When a regime falls, often the first victims are the statues of personages who symbolised it. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, numerous statues of Soviet icons such as Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were toppled. On April 9, 2003, a large statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos Square was destroyed by Iraqi civilians which symbolized the end of his brutal rule in Iraq.
During the recent anti-Hasina riots in Bangladesh, videos went viral on social media showing a man urinating on a statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding father, in Dhaka. The protesters desecrated and demolished Mujib’s statues. But unlike the other iconoclastic outbursts, the desecration of Mujib’s statue is patricidal and highly loathsome. Mujib represents the independence, democracy and plural secularism of Bangladesh, not the Sheikh Hasina regime. Bangladesh is because of him and what Bangladesh will become depends on whether it embraces or rejects his idea of Bangladesh.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman explained his idea of the Sonar Bangla by saying, “This country does not belong to Hindus. This country does not belong to Muslims. Whoever thinks this country is theirs, this country will be theirs. Whoever feels happiness seeing this country prosper, this country will be theirs. Whoever will cry seeing this country sad, this country will be theirs. This country will also belong to those who have given away everything for this country’s freedom and will do so in the future.” Mujib made sincere efforts to build a secular, plural Bangladesh.
Mujib used Rabindranath Tagore’s song Amar Sonar Bangla as an epitome of the secular Bengali identity. For Pakistan, the Bengali language was essentially Hindu and Tagore was a heathen poet. A ban was imposed by West Pakistan authorities on Tagore’s music all over Pakistan in 1967. But Mujib upheld secular politics and had many Hindu leaders in his legion. Chittaranjan Sutar was one among them. Mujib deputed him to India on the eve of the 1970 election to maintain liaison with the Indian leaders.
But after Mujib’s ruthless assassination in 1975, the Islamic fundamentalist forces have been trying to undermine his dream of an inclusive Bangladesh. The country’s Hindu population has come down from 13.5 per cent in 1974 to 7.9 per cent in 2022, they are socially and politically marginalised and pushed to the precipice of extinction. Bangladesh was certainly better off in the hands of a ruler who had the determination to uphold Mujibur’s legacy. Unfortunately, the rising prominence of anti-Mujib forces like the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami in the chaotic political milieu poses a serious threat to the idea of liberal democratic, and plural secular Bangladesh.
Lernaean Hydra in South Asia
Lieutenant Colonel Quazi Sazzad Ali Zahir, a hero of the Liberation War, said: “Yes, 1971 didn’t end. East Pakistan had many internal enemies who wanted it to remain a part of West Pakistan. Bangladesh today still has snakes who want this country to stop being what it is. They are inimical to our culture, our language. Our secularism. They are inimical to Hindus” (quoted by Deep Halder and Avishek Biswas in their 2023 book Being Hindu in Bangladesh: An Untold Story). The Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami is such a monstrous snake.
The Jamaat-i-Islami, founded by Syed Abul A'la Maududi in 1941, is a many-headed Hydra menacingly sitting over South Asia and spreading its tentacles all over the globe. The Jamaat-i-Islami is the nerve centre of Political Islam or Islamism which stands for the conquest of political power to impose the Sharia as the sole jural basis of social relationships worldwide. This aspect makes Islamism a totalitarian ideology.
The Jamaat-i-Islami has branches in Pakistan, India, PoK, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka (Jamiat-e-Islami in Afghanistan, founded in 1972 by Burhanuddin Rabbani, is also said to be inspired by Abul A'la Maududi).
The Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI) has played a major role in stirring the recent anti-government mayhem and rioting in the country. On August 1, 2024, the Bangladesh government officially banned the Jamaat-i-Islami and its student wing, Chhatra Shibir, designating them as terrorist organisations under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009 citing its role in spreading chaos and lawlessness in the country.
The BJI has always been opposed to the idea of a secular state and stood for an Islamic State in Bangladesh. It acted as Pakistan’s fifth column in Bangladesh. Jamaat members were allied with the Pakistan military during the Liberation War and formed auxiliary forces such as Razakar, Al-Badr, Al-Shams and the Peace Committee, which were involved in atrocities against Bengali freedom fighters, particularly targeting Hindus. Ghulam Azam, the Ameer of the Jamaat-i-Islami from 1969 to 1971, exhorted his party functionaries and its student wing to back the Pakistan rulers and oppose the Liberation War.
After the Liberation, he left Bangladesh and formed the Committee for the Restoration of East Pakistan to promote global public opinion, mainly in West Asia, against Bangladesh and to campaign for the de-recognition of Bangladesh’s sovereignty. Ghulam Azam visited King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and complained to him that Hindus captured East Pakistan, burnt the Holy Quran, converted masjids into temples, and killed Muslims!
After Mujib’s assassination, Azam returned to Bangladesh and assumed the leadership of the BJI. The Jamaat unleashed ruthless violence on the Hindu minority during the 2001 post-election riots. In the wake of the Bangladesh Nationalists Party-Jamaat Alliance’s win in the 2001 parliamentary elections, the BNP-Jamaat mob violently targeted the Hindu minority as they had voted for the Awami League. Many Hindu women were brutally raped during this reign of terror.
Herculean labour ahead
The Jamaat-i-Islami’s newly acquired upper hand in Bangladesh politics will seriously jeopardise South Asia's political ecosystem and geopolitics. Bangladesh Jamaat-i-Islami’s inflated political influence will be a shot in the arm for Islamic fundamentalist elements in the region, mainly for its brother Jamaats in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. It would be a fillip for Islamist forces, like the Muslim Brotherhood, spanning across the world.
Frédéric Grare in his Political Islam in the Indian Subcontinent: The Jamaat-i-Islami (2005) said, “Even if their [Jamaat-i-Islami’s] criticism of the system (corruption, social injustice, etc., problems endemic to the countries being considered here) is often sound, they do not necessarily have any miraculous solution to offer for ills of society.” Hence, the Bangladesh Jamaat-i-Islami cannot be expected to play any creative role in ameliorating the country’s society or economy, despite its newly acquired salience.
Containing the Lernaean Hydra, the closely connected Jamaat-i-Islami network in South Asia which has a strong ideological and functional bond with the Muslim Brotherhood spread across the Arab & Muslim world, is a Herculean labour ahead for liberal democratic forces. The potential support of Communist China may further invigorate the Hydra’s might. By sabotaging Mujib’s Sonar Bangla, this monstrous Hydra is undoing the noble ideals which Mujib stood up, lived and was martyred for.
(Faisal C.K. is Deputy Law Secretary to the Government of Kerala. Views are personal. Email: faisal.chelengara10@gmail.com)
