Is Bengali nationalism’s uneasy coexistence with orthodox forces unravelling in Bangladesh?

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the laminitis of Bangladesh- immoderate mightiness person been his backstage spiritual inclination- had adopted a secular constitution. Furthermore, contempt immoderate shortcomings helium had arsenic a leader, helium did not wrapper himself successful the mantle of Islam to bolster his legitimacy. It was truly nether 1 of his successors, General Hussein Mohammed Ershad, who had seized powerfulness successful a subject coup, that Islam was declared the authorities religion successful 1988. Ershad’s determination was strictly instrumental; it was designed to curry favour with Islamic zealots who had travel to consciousness their oats nether 1 of his predecessors successful office, General Zia-ur-Rehman, who had, successful turn, sought to region himself from Rahman’s secular legacy.

From the precocious 1980s onwards, important numbers of Bangladeshis sought enactment successful the Gulf states successful the aftermath of the lipid boom. Many of them besides recovered employment successful Saudi Arabia. Not surprisingly, they were exposed to a variant of Islam rather antithetic from what they had known astatine home. Simultaneously, arsenic authorities successful Bangladesh took an Islamic sheen, Riyadh went connected to enactment madrassas, which propagated its knowing of Islam. These duplicate forces strengthened the hands of a conception of Bangladeshi nine that had ne'er reconciled themselves to the unsocial practices of Bengali Islam. Over time, particularly flush with Saudi funds, they started to asseverate themselves. However, they lone made constricted headway successful the country’s electoral politics, adjacent nether Begum Khaleda Zia, the widow of General Zia-ur-Rehman, who was wide seen arsenic sympathetic to their views.

Obviously, Bengali linguistic nationalism has had an uneasy coexistence with the forces of orthodox Islam wrong the country’s governmental culture. Today, however, successful the aftermath of Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, the second constituent is progressively coming to the fore. Perhaps the astir striking manifestation thereof was past week’s onslaught connected the location of Rahman. Members of the Jamaat-i-Islami, a extremist Muslim organisation, it is wide believed, had orchestrated the attack.

Despite the sheer brazenness of this enactment of vandalism, the caput of Bangladesh’s Interim Government, the Nobel Laureate, Mohammed Yunus, portion condemning the violence, avoided naming the perpetrators. His unwillingness oregon inability to forthrightly telephone retired the Jamaat for engaging successful arson tin beryllium attributed to their quality to enactment with a grade of impunity successful the aftermath of the extremity of Hasina’s government.

In this context, it is worthy recalling that during the East Pakistan situation of 1971, erstwhile the Pakistan Army carried retired a run of unparalleled brutality against the Bengali citizenry, members of the Jamaat had sided with the military. Few, if any, Jamaat leaders person expressed immoderate regret for their relation during the crisis. Worse still, adjacent today, immoderate wrong its fold importune that maintaining the unity of Pakistan justified their enactment of the military’s genocidal actions.

Yunus, among different matters, accepted an invitation to sojourn Pakistan aft precocious gathering with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif successful Cairo. These developments, nary doubt, volition delight the spiritual orthodoxy and their supporters successful Bangladesh. In the process, Bangladesh’s legacies of a imaginativeness of syncretistic Islam and its committedness to Bengali linguistic nationalism volition beryllium invariably forced to instrumentality a backmost seat. The retreat of some those forces lone bodes sick for the aboriginal of a state that had been created due to the fact that a communal religion unsocial could not beryllium the ground of a unified authorities riven with linguistic, taste and determination differences.

Sumit Ganguly is simply a Senior Fellow and directs the Huntington Program connected US-India Relations astatine the Hoover Institution, Stanford University