As Bangladesh tries to process the dark legacy of its war of liberation in 1971, many liberal intellectuals have compared the popular uprising that started from Shahbag Square last month with the Arab Spring launched at Tahrir Square in Egypt on December 18, 2010.
No doubt both are iconless movements triggered by spontaneous public outrage. The Shahbag protests were initiated by none of the country’s established political parties. Nor were they started by any of the forces that in the past have been instrumental in building public opinion around the demand for adjudication of war crimes.
The principal role is being played by independent activists, and by students and youngsters. It is possible to consider the dynamic interconnection between Bangladesh’s people’s upsurge and the Arab Spring. Given the fact that the country’s population is overwhelmingly Muslim, it is only natural that the Bangladeshi citizen closely follows the changes taking place in Egypt and the Middle East.
But there the similarity ends. Whereas the Tahrir Square movement was against the dictatorial rule of the Hosni Mubarak government, and not against Islamic extremism, the targets of the Shahbag movement are the Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamic fundamentalists who have tried to impose their stamp on the liberal society of Bangladesh. Their agenda goes beyond the agenda of the democratic movements in the Middle East.
Whereas the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt has been the ultimate political beneficiary of the Tahrir Square movement, if the Shahbag movement succeeds it could mark the triumph of liberal political forces in Bangladesh over Islamic extremist elements with close links to Pakistan. Here is a movement that doesn’t just have an uneasy relation with Islamist parties. The mass upsurge from its inception has borne the seal of secularism and tolerance. The people of Bangladesh are not only rediscovering their secular spirit, which pervaded their struggle for independence, they are also setting an example for the Muslim world and the West.
Expectedly, the country’s biggest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami is on the rampage after its leaders got convicted for war crimes, throwing Molotov cocktails at pedestrians and attacking the police. The good news is that the people are refusing to be cowed down.
The country’s burgeoning middle class is fed up with the radicalism and violence of the Jamaat.
They want the fundamentalists who collaborated with the Pakistani Army to be brought to book.
Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government tapped into this demand for justice by setting up a war crimes tribunal after it came to power in 2009.
But even the government underestimated the depth of public feeling till last month sparked massive protests against the judicial verdict letting the collaborators off lightly. It is important at this juncture that India and the rest of the world support the government and people of Bangladesh against the tyranny of Islamic fundamentalists.
The West has done little to help beleaguered moderates in the Arab world and Pakistan, but here is a Muslim-majority nation where the mainstream is clamouring for moderate politics. Groups like the Jamaat can’t be allowed to hold a democracy hostage with the threat of violence.