Secular society joins the battle against orthodoxy

In an article in New York Times, “In Taleban heartland, villagers declare enough”, by Carlotta Gall, it appears that the villagers who were fed up with the activities of the Taleban, took courage in their own hands and decided to make their villages and the surrounding areas safe from the Taleban. Since early February, when villagers joined with police to begin ousting Taleban fighters from this region of rich vineyards and orchards southwest of Kandahar, hundreds of residents have rallied to support the government.

Nearly 100 village elders recently vowed to keep the Taleban out. The revolt in Panjwai district is the first in southern Afghanistan, right in the spiritual heartland of the Taleban. Matters came to a head after 300 to 400 civilians had been killed or injured by bombs or ambushes by the Taleban in the past six months in Panjwai, according to the district governor, Haji Fazel Mohammad. He said that villagers were angry because the Taleban had been laying mines in their orchards and vineyards.

Moving to the east, events in Bangladesh are being watched with great interest – and anxiety – by countries in the region and the world. The developments in Bangladesh resulting from the trials being conducted by the (National) International Crimes Tribunal have ramifications that go well beyond the internal stability of Bangladesh. The spontaneous outbursts in Dhaka’s Shahbagh Square of people demanding the death penalty for those charged with abetting rape and genocide in 1971 by the Pakistan Army have taken an ominous turn.

The occupying army of Pakistan killed 3 million Bangladeshi fighters, activists, students and academics and raped 200,000 Bengali women, as per Bangladeshi figures. Many forget that when these atrocities were committed, when the country called Bangladesh had not yet been formed, those being brutalised, killed and raped were citizens of East Pakistan. The Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) Razakars of the time supported the Pakistani brutalisers against their own people.

JeI, whose leaders are being charged with the crimes, have been able to mobilise their followers to contest the public spaces occupied by Bangladeshis demanding death penalty for the perpetrators of the 1971 crimes. The counter-mobilisation has shaken Bangladeshi authorities. A large number of people have been killed and injured due to the violence unleashed by the JeI cadres and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS).

There does not seem to be any let-up in the rioting that has spread across the country. That the JeI is well organised and had a substantial following was never in doubt. However, the coming overground of the jihadi elements in the mobilisation of JeI cadres across Bangladesh indicates the enormity of the inroads that the extremist elements have made in the country.

It has turned out to be much larger than people inside or outside Bangladesh suspected. The outcome of the struggle between the secular and liberal elements on one hand and the jihadis on the other is being eagerly watched. While countries that back secularism in Bangladesh can only wait and watch, the countries with a negative agenda – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – are not likely to remain inactive. Both these countries are responsible for the spread of fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Pakistan’s ISI combined with the massive outflow of Saudi monies have been responsible for the spread of Islamic orthodoxy in the subcontinent and throughout the world. With the effort they have put into Bangladesh over the years, they are not likely to let Bangladesh get out of their clutches.

The US and the West seem to be focussed almost exclusively on West Asia. Seeing that Bangladesh could turn out to be the much bigger prize for the Islamists, it might be time for the West to take note of developments in Bangladesh. Should the liberal elements in Bangladesh manage to marginalise the fundamentalists in their country, the ripple effect will be felt in Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Pakistan. The stakes for a successful outcome of the struggle for freedom from orthodoxy are much too high for Bangladesh and the world.

Except in very few countries where the populations have been totally excluded from modernisation and globalisation, there is some awakening, no matter how tentative. For example, in countries like Pakistan, where the danger of an extremist takeover cannot be wished away, the majority of the people would not be averse to a freer life with more choices for them and their children. Taking other examples from West Asia, in both Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood has taken power, and Tunisia, which is under an Islamic dispensation, people are beginning to protest in large numbers. Having suffered the ills of earlier dictatorial regimes, people do not want to be put under another type of suppressive regime based on outdated orthodoxy. These stirrings, should they be able to ensure more moderate governing dispensations, are bound to have a salutary effect in much of West Asia, Iran and Pakistan.

In the case of Bangladesh, the majority of people are much too immersed in their culture and language to ever come under the total sway of imported orthodoxy; in other words, through a medieval interpretation of religion that denies rights to women and gains ground through coercion and organised terror.

Analysing the nature of the hold that regressive orthodox regimes have on large swaths of the population in so many Muslim countries, and in a few cases elsewhere, an inescapable inference is that organised groups, even small ones when compared to the size of the population, are able to exercise power or wield influence far in excess of their actual strength. 

The time may have come for liberal elements that historically have seldom shown themselves as being capable of organising to capture political power, commensurate to their size, to bring the desired change in their countries. Otherwise they might have to continue to remain under the sway of regressive orthodoxies notwithstanding the winds of globalisation sweeping across the rest of the world. 

It is against this background that the world watches with trepidation the outcome of the youthful exuberance spilling over from Dhaka’s Shahbagh Square.