No Country for Old Men: The Niloy Chatterjee killing and the roots of Violence in Bangladesh

Posted on August 17, 2015 by brethrenofblacklotus in Culture, History, Politics, Religion, Ziaur Rahman and tagged AL, Awami League, ধর্ম, Bangladesh, Bangladesh Politics, Chetona, English, religion, society, Ziaur Rahman.

Recent murder of Niloy Chatterjee, and the accompanying outcry, has again lead to the thesis in the domestic and international media that religion, in this case Islam, is at the heart of all violence in Bangladesh. The article looks at depth into such reporting and seeks to answer the question: Is the current practice of Islam responsible for the recent upsurge in violence in Bangladesh?

By Surma

The Killing Fields of Bangladesh

Picture of Baby shot in the womb of his mother in Magura, Bangladesh, by political cadres of the current ruling Awami League .

Bangladesh this summer again is revisited with the spectre of the another gruesome killing of an online activist, this time Niloy Chatterjee. The killing is not isolated but is part of an epidemic of disappearances, murder, torture and kidnappings which are occurring all over the country. Human Rights activist, at great risk, have tried to highlight this ‘dirty war’, pointing their collective fingers towards the current Awami League government and its security forces.

In Bangladesh, in this context of mainly state sponsored violence, there has been much discussion in social media, about the circumstances surrounding the Niloy Chatterjee’s death. Some commentators, came up with an interesting hypothesis, not attributing the gruesome killings to Ayman Zawahiri and Al Qaida, but that to other possible players. A good summary can be found in the writings of the social media activist Talukdar Shaheb.

It now appears, according to the domestic press in Bangladesh, that individuals connected to the ruling ‘secular’ Awami League government have been arrested, in particular a nephew of the Minister for Labour and Employment. In contrast to the vibrant discussion in Bangladesh surrounding Chatterjee’s death on social media, sadly many international journalists, it seems, are happy to ignore the present context and trot out the usual lazy stereotypes of starry eyed ‘Mad Mullahs’ running amok in Bangladesh.

A Bollywood Rerun of Burke’s Law

‘Burke’s Law’, now solving international crimes: Above: Screenshot of TV Series Burke’s Law. Below: Picture of the late Niloy Chatterjee

One particular example of this type of lazy journalism is Jason Burke’s piece in the London Guardian, an investigative piece on the face of it but with closer reading, it becomes a pale imitation of US TV hit show Burke’s Law. In the TV series Amos Burke, a millionaire police captain, is chauffeured around in a Rolls Royce, simultaneously solving murders while sipping champagne and enjoying the high life. In our case Jason Burke is over thousand miles away in Delhi, chauffeured through the mental terrain of Bangladesh by his trusted sidekick Saad Hammadi, solving crimes in Bangladesh without having to step inside the country.

In the piece Jason Burke follows the age old technique of developing a distorted picture of Bangladesh for his readers. First he whitewashes the story in a strong solution of decontextualization, by failing to mention in detail the wider spate of killing and violence that has been engulfing the country for the past years. Second, he distorts his piece with unequal representation, there is a direct quote from Imran H Sarkar but no quotes from Conservative Muslims in Bangladesh that oppose Mr Sarkar. Thirdly this unequal representation, allows the picture to develop in a dark room of non being. Where one side is humanised, and has a name and simultaneously the Conservative Muslim voice, is dehumanised into mindless mob, tenuously linked to the murder and transformed into non beings at the same time.

One is surprised that such epistemic racism is allowed to flourish at the left leaning progressive Guardian. Also I expected Jason Burke, being the Guardian’s expert on the ‘War on Terror’ (having authored four books according to the website), to have a more nuanced and thoughtful article. However when reading his other works in the newspaper I am not surprised. In a piece on key books on Muslim Extremism, Jason Burke summarises, ‘The Islamist’, an autobiographical work by the British Bangladeshi Ed Husain, as: “Excellent on the cultural gap between first generation Pakistani Immigrants and their children in the UK”. I guess according to Jason Burke and the application of his ‘Burke’s Law’, all us Pakis look the same!

(Paki is a derogatory term used by racists in the UK to describe all South Asians)

Burke’s article on Bangladesh follows the memes of many writings by Westerners on Bangladesh, who in essence argue that religion is at the heart of all violence in Bangladesh. This sentiment is echoed in academic circles, where even violence and repression perpetrated by the ‘Progressive and Secular’ Awami League government is blamed on religion. For example David Lewis at the LSE somewhat justifies government repression in Bangladesh, as a defensive posture against religious violence. Leading to the question, is religion, in our case Islam at the heart of all violence in Bangladesh?

The tradition of tolerance in Bangladesh

Interpreting the picture: Familiar medieval scene of congregation prayer, with a Qalandar (Baul) in the corner (right of the picture) left unharassed and tolerated by the orthodox members of the congregation. Ibn Taymiyyah in his Majmua al Fatawah, upholds the prevalent tradition, by advocating tolerance of the unorthodox Qalandars.

Looking at the available data on violence in Bangladesh, majority of violence is either attributed to criminal gangs or state security forces. Even one looks at violence by political parties, two out of the three main players are secular, therefore using a rough rule of thumb majority of political violence in the country is non religious. This leaves us the theoretical question, is the practice and articulation of Islam in Bangladesh one that is necessary or in essence violent ? Again the historical and empirical data would suggest otherwise, historically and until the present day, dotted across many villages in Bangladesh Muslims and Hindus communities have coexisted together. Also contrary to popular perception, Islam in Bangladesh has never been monolithic nor uniform, with various theological schools within Sunni Islam, living side by side with no outbreaks of any sectarian violence.

As a way of explaining such discrepancies, many writers have posited the binary of Syncretic Bengali Islam vs Foreign Wahhabi Islam. Wahabi Islam gaining the upperhand in Bangladesh due to the unlimited oil money of the Saudis. Again looking at the empirical data the influence is negligible. For example, looking at the core and regular practice of prayer (namaz/salah), in Saudi Arabia the practice is to pray with hands above the navel or single cycle of prayer (rakat) performed for the late evening Witr prayer, but in Bangladesh, anecdotally wherever I went, everyone prayed with their hands below the navel and three cycles of prayers were performed for the Witr Prayer.

Sections of the elite as well as writers and journalists still continue with the argument, pointing not to quantifiable practices but to a an abstract foreign ‘Wahhabi’ ideology that has infected the body politic of Bangladesh, in particular the works of Ibn Taymiyyah.

Such theories appear to be convenient fig leafs for inconvenient facts, leaving more questions unanswered than solved. If the Wahabi movement has been around for over 200 years, if it is so powerful, why does it have an impact now? Why does Saudi Arabia, despite being bordered by the failed states of Iraq and Yemen, the motherland of such violent ideology, has a lower violence and crime statistics than Bangladesh and many Western countries? Why is this myth still peddled by elites, writers and journalists in Bangladesh, when it has already been debunked in academic circles?

An unbiased review of the current data and evidence, points to an alternative source to the violence that is engulfing Bangladesh. We should not be fooled by the fact that the violence may be couched in religious symbols or language. The manipulation of religion is not a recent phenomena in Bangladesh, nor is it the sole prerogative of the ‘religious right’, it is a universal and established practice of the powerful. Who can forget the pronouncements of the ‘secular’ Awami League government, in following the Medinan Constitution or that no laws will go against Quran or Sunnah.

Caption Competition Bangladesh: ‘Security Forces Foil Islamist Attack Against Civilised Folks’ or ‘The Haves in Bangladesh Keeping Under Their Heels the Have-nots’, you choose !

Rediscovering the Lost Art of Compromise

“When two elephants fight it is the grass thats gets hurt.”

African Proverb

Taking a step back from the present, without the prejudice against the sacred traditions of the land and looking back into the history of Bangladesh, the spikes in violence cannot be attributed to the constant of deep attachment the Bangladeshi people had for the sacred. The spikes of violence that we witnessed in our recent history in 1947, the crisis leading to and including 1971, the BAKSAL of 1973 and now the violence of the current political crisis, lies squarely instead at the inability of the elites of the country to come to a compromise rather than the religious beliefs held by the common people.

The roots of the present violence, sprout from the feet of the current Awami League Government. The crisis was sparked by the mishandling/politicisation of the War Crimes Trials and the suspension of free and fair elections. These unilateral steps by the Government has shattered the political consensus that existed in the country since the 1990s. It has created a political vacuum, creating a winner takes all situation for the Government and and a do die situation for its opponents, thus giving the illusion of violence as the panacea for the malaise perceived by both parties.

On the other hand, International backers of the Awami League government either in Delhi or in the West, instead of restraining the violence, maintain and fan it. They are all too eager to prop up and paint the current crisis in a clash of civilisation colours. This manufacturing of a new front on the ‘War on Terror’, has the desired effect in justifying new budgets for their ever burgeoning Military Industrial Complex (cue the useful idiots of Bangladesh Studies).

The history of Bangladesh has not been a continuous orgy of violence, there have been long periods that did see stability and reduction of violence. The catalyst for the periods of peace, was the ability of the elites of the country to compromise. The first instance was in 1975, in a series outlined by the blogger Jyoti Rahman, it was Zia Rahman’s genius for compromise that steered the country from the initial chaos under the Awami League dictatorship, to stability and normalcy. The second period was the unified effort by all parties to depose the Ershad dictatorship and the formation of a new democratic political arrangement in the 1990s.It is the abandonment of this ancient wisdom of tolerance and compromise that has lead to the spate of violence in Bangladesh. Intolerance emanating from the elites feeding down to the common man in the street as innocent victims of collateral damage.

Looking at the privileged young marchers of Shahbag and their slogans, reading the opinions pieces and accompanying comments on Bangladesh, a silent melancholy sigh takes over the soul. I hear in my heart the lament of W B Yeats, in his poem Byzantium. The young have forgotten the age old wisdom of their elders, thus mistaking the onward march of intolerance with the onward march of progress…

“THAT is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees

– Those dying generations – at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect”

W B Yeats – Sailing to Byzantium

March to Progress or Intolerance? Left: Torchlight Rally at Shahbag and Right: Torchlight Rally in Nazi Germany

Militant Atheism, Madrasahs and Bangladesh: Midnight at the Noon of Golden Bengal

Posted on April 15, 2015 by brethrenofblacklotus in Awami League, Culture, History, Politics, Religion, Rights, Society and tagged Al Ghazali, ধর্ম, Bangladesh, Bangladeshi government, Darse Nizami, democracy, Hefazot, Hussain Ahmed Madani, Imam Abu Hanifah, ISLAM, Islamophobia, Madrassah, Qawmi Madrassah, religion, Shahbag, society.

We try to interrogate the Truth of the Events unfolding in Bangladesh, and claims of the death of secularism. We ask if society is experiencing a silenced, spiritual revolution and present important reference materials to make sense of the politics of curricular change, the times of Al Ghazali and the contents of the much maligned Darse Nizami. With both secular and more than secular spaces struggling to make space for history, epistemic plurality and colonial continuity we travel through China, East London and Sylhet to demonstrate how texts and people flow and interact. We amplify excluded voices, to give new readings to Events in Bangladesh today.

Avijit Roy Murder: In the search of the Truth after the Event

When the then British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan was asked what can most easily steer a government off course, he answered “Events, dear boy. Events”. One of the truisms of the statement being, is that our subjective perception of the truth is tied to ‘Events’ that we witness in our lives.

In recent times in Bangladesh, the Avijit Roy murder, seems to have shifted the knowledge of what Bangladesh means. Avijit was the joint founder of the website Mukto Mona, and was slain in mysterious circumstances in February 2015. The Bangladesh government of the day as well the corporate media has blamed the death on shadowy Islamist terrorists. The meaning derived from the ‘Event’ being, Bangladesh is now an irrational conservative Islamic country, where secular and atheist bloggers and writers fear for their lives. Even The New York Times joined in the chorus following the murder, declaring in an op ed piece, the end of secularism in Bangladesh.

In sharp contrast, two years ago, during the Shahbag protests for the hanging of Abdul Quader Mollah. The ‘Event’ was described mainly as knowledge that Bangladesh was a secular and progressive country, where as an exception to the rule, conservative Islamic forces have been beaten back and were in full retreat. So looking at the current coverage of Bangladesh, it appears the country has gone through some kind of revolution, where there has been a dramatic shift in society, within a short period of time. Or has it?

Could it be that much of the current English and Bangla social commentary on recent developments in Bangladesh is ill informed, malicious and self censored? For example if the supposed epidemic in ‘Atheist Killings’ weren’t confusing enough, Ahmede Hussain recently confused Deoband with Aligarh, in regards to being supported by the British Empire. Systematically appalling coverage prevents the public from learning and discussing underlying issues, and frames everything in terms of a third rate Hindi soap opera, produced through the pockets of the power elite.

Rage against the Nastiks (Militant Atheists): Voices from the ‘Other’ Bangladesh

Glorified is My Lord, The Magnificent: An image of congregational prayer on the streets of Dhaka 2013. Islami Andolon Bangladesh gathered in the capital to protest corruption and nepotism as well as demand restoration of the caretaker government system for political transition and new legal protections against religious defamation

Proponents and supporters of Mukto Mona would posit their writings in terms of progress and modernity, and would see themselves as the intellectual successors to the 19th century, Calcuttan, Bengali Renaissance. Their core proposition is that religion poisons everything, that it is a belief based on feeling rather than fact, hence religion is at the root of most of the problems of Bangladesh. This seems to be the general view that seems to permeate elite discourse within the country, conscious or otherwise.

However, when searching for the Truth of the ‘Event’, we have to go beyond the knowledge and discourse generated by the power structure , in our case the Bangladeshi government, elite commentators and the corporate media. We have to listen and address the voices excluded, and observe the material being reconfigured, in order to have a complete picture of the Truth. Incorporating both sides of the binary, whilst queering that binary challenges the interests gathered around the dominant pole. From a socioeconomic perspective, both sides of the debate generally fit into social classes created by widening economic inequality, initiated in colonial times and maintained by the post colonial state.

Conservative, mainly excluded voices in Bangladesh, would place the writings of Mukto Mona and its supporters within the binary of the ‘Astik vs Nastik’ debate, or militant atheist vs people of faith debate. In a background of increasing political turmoil and state security suppression, the disenfranchised conservative mood in the country manifested itself in the 2013 Hefazote protests in Dhaka. Where on two separate occasions, it is believed that over 1 million people participated in the protests. The organisers, Hefazote Islam, had a 13 point demand, the second point of the demand being:

“to stop all the anti-islamic propaganda of the self declared atheist and murtad leaders of so-called Shahbag movement and bloggers who propagate lies against the Prophet (saw) and to punish them.”

In the run up to and in the aftermath of the Dhaka massacre of May 2013, I asked Hefazote supporters as to the meaning of the 2nd point in their 13 point demand, and as to why they were so agitated by insults from atheists and former Muslim writers.

One made the issue of the difference in terms if genealogies, which leads to misunderstandings. Apostasy, in the English language, means for someone to change their minds about religion. Apostasy and apostates, using an Islamic genealogy is better translated as ‘nifaq or ‘munafiq’’. He then went onto argue, that the Prophet Muhammad (saw), knew who the apostates were and didn’t kill them. Many made the point that they were simply asking for the implementation of existing laws against hate speech.

Nearly all gave a reply that one had to distinguish between atheism and what they termed Militant Atheism. Atheism on its own is a non positive assertion, it is to believe there is no god, it is ambivalent as to whether god or religion is force for good or evil. They pointed out the Muslims in past have had a long history of coexisting with atheists, from the earliest community to the present time. For example there are the famous public debates Imam Abu Hanifah had with the atheists of his time.

‘Nastiks’ or Militant Atheists, they argued, step outside the prism of a traditional atheist, from a passive position to an aggressive one, from ‘I have no god’ to ‘you should have no god’. These ‘Nastiks’ they argued, are not equal in their hatred of religions, they are entirely fixated with Islam. As an example, they stated that this discrimination and hatred against Islam in Bangladesh is expressed explicitly, from the ban on University admissions to Madrassah students, to bans on the headscarf (hijab) in various workplaces. Implicitly it is found in reading the works of famous novelists and images in the media, in the portrayal of the characters of religious people. Such evidences are replete in Bengali dramas, novels, stories and other media and genres. An evil character is always portrayed by the image of an Islamic person, with the beard, outfits such as tupi, long dresses and lungi or pyjamas.

In conversations, social media and in their writings, proponents of such discrimination and prejudice towards observant Muslims and Islam in Bangladesh, would justify it in the name of muscular secularism. They lay out a dichotomy between a Medieval God centred Muslim culture in opposition to an Aryanising progressive world view. Thus discrimination and suppression of Muslim culture and practices is the necessary price of progress and development. Concluding, that Islam and Muslim culture in its very essence is barbaric and backwards, and its effect on society should be limited and mitigated where possible.

Black Swans: A Snapshot of the Qawmi Experience in the UK

A seminar on the Philosophy of Islamic Science and Modern Technology by Professor Datuk Osman Bakar in a Qawmi Madrassah in East London, attended by madrassah students, professionals, medics and academics. March 2015.

Looking at statistical evidence worldwide the argument that Muslims and Islam at their very essence are anti modern or development, does not hold. Many Muslim countries enjoy high per capita wealth income, some with higher than or equal to many Western countries. Even if we restrict the field to the context of Bangladesh, using the extreme example of Qawmi Madrassas both in UK and Bangladesh, the argument seems not to hold.

In recent times in Bangladesh, most of the debate around Qawmi Madrasahs, under the influence and guidance of foreign governments, is around how they are creating a large pool of graduates unable to function in a modern economy and society. Most of the arguments concluding that they need to come under state control under the guise of curriculum reform. Images of Qawmi Madrassah’s and graduates are used often in the corporate press both at home in Bangladesh and abroad to front negative articles, represented in the stories by journalists as anti progress and development forces.

Qawmi Madrassah, also known as Darul Ulooms, mainly in South Asia, are independent community run madrasahs, who are distinguished by the fact that they receive no government funding and teach one of many variations of the Darse Nizami Curriculum. The Darse Nizami curriculum is an educational syllabus which was formulated and crystallized in Lucknow, in the late Mughal period. The curriculum traces its origins and influences back into the medieval period, to Nizamuddin Awliya and Al Ghazali.

As in Bangladesh, the Qawmi Madrasahs in the UK receive no government funding, however the medium of instruction is mainly English. The difference in the UK being that madrassah students face no bar with regards to employment in public services or access to universities, hence the majority of graduates, who I encountered, go onto careers other than that of an Imam at a Mosque. A large portion go on to working in the public sector, in the NHS and Prison Services as part of the chaplaincy service, one even ended up as a chaplain for the British armed services. Many go on to universities, either through the traditional route of sitting A-Levels, entering as mature students or the unconventional route of getting the qawmi madrassah certificates accredited by the Pakistani High Commission. After graduating many have gone on to pursue careers either in Teaching, Law or Finance and Accounting. One graduate of Lalbagh Qawmi Madrassah in Dhaka, has gone on to graduate in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London and then onto running a successful construction company.

The other phenomenon in London, when it comes to the Darse Nizami is the rise in the number of ‘Midnight Madrassas’, evening and part time classes aimed at professionals, workers and students. Here after work or study, students attend classes on religious texts. Many of whom, increasing number being women, have no intention in going onto becoming religious leaders or Imams in the mosque. This brings into question as to what is the essential function of these texts in society, past and present.

Picture of British Armed Services Chaplain, Darul Uloom graduate Asim Hafiz (OBE) 2014.

The Roles of Classical Texts in the Land of the Rising Sun

“When the Sages arose, they framed the rules of propriety (ritual) in order to teach men, and cause them, by their possession of them, to make a distinction between themselves and brutes.”

Liji – The Confucian Book of Rites

Formally the Darse Nizami, does not confer on its graduates the right to be a religious leader or Imam. What it does confer is the right to read unaided the canon of Arabic religious literature, as well as being a transmitter of the oral tradition that is at his heart. A good comparison and model of understanding, is the similarity between the roles of the Darse Nizami texts and those of the Confucian classics, in Imperial China.

Confucian texts formed the basis of the examination system of the Imperial bureaucracy in China. Thus the dissemination of the texts created a literary class in Chinese society who acted as the guardians and repository of Chinese culture from the 500 BCE upto the beginning of the 20th century. A self appointed class, whose function was to act as the guardians of Chinese civilisation and to be a bedrock of stability in times of economic and political upheaval.

“The Sage of the West, Muhammad was born after Confucius and lived in Arabia. He was so far removed in time and space from the Chinese Sages that we do not know exactly by how much. The languages they spoke are mutually unintelligible. How is it then that their ways are in full accord? The answer is that they were of one mind. Thus their Way is the same.”

Liu Zhi – Tianfang dianli

A similar observation was made by the historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun in his Muqaddimah distinguished between tribalism or asabiyyah on the basis of blood and that on the basis of a shared educational experience. These networks and bonds of shared educational experience, in the Muslim world today, they can be traced through the distribution and acceptance of certain key texts. A good example is the spread of the core Darse Nizami text, the Hidayah, which was first written in the then Persian region of Greater Khorasan (the land of the rising sun). Today the Hidayah can found being taught in Europe (Bosnia and the Greek Region of Thrace), through Turkey and Central Asia, on to South Asia and even as far as Ningxia in China and Kazan in Russia. Thus it appears the texts and curriculum have a dual function not just instructing individuals in religious rites or dogma, but also creating a collective experience and memory, that supersedes the nation state, that of a shared Islamic Civilisation, the ummah.

“The Way of the Sage is none other than the Way of Heaven.”

Liu Zhi – Tianfang dianli

A Living Intellectual Tradition: In the Shadow of Shahjalal

( L) The birds at the Shahjalal Shrine in Sylhet, descendents of the original birds given to him by the Chisti Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi ( R) Tomb of Shah Jalal in Sylhet

As in the UK, similar Black Swans to the dominant narrative of medieval Islamism versus a modernising Aryanism/Atheism can be found in Bangladesh, in this case, in Sylhet. At the heart of Sylhet city is the complex dedicated to the grave of the Sufi Shahjalal. The grave of the saint sits on top of a mound , and in its shadow at the foot of the mound, next to the main gate, within the complex is a Qawmi Madrassah, known locally as the Dargah Madrassah.

Nearly a decade ago I was visiting a friend from the UK, who enrolled on to the final year of the madrassah. During the visit, I got him to conduct a brief straw survey of his class, asking respondents about their backgrounds and motivation.

The students in the class fell broadly into three categories, corresponding to where they sat in the class (front, middle and back). Around 10% of respondents wanted to pursue a career in teaching, further learning or research. This group normally sat at the front of the class, and for sitting at the front had the privilege to read out the Prophetic traditions that were going to be studied on that day.

The second group comprising of about 60% were made up of students, who came into the madrassah for ‘welfare reasons’. The madrassah life provided them with free or subsidised lodging and food. Graduation from the madrasah, provides a route out of poverty as well as increased social status.Most wanting to opt for a quiet life of an Imam in a village or a small urban mosque.

The third group, 30% (which normally sat at the back of the class) were the most interesting. The students came from a varied background and had diverse ambitions. Many came from the state Aliyah Madrassah sector, but enrolled to access the oral tradition still preserved within the Qawmi madrassas. There were others who were products of the secular education system. For example there was an engineering student, simultaneously completing his degree while attending lectures at the madrasah. Then there was the budding journalist, drafting his articles while the traditions and commentaries were being read out in the class. All of the individuals in this group wanted to pursue a career outside the mosque or madrassa but saw madrassah education as an important companion along those career paths. When asked about the barriers that they face due to prejudice and misconception, they accepted it as a necessary price to pay for the commitment to their beliefs. They saw no contradiction between the modern society they occupy and the image of themselves as successors of a living tradition, first brought to Sylhet by Shahjalal.

Al Ghazali and the Incoherence of the Juktibadi: Then and Now

Shahjalal came to Sylhet from the then Seljuk Turk city of Konya, famous for being the resting place of Rumi. He was a product of the state sponsored education system, that was designed and pioneered by Al Ghazali nearly 200 hundred years earlier and 900 years before our time. Ghazali near the end of his life, penned his autobiography, ‘The Deliverance from Error’, where he described his intellectual and spiritual journey. On the one hand, he wrote about his encounters with religious fundamentalist, who he described as ignorant fools who do more harm than good, by rejecting science and reason in the name of defending Islam.

On the other, he wrote about the militant atheists of his day, who described themselves as free thinkers or ‘philosophers’.These free thinkers in the name of science and reason, declared Islam as a social ill towards progress and development. After various encounters and reading their works, Ghazali concluded, that despite their declarations of following reason, at the very core of their beliefs and attitudes was an irrational prejudice against religion, a domination of the ego over the intellect.

The irrational prejudice, written about by Ghazali over 900 years ago, is alive and kicking in powerful circles in Bangladesh today. This modern manifestation of the ego over the intellect has two parts. First, the argument one hears that religion is the root of most or all of the world’s problems. An irrational belief, given the last 100 years produced the mass slaughters of World War I and II, colonialism, Communism, imperialism, Korea, Vietnam and the Iraq war – all of which had nothing to do with religion.

Second, the doctrine that if one can educate and manipulate enough religious believers to ‘truth’, then the world will be perfect and all our problems will disappear. An irrational myth, following on from the Enlightenment, that physical and social environments could be transformed through scientific and rational manipulations. An irrational dogma that gave us the false utopias, of the Nazis, and Stalinism and the killing fields of Cambodia. As Chris Hedges writes, this irrational belief in, “rational and scientific manipulation of human beings to achieve a perfect world has consigned millions of hapless victims to persecution and death”.

It is not just religious Zealots that incite violence against and kill people for their beliefs. Above: Picture of victims following the state massacre of madrassah students in May Dhaka 2013.

The on going struggle (Jihad) of Liberating Theology, Past and Present

Above attempt by British Raj administrators in trying to thwart the civil disobedience campaign of Hussain Ahmed Madani.

Al Ghazali and his Seljuk patrons, saw their education policy as a prerequisite in their political programme to liberate Muslim lands in the aftermath of the European Crusades. Thus following in the footsteps of Al Ghazali, in 1857 amongst the ashes of Delhi, then burnt down by the British, the seeds of the Qawmi Madrassah movement were sown. The original pioneers saw their educational movement as an essential prerequisite to freeing South Asia from British colonial rule.

After a 150 years it seems, as opposed to many other countries around the world, that in Bangladesh, with a deteriorating human rights situation, the struggle has not finished and still continues. The Avijit Murder of 2015 occurred against a backdrop in Bangladesh, where universal franchise, in terms of free and fair elections, has been suspended and where foreign interests take precedence over domestic concerns. Thus the supposed war on terror on alleged fanatics, provides a convenient figleaf for increasing repression by the security forces against legitimate opposition activists.

These recent battle cries of the war on terror, echo earlier calls against shadowy Islamists at the time of the British Raj. Nearly a hundred years earlier, a madrassah teacher, Hussain Ahmed Madani, arrived at the Nayasorok mosque in Sylhet, to teach and instigate a non violent local movement for home rule against the British. For his activities, he and his followers were persecuted, tortured and labelled as fanatics by the Britishers. Thus it appears a century on, nothing much has changed, after two attempts at independence, things appear to have reverted back to their original state. Thus the Truth after the Event in Bangladesh is this, ‘Yes, the British have left, but they have left behind in charge, bastard offsprings with their Hindustani manservants.’

Following the Dhaka Massacre of May 2013, I had a discussion with Qawmi Madrassa teacher in the UK. He was privy to the discussions of the current and previous Bangladeshi government’s attempt at Qawmi Madrassah reform. He said all parties want reform, the madrassas want to end discrimination against their students, in terms of public sector employment and access to University education. However he added due to ideological vested interests on the Government side, negotiations have been sabotaged both in the previous BNP government and now in the current Awami League one.

He conceded that there are some vested interests within the Qawmi madrassah movement, ‘political opportunists’, who benefit from the status quo, as it gives them ownership over a ghettoised frustrated vote bank. In spite of the lack of resources and existing institutional barriers, he pointed to interesting examples of internal reforms. In the Sylhet region, following a model established in Lucknow, Arabic intensive institutions, with an accelerated Darse Nizami programme have been established. He also cited the example of a Qawmi madrasah in Comilla, which has modern IT facilities and train’s common law judges and public officials in the intricacies of Shariah Law.

As a counter example to Bangladesh, he cited pragmatically oriented reforms in Turkey, where in the 1980s barriers were removed in terms of employment and education to madrassah students (graduates of the Imam Hatip Schools). After those barriers were removed, more than a third of the students went on to graduate in Law, Finance and Business. The current President of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, being an example of an Imam Hatip school graduate choosing a mainstream career path.

When I asked him, whether the same pragmatic reasoning, as in Turkey will triumph over ‘Aryanising’ ideological hatred in Bangladesh. The Maulana answered by reciting the prayer derived from the Prophet Jacob (as):

Allahu Musta’an Sabran Jamil – Allah it is Whose Help is sought, with comely patience

Solar Eclipse Northern Europe March 2015

“Remember: oppression is temporary. Reality is light, but darkness overtook it. Islam came with a light to extinguish these tyrants, dictators and ignoramuses. Their darkness has covered us, but darkness does not last forever. This is a sign that oppression must come to an end, that this age of tyrannical rule is coming to a close, just as the light follows darkness…”

The late Naqshbandi Sheikh Nzaim Haqqani – on the Eclipse Prayer, Salaat Al Kusoof

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Resources and Further Reading:

PDF Library of the entire Darse Nizami curriculum as well as other associated texts in English, Arabic and Urdu.
Life and Times of Al Ghazali Dr T J Winter Part 1 and Part 2
When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists by Chris Hedges
‘Intellectual Legacy of Shah Wali Allah’: Diagram below showing the fluid and interlinking student teacher relationships in all the varied religious movement in South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula.
Silsilah of the Chistiyyah Sufi Tariqah: Spiritual Chain of Transmission which includes at the end, prominent political figures at the time of Independence from the British (Sulayman Nadwi and Hussain Ahmed Madani).

Against the Polite Islamophobia of the Bengali ‘Bhadralok’ : The Bangladesh Unreader

Posted on January 20, 2015 by brethrenofblacklotus in Culture, History, Religion, Rights, Society and tagged Bangladesh, charlie hebdo, Chetona, Constitution, democracy, English, Fascism, Featured, Islamophobia, religion, satire, Slide, society.

The article explores perhaps the most powerful and distracting misreading of desh today, the Islamic vs Secular smokescreen. Its origins are traced through the ‘colon’ narrative which paints the majority of it’s inhabitants as an inferior other, to Aryanisation, an attitude supported by another rotten European theory – racial anthropology. Connecting with manifestations of colonial continuity in the Algerian, Muslim experience of France and the doubling up of Aryanisation on the Muslims of Bengal, the debilitating terrorism rents and settlements of the new jomidary are presented along with sacred, indigenous histories of resistance from which we might draw strength, hope and mobilisation.

Allahumma Salli Ala Muhammadi Nabiyil Ummi – O Allah! Send Prayers upon Muhammad, the Unlettered (Ummi) Prophet

Once upon a time in New York, Paris and Dhaka…

” (Islamophobia in) France is the worst in Europe and tries to mask it by proclaiming its secular values (sound familiar?), but these values don’t apply to Islam. In fact, French secularism means anything but Islam” Tariq Ali

In a New York meeting during September 2014, Abdul Latif Siddiqui, the then Bangladesh cabinet minister for Post and Communications (formerly for Jute and Textiles) made a statement denigrating the Hajj pilgrimage, crudely commodifying all of its pilgrims and racially slurring Arabs as the descendants of robbers. The minister was a senior member of the ruling Awami League, returned to government earlier in the year in perhaps South Asia’s most dubious general elections ever. There was widespread revulsion as to how a senior politician of a country of over 100 million Muslims could make such statements in public, and after protests he was eventually sacked.

Unlike many, I was not shocked by the contempt shown to the indigenous Muslim culture of Bangladesh by members of the elite who rule in their name. I came across many such instances in recent years whilst researching and discussing the suppression of urban industrial workers in 2012 and the massacre of protesters mainly from rural madrassas in May 2013.

In an academic forum, I witnessed the spectacle of seeing a Bangladeshi academic describing the massacre victims of May 2013 (over 60 unarmed protesters killed) as feral animals that needed to be culled, and another academic justifying the massacre on the basis that the protestors were causing unnecessary traffic congestion in Dhaka. Bangladesh is not exceptional in having to suffer such Macaulayan Misleadership, that is to say firmly in the thrall of white supremacy and its epistemicidal traditions. To the bemusement of many observers, outrageous colonial continuities are explicitly written into much of Francophone Africa’s independence documentation.

Recognition of the globality and gravity of this condition is the first step to unreading Bangladesh. The next step being, unwinding the roots and after effects of the racial supremacy woven into the fabric of Bengali nationalist selfhood, eventually creating new spaces for indigenous discourse to be heard.

We saw another manifestation of this contempt for the local and thrall for the colonial as a large section of elite in the social media in Bangladesh gave unequivocal support (#jesuischarlie) to the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, following the massacre there, whilst maintaining their silence on Bangladesh governments systematic destruction of press freedom. In their submission, they conveniently ignored the fact that the magazine disproportionately targeted the marginalised Muslim minority of France, viewing them as a ‘Clandestino’ fifth column. Commentators such as Richard Seymour and Professor Tariq Ramadan, rightly called out the publication as racist, while a former writer for the publication, Olivier Cyran, had previously pointed out that,

“Belief in one’s own superiority, accustomed to looking down on the common herd, is the surest way to sabotage one’s own intellectual defences and to allow them to fall over in the least gust of wind.”

In fact, to the observant eye, this contempt can be seen running through the corporate media of Bangladesh as well as the elite, in their political pronouncements, reporting and academic masquerades. Here, the urban and rural poor and their mainly Muslim culture, is infantalised, primitivised and decivilised into an essentialised mindless mob. To rephrase Fanon, talking down to the mainly Muslim poor in Bangladesh, as well as ‘Islamophobic’ insults make the Muslim, “the eternal victim of an essence, of an appearance for which he is not responsible”. Thus the precursor to any oppression, exploitation and elimination is the process of differentiation and dehumanisation.

Take Tasneem Khalil’s recent op ed in the Dhaka Tribune, which blames Muslims worldwide for being somehow responsible for the January 7 attack in Paris. The newspaper cites attitudes of Egyptian Muslims in a poll, but omits that most of the respondents in the poll live in one of the most economically unequal and repressive countries in the world, as if to ask someone whose house is on fire, why he is so agitated? The article also misreads the opinion polls of respondents in Muslim countries, ignoring nuances, hence mimicking the method ,attitudes and conclusion of Islamophobes in the West, such as Bill Maher and Sam Harris.

If we skip back a few years, we can recall when the editor of the same ‘liberal’ newspaper, Zafar Sohban (then as assistant editor in the Daily Star) wrote/incited in a polite tone, for the elimination of Bangladesh’s ‘Original Sin’ of Muslim identity based politics. Arguing for the restoration of ‘Mission 1971’ by the cleansing of poison from the bloodstream and righting history. In doing so he (un)intentionally resonates the mood music, intellectual cover and political anesthetic for the new ‘Guerra Sucia’ (Dirty War) afoot in Bangladesh. A Dirty War in which so many opposition political activists have been abducted, disappeared and murdered. Leaving in the wake orphans, widows and terrified communities throughout Bangladesh.

In the midst of the obligatory, hypocritical media cacophony, author Will Self made an insightful intervention on the justice of journalism, that it should afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. In the elite blogosphere and corporate press of Bangladesh, with its latent Islamophobia, such ‘crusading churnalism’ as in the case of the Dhaka Tribune, does the inverse, comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted, thus reinforcing the hierarchy and power left over by former colonial masters, and kept intact by their successors.

Beyond the Fog of (the Phony) War: Decoding the riddle of Bangladesh

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Hamlet – William Shakespeare

Polite Islamophobia in Bangladesh is defended and justified by the myth of a ‘No Stopping the Cavalry – Long War’ of Bengali exceptionalism. This is an imaginary, intergenerational and Manichean struggle between the forces of a muscular ethnic and linguistic nationalism, wrapped in eurocentric values pitted against the global forces medieval Islamism. These goggles view the, ‘Cops of the World’ War on Terror as a boon for sapping the strength of this global Islamism, eventually leading to its elimination.

Grounding ourselves in current and historical data, we view this imaginary war as a smokescreen for a struggle between a privileged elite and an ever emboldening population, a distraction from the struggle for more visible participation in the state and society at large by a hitherto marginalised majority. The languages and symbolisms used in the struggle reflect the traditions inherited, internalised and embodied by its participants., the elite from their European colonial masters, the masses from their indigenous tradition, Islam, and everywhere inbetween. Globalisation, coupled with the War on Terror, has (re)turned the balance towards the masses, leading to the somewhat painful (re)emergence of Muslim nationalistic discourse and identity of the state, in Bangladesh.

Seeing past the smokescreen requires that we excavate behind the fairytale. We have to go beyond that the sitting regime came to power on the coat tails of a ‘development partner’ imposed military coup, and has manifested the fascistic one party state ideology that only it can yield. We must travel and dwell in the roots of the present ex-colonial state, if not further, with a wide angled lens and a longer duration, to comprehend the reality and after effects of the colonial encounter.

Colonosibilite’ and the new ‘colons’

Sixty years ago in French occupied North Africa, familiar tensions existed between a foreign imposed ‘colon’ government and the mainly Muslim populace. Here, racist and Islamophobic prejudice combined with economic domination created an entrenched two-tier society, sitting on a tinderbox.

It was into this milieu that the Algerian Muslim writer and intellectual Malik Bennabi published his ‘Vacation de Islam’ (Vocation of Islam) in 1954, to synchronise with the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence against the French. During this 8 year long war, 400 000 to 1 500 000 people are thought to have died, out of a population of 10 million, it was one of the defining anti-colonial struggles of the 20th century.

In the Vocation, Malik Bennabi presents the concept of colonsibilite’, the process through which elites in Algeria and other Muslim countries had declined culturally and intellectually to a stage where colonialism was inevitable. Bennabi distinguishes between a country simply conquered and occupied, and a colonised country. The latter having lost its own cultural bearings, internalising what we might call a ‘House Muslim’ mentality upon the perceived superiority of the colonial masters.

Unlike French colonialism in North Africa which was more direct, British imperial rule in Bengal was more indirect, tending to rule in partnership with local intermediaries, who in turn helped them exploit the local populace and ecology. In a familiar image and model to that painted by Bennabi and Fanon, but upon a different precolonial civilisational milieu, we have in the alienated culture of Bangladesh’s mental elite. Its ‘cultural’ heyday, of British Raj Calcutta, are situated upon the devastation of 1770 Bengal Famine, the land grab of the 1793 Permanent Settlement, and the production of a select and moneyed class, pliant and beholden to the British.

Flogging the dead horses of the Aryanisation Apocalypse: The Common Roots of Islamophobia

Liberte’, Egalite, Ambiguite

During the 19th Century, the multiculture of Bengal was subjected to Double Aryanisation from the blackboards of British administrators and their local rentier-landlord development partners. This mirrored the Aryanisation of Classical Civilisation in Europe at the time, and the expulsion of references to African and Asiatic influences on the Ancient Greeks, as demonstrated by Martin Bernal in his Black Athena series. Bernal shows that during the 19th century there was whitewashing of the origins of Western Civilization, a process which he termed Aryanisation.

Aryanisation is a product of an imagined Aryan identity formulated by the 18th century French Orientalist, Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil Duperron. In the 19th century the concept was developed further by the French Arthur de Gobineu into a hierarchy of races. In this hierarchy of scientific racism, ‘superior’ races like the Aryans are juxtaposed against inferior races, such as Semites (Arabs and Jews) and ‘Negroes’. It judges that inferior races have an incapacity to grasp metaphysics, philosophy or the arts.

Aryanisation was forged in a bigoted Europe, where in the zeitgeist of Imperialism, nations and national cultures were given shape and supportive national myths. These artificial constructs provided soothing balms to conscience of the coloniser and his local side kick, justifying on a rational basis, through a racial anthropology, the economic and political exploitation of indigenous masses in an increasingly globalised capitalist system.

In colonial Bengal, Double Aryanisation was achieved through ideological linguistics and an elite schooling system that remains in service today, these are now busy reproducing inequalities despite two attempts at national self determination. The eviction of references to Muslim (Persian and Arabic) influence on ‘pure’, ‘chaste’ Bengali language has been demonstrated by Anandita Ghosh’s recent work on the artificial construction of the Bengali language in the 19th century, functionally it delegitimises indigenous expressions and discomforts the subaltern. As elsewhere in South Asia, this schooling of elites would create, what Professor Akbar Ahmed dubs, MacCaulay’s Chickens, a class of natives, Indian in appearance but Anglicised in term of education, taste and cultural norms. But in Bangladesh, ‘the Animals at the farm, in the form of chickens have been forcefully inbred by their farmers, to form a hybrid breed, twice removed from the original colonial encounter, and twice alienated from their natural environment.

Zooming out to other human experiences, the after effects of similar (but one-stage), ‘Road to Nowhere’ Aryanising projects unfolded in Iran through the writings of Mirza Agha Khan Kermani, put into practice by the Pahlavi dynasty. In Turkey initialising through the works of Ziya Gokalp, it reaching its zenith with the reforms of Mustafa Kamal.

The alienating and socially debilitating effects of the of this Aryanisation in Bengal during the British Raj was noted in the 20th century, by the historian Arnold J Toynbee in his A Study of History. He wrote of the anguish of British administrators, writing about the phenomena of Calcutta, creating an intellectually bankrupt class of rentier political activists and ideologues.

This sentiment was echoed nearly a hundred years on in independent Bangladesh, by the novelist Zia Rahman Haider. There in front of the ‘Bricks in the Wall’, on the hallowed grounds of ‘Oxford of the East’ Dhaka University, he declared, ‘Bangladesh as a land of dead ideas, where new concepts are throttled at birth and never get passed on because of social, political and class barriers.’

A good example of this double battery hen’s Aryanised epistemology at work in Bangladesh, is in the production of a mainly ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ academic attitude in Bangladesh. One facet of this psychological suffocating (‘Breathe’) malaise afflicting large sections of the intelligentsia can be seen in the Islamophobic discrimination against madrasah students in higher education. For example Dhaka and Jahangirnagar University’s have barred the admission of government run (Aliya) madrasa graduates into Arts and Science departments. This imposed barrier to learning and flourishing has nothing to do with merit, Aliya graduates have occupied the top 20 positions in the admission test in Jahangirnagar University. The matter was taken up in the High Court and Supreme Court which lifted the bar but many universities are unwilling to admit madrasa graduates in many departments regardless. That the ‘Brain Damage’ university leaderships saw fit to segregate ‘Us and Them’ the different learning traditions of the society speaks volumes as to their intellectual insecurity, if not their fundamental institutional failure.

Frances Harrison in a presentation in London shed some light on this attitude. She explained that some university teachers in Bangladesh complained to her about their fear of being ‘Eclipsed’ by madrasah students in the class room. They explained that madrasah students knew more about religion than the actual teachers, and often corrected them, thus undermining their authority in front of other students.

War on Terror Times: The new Zamindery and its Terrorism Rent

If patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel in the 18th century, it has been replaced by the War on Terror in this one. The refuge, allows the continued oiling of ‘The Welcome to the Machine’ post independence status quo, allowing a ‘colon elite’, to carry on their brutal and wasteful and dangerous reign over a population which does not share their values.

Recognition and analysis of this enterprise is broadening, with the idea of ‘Terrorism Rent’ describing how regimes frame their domestic political opposition as a security issue with the prism of the ‘War on Terror’. In this Faustian pact, international interests/donors turn a blind eye to internal suppression, while providing foreign aid, valued by many. to prop up corrupt regimes and their dependants. In return the host countries, allow Western interests to gain strategic influence and footholds, under the guise of military assistance and countering Chinese encroachment in the Third World. In this sense, the ‘War on Terror’ functions as an ideological narrative that underpins the capacity of Western and American states to sustain control over an increasingly fragile and changing international system. For example in Afghanistan we have a Norwegian government report revealing how covert indirect US support to both to the Taliban in Afghanistan and overt support to the Afghan authorities, is used to ‘calibrate the level of violence’, thus sustaining support for US military intervention and presence in the region.

In sub saharan Africa we see a return of the French. In Bangladesh, there has been an increase in military assistance by the UK, focusing on counter insurgency under the comical doublespeak of ‘Democracy Stabilisation’. A British ‘Democracy Stabilization’ experience gained in the decade long occupation of the Helmand Province of Afghanistan, where in 13 years British troops were responsible for the deaths of over 500 Afghan civilians and the injuries of thousands and yet did not capture or kill a single Al Qaida operative.

The unintended consequences of the ongoing ‘War on Terror’, and the accompanying intensification of Islamophobia that comes with it, is the counter intuitive awakening of an assertive Muslim identity and consciousness and what one would term the rise of Muslim nationalism. As in the face of such hostility and prejudice, even the most secular Muslim, as happened in Northern Ireland amongst Irish Catholics, is forced to defend Islam and the rights of a Muslim identity.

In Bangladesh, this is seen in the enduring support the massacred rural Madrassah students and their affiliates still receive in all sections of society, including ever growing numbers of the governing and commercial elite. Farhad Mazhar in London termed the massacre as a victory for the rural madrassah students, in terms of putting a halt to the de-Islamification and Aryanisation policies of the current Awami League government and being a catalyst for a re emerging of a mainstream Muslim political discourse and identity in Bangladesh. Six decades ago Fanon identified the same phenomenon amongst the native Algerians, vis a vis their French colon rulers. In Fanon’s essay, Algeria Unveiled, the French attempt to unveil the Algerian women did not simply turn the veil into symbol of resistance, it become a technique to camouflage, a means of struggle. Thus every veiled women became a suspect and also at the same time a sign of resistance.

To conclude, the reassertion of Muslim political discourse in Bangladesh, is not as what many colon elite academics home and abroad would market as the thin end of an edge of a rising global Islamic militancy. As elsewhere, it is profoundly connected to long term local experiences and demands on post colonial state institutions, to dignify and include the identity of those who they claim to represent. This concern is expressed in an indigenous tradition and language of the people, which in the case of Bangladesh, is Islam.

Emperors and Dervishes – The Mantle of the Prophet and a Tradition of Resisting Empire

If a wound touches you, a like wound already has touched the opposing ones; such days We deal out in turn among men, and that God may know who are the people of faith, and that He may take witnesses from among you; and God loves not the evildoers. (3:140)

Quran -verses referring to the Battle of Uhd

Countering external and internal Aryanising aggression, is the tradition of resisting Empire in Bangladesh, a Quranic semantic field of meaning consciously and subliminally deep rooted in the collective psyche. I was fortunate to be acquainted with an example of this living tradition, when I met the Principal of a Qawmi Madrasah in Sylhet who was a scholar of prophetic traditions. A contemporary of Allama Shafi, the leader of Hefazot e Islam, the shaykh had the triple distinction of being imprisoned and tortured by the British, arrested and imprisoned under the Pakistani generals of United Pakistan, and being physically assaulted and imprisoned in his last years by the first Awami League government of 1996 -2000. Everytime he was imprisoned he had with him the khirqa, shawl given to him by his teacher, who was imprisoned and tortured by the British, who in turn received the shawl from his teacher who was also imprisoned and tortured by the British, who in turn received a shawl from his teachers of the Madrasah Rahimiyyah in Delhi, and who were at the forefront at the 1857 War of Liberation against the British invaders. A tradition of the khirqa and seeking justice going back through the ages to the earliest Muslim community, to Imam Hussain in Karbala, Abdullah ibn Zubair in Makkah and the Prophet Muhammad’s struggle against the Quraysh.

‘The greatest Jihad is to speak the truth in the face of an unjust tyrant.’

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

We see the same non violent resistance in Turkey against the state in the life and struggles of the Naqshbandi Sufi and Kurd, Said Nursi. Who for his criticism of Mustafa Kemal, was imprisoned, starved and poisoned by the Turkish state. Yet the Turkey of today, with the reintroduction of the Ottoman Arabic script in the High Schools, is not the Turkey of Mustafa Kemal and the Kemalist generals but the Turkey of Said Nursi. The current political establishment of the late Menderes and Ozal,and the presently feuding Gulen and Erdogan were influenced by Said Nursi’s movement and teachings.

Straight after the Dhaka centred massacre of the 5/6th of May 2013, fully armed members of the Bangladeshi security forces attempted to storm the Hathazari Madrassah near Chittagong, but were beaten back by local residents and students of the madrassah. Soon afterwards, I interviewed a graduate of Hathazari to gather more information. I asked him his thoughts post massacre, especially with Allama Shafi, the movement leader in police custody. He gave me a somewhat cryptic reply by narrating the story of the Indian Saint, Imam Rabbani – Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi.

The Naqshbandi Sirhindi was galvanised into a course diametrically opposed to the Mughal state when his father in law was executed by the then Emperor Akbar, for sacrificing a cow at Eid ul Adha. Sirhindi was eventually imprisoned by Akbar’s son Jahangir, arrested on the grounds of failing to bow to the Emperor. After the arrest, rebellion broke out in the Empire in protest. The rebels eventually captured the Emperor and asked Sirhindi for advice. Contrary to expectations he ordered the rebels to release Jahangir.

Impressed with the Sufi Sheikh, the alcoholic Jahangir kept him imprisoned but not before elevating him to the role of advisor, eventually releasing him. The Emperor outlived this Dervish, as Sirhindi died a few years after his release, however, his own grandson Aurangzeb would be initiated into the Naqshbandi tariqah by Sirhindi’s son. Aurungzeb would go onto commission the codification of Islamic Law, the Fatwa Alamghiri and patronise the institution that co produced it, the Madrasah Rahmiyyah.

‘Gimme Shelter’ for ‘A Change is Gonna Come’

Aside from the enduring indigenous traditions and the impact on the War on Terror. Geo-economic shifts place Bangladesh into an interesting situation . With the centre of global economic and cultural activity returning from the mid Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, we are reminded of half a millenium ago, when Mughal India and Imperial China accounted for nearly two thirds of world manufacturing.

Such a change in resource and human flows opens up possibilities and multiple trajectories, of ‘Learning to Fly’ and take off, from one party rule in China, the managed democracy of Singapore and the petro-autocracies of the Gulf, to the more accommodating polities of West Asia and the populist democracies and liberation theologies of Latin America. Greater exposure to possible political futures is yeast for the imagination, of how we might be more reflective and inclusive of our traditions, values and historical experiences.

Surveying the present political field of Bangladesh, the ‘East Wind’ that is currently blowing through Bangladesh, does not originate from the current autocratic Awami League (AL) government, but goes back further, and is more systemic. from the silent, clenched buttocks of a ‘Bhadralok’ class. An unwieldy coalition of military and civilian bureaucrats, civil society leaders and businessmen, who are now currently keeping the AL in power. Who by their desperation of holding on to colonial privileges, are creating a vacuum, by dismantling the very state that has been set up to protect them.

Faced with shifting global power geometries and historical patterns, the Double Aryanised elites of Bangladesh might perceive two stark choices before them. Either they equitably share power and resources with the indigenous mainly Muslim population, reflect their values in state institutions and respect their dignity, as what happened in Turkey, or they be dragged kicking and screaming to the firing squads as in Iran, during the revolution of 1979.

One option they do not have is the ‘Comfortably Numb’ King Canute fantasy of hoping to drive back the winds of change and sands of history that are enveloping them and their exclusive ethnic Bengali exceptionalism, proclaiming:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

A fitting reply being:

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away

Or as Led Zeppelin would say:

‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’.

Accompanying Videography with the Article

Why Is Charlie Hebdo OK, But Not Dieudonne? (Al Etejah TV 2015)
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Hur Adam (2011) – Biopic of Said Nursi

Accompanying Discography with Article:

‘Clandestino’ – Manu Chao
“Stop the Cavalry” – Jona Lewie
“Cops of the World” – Phil Ochs
“Animals” – Pink Floyd
“Road to Nowhere” – Talking Heads
“Brick in the Wall” – Pink Floyd
“The Dark side of the Moon” – Pink Floyd
“Welcome to the Machine” – Pink Floyd
‘’Gimme Shelter’’ – Rolling Stones
“ A Change is Gonna Come” – Sam Cooke
“Learning to Fly” – Pink Floyd
“Comfortably Numb” – Pink Floyd
“Your Time is Gonna Come” – Led Zeppelin

Remembering Maulana Bhashani: The ‘Play’ of Religion and Politics in Bangladesh

Posted on April 25, 2014 by brethrenofblacklotus in 1971, 1975, Culture, History, Religion, Uncategorized, Ziaur Rahman and tagged Bangladesh, Bhashani, Featured, politics, Slide.

In this article the Brethren explore some rarely mentioned aspects of Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani’s political practice. A close reading of his oath of allegiance, adds a new dimension to our existing understanding of his political project. It excites and liberates us from the Manichean question of secular-versus-religious politics that dominates our discourse so unproductively. It is in the greater interest to supersede this intellectual roadblock, which causes national self-harm, but is woven into a narrow account of our people’s historical experience. It is high time to question current ‘banking’ education narratives and ask whether it is not time for a new ‘Historiography of the Oppressed’.

Down I went into the Diaspora (Piraeus)…

Have you heard the one about the Maulana and the Marxist?

My first brush with the meanings of Maulana Bhashani was at one of those social gatherings that are part of London diaspora life. It was at the height of the kitsch culture madness of Shahbag in early 2013, which was reaching its Islamophobic conclusion of calling for a banning of religion from politics in Bangladesh. I sat next to a former graduate of Sylhet’s famed MC College, a lifelong JSD (National Socialists Party) member, and a Maulana, a Qawmi Madrassa graduate. Their conversation soon descended into an argument, with the JSD member scolding the Maulana, ‘Why don’t you Mullahs give up politics?’ To this the Maulana replied, ‘How does the son question the existence of his father?’ He continued, ‘Without a free India and Pakistan there would be no Bangladesh, without Bhashani there is no Mujib, where do you think free India and Maulana Bhashani came from?’

or the one about the ‘Bismillah Capitalist’?

Related to the above topic, I remember a conversation with the late Dhaka University’s Dr Aftab Ahmed, months before his 2006 assassination and the 2007 Diplomat’s Coup. He was puzzled by a conundrum that came out of study on Islami Chhatra Shibir alumni. He found that a minority progressed into the hierarchy of Jamaat e Islami, and a small number would leave to pursue their spiritual quest, mainly ending up in the ranks of the quietist Tablighi Jamaat. The majority went into the corporate world or private business, and became good capitalists. He noted an important limitation of the party, that it was basically a modern one with a sprinkling of Islam here and there.

Living in London, which comically pitches itself as global Islamic Finance hub, I observe a similar phenomenon. We call them ‘Bismillah Capitalists’, capitalism with a sprinkling of Islam to make it palatable for an indigenous market, and switch off our people’s critical faculties. A thread of the conversation I am sorry not to have developed was Dr Aftab’s call for a Liberation Theology amongst Muslims, and the courage to see and study the politics between the Prophet’s (pbuh) companions. Perhaps the optic of Maulana Bhashani’s soulful politics provides some yeast for the former.

Escape from the shadow of Lagado: Preventing Violent Eurocentrism (PVE)

To understand the significance of Bhashani, we are minded to read him within his tradition. Thus as readers we have to leave our prejudices and let the Maulana speak for himself and be understood in his own categories and definitions.

We must avoid the mistake of many academics at the Academy of Lagado (La-puta), who use Eurocentric monocles, even when gazing in the mirror. This use of an outdated and discredited tradition is unwittingly kept alive today in the field of Bangladesh Studies (BS) by the likes of Ali Riaz and his supporters of publicists and hangers on. It is an academic practice which claims to understand Islam and Muslims, but has no training in philology or religion but a combination of journalism, political science and interests in (self) sustainability. These experts take a cue from a section of their colleagues in Middle Eastern studies, and speak in the name of foreign policy and development, creating an arid landscape ready for the neo-con mind to wrap its talons around. The consequences of such misdirection is increased ignorance and grist to the burgeoning ‘War on Terror’ industry, with ever increasing collateral damage, bordering and crossing over into Islamophobia. An ignorance multiplier effect, exposed by Farhad Mazhar about media manipulation in general and specifically by a recent article on the editorial policy of a national newspaper in Bangladesh, the Dhaka Tribune.

This approach has been critiqued in terms of its professed political objectivity by Edward Said in his ‘Orientalism’, and methodologically by the Native American scholar Ward Churchill in his seminal ‘White Studies’. For the interested, a good starting point for a constructive and knowledge-based philological study of Islam are the works the Malaysian thinker Syed Naquib al Attas, especially his ‘Islam and Secularism’.

The Tao of Remembrance (Mudhakara)

Bhashani’s life reflects the journey of his people, born and educated during the British Raj, he mobilised throughout the United Pakistan period (when not incarcerated) and was revered in Independent Bangladesh. Politically he began with Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind and signed off in the left wing National Awami Party.

One document that that might help us understand the essence of this enigmatic figure is the disciple’s oath (bayah) he administered to his followers. It is reproduced and translated below.

“I give an undertaking that in Allah the Supreme I profess firm belief. I will believe with certainty that Rasulullah is the sent messenger. I will abide by all the regulations pertaining to the permitted and disallowed, as propagated by the Messenger.

I will not bow my head to anyone besides Allah.

I will endeavour tirelessly to establish socialism, the only way to relieve all forms of human extortion and embezzlement.

I will join the volunteer’s corps of the peasantry to eradicate from society all forms of imperialism, capitalism, feudalism, usury and corruption.

I will perform litanies, contemplation, meditation, prayers and fasting… according to the tariqah of Qadria, Naqshbandiya, Chistiyyah.

Every year on the 19/20th January 5 Magh I will attend the large seminar at Santos, Tangail and assist in the advancement and progression of the Islamic University.”

The disciple’s oath presents two features of Islamic pedagogy; action melded with belief and an anchoring to an oral tradition. Action, or orthopraxy, is seen in the obligation of adherents to engage physically from prayer, fasting, to attending annual gatherings. It is similar to the Aristotelian concept of hexis, a state of being, conditioned by habits and practice known colloquially in Bangladesh as ‘adab’.

The oral tradition is seen in reference to the Chistiyyah, Qadiriya and Naqshbandi Sufi orders and their practices. The Islamic tradition is oral before being written, even the word Qur’an means recitation. Arabs often distinguish between the Qur’an as recitation, and the written copy of it, the mus’haf. Oral primacy is maintained in Islamic pedagogy: from Qur’an memorisation; to the science of understanding where a Prophetic tradition has been narrated from; to the teaching genealogies preserved in the supplications of the Sufis. Such live oral traditions continue to breathe in Bangladesh, through the independent, non-government Qawmi (community) Madrassas, and the Sufi orders.

People with Muslim heritage can relate to this oral tradition through their formative childhood experiences, through the teaching and memorisation of short verses of the Quran, to the method of how to perform the five canonical prayers. This cycle of instruction and embodied practice is communicated from the first community in Makkah with a template established during the early Prophetic period, with the Angel Gabriel teaching the Prophet (pbuh) to recite and memorise the first verses from the Quran, and showing him how to pray.

The principles of this epistemology are laid out in a Prophetic tradition found in the Muwatta of Imam Malik ibn Anas, founder of the Maliki legal school and author of the first book of sacred law. Imam Malik knew many traditions recommending the seeking of knowledge, but felt suffice just to narrate this single hadith on the matter, one which expresses the essence of seeking knowledge, heart to heart – ‘sina ar sina’, teacher to student all the way back to the Prophet (pbuh),

Luqman the Sage (pbuh) made his will and counselled his son, saying, “My son! Sit with the learned men and keep close to them. For Allah gives life to the hearts with the light of wisdom as Allah gives life to the dead earth with the abundant rain of the sky.”

Genealogy of Resistance (Mujahada)

‘Let there be among you who enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong’.

(Qur’an 3:104)

The Oath affirms actions and a continuous struggle against imperialism and feudalism. Our 2013 Twin Towers of industrial and state crimes deserve better than, the paparazzi politics of the Reshma Rescue, the middle class guilt of Lungi March and the Dad’s Army that is Sushil Samaj. The Oath excites a soulful politics of the human solidarity and spiritual awakening – towards the creation of Al Insan al Kamil (the Perfect and Universal Man).

The impact of the Sacred on Bhashani’s political training can be seen not just in the oath’s content and monotheistic refusal to submit to all but God, but in the relationship of his teacher’s to the growing power of colonial capital. As T S Eliot wrote in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’,

‘No poet, no artist of any art, has complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.”

Bhashani was the disciple of the Baghdadi Pir of Lakhimpur in Assam, who advised him to journey to the Deoband seminary in Uttar Pradesh to study under Maulana Mahmudul Hassan. Bhashani’s chain of teachers were deeply committed to anti-imperial activities against the British before, during and after the 1857 War of Liberation.

Mahmudul Hassan accompanied his father in the war as a boy, and his own teacher Rashid Ahmed Gangohi had to flee from the British for his participation, he was later caught and imprisoned. Gangohi was the spiritual disciple of the Sufi Master Haji Imdad Ullah Makki. The pictures below of Delhi show the ferocity of British retribution on the built environment in the aftermath of 1857, and the simplicity of the graves, reflecting the humility of those who took part in the struggle.

All three scholars (Hassan, Gangohi and Makki) were either influenced, intimately took part in, or were inheritors of the Madrassa Rahimiyyah, the intellectual centre of resistance to the British in 1857. Scholars and students from Rahimiyyah participated in the war intellectually and physically, giving it moral legitimacy and directing movements and defences. Rahimiyyah, translates as an adjective of the enduring manifestation of Divine mercy, grace and love, as a consequence of human work, sacrifices and supplications. The madrassa was established in the 17th century during the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb by Shah Abdul Rahim, who also helped to compile the Fatawa Alamgiri, a landmark codification of the Muslim legal tradition.

When the British eventually captured Delhi, amongst other civilising barbarities, their Army decided to destroy the leading Islamic educational institute in India, ordering the Rahimiyyah closed and selling it to Hindu businessman. The poet Mirza Ghalib is quoted in William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal,

“The madrasas were almost all closed, and their buildings were again mostly bought up-and in time demolished – by Hindu moneylenders. The most prestigious of all, the Madrasa-i-Rahimiyyah was auctioned off to one of the leading baniyas, Ramji Das, who used it as a store (p463)”.

Out of the ashes of Rahimiyyah, its alumni began a new wave of Muslim institutional innovation, with Deoband (1866), Aligarh (1875) and Nadwatul Ulema (1894) founded to establish dignity, social justice and representation for radically disempowered Muslim communities. These institutions were supported across India, cascading regional developments. Without Deoband, Aligarh and Nadwatul Ulema, there would be no Hathazari or Dhaka University. They also schooled leaderships for the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, who led the freedom struggle for Independence. This contribution was recognised in the anniversary celebrations of the Deoband Madrassa in March 1982, by the attendance of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and leading members of her opposition including Raj Narain, Jagjivan Ram, and Chandra Shekar.

The Academy and the Maulana : Escaping the Cave

Talking about Bhashani connects with wider narratives of religion, politics and the subaltern Bangladesh. He is claimed by most factions as their own, from members of Jamiatul Ulema to Marxists who place his picture beside Marx and Lenin. He continues to suffer poor treatment from the Joy Bangla Kitsch Culture Machine. Recovering Bhashani washes away the formaldehyde into which Bangladesh’s (mis)leadership has tried to drown and trade religion, and remove dynamic religion from both the political sphere and informed public debate. Recovering Bhashani transcends this bourgeois political cul-de-sac of the post-Liberation era.

In the unfortunate political shorthand of our times, leftists are invariably considered atheists who battle with rightists, who invariably aren’t. Figures who cross these two immiscible currents are pathologised if not dismissed outright, for example the case of Abul Hashem, author of ‘The Revolutionary Character of the Kalima’, a formative influence on the Awami League and proponent of Islamic Socialism. His son, Marxist-Leninist historian Badruddin Umar is on the record as saying that his father was ‘a political schizophrenic’.

Between the politics of competition and class considerations, enchantment with the Maulana is not shared by all. In a certain camp of Political Islam, Bhashani has even been takfired upon. His politics of the dispossessed disturbs the tactical movements for business as usual, but with beards. A deconstruction of the cold war politics and the personal anxieties of the individual allegedly behind this dismissal is long overdue. Looking through the eyes of the colonially colour blinded, it seems Bhashani was a flash in the pan never to be found again. Yet the same kind of personalities and struggles against oppression can be found all over the Muslim world.

To the West, in Syria we have Abd al Rahman al Shaghouri (1914 – 2004), a scholar of sacred law, poet and sufi. Originally a weaver, then a textile mechanic and later foreman of technicians at a fabric plant, his story has more than a few lessons of how we think of our garments workers. Al Shagouri was instrumental in unionising workers in Damascus and was part of the team that led the Syrian Textile Workers Union to a successful 40 day strike for workers compensation. To the East, in Malaysia we see Nik Abdul Aziz, graduate of indigenous punduk seminaries and elected premier of Kelantan State for a period of 23 years. Last year we saw a coalition of his Islamic party, Chinese Malaysians and Anwar Ibrahim’s Kedalan forming Pakatan Ryat, The People’s Alliance, and mount the biggest challenge to the Malay ethnonationalist UMNO establishment so far.

Nearly four decades after Bhashani, there seems to be a deliberate attempt to cover up his politics and enduring contributions. The erasure takes several forms, from the demotion of his life in textbooks, to the festival cancellation, following his annual death memorial prayers. In Bangladesh today there is only room for the cultural hegemony of the feudal-industrial complex, which splices the dynasty of ‘The Sheikh’ to the kitsch culture of Shahbag. Judging by the quantity of faces on billboards, or media mentions, or columns in print, the legacy of Maulana has faded away.

The urge to forget emanates from a structural push by literary custodians of elite history to exorcise the undecidability and derailment that Bhashani brings to their ‘Little Boxes’. The false dichotomies we see bandied around today, of religious vs secular, urban vs rural etc, were delivered by ‘Biman’s’ own ‘cabin crew’. The court painters of the Republic’s history have stopped exercising their memory and have forgotten themselves. Their reliance on external marks of writing instead of their internal capacity to remember and relate, holds them hostages to their own appearances. Seemingly knowledgeable and connected, but unfortunately quite the opposite, they are thoroughly intolerant of dissenting views. We see this attitude evident in the ‘Academy’ of Bangladesh today, like three prongs of the same thrusting trident. The flat earth mantra of 3 million war dead, mediated by faux objective civil society speak, and somewhat more sophisticated but juvenile ersatz Jean-Luc Godard, Marxist Existentialist mirages of ‘Utopia’.

Can the subaltern remember?

Unfortunately for his detractors, the ghost of the Maulana and the legacy he represents refuses to die and continues to live in the body politics of Bangladesh. He is the tip of an iceberg of a living collective memory and continuity that permeates and ennobles the lives of ordinary people. Bhashani is more than politics, and in many ways emblematises the country’s story (mistakes included) of an uphill struggle for truth, justice and dignity. It is a narrative which also unfolds in India, as expressed by Mahmood Madani in a recent intervention with Tehelka.

Such a narrative disrupts the orthodoxies of contemporary politics, from the traditional far left arguments of religion being an opium of the masses, to the public Islam offered by Jamaat, of an Islam in the public sphere, relegated to the Islami Bank, local shopping centres, and a few ministries in a coalition government. Tariq Ramadan echoes a similar view when he observes that the present generation of Political Islam in Egypt had strayed from his interpretation of their original raison d’etre – of Liberation Theology. Bhashani’s anchoring in the Sacred speaks to a greater narrative of the Bangladeshi people, which we visit next.

The struggle continues: (left) Maulana Bhashani (1880 – 1976) and (right) Aminul Islam (1973 -2012) trade unionist who struggled for workers rights, and was tortured and killed by individuals linked to the security services of the current Bangladeshi government.

Uncovering the Story(ies) of Bangladesh

Clifford Geertz’s definition of culture as ‘the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves’.

In 1989 the British Broadcaster Channel 4, commissioned a three part documentary called the ‘The Story of Bangladesh’. It was directed Faris Kermani, and the theme was betrayal, from Plassey to the modern day. Following the tumultuous events of 2013 and our most farcical election in January it’s hard to say anything has changed. Maybe it’s time for critical introspection, into whether these are isolated events or woven into an overarching narrative of self harm.

The nation’s elite and their foreign partners tout the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 as the end of history. It is a story, of a land without progress and development for progressives and developers without a land. A story which is the exclusive property and achievement of the elites. The villain on this blank canvass is the country bumpkin, who doubles up as an Islamic militant if not a microloan borrower, in a tale faithfully retold recently in the Washington Post.

Viewing the world with this history explains the radio silence and editorial misdirection of its adherents regarding the government’s human rights violations, hamstringing of oppositional voices and state crimes in Bangladesh. The case for investigation has been submitted and is being processed by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Contrast this complicit silence with the amplitude of humane concern when that same alleged state sponsored violence spills over into the homes of minority religious communities. The secret, open to all who work in and know the sector, is in the funding streams and the agendas that frame them.

Towards a Historiography of the Oppressed

There are other histories, for those who listen, rarely recorded by foreign observers and their native informants, but spoken and heard locally and regionally, amongst the people. This Deshnama has its roots in the deeper history of the Bangladeshi people, the places they have been and the peoples from whom they are descended. It is where the history of a sacred land meets its residents, a memory that not only has its (re)source in the Medinan community of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), but connects with precedents in the edicts of Ashoka.

It is a familiar synthesis, to the incorporation of the Ethics of Aristotle and the Republic of Plato, into Christian thought by St Augustine and St Aquinas, co-authored and harmonised in the works of medieval Muslim theologians such as Al Ghazali, Al Razi and Averroes. These authors, books and ideas are still read and heard in the mosques, madrassas, churches and temples that bejewel Bangladesh today. The country’s music and poetry is filled with the same cosmopolitan religious symbolism shared and contested by all those who live within it.

Near my abode, there is a wondrous City of Mirror,

where my Great Neighbour lives.

(‘The Great Neighbour’ – Lalon Shah)

It is a chronicle prologued by Atish Dipankar, who arose amidst the general background of the Buddhist struggle in Bengal against the hegemony of the Brahmin led caste system. To invoke a few Prophetic paradigms, it is like a replay of the battle between the Prophet David (pbuh) and Goliath with the dialogue of the Prophet Moses (pbuh) with Pharaoh.

Oppression (zulm) transforms with time from local rajas, Delhi Emperors, the inimitable British East India Company, The British Crown, Calcutta zamindars, military juntas to Indian hegemony. The same can be said for the movements and figures that champion the oppressed (mazlum) like Shahjalal, Isa Khan,Nuraldeen,Titu Mir, Dudu Mian, and Bhashani. Post independence, we might observe Ziaur Rahman’s struggles and achievements, against internal and external opposition, in this vein, in laying the foundations of a modern democratic state amongst the ‘basket case’ ruins of despotic totalitarianism and the devastating 1974 Famine .

This is a story of people with a rich culture, entangled in global and regional developments, and a history of struggling against great odds, with great losses, for justice and dignity, inspired and strengthened by the Sacred. In this narrative, 1971 is a continuation of that history and not its end.

When an individual participates in this of sort historical experience, he or she comes to a new sense of awareness of self, has a new sense of dignity, and is stirred by a new hope. It gives the individual the tools to take on the arrogance, violence and false ending, that characterises the power discourse in Bangladesh today, or at least partially defang it.

Finally, have you heard the one about the Maulana and the Britisher Teacher?

During my research on the 2013 May Massacre in Dhaka, I was fortunate to meet a graduate of the Hathazari Madrassa. He had moved to the UK, taken up a career in business and was now married with children. In our discussions on the importance of education placed by the historian Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406), he narrated an anecdote.

That one day, his son came home from school and told him that he learnt from his teacher that Bangladesh was a poor and backward country, to which the UK government gives a lot of money for development. The next day, instead of dropping his son off to school, the Maulana took him on a day out, stopping first at the Tower of London. As they stood looking at the crown jewels, the Maulana pointed at the Kohi Noor stone and asked his son, ‘where do you think that came from?’ All day father and son visited various landmarks throughout London, which breathes heavily with the impacts of colonial capital, and discussed their history.

The next day at school the furious head teacher wanted to take the Maulana to task for taking his son out of education. When pressed by the head teacher for an explanation, the Maulana indicated to his son to reply. His response and act of defiance is something worth sharing across our amnesiac nation, ‘We learnt in school that Bangladesh was a poor country but that’s a lie, because all its wealth is here in the UK along with the riches of other nations stolen by the British Empire’.

“But the Emperor has nothing at all on!” said a little child.

(Emperor’s New Clothes –

Hans Christian Anderson)

As practitioners of the ‘Academy, Journalism and Art’ and as seasoned desh watchers, our roles should be to listen and record the stories that the people of Bangladesh tell us, not the ones that our foreign ‘development partners’ (funders & masters) pay for and want to hear. The challenge is to cultivate a dignifying and polyphonic history to humanise each other and heal the divisions that plague Bangladesh – a new ‘Historiography of the Oppressed’.

O you who have attained to faith!,

Be ever steadfast in upholding equity,

bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God,

even though it be against yours own selves,

or your parents and kinsfolk.

Whether the person be rich or poor;

God’s claim takes precedence over [the claims of] either of them.

Do not then, follow your own desires,

lest you swerve from justice:

for if you distort [the truth], behold,

God is indeed aware of all that you do!

(Quran 4:135)

_________________________

We would like to dedicate this article to Mohammed Burhan Uddin who passed on a few days ago in Tangail, Bangladesh. Pictured here in his mid 80s, he was one of Bhashani’s oldest surviving disciples (mourides). He became involvedas a young man in the 1950s when he heard Maulana Bhashani pray openly ‘don’t do anything for my kids but provide freedom for all’.

He was a cultivator who had not finished his primary education, but well informed about Syria and American Imperialism in general. He was part of a cultivator’s committee which went around checking prices of fish from market to market – just to make sure people were not getting swindled.

A few years ago on the 20th night of Ramadan, Bhashani appeared to him in a dream instructing him to struggle, (Shongram kor) and that modern technology was insufficient, only a people’s movement would work.

Accommodating the New Imperial Order: The Dhaka Tribune and the Ruling Culture of Subservience

Posted on March 25, 2014 by brethrenofblacklotus in Awami League, Culture, Economy, India, Media, Rights, Society and tagged AL, English, Featured, India, Media, Slide.

By Surma

They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire (Superpower), and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace – Tacitus (56 – 117 AD)

Have you heard the one about the Bangladeshi farmer and the Indian Border Guard?

Picture of 15 year old Felani killed by Indian Border Guards (BSF) on the 7 January 2011

There was once a Bangladeshi farmer who was ploughing his fields with his cattle near the Indian Border. The Indian border guards (BSF) as part of their live exercises, for the sake of target practice, crossed the border shot the farmer and took his cattle. The BSF re-brand the cattle as Indian cattle and then sell it to an Indian cattle smuggler, who in turn smuggles the cattle into Bangladesh, with the help of the BSF, and sells at a premium. All this time our helpless Bangladeshi farmer is lying in his field bleeding to death.

First the the local Awami League Chairman comes along, see’s the farmer walks over the farmer, crosses the border and has tea with the BSF guards at their station.

Second, a civil society, Sushil type, Nirmul Committee member comes along, see’s the farmer, takes pictures and then crosses the border and writes a report with the BSF guards. In the report the farmer was part of international Islamist terror network, and his cattles were being used to fund that terror network, thus both the farmer and his cattle created an existential threat to the Bangladeshi state and needed to be neutralised.

Third, a correspondent from the Dhaka Tribune arrives and takes an interview of the farmer, noting down all the facts, then writes a sympathetic piece in the paper about the problems faced of being an Indian Border Guard.

The above comical anecdote sadly reflects the state of affairs that is amongst the ruling clique, political and civil in Bangladesh. A culture of submission to an aggressive foreign power, which regularly kills citizens of the country, interferes in domestic politics and is economically exploiting the country’s resources. It is a culture of subservience which permeates the ruling Awami League, to a myopic civil society members, whose indignity is masked by spineless corporate media. This pro india bias was recently highlighted by former ambassador Sirajul Islam, in the Weekly Holiday. The Dhaka Tribunes role of propaganda as an extension of the state was confirmed when it and its editor Zafar Sobhan received an award by the Better Bangladesh Bangladesh Foundation (BBF) for creating a better image for the country. The other awardees are (post Rana Plaza) Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association for its contribution in the garment sector, the (post internationally criticised elections) Ministry of Foreign Affairs for contribution in the field of international relations, Bangladesh Armed Forces for serving in the United Nations Peace Support Operations and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for its role during the Liberation War and Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali.

Policy of Appeasement – ‘Please Sir, can I have some more!’

(l) Neville Chamberlain proclaiming foolishly ‘peace in our times’, after rewarding Nazi aggression at Munich 1938. ( r) Famous scene from Oliver Twist 1968, ‘Please sir can i have some more!’

This culture of subservience reached new heights, with the recent editorial by the Dhaka Tribune by its editor Zafar Sobhan, where he beseeches the Indians to extend the cricketing Indian Premier League into Bangladesh:

“The most obvious way in which to do this would be to let Dhaka bid for a franchise in the next application process and let economics sort it out. With a catchment area that would comprise the entire country in terms of local fan base, or even simply taking Dhaka as the focal metropolis, such a franchise would be a better bet than some that are already in the IPL”

The article and its timing displayed new a new marker for the paper, in its ‘Walter Mitty’, type editorial policy, a new level of a comic detachment from the reality faced by ordinary Bangladeshis. Instead of confronting criticism of the papers Islamophobic and pro India bias, the article just confirmed those accusations and further silenced an ever decreasing number of sympathisers, The reality on the ground, which the paper ignores and is insensitive to, is that one sided elections were held with the open support of the Indian government, with a brutal security crackdown with an alleged assist from the Indian army, all held against the backdrop of an increasing number of Bangladeshi citizens being killed by the Indian security forces at the border.

The content and timing of the piece could be interpreted as a rerun of Munich 1938, where instead of aggression against the sovereignty of a neighbouring country being opposed and resisted, we have a cringe worthy acceptance of the aggression by masking it up and seeking to reward such aggression, in this case unilaterally seeking an IPL franchise.

The ignorance multiplier effect – one import size fits all

The proposal shows an incredible disregard for developing Bangladeshi cricket, which can be throttled by importation of franchise and precious resources being diverted to it. Instead of advocating investment and development of local clubs, the newspaper’s solution, like so many other solutions adopted in current Bangladesh, is to import a ready made manufactured Indian solution. This is in the foolish belief that such a solution, of a single franchise, is for the benefit of development of the game in a country of over 150 million.

A similar dynamic, rather stagmatic, can be observed in every domain of indigenous social-technological development, from water resources engineering, to urban planning and education. The systematic undernourishment of our own talents is no basis for a state with pretensions of autonomy. Realise this, even (y)our foreign development partners are laughing all the way to the bank and up their career ladders

The attitude in the paper seems to be hangover of the Mujib-era one party state of the early 70s, where dogma superseded practical technicalities. Then it was the import of ill fitting Soviet blueprints, now we have the advocacy of ill fitting, counter productive Indian ones, for our politics, culture, economics and now cricket. For too long, the Dhaka Tribune and its ilk, has gotten away with weaving a fairytale of Bangladesh. Until people start complaining – and loudly too – the corporate media agenda will be shaped by supporters of government, pro AL big business and Indian foreign policy. That does not just subvert honest journalism: it undermines our democracy.

(l) Scene from the famine of 1974, mainly caused by the political and economic ineptitude of the government of the day. ( r) Memo to the Dhaka Tribune and the corporate media of Bangladesh, from a real journalist, George Orwell.

Ssh! No Islam Please, We’re Bengali

Posted on March 6, 2014 by brethrenofblacklotus in Culture, History, India, Politics, Religion, Rights, Society and tagged Bangladesh, Bengali Renaissance, Dhaka, Dhaka Tribune, Dhaka Tribune Editor Zafar Sobhan.

This article investigates the seemingly Islamophobic editorial policy of the Dhaka Tribune, and relates it to the deeper question of why Bangladesh’s current ruling elite have such an aversion to the Islam and Muslim culture of their subjugated population. It is high time that this state of affairs was transformed.

‘The Matrix’ that is Bangladesh: Which pill will you take, the red pill or the blue pill, reality or rhetoric?

Two Worlds Apart

In late February 2014 two meetings were held on the rights of ‘indigenous’ people. One was held in Dhaka at the Cirdap auditorium, the other in London at King’s College. Both were talking about the rights of indigenous people, the threats they faced and depictions of Islam.

The Bangladesh conference talked in alarmist tones of the epidemic of indigenous children being converted shock horror, to Islam in Muslim majority Bangladesh. There was no mention of Christian missionary activity, but only Muslims propagating their faith. In the imaginary world of the organisers, Islam is not a universal and dynamic tradition, but a static religion established 1400 years ago, it became the second largest religious tradition, purely on the reproductive abilities of its original adherents.

This view runs against the everyday reality experienced by Muslims in their lives and throughout their histories. From the earliest community, lead by the Prophet (pbuh), down to the Sufi giants of the Indian subcontinent, calling people to God has been one of the essential foundations of the faith and community. Frustration at the double standards applied towards Muslim vis a vis Christian missionary work in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region was expressed in Hefazat e Islam’s tenth point in their first set of demands last year.

Stop anti-Islamic activities in Chittagong propagated by several NGOs and Christian missionaries under the guise of religious conversion.

The Dhaka gathering stood in stark contrast in attitude to the one held in London by Reprieve, a human rights organisation that works for fair trials and justice for the most vulnerable and powerless against the most powerful states. Reprieve’s intervention aimed to highlight the plight of large communities in the tribal areas of Pakistan who live under constant fear of extrajudicial killing from drone attacks by the United States with the complicity of sections of the Pakistani state and wider society. Theirs is risky work, their key speaker, journalist Kareem Khan, whose son and father had been extrajudicially killed in a drone strike in December 2009, had been kidnapped then released in Pakistan only days earlier. The 2012 report Living Under Drones is well worth digesting for more background. The key difference here was that neither the participants nor their western liberal audience viewed Islam as an anathema, but instead as a source of strength in the struggle for universal humanity and rule of law. From Kareem Saheb’s opening prayer with the prayer of the Prophet Moses before facing his Pharaonic stepfather, to the supplications of solidarity he extended to the victims of state crimes in Dhaka last May. Kareem Saheb, took the same message of shared humanity, universal rights and pride in Islam to the European Parliament. The European Parliament showed their approval of the message by passing a resolution demanded European Union Member States not to “perpetrate unlawful targeted killings or facilitate such killings by other states” and called on them to “oppose and ban practices of extra judicial targeted killings.

Comparing both conferences, what I found incredulous were not the views expressed in Dhaka, Muktasree Chakma Sathi is entitled to her opinions, misunderstandings and key performance indicators. There is a need for more genuine, faithful interfaith space in Bangladesh, and in the absence of justice for any majority, minorities are vulnerable to co-option, division and rule. I was dumbfounded at how these views could be produced and published in the Dhaka Tribune without any challenge or right to reply.

‘Crusading’ Churnalism from Dhaka to London

crusading knight.jpg

‘Crusading’ journalism at the Dhaka Tribune proving indeed that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’.

This is not the first time the newspaper has run a negative, irrational news story on Islam and Muslims. Over its short lifespan of a year, there is a recurring pattern of negative and irrational attitudes toward the belief of the Muslim community in Bangladesh. From cursory, non-scientific search of the stories run by the Dhaka Tribune using the adjective Islamic, between a third to half of the stories are related to violence, militancy and terrorism. This gives any reader, prone to believing what they read in print, the impression that Islam is a regressive and violent religion, with a large section of its adherents engaged in militant terrorist activities.

It is worth scratching the skin of a particularly smug example or the irrational Muslim meme. On Language Day the Dhaka Tribune published an article with the title ‘New Fatwa deems Mars Trips Haram’. It was a story that clerics in the UAE had given a legal opinion that it is prohibited for a Muslim to fly to Mars, deliberately distorting the facts by a fatwa to the Mars One mission. The actual relevance of the story to Bangladesh I am yet to figure out (answers on a postcard please), but the psychic intention is clear. The Dhaka Tribune claimed that following the fatwa, ‘Muslims banking on a holiday to Mars will have to cancel their plans on space travel.’

This particular piece came just days after the right wing anti-immigrant Daily Mail published the story in the UK. The Daily Mail is currently being investigated by the UK Press Complaints Commission after it published a racist and Islamophobic op-ed piece ‘satirising’ a private community visit to a children’s theme park. The piece, which wrote of busses, with Muslim children on, blowing themselves up, was met with right wing revelry and public revulsion. More than 25 national Muslim groups wrote a letter of complaint to the editor with regards to the paper’s piece on Islam and Muslims, arguing that the piece has increased the risk of attack on Muslims from far right groups.

The story, printed by both the neocon Daily Mail and ‘progressive’ Dhaka Tribune for similar effect is patently untrue. A rebuttal was issued from the UAE, explaining that the answer was to a kamikaze-like, one-way trip to Mars. Given the Muslim moral abhorrence of suicide, the answer was a prohibition rather than an affirmation. The entire episode is lampooned elsewhere on the internet.

It begs the question of why the Dhaka Tribune would publish a story so clearly negative about Muslims, of no relevance to Bangladesh, echoing a right wing anti immigrant newspaper, and which was based on a cruel twisted half truth. To put the impression this gives of Dhaka Tribune’s professionalism, integrity and agenda even more clearly, the Daily Mail piece in the UK was actually much better. They at least buried the correct context of the story in the text beneath their sensationalist Muslim-negative headline, whereas the Dhaka tribune further spun the story out of context with its own Fatwa saying it meant that flying to Mars was morally reprehensible (haraam).

The American Muslim cleric Musa Furber, argued the episode demonstrated a deliberate media distortion of facts. He stated, the type of voyage Mars One plans is not analogous to the type of voyage presented in the article. Mars One aims to establish a permanent and sustainable human colony on Mars, as is apparent from its mission goals, roadmap, and the risks and challenges involved. It is obvious that this isn’t the type of voyage addressed in article, nor is it the type deemed impermissible in UAE fatwa authorities clarification.

The Ignorance Multiplier Effect and The War on Terror Economy

Needless to say, the story underscores the ignorance, and ignorance multiplier effect of the Dhaka Tribune on Islam, as it was misleading its audience that a fatwa issued in the UAE was somehow a binding space-exploration legislation upon all Muslims over all time and space, like the equivalent of a Catholic papal bull. The exact opposite is the truth and as this is a recurring error, briefly outlined next.

A fatwa is nothing more than a personal legal opinion, optional for everyone else to follow and morally binding only upon the person who issues it. An analogy might be made to the issue of legal opinions from courts in common-law systems. Fatwās generally contain the details of the scholar’s reasoning, typically in response to a particular case, and are considered a binding precedent by those Muslims who have morally bound themselves to that scholar, including future muftis. Mere rulings can be compared to memorandum opinions. The primary difference between common-law opinions and fatwās however, is that fatwās are not universally binding. The Islamic legal traditions are not universally consistent nor are they hierarchically structured. Contrary to what some would have us know, fatwās do not carry the sort of weight that secular common-law opinions do.

A well-trodden social response to the editorial policy of the Dhaka Tribune, would be to judge that its editor, staff and proprietors are anti-Muslim. A similar accusation was raised by a staff member at the paper, arguing that the paper was promoting intellectual attacks on Islam. Proponents of such a view might point to editor Zafar Sobhan’s facebook page where he suggests Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’, a book banned in Bangladesh, to be one of his favourite.

Zafar Sobhan’s facebook page is a regular portal for the Dhaka flatterati to pay tribute.

Such arguments are too blunt for the challenge at hand, but have indicative value. They are dismissed, by the religiously indifferent of course, with statements like ‘but there is a prayer room in the Gencom building’, or some derivation of ‘brown people can’t be racist’, and ‘how can he have an irrational antipathy towards Islam when he was born Muslim?’ Vocal objection to this publication’s apparent approach to perhaps the majority of its reader’s, if not their parent’s din might even be met with the well worn liberal-sounding excuse of “Well if you don’t like it, nobody is asking you to read it.”

Yet it is very much in the public interest to dwell on the matter for longer. As the War on Terror economy booms in Bangladesh, it becomes steadily more deadly and systematic as corporate media and corrupt scholarship seek more control over our intellects, bodies and relations with each other. We must penetrate deeper than observation and frustration at systematic bias, to examine the broken record that plays us for fools.

Introducing the Three Bankruptcies of Islamophobia in Bangladesh

The irrational antipathy the paper has towards Islam and Muslims in Bangladesh, emanates from a three pronged bankruptcy: intellectual, economic and moral, which have their origins and development deep in history. It creates an anaesthetising alienation and a homebrew Southern Comfort for the powerful and the privileged.

It is a crying shame that the self proclaimed liberal elites of Bangladesh do not deem it fit to extend such values of tolerance and compassion to their less advantaged neighbours. Instead of honouring their expensive educations by partnering with fellow citizens in tough predicaments, they continue to lap up the global war on terror narrative to preserve the status quo, keeping their neighbours, and themselves, in their place.

This is in sharp contrast to the acts and works of Professor Akbar S Ahmed, who in his latest volume The Thistle and the Drone, advocates the rights of ordinary citizens on the periphery of modern states who have found themselves victimised like the Pakistani tribesman by drones, the Age of Globalisation’s most terrifying kill technology.

The Islamophobia manifesting through the Dhaka Tribune is more insidious than Bollywood, and its buzz reverberates amongst many within the current power elite and ‘polite’ circles that Mr Sobhan services. It is the result of internalisation of a racist 19th century Britisher argument which at it core says that one cannot be both a Liberal and a practicing Muslim. It is as if they are two static, mutually exclusive categories. According to such a warped development indicator, one measures progress by the distance one keeps from living Muslim traditions. It is an outdated, bankrupt ‘essentialist’ view of Islam, ignoring its diversity and dynamics, gaining inspiration from the dictum of the imperialist British poet Rudyard Kipling: ‘OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet…’

Do as I say not as I do: J S Mill was one of the founders of modern liberalism, who also worked in the British Imperial Indian Civil Service

This argument has its roots in the works of J S Mill, who made it clear in On Liberty and Representative Government that his views there could not be applied to India, because Indians were civilizationally, if not racially inferior. This powerful view continues, tacitly and explicitly, despite vivid contradictory evidence, from Reprieve’s work with Pakistanis against drones, to Hasan Suroor’s recent study with Indian Muslims. It is an opinion that sheds more light on the insecurities of its advocates than the inadequacies of non-European civilisations.

Revis(it)ing Two Economies and The Song of Bangladesh

Indian classical festival.jpg

Indian fiddling while Dhaka burns: Bengal Classical Music Festival (BCMF) held at the Army Stadium from November 28 to December 1 2013 – during which time when opposition party members were being rounded up and killed by security services for their agitation for free and fair elections.

The Dhaka Tribune, with its combination of op-ed declamation, hypnotic kitsch history, mass choreography of facts and dramatic partisan lighting finds its model in a party street rally rather than the liberal newspaper it purports to be. A construction of a grandiose theatre rather than debate, its readership are offered images of themselves as the editorials want, with little correspondence with reality.

It would appear that Mr Sobhan is trying to recreate a spectacle of a Bangladesh in his reader’s mind that shall forever be Calcutta, and a second-rate one at that, with a colonially capital driven and Muslim-lite metropolis extracting resources and cheap labour for global markets from a Muslim rural hinterland. A century on and The Song Remains the Same.

In this two (cultural) economy theory, Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh) has a dependent and binary relationship with its Western half. According to the theory, the ruling elites of Bangladesh, in return for economic concessions and precious foreign exchange, purchase kitsch manufactured cultural products, political attitudes and certainties from a Delhi directed West Bengal. This attitude is exemplified in the newspaper’s favourable attitude towards the Indian government and turning a blind eye to the increasing Indian interference in domestic politics and domination over the economy.

The paper’s metropolitan myopia barely picks up the looming environmental crisis in rural Bangladesh, amongst other factors caused by the unilateral construction of upstream dams by the Indian government. A recent classical music festival is given more coverage than barrages and rivers in a country where millions are displaced environmental refugees. Multiple environmental crises are devastating certain parts of the rural economy and society, causing rural depopulation and driving desperate throngs into the crowded slums of Dhaka, where many are compelled to accept dangerous working conditions for meager wages. It is a labour market where wages are artificially kept low by the ruthless clampdown on dissent, as witnessed by the brutal torture and murder of labour activist Aminul Islam by individuals linked to the security forces. The Rana Plaza industrial disaster and its production are not the exception to the rule, but a tip of the iceberg of the two economies of Bangladesh.

It is a familiar image, but with different technology, of the absentee landlord, his rent collector and the tenant farmer, a return to the supposed ‘cultural’ heydays of British Raj following the 1793 Permanent Settlement, where centuries-old flexible land tenures were unilaterally appropriated then handed over by the British to a select, pliant moneyed class. This fundamental, multi-generational mutilation of social and ecological relations fueled the much celebrated 19th century Bengali renaissance that rested on the back of dispossession and pauperisation in the countryside.

A reminder of the true human cost of Bengal under the British is recorded in Noam Chomsky’s, World Orders Old and New:

“A British enquiry commission in 1832 described the effect of sponsored government created through Permanent Settlement Act of British Parliament. The commission found “the settlement fashioned with great care and deliberation has to our painful knowledge subjected almost the whole of the lower classes to most grievous oppression.” In the words of Director of East India Company, “The misery hardy finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India” Nevertheless Governor-General of India, Mr. Bentinck, was unmoved and observed, ” The permanent settlement, … has this great advantage, at least , of having created vast body of rich landed proprietors deeply interested in the continuance of the British Dominion and having complete command over mass of the people.”

Let them eat culture: (l) An illustration of famine victims of the Permanent Settlement Acts, and (r ) the 19th century Bengali Renaissance was result of a joint venture interaction between British Administrators and their Bengali Zamindari (feudal) colleagues.

The fear, and reality, of economic bankruptcy is an under-explored driver of human behaviour. Politically produced famines have claimed the lives and hopes of millions of our forefathers and mothers through 1770, 1943 and most recently 1974. In the shadow of such absence, this verse of Joan Baez’s haunting lament over our most recent military war is given new layers of meaning.

The story of Bangladesh

Is an ancient one again made fresh

By blind men who carry out commands

Which flow out of the laws upon which nations stand

Which is to sacrifice a people for a land

Morality and The ‘New’ Anandabazar School of Journalism

Intellectual, economic and moral factors intermingle in the messiness of real life, but the moral sphere is our next zone of interest. For those who can remember as far back as 2007, Mr Sobhan once reimagined the theatre of Bangladesh using the Christian Biblical story of Original Sin. Exhibiting symptoms of the Clark Kent ‘Ubermensch’ syndrome, Sobhan urged his countrymen to, ‘cleanse the poison from our bloodstream’. Since taking power in 2008 the Awami League government has obliged, we continue to see a rising number of political disappearances and deaths, not to mention mass incarceration and criminalisation of opposition activists.

This concept of Original Sin is opposed by the Qur’anic narrative and Muslim world view of Adam (ah) and his progeny – us – of original innocence, forgiveness, spiritual equality and personal responsibility. Original Sin is a fatalistic doctrine of Western Christianity, which is an anathema to and challenged by the egalitarian spirit of Islam.

A more apt Qur’anic and Judaic narrative that speaks to the reality of Bangladesh would be that of Cain and Abel. Cain, who killed his brother Abel the herdsman, and built a city, prefigured the modern call one hears from the polite circles of Dhaka, of the necessary cost of ‘progress’. The story gives us a framework to understand how ‘civilised’ people like Zafar Sobhan can dehumanise and applaud brutality against their fellow citizens, as we saw from the Dhaka Tribune’s production and coverup of the 6th of May Massacre.

In an interview for the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, Dhaka Tribune Editor Zafar Sobhan extols the virtues of media ethics and modern technology, stumbling ( choking? ) over a reference to his paper’s live blogging of “May 5th, 6th… the Hefazot in Dhaka”.

This attitude reenacts the tragic history of the bloody fields of Plassey in 1757 in modern day Bangladesh. At the heart of the tragedy lies the betrayal by Mir Jafar of Siraj Ud Daulah, a tragedy we replay time and again, one betrayal after another, of brother against brother, all in the name of a misconceived notion of ‘progress and development’.

The onward march of ‘progress’ in the history of the Bangladeshi people: (l) From the fratricide of Cain and Abel, to the (c) 1757 betrayal at Plassey and a (r) scene from the May Massacre in Dhaka .

Following in the footsteps of Zafar Sobhan in the use of Christian Biblical terms, the best summation of the Dhaka Tribune and its editor is:

And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?

(King James Bible, Genesis 4:9)

or as Sher e Bangla Fazlul Haq is reported to have said:

‘I worry the day when I see that the Anandabazar* has printed something positive about me, because that is the day I understand that I have done something against the interest of the Bengali Muslims’.

sher e bangla.jpg

The Lion of Bengal ‘Sher e Bangla’, A K Fazlul Haq, founder of the Krishak Praja Party (Farmer’s People’s Party) and the first elected premier of Bengal

* Anandabazar Patrika is a Kolkata based Bangla daily newspaper, founded in 1922, it was then seen as representing the interests of absentee landlords against their mainly Muslim tenant farmers.

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Author: brethrenofblacklotus