engaged in crimes must be brought to book, but there is no reason to throw away the baby with the bath water. While the murderous, corrupt Awami League leadership is the bath water, Bengali national identity is the baby.

Ìý

Critique of nation

LIKE all things in life, the nation, too, has its share of criticism. The first that comes to mind is the postmodernist critique of ‘imagined community’ theory. It claims that nations are illusory. The counter-argument can be based on the Cartesian theory — ‘I think; therefore, I am’. Hence, if a community imagines itself to be a nation growing over a long period, why ca it not be a nation? It is true that some post-colonial states may claim artificial nationhood, but many others can also claim organic evolution of their nations over centuries.ÌýÌý ÌýÌýÌýÌý

The next critique came from Marx. He imagined that the working class would eventually grow into a nation. That has not happened anywhere since his passing nearly a century and a half ago. In fact, what has happened since then is the opposite. Nations have consolidated and become the driving force of history. Some are quite mature, some are only crossing the threshold while others are in their infancy. But, they are a global phenomenon unlike pre-modern times.

The third comes from the globalist/monopoly capitalist/neocons or by whichever name they are called. In their view, sovereign nations are a hindrance to their intent to control vital resources and markets of the world, wherever they may be, with as little hassle as possible. In order to achieve this goal, they are willing to go to any length, if need be, to destroy the world. The post-modernists inadvertently subscribe to this project when they reject the nation.

The last comes from the Islamists. They believe that all Muslims belong to the nation of Islam.ÌýThey do not recognise ethnic nations and, by extension, modernity. They welcome the Industrial Revolution and its fruits but not westernisation. It is true that the governing doctrines in western states are neither universal nor perfect. They are beset with faultlines. But, the enlightenment, born in Europe though, nevertheless, has succeeded over the past two centuries in attracting a worldwide appeal and, in the process, became universal like all major religions. It has multi-dimensional attributes. Some may have universal utility like separating the state and religion while some may not, like insisting on a euro-centric world order based on its value system.

So, nations exist as they have, at least, for two centuries in its present form and in its earlier form of a linguist people cohabiting in a given region sharing many socio-religious bonding for many centuries. We are Bengali-speaking people who have lived here for more than millennia. Most of us are by faith Muslims, but we created a modern nation state through a national liberation war based on our Bengali ethnic identity. But this also demands the recognition of several other minor nationalities and ethnicities that live in Bangladesh. If we discard these basic facts, we may stumble from pitfall to pitfall.

Ìý

Ali Ahmed Ziauddin is a researcherÌýand activist.