The Diverse Roots of the ‘Secular’ in East Pakistan (1947–71) and the Crisis of ‘Secularism’ in Contemporary Bangladesh

Abstract

This article traces the formation of the secular in Bangladesh during the period of 1947–71. Arguably, this is a period when the idea of a ‘secular Bengali nation’ as opposed to ‘Islamic Pakistani nationalism’ was coined in by the political forces to foster imagination of a Bengali root of East Pakistan. This article argues with multiple evidence that particular project of secular Bengali nationalism in the sense of strict separation of religion and politics as opposed to religious nationalism makes little sense in contemporary Bangladesh as major parties here are found to manipulate religious nationalism in a society where simplistic and unenlightened interpretation of religion plays a significant role. This article argues that the idea of secular nationalism had multiple meanings and roots during 1947–71 and by acknowledging diverse roots of secular nationalism, it is possible to make sense of contemporary Bangladesh that is by all secular indicators turned into an intolerant entity but at the same time it is equally important to note that Bangladesh's intolerance is devoid of enlightened application and teaching of Islam.

Keywords

Bengali Nationalism Secularism Bangladesh Islamism

Introduction

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards—this famous quote of a Danish Philosopher Søren Aabye Kierkegaard paves the way for making sense of the present through the enquiry of the past. With that in mind, this article traces the roots of the secular in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). It investigates what secularism meant to middle classes and the masses during the rise of Bengali nationalism during 1947–71, which eventually saw the emancipation of Bangladesh in 1971. Within this knowledge quest, this article argues that even though secularism was instrumental in shaping Bengali nationalism during the struggle for the emancipation of the right to self-determination of the Bengali nationals living in Pakistan, Bengali nationalism was never really devoid of religious nationalism, contrary to a dominant scholarly narrative.

In this article, I argue that there are several roots of interpreting Bengali nationalism as a concept and it is important to locate these roots, which are contested and diverse in nature. In my view, locating several roots of Bengali nationalism is a key to understand modern Bangladesh—which is overwhelmingly conservative by several indicators and where many bloggers who have criticised Islam are now either dead or living in exile against the backdrop of violent extremism and where Bangladesh police had publicly warned against hurting religious sentiments.²

PTI dated 1 February 2017. ‘Don’t Hurt “Religious Sentiments”: Bangladeshi Police to Writers’ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/dont-hurt-religious-sentiments-bangladeshi-police-to-writers/articleshow/56916518.cms (accessed 10 March 2017); Maz Hussain, 1 March 2017, ‘Bangladesh Criticized for Slow Progress in Blogger Murders’, http://www.voanews.com/a/bangladesh-criticized-for-slow-progress-blogger-murders/3744833.html (accessed 3 March 2017); Marsha James, 16 February 2017, ‘In Exile, Bangladeshi Activist Writes, Dreams of Home’, http://www.voanews.com/a/tuhin-das-poet-activist-and-writer-in-exile/3726764.html (accessed 9 March 2017).

It should be noted that extremists have killed few Muslims for holding tolerant religious views³

Daily Mail, 2016, ‘Sufis Live in Fear after Bangladeshi Machete Slaughter’, June 2, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3621168/Sufis-live-fear-Bangladeshi-machete-slaughter.html (accessed 27 May 2017).

and recently Bangladesh government have removed the statue of Greek Goddess of Justice Themis against the backdrop of demand from conservative religious group sparking outcry from liberal quarters of the country.⁴

The Daily Star, 2017, ‘Statue of Greek goddess on SC premises being taken down,’ http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/statue-greek-goddess-sc-premises-being-taken-down-1411168 (accessed 27 May 2017).

Moreover, it is now an established fact that both the political parties—Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh Nationalist Party—are vying in public to be ‘the authentic flag bearer of Islam’ though their practices are largely devoid of ethical and enlightened teaching of Islam.

Against the backdrop of this broad-brush factual illiberal portrait of the contemporary Bangladesh, one must raise the question why is then secularism endorsed in Bangladesh Constitution after the independence of 1971? How substantial is the claim of scholar such as Lewis who argued, ‘religion and politics were only weakly linked together in the public sphere during the years before and immediately after liberation, during which time a secular inclusive Bengali national identity was uppermost […]’.⁵

David Lewis, Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 28.

Or how representative of reality is the claim by Islam who argues that ‘Bangladeshi people fought a successful liberation war with secular-nationalist vision?’⁶

Maidul Islam, Limits of Islamism: Jamaat-e-Islami in Contemporary India and Bangladesh (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 170.

A similar claim about the secular orientation of Bengali nationalism in the sense of non-communalism is also advanced by Anisuzzaman.⁷

Anisuzzaman, ‘Claiming and Disclaiming a Cultural Icon: Tagore in East Pakistan and Bangladesh’, University of Toronto Quarterly 77, no. 4 (2008): 1058–69.

This article, in contrast to these claims, advances an argument that calls for cautiousness in evaluating Bengali nationalism with only secular root. I argue that a difference of interpretation that used to persist among Marxist-oriented middle class intellectuals who in contrast to masses defined Bengali nationalism with a prism that is premised upon various Western political thoughts. These intellectuals were largely instrumental for shaping the imagination of a secular Bengali nationalism in paper, but that project has failed because this narrative is detached from the reality of masses as contemporary Bangladesh suggests majority Bengalis here do not see any conflict between religion and nationality whereas few of those intellectuals who are alive and were instrumental in shaping secular discourse of the country are no more associated with the AL since the party, in my opinion has moved to a central right position as I shall show later.

In order to illustrate these points, this article would first indulge itself in exploration of theoretical and practical definitions of secularism and its effect on nationalism. Second, it will explain why I believe there is a crisis of secularism in Bangladesh. Finally, it will portray the conflated roots of Bengali nationalism to make the point that there was non-secular root of Bengali nationalism, which overshadows the secular root but largely ignored by the scholars. By acknowledging this non-secular root of Bengali nationalism, it is possible to make sense of current crisis of secularism in Bangladesh. I should, however, confine my enquiry to 1947–71 time period, as that was the time, as mentioned before, when Bengali nationalism in opposition to Pakistani nationalism sprung as a powerful imagination. However, at the same time, I acknowledge it is not possible to understand contemporary Bangladesh and its crisis of secularism without the history of partition and religious nationalism that founded Pakistan. Therefore, while the key focus of my historical enquiry would be between 1947 and 1971, I would make pertinent references to partition. The overall approach of my enquiry could be explained through the notion of historical specificity which according to Alam, ‘shows how, for any specific situation, a series of historical conjunctures has led to a distinctive configuration’.⁸

S. M. Shamsul Alam, ‘Islam, Ideology and the State of Bangladesh’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 18, no. 1–2 (1993): 88–106.

Secularity of the Secular and its Connection with Nationalism

Secularism has multiple meanings, as scholars such as Fitzgerald, Swatos and Christiano and Hurd and Casanova⁹

Timothy Fitzgerald, Religion and Politics in International Relations: The Modern Myth (London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011); H. William Swatos and J. Christiano Kevin, ‘Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept’, Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999): 209–28; Jose Casanova, ‘Secular Imaginaries: Introduction’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 21, no. 1 (2008): 1–4.

offer diverse meanings of secularism. Tschannen, in his ontological essay The Secularization Paradigm: A Systematization, argues that the secularisation paradigm is based on three concepts: differentiation, rationalisation and worldliness.¹⁰

Olivier Tschannen, ‘The Secularization Paradigm: A Systemization’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30, no. 4 (1991): 395–415.

In Tschannen’s analysis, ‘differentiation’ means separation of religion and state and is at the centripetal for the evolution of secularisation theory. Tschannen states that secularisation enables various institutions such as education, politics and economy to differentiate from religion.

Such rationalisation has two implications in human society, Tschannen argues. First, rational worldview facilitated the emergence of science, which proposes a new interpretation of the world that competes with the religious worldview. Second, when this rational and scientific interpretation of the world is applied to human affairs, we witness a process which attempts to determine social life in a rational fashion.¹¹

See Tschannen, ‘The Secularization Paradigm: A Systemization’.

Tschannen argues that the emergence of worldliness derives from unbelief in god against the backdrop of the emergence of rational science and rational socialisation process. However, it is necessary to note that there are variances in degrees and magnitude in approaching each concept of the secularisation paradigm by these authors.

In a similar vein, Casanova argues that secularisation deals with empirical patterns of differentiation between religion and secularity.¹²

Jose Casanova, ‘The Secular and Secularisms’, Social Research 76, no. 4 (2009): 1049–66.

Casanova opines that secular establishments include state, economy, science, art, entertainment, health and welfare, etc. In his view, thesis of ‘the decline’ and ‘privatisation’ of religion in the modern world become the centripetal of secularisation theory. By secularism, he means a combination of a variety of secular worldviews constructed in particular times of European history of the enlightenment and applied in state projects until now. The key for the creation of a secular state in Casanova’s view depends on a secular view, which differentiates between constitution and judicial system from religious faith and practice. Casanova further explains what constitutes secular state ideology. In his view, a secular state ideology sees religion as either an irrational force or a non-rational form of discourse that should be banished from the democratic public sphere. Casanova further classifies secularism into two categories: (i) phenomenological secularism and (ii) political secularism.

In Casanova’s view, phenomenological secularism deals with social conscious-ness of secularism. With reference to Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, he argues that phenomenological secularism becomes an imminent frame, which constitutes an interlocking constellation of the modern differentiated cosmic, social and moral orders where all these orders are purely secular; here, god does not exist. In modern societies, Casanova claims that due to phenomenological secularism people are non-religious, as naturalisation of non-religion becomes a human condition.¹³

See Casanova, ‘The Secular and Secularisms’.

Political secularism, on the other hand, in Casanova’s opinion, keeps the public democratic sphere free from religion in a state. Casanova argues that this is the basis behind any secular state doctrine. He argues that a society can be truly secular, but there is always the risk of mixing religion and secularism in terms of state doctrine. Casanova opines that as a statecraft doctrine, secularism has two principles: principles of separation (religion and state) and the principle of regulation of religion in the society (free exercise of religion). He argues that the principle of separation depends on whether secularism is an end in itself or is meant for some other end, that is, democracy, equal citizenship or religious pluralism.

If one considers key implications of these aforementioned theories, one must realise that despite of differences in approaches, secularism/secularisation offers religious neutrality. In the world, there are two models of secularism that shapes polity, one is the French model, Laicity (complete absence of religion), and the other is USA model (religious pluralism/freedom). The connection between secularism and nationalism is obvious too. If one considers the theory of nationalism advanced by Gellner, they could see how secularism may influence nationalism.¹⁴

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Paris: Payot, 1983).

Gellner in his contested theory argues that nationalism promotes one kind of culture, one style of communication and one centralised and standardised educational system. We could see the reflection of this connection and theory in communist secular Soviet nationalism. Similarly, it is possible to argue that Anderson’s (2006) theorisation of imagined communities through print capitalism is relevant to understand the connection between secularism and nationalism as those polities and societies shaped by secularism would be promoting an imagination of secular nationalism through media or print capitalism.¹⁵

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso Books, 2006).

Same logic applies to non-secular polities and their nationalism. Having set the theoretical connection between secularism and nationalism, the next section would be portraying what I call the crisis of secularism in contemporary Bangladesh.

Crisis of Secularism in Contemporary Bangladesh

This section would be confined within an illustration of an illiberal Bangladesh where it is difficult to locate the secularity of the secular in the socio-political scenario of Bangladesh. In other words, this section would make a point that Bangladesh is overwhelmingly conservative where it is getting harder to find the essences of two models of secularism—no religion or religious pluralism—in effect into politics. In order to explain the scenario, I would depict anon-secular social trends captured by globally accepted surveys such as Gallup and Pew Research.

These survey reports have shown that Bangladesh hosts a highly conservative Muslim society, where an overwhelming number of people offer their support in favour of the political role of Islam. In other words, Bangladeshis want their state and politics infused by Islamic values and culture. For example, over 98 per cent of the surveyed Bangladeshi Muslims in 2009 said in a Gallup poll that ‘religion plays a very important role in their lives’.¹⁶

Nicole Naurath, Religion, Secularism Working in Tandem in Bangladesh (GALLUP World, 2009), http://www.gallup.com/poll/121937/Religion-Secularism-Working-Tandem-Bangladesh.aspx (accessed 12 January 2013).

A Pew Survey in 2012 found that 71 per cent of the surveyed Bangladeshis displayed Quranic verses in their homes to highlight the importance of Islam in their lives.¹⁷

James Bell, The World’s Muslims: Unity and Diversity (Pew Research Center, 2012), http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity.aspx (accessed 3 April 2014).

Another Pew Survey found that 82 per cent of the surveyed Bangladeshi Muslims favour making Sharia the official law of the country and 71 per cent said they wanted religious judges deciding family and property disputes.¹⁸

Ibid.

The 50 per cent of those surveyed Muslims who favoured Sharia law also supported corporal punishment (such as whipping or cutting off the hands of thieves and robbers), while 55 per cent supported stoning as punishments for adultery. About 44 per cent of those same surveyed Muslims favoured the death penalty for converts.¹⁹

Ibid.

Not all aspects of Bangladeshi law follow Sharia and ‘83% of the surveyed Bangladeshis believes that not following Sharia law is a bad thing’. It first became apparent that many Bangladeshis wanted Sharia as the state’s legal framework in a 2006 Gallup poll, which found that 52 per cent of the surveyed Bangladeshis wanted to see Sharia as the ‘only source’ of legislation and 39 per cent said they wanted to see Sharia as ‘a source’ of legislation.²⁰

Dalia Mogahed, Islam and Democracy. Gallup Muslim Studies Series, 2006, http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/153866/Abu-Dhabi-Gallup-Forum-Key-Findings-Muslim-West-Relations.aspx (accessed 23 November 2012).

This meant in 2006, 91 per cent of the surveyed Bangladeshis wanted the constitutional and legislative framework of the country infused in religious values. Although those Bangladeshis differed about the degree of inclusion of Sharia in state and politics, in general, they agreed that Islam should play a significant role in the country’s socio-political structure. It can be noted that the meaning of Sharia may differ widely; however, it would not be inappropriate if one argues that these findings do not take into account that Bangladesh hosts a non-secular society, which demands a non-secular state and politics. The state at the same time, as I argued with Martin Griffiths elsewhere, promotes many policies reflective of religious biasness.²¹

Martin Griffiths and M. Hasan, ‘Playing with Fire: Islamism and Politics in Bangladesh’, Asian Journal of Political Science 23, no. 2 (2015): 226–41.

As a result, the situation of minorities is not encouraging. Minorities, especially Hindus, are leaving Bangladesh, mostly for neighbouring country India. Based on census data, Barakat et al. found that a total of 1.8 million Hindus left in the period of 1964–71, while 1.9 million went between 1971 and 1981, 1.6 million during 1981–91 and 2.8 million between 1991 and 2001.²²

Abul Barakat, Shafiq Zaman, M. D. Shahnewaz Khan, Avijit Poddar, Saiful Hoque and M. Taher Uddin, Deprivation of Hindu Minority in Bangladesh: Living with Vested Property (Dhaka: Pathak Shamabesh, 2008).

In other words, according to this analysis, 8.1 million Hindus left Bangladesh between 1964 and 2001. The approximate volume of Hindu emigrants was as high as 705 persons per day during 1964–71, 521 persons per day during 1971–81, 438 persons per day during 1981–91 and 767 persons per day during 1991–2001.²³

Barakat et al., 2008, 67.

According to a newspaper report, 900,000 Hindus either went missing or left the country between 2001 and 2011.²⁴

Shishir Morol, 2014, ‘0.9 Million Hindu Population Reduced in Last 10 Years’, Daily ProthomAlo, Dhaka: Bangladesh.

Barakat et al. have outlined in their book how policies such as enemy property act were used to grab lands from minorities. Similar bias is recorded to deprive Muslim women from their property rights on religious ground as an Economist report has found that “only 2% women in Bangladesh owns productive lands due to biased religious inheritance law. This is not a picture of secular Bangladeshˮ²⁵

The Economist, 2013, ‘Women and Property Rights: Who Owns Bangladesh?’, http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2013/08/women-and-property-rights (accessed 27 May 2017).

However, against the backdrop of Shahbagh Movement that advanced a political campaign to ban religious politics in Bangladesh and supported capital punishments for Islamist leaders from Jamaat e Islami, who were convicted as war criminal by Bangladesh’s war crime trial, commentators such as Ganguly²⁶

Sumit Ganguly, 2013, ‘The Battle for Bangladesh: Who Defines Bengali Identity?’ Foreign Affairs Magazine. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/bangladesh/2013-03-13/battle-bangladesh-0 (accessed 3 March 2017).

in an article in the Foreign Affairs Magazine incorrectly argues that ‘Shahbag Movement in 2013 demonstrates and harbor hopes of a secular and unified Bangladesh’. Ganguly’s polemic claim was disproved by a survey conducted by the Prothom-Alo and Org Quest Research in 2013, which found that Shahbagh Movement was not really representative of majority as that survey has found 58 per cent Bangladeshis did not support Shahbagh and 17 per cent did not know anything about it, which means 75 per cent of the surveyed people did not associate with Shahbagh contrary to the claim of Ganguly (2013).²⁷

Iftekhar Mahmud and Kuntol Roy, ‘Prothom-Alo ORG Quest Survey 9–20 April 2013: What the Public Perception About the Country?’ (DesherPoristhithiniyemanushkivabche?), Daily Prothom-Alo (11 May 2013), http://www.prothom-alo.com/bangladesh/article/971/%E0%A6%A6%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%B6%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%AA%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%A5%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%A4%E0%A6%BF-%E0%A6%A8%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BC%E0%A7%87-%E0%A6%AE%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%A8%E0%A7%81%E0%A6%B7-%E0%A6%95%E0%A7%80-%E0%A6%AD%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%9B%E0%A7%87

The same survey found that over 75 per cent Bangladeshis opined against banning Jamaat. It is also pertinent to mention that scholars such as Islam (2015) downplay the influence of Islam into politics by indicating voting share of Islamist parties.²⁸

Maidul Islam, ‘Crisis of Islamist Extremism in Contemporary Bangladesh’, Economic & Political Weekly LI, no. 4 (2016): 29.

In a similar vein, Bangladesh expert such as Jahan²⁹

Rounaq Jahan, CPD-CMI Working Paper Series-8: Political Parties in Bangladesh (CMI, 2014), https://www.cmi.no/publications/file/5229-political-parties-in-bangladesh.pdf (accessed 12 February 2017), 52.

incorrectly defines AL supporting secularism and a non-religion-based definition of national identity (Bengali nationalism), whereas Jahan is correct to point out that the ideology of BNP, Jatiya Party and Jamaatuses Islam as a basis for nationalism (Bangladeshi nationalism). The problem with this narrative is that the recent transformation of AL’s platforms is completely ignored in these claims as the partyputs ‘Allah is the most Powerful’ at the centre of the cover of their publications as shown in Picture 1.

Picture 1.

Source: Author’s own.

It is a fact that party publications reflect identity and practice of a political party. Theories of discourse analysis are useful to decipher the meaning of symbols of languages used in party manifestoes. Many definitions from various perspectives are given by academics regarding discourse analysis, and discourse is by now a well-known postmodern term. Gee argues that discourse analysis considers how spoken and written language enacts social and cultural perspectives.³⁰

James Paul Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (London: Routledge, 2005).

Deacon et al. suggest that discourse conjoins language use as texts and practice to show systematic links between texts and sociocultural practices.³¹

David Deacon, Michael Pickering, Peter Golding and Graham Murdock (eds), Researching Communications: A Practical Guide to Methods in Media and Cultural Analysis (London: Hodder Arnold, 2007).

Language written in political manifestos, constitutions and pamphlets constitutes relevant discourse, as Römmele (2003) argues that political parties communicate with citizens in various ways, using constitutions, posters and leaflets to campaign for their respective agenda and objectives.³²

Andrea Römmele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’, Party Politics 9 no. 1 (2003): 7–20.

I argue that AL, by putting Allah at the centre cover of their political manifesto, is communicating to its citizens that Islam is at the heart of its politics, where the party leader Sheikh Hasina has defined secularism as an Islamic concept which brings me close to my point that the distinction between Bangladesh’s major parties and conventional Islamist parties in terms of engaging or integrating Islam into politics is minimal.³³

Mubashar Hasan, ‘Religious Freedom with an Islamic Twist: How the Medina Charter Is Used to Frame Secularism in Bangladesh’, 13 June 2016, South Asia@LSE, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/ 2016/06/13/religious-freedom-with-an-islamic-twist-how-the-medina-charter-is-used-to-frame-secularism-in-bangladesh/ (accessed 15 December 2017).

Scholars such as Riazhas also asserted similar thesis.³⁴

Ali Riaz, God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

Diverse Roots of Secular Nationalism in Bangladesh

It is a fact that nationalism itself is by and large a secular concept when it is associated with the idea of a nation state. Therefore, it is perhaps fair to argue that the Bengali nationalism, which was sweeping across campus to campus among university going students and middle-class Bengalis in East Pakistan, was secular. However, whether there was a widespread support for Bengali nationalism as a secular ideology among masses or whether the masses really had a clear understanding of what Bengali nationalism or secularism meant is open for interpretation. It is highly likely that the idea of a Bengali nationalism being a secular concept was majorly confined within highly educated academics and some university going middle-class students, while rest of the country marched towards autonomy and freedom without giving a much thought on what secular nationalism actually is. Otherwise, the current crisis of secularism in Bangladesh would make little sense.

Since the inception of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1947, the minority section of the population was based in West Pakistan. In contrast, majority of the population was based in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), who constituted 56 per cent of the total Pakistani population.³⁵

Kamal Hossain, Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 2013), 6.

The major languages of the West Pakistanis include Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi.³⁶

See S. M. Shamsul Alam, ‘Islam, Ideology and the State of Bangladesh’.

The administrative base of Pakistan was based on West Pakistan, and they were running the country. In the eastern part, the imagination of a Muslim nation-state was diluted when the Bengalis of East Pakistan soon realised that they were deprived of a fair access of Pakistan’s economy, bureaucracy, military and social services. In Maniruzzaman’s view, ‘the relationship between West Pakistan and East Pakistan was an exploitative one, based on classical 19th century colonial patterns’³⁷

Talukdar Maniruzzaman, Radical Politics and the Emergence of Bangladesh. (Dhaka: Bangladesh Books, 1975).

Based on Maniruzzaman, Alam, Kabir and Hossain,³⁸

See Talukdar Maniruzzaman, Radical Politics and the Emergence of Bangladesh, ‘Razzaq, Abdur’; See S. M. Shamsul Alam, ‘Islam, Ideology and the State of Bangladesh’; M. G Kabir, ‘Religion, Language and Nationalism in Bangladesh’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 17, no. 4 (1987): 473–87, See Kamal Hossain, Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice, 7.

I summarise a picture of disparity between the two parts of Pakistan below:

Bengalis were poorly represented in the first cabinets of Pakistan. Popular Bengali Muslim League leaders for the Pakistan movement such as FazlulHuq and H.S Suhrawardy were kept out of power by the maneuverings of central leadership of Muslim League.

Governmental expenditures in West Pakistan were much larger than in East Pakistan. For example, 1955–56 to 1964–65, the central government spent a total of 18,845.1 million rupees. Out of this total, 10,107.9 million rupees (about 54 per cent) went to defense, almost all of it being spent in West Pakistan. During the same period, 3,678.8 million rupees (about 19 per cent) supported the civil administration, of which nearly 70 per cent was going to West Pakistan.

Over 80 per cent of all the foreign aid obtained during the period 1947–70 was utilised in West Pakistan.

Over two-thirds of all imports over the same period went to West Pakistan.

East Pakistan surrendered a huge amount of foreign exchange to West Pakistan, being forced to buy West Pakistani consumer goods in protected market at much higher prices than would be paid for equivalent foreign products.

The Bengalis had barely 5 per cent representation in the armed services, 30 per cent in the bureaucracy and 15 per cent in the entrepreneurial class.

Against the backdrop of such uneven socio-economic relationship between the two parts of Pakistan, the Secretary General of the People’s Party in West Pakistan admitted, ‘we have seen that it is not a matter of offended sentiment but a hard fact that East Pakistan is indeed a colony’.³⁹

Talukdar Maniruzzaman, Radical Politics and the Emergence of Bangladesh.

In the consequences, ‘thousand of Bengali Muslim youths who joined the Pakistan movement were frustrated by the attitude of the central leaders of Muslim League and became skeptical about their partnership with their [Muslim] brothers from the west’.⁴⁰

M. G. Kabir, ‘Religion, Language and Nationalism in Bangladesh’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 17, no. 4 (1987): 473–87.

Thus, it was a matter of time that the ‘unity of an Islamic nation’ founded upon the common religion of Islam sounded hollow to East Pakistanis, and they began to imagine a separate nation for West Pakistanis. The result is the outcome of a new form of politics; a politics for constructing a Bengali nation and there were several roots of it.

First, it is important to talk about groups of middle class intellectuals such as Freedom of Intellect Movement, New Value Group and National Association for Social and Economic Progress, who were instrumental in shaping the course for secular politics through the discourse of a Bengali nationalism. These groups were inspired by progressive thinking of Bengal Renaissance and advocated theories of Marxism and liberal socialism. They found philosophical inspiration for secular thoughts from Western liberalism and Marxism. They further used songs, poems, drama and essays from Bengali poet, novelist, playwright, songwriter and essayist Rabindranath Tagore (who won a Noble Prize in literature in 1913) as a symbol of a secular society and secular politics. They advocated these ideas by emphasising on what they claimed ‘non-communal nature of Bengali language’ in opposition to Urdu language that has strong Islamic influence.⁴¹

Kamal Hossain, Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice (Dhaka: The University Press Limited, 2013).

Established in 1920s in Dhaka, the intellectual motto of Freedom of Intellect Movement was, ‘Where knowledge is restricted, there the intellect is inert, there freedom is impossible’.⁴²

Shahadat Khan, ‘Radicalism in Bengali Muslim Thought: Kazi Abdul Wadud and the “Religion of Creativity”’, in Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretative Essays, ed. Rafiuddin Ahmed (2001).

It used to regularly publish a Bengali journal titled ‘Shikha’ (meaning flame in English). During that time of heightened sense of religious identity, Khan notes that this journal used to promote inclusiveness of people and its founder Kazi Abdul Wadud was inspired by the vision of universal humanism of Rabindranath Tagore.⁴³

Ibid.

Later, inspired by the Freedom of Intellect Movement group, an amorphous group of university teachers had formed the New Value Group after the partition of 1947 and against the backdrop of central government’s suppression of Bengalis of East Pakistan.⁴⁴

Tazeen Murshid, ‘State, Nation, Identity: The Quest for Legitimacy in Bangladesh’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 20, no. 2 (1997): 1–34.

Hossain argues that this group was ‘inspired by the conviction that social transformation required a change in the value system, especially where the old values were a legacy of an authoritarian, colonial, and feudal system’.⁴⁵

See Hossain, Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice.

In 1960s, another group, National Association for Social and Economic Progress, helped drafting Sheikh Mujib’s famous ‘Six Points Charter’ as well as other publications which were advocating for a secular-democratic Bangladesh.⁴⁶

Ibid.

This group later transformed into a think tank according to Khondker.⁴⁷

Habibul Haque Khondker, ‘Birth of Bangladesh: Recollections of a Politician Economist’, Economic and Political Weekly (2016), http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/28/book-reviews/birth-bangladesh.html (accessed 28 February 2017).

Professor AbdurRazzaq of Dhaka University, who later was announced as the National Professor of Bangladesh, Rehman Sobhan, a well-known economist in Bangladesh, Badruddin Umar from Rajshahi University and Dr Kamal Hossain along with few others formed this group.

These Bengali intellectuals were influenced by theories of modernism, liberal socialism and Marxism. They argued for an independent Bangladeshi state, where a fusion of liberalism and communism had triggered them to endorse ‘democracy, secularism, socialism and nationalism’ in Bangladeshi Constitution as state principles in 1972 constitution. In order to illustrate this point, I want to use the example of Professor Abdur Razzaq, who was an active member of National Association for Social and Economic Progress group, which as mentioned earlier, and was responsible for the initial drafting of the charter of Six Points for Awami League. According to Khan Razzaq, ‘played an important, even leading, role in giving a new orientation to intellectual life in Dhaka since 1950s’.⁴⁸

Salimullah Khan, ‘Prof. Abdur Razzaq on India’s Partition and Independence’, The Daily Star (8 March 2015), http://www.thedailystar.net/prof-abdur-razzaq-on-indias-partition-and-independence-57586 (accessed 27 February 2017).

If one follows his intellectual evolution, it is not hard to locate his ideological construction. Razzaq went to the London School of Economics (LSE) to conduct PhD thesis under British Professor Harold Laski, who also was the Chairman of the British Labor Party in late 1940s. Laski had legacy of influencing the view of political and intellectual figures of South Asia, especially in Indian context is an established fact. For example, a former Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in a lecture at the LSE in 2006 said:

Professor Laski had great many followers even among our political leaders. Many of his students, like our former President K.R. Narayanan, had distinguished careers in our government. Often their appointment to government service was based on a mere note of recommendation from Professor Laski to Jawaharlal Nehru!⁴⁹

Brant Moscovitch, ‘Harold Laski’s Indian Students and the Power of Education, 1920–1950’, Contemporary South Asia 20, no. 1 (2012): 33–44. doi:10.1080/09584935.2011.646074.

Following an analysis of power of education in shaping vision of political figures in India, Moscovitch argues that Professor Laski’s education to his students, who included the future president of India K.R. Narayanan, future Defense Minister V.K. Krishna Menon and numerous other intellectual and political figures such as P.N. Haksar, B.K. Nehru, Tarlok Singh, Anila Graham (ne ́ e Bonnerjee), Renuka Ray and G.L. Mehta, had ‘broadened their sense of India’s challenges from a prior focus on attaining independence to an increasing emphasis on inequality and social problems’.⁵⁰

See Moscovitch, ‘Harold Laski’s Indian Students and the Power of Education, 1920–1950’.

To define Laski’s political philosophy Ralph Millband states that

Laski sought throughout his life to explore the conditions in which fundamental social changes which he deemed urgent and desirable in our society might be realised without the obliteration of freedom; how, furthermore, socialism as a form of economic and social organisation might be combined with political democracy.⁵¹

Ralph Miliband, Harold Laski’s Socialism (Marxists’ Internet Archive, 1995), https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1995/xx/laski.htm (accessed 19 March 2014).

Oddly enough, Bangladesh’s constitution too resembles his thought, as it is mentioned that secularism, socialism, democracy and nationalism were endorsed as Bangladesh’s philosophical foundation for states. One should note that this is a scholarly inquiry into the history and since Dr. Hossain is alive, he may defer with this line of argument but I am showing a historic pattern based on the historic data I consulted where probability of limitation can't be ruled out. However, this connection between Laski and Bangladesh’s constitution is no surprise because Professor Razzaq, Laski’s former student and one of the major philosophical architects for the political movement for Bangladesh, was too close to Dr Kamal Hossain, who was in charge of framing the constitution. During the time of Bangladesh movement, in 1960s, Razzaq was so influential that he was dismissed from his teaching position in Dhaka University by the central government of Pakistan, as the government thought Razzaq was having ‘pernicious’ influence of his political ideas on the dissenting politicians of the 1960s.⁵²

Mohammed Mahmuduzzaman, ‘Razzaq, Abdur’, Banglapedia, http://www.banglapedia.org/HT/R_ 0215.htm (accessed 2 February 2015).

His ‘treasonable’ acts during the War of Liberation earned him in absentia 14 years of rigorous imprisonment. In recognition of his unique status among academicians and scholars, the Government of Bangladesh honoured him with the distinction of National Professor in 1975.⁵³

See Mahmuduzzaman, ‘Razzaq, Abdur’.

However, the problem of defining Razzaq’s idea comprehensively is based on the fact that he hardly had written or published anything. Dhaka University has published one of his public lectures in a book format titled Bangladesh, State of the Nation in 1981. That book offers a glimpse about Razzaq’s mindset where he states: ‘city life is civilized life’.⁵⁴

Abdur Razzaq, Bangladesh: State of the Nation (Dacca: Dacca University Press, 1981), 15.

This statement is remarkably supportive of modernist theories such as Rostow’s Five Stages of Growth⁵⁵

W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto (UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960).

and Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.⁵⁶

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings (NY: Penguin, 2002).

One of Razzaq’s disciples who became an influential essayist in upholding Bangladesh’s secular thoughts at post liberation period, Ahmed Sofa, had written a book titled Although My Guru (Joddopi Amar Guru) based on the conversation between him and Professor Razzaq which took place for several months in Dhaka. This book gives a fair understanding to a reader that Razzaq following his teacher Laski, favoured socialism, freedom and democracy.⁵⁷

Ahmed Sofa, Joddopi Amar Guru (Although My Guru) (Dhaka: Mawla Brothers, Fifth Edition, 2010).

Razzaq was also a staunch supporter of Muslim League during the time of Pakistan movement as like other young Bengalis including AL’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and later dismayed by Islamic nationalism.

It was palpable from Sofa’s first-hand account of Professor Razzaq that Professor Laski made a permanent impact on Razzaq’s mind. Razzaq spent five and half years in London as a PhD student under Laski’s supervision. Laski introduced the then contemporary Western political philosophies to him as Razzaq told Sofa, ‘when I was not sure how to start my thesis, Laski showed me the library of the LSE and told my boy go and soak’.⁵⁸

Sofa, 2010, 20.

Razzaq admitted that Laski had a wondrous power to influence someone.⁵⁹

Ibid., 84.

When Laski died during the studentship of Razzaq, Razzaq never submitted his thesis to anybody else because he thought nobody else could understand his work apart from Laski. So, one sees a personal connection in the form of a disciple-master between Razzaq and Laski. Sofa’s account of Razzaq also highlights the inner world of the group of scholars such as Dr Anisuzzaman, Dr Kamal Hossain and Badruddin Umar, who were the brains behind the political force in shaping the secular politics in Bangladesh. In numerous times, a reader gets a glimpse of philosophical standpoint of member of these groups as Sofa’s personal account features references, uncritical appreciation and admiration of John Locke, Max Weber, Friedrich Engels, Arnold Toynbee, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Shakespeare. It is also evident that these groups of scholars had favoured Marxist revolution against the backdrop of Pakistani colonial suppression of Bengalis. They appreciated Lelin’s Economic History of Russia and Razzaq even translated Leon Trotsky’s Idea of Permanent Revolution in Bengali. This enquiry into the thought process and inner circle of middle-class Bengali intellectuals are important because they were influential in shaping the secular discourse of Bangladesh after independence, as member of these groups were intrinsically linked into the writing of the Constitution of Bangladesh after independence that defined secularism, Bengali nationalism, democracy and socialism as key principles of the state.

Not only that this group of Bengali thinkers used Western modernist, progressive and socialist thoughts to construct an idea of Bengali nationalism, they also have used Tagore to localise symbols of Bengali nationalism and political freedom. It was a logical creation to counter West Pakistan’s nationalist propaganda based on Islam. Tagore was born and died in undivided India. After the partition of 1947, the West Pakistani rulers had taken a stance to construct Tagore as an Indian poet, thinker and artist.

Ethnically, Pakistan was a diverse nation. Bengalis of East Pakistan did not share any common cultural bond with West Pakistani, Punjabis, apart from sharing the similar religion of Islam. As against, East Pakistani Bengalis were used to share a common language and culture with the West Bengalis of India. Between Indian and Pakistani Bengalis, Tagore was a celebrated figure.

The central government authority of Pakistan had seen Tagore as an obstacle to the unity of a Muslim nation, and as a ploy of India to separate Pakistan. A classic example in this regard could be the debate, which unfolded in 1961, and onwards on the occasion of the birth centenary of Tagore. When three committees of Bengali intellectuals and writers from Dhaka University and journalists of the Dhaka Press Club were set to celebrate Tagore’s birthday, the then Pakistani Intelligence Agency had accused them of receiving funding from India.⁶⁰

Anisuzzaman, ‘Claiming and Disclaiming a Cultural Icon: Tagore in East Pakistan and Bangladesh’, University of Toronto Quarterly 77, no. 4 (2008):1058–69.

The government-supported national daily such as Azad attacked Tagore vehemently through editorial, articles and letters to the editor on the occasion of his centenary birthday. According to Anisuzzaman, major allegations against Tagore included: ‘Tagore as a dreamer of Hindu India, a communalist, a writer who denigrated Muslims and whose ideal was antipathetic to the concept of Pakistan’.⁶¹

Ibid.

The newspaper argued that the ‘move to hold the centenary celebrations is a conspiracy to unite the two Bengals, to strike at the basis of the ideals of Pakistan, and to endanger the distinctive cultural life of its people’

In reply to this set of criticism, Anisuzzaman notes that several other national newspapers supporting Bengali nationalism argued that Tagore was a humanist above all, an anti-communal person who was deeply entrenched to Bengalis everyday life.⁶²

Ibid.

The newspapers supporting Tagore also argued that, ‘Hitler had banned Tagore in Germany which reminded that only fascists would take position against him’.

Furthermore, during the war of India and Pakistan in 1965, Radio Pakistan and Dhaka Television stopped broadcasting Tagore's work as Pakistan government had depicted Tagore as an Indian person⁶³

Ibid.

In June 1967, the then Information Minister of Pakistan announced that the electronic media of Pakistan had been directed to stop any Tagore’s songs that were opposed to the ideals of Pakistan. Islamic scholars (Ulemas) too supported Pakistani government in this regard and argued, ‘Tagore’s song should have been banned from the media from the very day Pakistan was established.’⁶⁴

Ibid.

Those Ulemas of East Pakistan opposing Tagore is reinforcing the fact that religio-political sentiment was existent during 1960s. However, in protest, a statement issued by 19 people including writers, scientists, painters and teachers appeared in national dailies. The statement stressed that the Pakistani government’s decision of banning Tagore was ‘very unfortunate’, claiming ‘Tagore as an integral part of the cultural existence of the Bengali speaking Pakistanis and that the significance of this fact should be respected in framing of government policies’.⁶⁵

Ibid.

Later, cultural associations, student organizations and political parties joined in to back the protests of those nineteen activists. The leader of East Pakistan’s independence movement Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is now known as the father of the Bengali nation, was ‘pragmatically influenced by Tagore’s unequivocal espousal of religious neutrality, individual freedom and universal humanism’.⁶⁶

Zillur RKhan, ‘Tagore’s Impact on the Intellectual and Political Development of Bangladesh’, in Celebrating Tagore, ed. R. D. Datta and C. B. Seely (India: Allied Publishers, 2009).

In Khan’s view, The Non-Cooperation Movement of Sheikh Mujib was deeply influenced by Tagore and one should remember the intellectual framework of this non-cooperation movement was influenced by the middle-class Bengali elites as mentioned above.

Tagore’s song ‘Shonar Bangla’, or golden Bengal, became a hallmark of Mujib’s public speeches; in private interviews too Mujib referred to the new independent country as ‘Amar Shonar Bangla’ (My Golden Bengal) ‘in the vein of Tagore’s lyrics’.⁶⁷

Ibid.

Even when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returned to the independent Bangladesh after his imprisonment in a Pakistani prison during the war of independence, he greeted the new independent nation in Tagore’s words:

Janani Bangabhumi, GangarTir, Snighda Samir JivanJuraleTumi (Mother Land of Bengal; By the Banks of the Ganga, your pristine breeze, how you have soothed my heart).⁶⁸

Khan, ‘Tagore’s Impact on the Intellectual and Political Development of Bangladesh’.

However, in my view, this is just a part of the story. As this narrative of Bengali nationalism ignores the significance and memories of 1947—where an overwhelming support for establishing a separate state for Muslims in the name of Pakistan was persisting among Bengali Muslims. While the above-mentioned root of secular Bengali nationalism infused by Western thinkers and Tagore was clearly instrumental in the narrative middle-class Bengalis, there were large number of masses who did not seem to be bothered about the ‘secular’ of Bengali nationalism.

Very few systematic studies were conducted during that time of Bangladesh history, as most of the writings of Bangladesh history were polemic in nature. Amid this limited pool of research, a survey conducted by Schuman is worth mentioning.⁶⁹

Howard Schuman, ‘A Note on the Rapid Rise of Mass Bengali Nationalism in East Pakistan’, American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 2 (1972): 290–98.

Schumen wanted to find out how ordinary East Pakistani-Bengali men perceived the idea of Bengali nationalism. In this regard, in 1964, just 7 years before the War of Independence, he asked four questions to 1001 Bengalis with little or no educational background, and who were employed as rural farmers and urban factory workers. His questions were: (i) Are you a Pakistani?, (ii) Are you a Bengali?, (iii) Are you from districts (name)? and (iv) Are you from village (name)?

The aim behind these questions was to understand what respondents’ identities with. Schuman found that a considerable part of the sample retained a largely local identification (42 per cent), answering with the name of either their village or their district, but a surprisingly large proportion (48 per cent) preferred to call themselves Pakistanis. A relatively small percentage of respondents identified themselves as first and foremost Bengali.⁷⁰

Ibid.

Even then, those who identified themselves as Bengalis had little or no conflict with the idea of being a Pakistani. For most, the Bengali language formed the Bengali identity whereas, for many, the idea of being a Pakistani equated to being a Muslim. Schuman concluded that ‘there was little or no awareness by the ordinary men in East Pakistan about the conflict between his identity as a Bengali and as a Muslim’. Schuman argued that ordinary Bengalis’ revolt against the Pakistani military was a natural reaction to the Pakistani military assaults on Bengalis in 1971, but it did not take place out of ‘secular’ motivations. [Secular] ‘Bengali nationalism usually took place amongst a small set of highly educated individuals.’⁷¹

Ibid.

While I partly agree with Schuman, I believe he downplayed the mass spirit for freedom from Pakistan to some extent.⁷²

Ibid.

It is a probability that Bengalis of East Pakistan were not devoid of religious biasness but that does not mean they were not secular though their inspiration of nationalism was rooted in liberal/secular interpretation of Islam. The example of Maulana Bhashani is a case in point. According to Custers, Bhashani had huge followers among masses.⁷³

Peter Custers, ‘Maulana Bhashani and the Transition to Secular Politics in East Bengal’, Indian Economic & Social History Review 47, no. 2 (2010a): 231–59.

Custers argues:

Bhashani’s vigorously advocated the need for a separation between state rule and people’s religious faiths. Moreover, Bhashani did not just take a stance in favour of secularism, the evidence collected by historians brings out that he personally led the transition to secular politics in the decades that preceded the formation of Bangladesh in 1971.⁷⁴

Ibid.

According to Custers, Bhashani’s guiding philosophy was Rabubiyat, where it preaches ‘the undivided equality of all people, whatever their caste, nationality or religion’.⁷⁵

Ibid., Peter Custers, ‘Maulana Bhashani and the Transition to Secular Politics in East Bengal’, International Institute for Asian Studies 12th Study News Letter 55, (2010b), http://iias.asia/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL55_1213.pdf (accessed 4 January 2017).

Custers went far to construct Bhashani as leader that supports communism through the prism of Islam as according to Custer, Bhashani believed, ‘Man is only a custodian, whereas Allah holds ownership over all properties that exist. Thus, the state should abolish all private ownership, and should distribute things in equal proportions, on the basis of need.’ However, Farhad Mazhar contradicts with Custers and argues that:

Bhashani vehemently opposed that trend of communism lacking spirituality in its subjective principle and political activities because of the denial of the divine nature of human beings as prescribed by Quran, and equally he opposed those Ulema who are blindly glued to their theological texts and unable to decipher meaning responsibly for the real material world to demonstrate the spiritual and political value of Islam.⁷⁶

Farhad Mazhar, ‘Perspectives: Why We Need Bhashani Now?’, Law at the Margins, http://lawatthemargins.com/perspectives-why-we-need-bhasani-now/ (accessed 2 January 2017).

The point is that secularism has multiple meanings to Bengalis during 1947–71 with a root to Western political thoughts, which are in general devoid of religion, and the other part was strongly embedded into enlightened part of religion which in the contemporary Bangladesh gave away to rigid interpretation and propagation of Salafi Islam.⁷⁷

Tipu Sultan, 2016, ‘Salafi Ideology Behind JMB’s Rise’, Daily Prothom-Alo, August 6, http://en.prothom-alo.com/bangladesh/news/115169/Salafi-ideology-behind-JMB%E2%80%99s-rise (accessed 27 May 2017).

Conclusion

Several interpretations could be drawn from the above-mentioned historic narrative. First, Bengali nationalism was constructed against the backdrop of a depressing socio-economic and political backgrounds of East Pakistan. That said, it should be noted that there existed an overwhelming level of support for Islam in the undivided India. Such support had led to the creation of Pakistan. This refers to a pre-existing mass mindset that was overwhelmingly in the favour of Islamic root of Bengali nationalism. How secular was then the masses of Bengali nationalism? The survey result by Schuman refers that they were not much secular and the claim that the idea of secular Bengali nationalism being confined within educated middle class in university campuses and colleges may well have some substances.⁷⁸

See Schuman, ‘A Note on the Rapid Rise of Mass Bengali Nationalism in East Pakistan’.

Otherwise, it does not make sense why a big portion of population in Bangladesh supports BNP and BNP-led four party alliances. I argue that the findings of Schuman⁷⁹

Ibid.

may be right because otherwise it would not make sense about the crisis of secularism and why AL despite reasserting secularism in Bangladeshi constitution kept Islam in the constitution, or why it sent a mass text message (SMS) to Bangladeshi mobile phone users in 2013 explaining that the government is not against Islam as per the propaganda of AL’s opposition. AL too is not the secular party as per some of the supporters of these party projects. That is why the core advocates of secularism before and after the independence such as Dr Kamal Hossain who was among some key architects of secularism are now not close to the AL.

If one evaluates the evolutionary trend of the secular construction of Bengali nationalism from 1947 to 1971 through an objective frame of mind, it would not be hard for them to miss a point that the architects of middle-class secular discourse of East Pakistan were highly educated. In order to understand the deeper theoretical dynamics of Laski, Marxism or even humanism of Tagore, one needs to be highly educated. It is therefore unlikely that the dream of a Bengali nation being secular in the sense of strict separation between state and religion was never a dream shared by hundreds and thousands of less educated or uneducated freedom fighters who joined the war.