Gonojagoron Mancha Drawing a line in the sand?

BANGLADESH NEWS

I write in deep anguish, in deep resentment, and somewhat in despair over the recent happenings. They were blatant, in your face insults to our nationhood, to the core values of our struggle for independence. On the surface these affronts were a reaction of a bigoted minority to the historic upsurge of national ire against war criminals, and justice demanded by our youths against the criminals that was voiced over three weeks in Shahbagh Square. But deep down this is a resurgence and muscle flexing by elements that have inherited the spirit and philosophy of the forces that stood against us, and aided and collaborated with the power that had launched a war against us in 1971.

In 1971 when the Pakistan army was in a full-scale war against the civilians of Bangladesh, a cadre of people from among us formed bodies to aid the marauding army in its murderous tasks across the country. Their motivation was religion, and not ethnicity, language or culture that defined us a Bengali nation. In the name of religion this cadre perpetrated heinous crimes against their own people, and they rationalised their acts against humanity in that name.

As a sub-divisional officer in a district of Dhaka during that period, I had painfully witnessed how a leader of that cadre would obey the dictates of a Pakistani army commander who was the local martial law administrator. The leader was a lawyer by profession, but newly anointed as chairman of the Sub-divisional Peace Committee. In that capacity he would spy on all neighbourhoods and local officials, report to the army commander about concocted anti-state activities, and help the army raid local villages.

In a desperate act I was able to nab this man on some criminal charges, but none stuck until after liberation. After independence the man was arrested and I was asked to depose against him (although by that time I was no longer in charge of the sub-division). As I was leaving the court after deposition the man smiled at me from the dock and said my deposition would not hold, and that he would be soon free. I never knew if he was sentenced to jail, but I do know that many like him moved about freely without ever having to pay for their misdeeds.

The recent happenings make me feel that this is 1971 all over again. We are faced with the same ideological divide that launched us into our fight for independence. We are facing the acolytes of the same belief that wanted to deny us our nationhood on the basis of our language and ethnicity and fought against us from within. We are again witnessing resurgence of a force that had never come to terms with our right to exist as a country that put our culture, language, and ethnicity ahead of anything else.

We are again thrown back to the time when this force worked with our enemies to put an end to our struggle for independence by liquidation of our people in the darkness of night, all in the name of preserving a country that was built on a flawed ideology. Again we have a line drawn in the sand by our adversaries. And maybe it is a good thing that this is happening now.

Perhaps this new drawing of the line in the sand would not have happened had there been no Shahbagh Square uprising. Perhaps we would have allowed this cancer to grow unnoticed and gone about merrily with our politics as usual. But just as the whole Shahbagh Square movement took the nation and our political parties by storm, the fallouts of this movement also shook the nation no end.

While the biggest outcome of the movement is the reaffirmation of our faith and firm adherence to the core ideals of our Liberation War and a renewed rejection of those who opposed those ideals, another major outcome is the demonstration of people's will to reject politics that uses religion as a platform.

This post- liberation generation has shown that they no longer carry the baggage of the flawed ideology that once built a country based on religious affinity ignoring ethnicity, language and culture. The upsurge showed that in politics what figured most was honesty and integrity; adherence to the values of our independence; respect for our ethnicity and culture; and keeping religion separate from politics.

However, a parallel by-product of this movement has also been aggravation of the negative forces that have always been acting in the opposite direction. For these forces the 1971 war never ended. For these forces the ideology on which Bangladesh was founded is an anathema. The forces lay dormant for a time, but they would rise when circumstances were in their favour. In times of crisis they retreat, but regroup and reenergise when the crisis moves away. When they come back they attack with greater force and intensity.

It seems from the events of the past few days that the evil forces are flexing their muscles once again to take away the hard earned gains of our freedom. This is at a time when the majority in Bangladesh have unequivocally sworn their adherence to pursuing their dreams of a democratic society based on respect for all religions and for all humanity. This is at a time when this majority has unequivocally spurned religion based politics and its followers, particularly those who had opposed our War of Independence and had carried out murderous attacks.

The voices raised at Shahbagh Square demanded justice for an aggrieved nation for crimes that were committed against people during our War of Liberation. Unfortunately, those who we have in the dock today are a handful from among hundreds or perhaps thousands of such people who fought us on a false ideology. Maybe we can get some justice by prosecuting those we have at hand.

But what do we do about the ideologues and acolytes of this ideology who are now threatening our identity as a nation, which we are trying to build based on our core values of independence? The Shahbagh protesters may constantly remind us of these values, but how do we contain the counter values that the new-fundamentalists pose or threaten?

The enemies of our freedom struggle were not all foisted on our soil from outside. A good number came from within us, and they continue to live among us. They take the garb of religion to fight us and delude our innocent masses for their own political objectives. A ban on the activities of a political party based on its affiliation to religion may be a short term solution, but it will not be effective to alter their mindset in the long run.

For this we need a more conscious and deliberate approach to educate the whole society to take pride in our identity first as a Bengali nation, and in our culture, language and ethnicity. We need to constantly educate our next generation on this identity first, and remind them that religion and politics are separate. We need to educate them that we need religion in our personal lives and not in state politics. And that is the true drawing of a line in the sand.

The writer is a former staff member of the World Bank