The challenge facing Bangladesh

The Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 into India and Pakistan on the basis of religion. Bangladesh was born 31 years later, in 1971, on the basis of nationalism, democracy and secularism. Democracy we lost first, in the mid-seventies and then in the early eighties, and are yet to recover fully. Secularism, which was on a gradual decline, now faces its most serious threat.
As a freedom-fighter, I remember, as we sat glued to a one-band radio, on the evening of December 16, 1971, along with others in a guerrilla camp, listening to the surrender ceremony of the Pakistani army to the joint command in Dhaka and shouting “Joy Bangla” (Victory to Bangla), I was certain that my new country would be a place of prosperity, freedom and religious harmony. Never again would a Muslim or a Hindu lose his or her life for religion.
On the night of July 1, as most inhabitants of Dhaka stayed up all night watching the hostage tragedy on television unfold and hoping that the end would not be as tragic and gruesome as we were beginning to fear, I could not recognise the country to whose birth I, with millions of others, had contributed.
Bangladesh – the people, government, civil society, intelligentsia, media and everyone – is still reeling from the events of that day when 20 people – 17 foreigners and three Bangladeshis – were killed. Two police personnel also died while trying to fight the terrorists in the first rescue attempt. It was not only an act of cold-blooded murder but its bestial nature and the age of the perpetrators – between 20 and 28 years – that has raised many questions as to where the country has come in terms of its values and beliefs after independence.
As a people, we firmly believed that our culture and history, especially the syncretic Islam that we practice here, and our religiosity that blended our diversity and devotion to produce a living culture of tolerance and openness, was enough to protect us from the extremism that seems to afflict so many other countries where Islam is the dominant religion.
We proved to be so thoroughly and tragically wrong.
Our government made the cardinal mistake of being in denial from the start, thinking that any admission, either of the seriousness of the initial killing of bloggers, atheists and LGBT activists, or of any outside link will provide an excuse for the international community to term us as a terrorist or a terror-prone country with all the accompanying negative “advisories” and other possible restrictions. This led to the initial downplaying of the gruesome murders of writers, publishers and free thinkers as “isolated incidents”, and not taking serious and effective preventive measures that could have prepared us better to handle the situation that we unfortunately did on July 1.
The ever-vigilant Bengali intellectuals, known for their anti-colonial and anti-imperialistic struggles and for being the first to raise their voice against all forms of oppression and for their uncompromising stance against extremism and for secularism, appear to have totally failed to grasp what was happening around them. Instead of issuing a robust wake-up call about the looming fundamentalist threat they made the fatal error of allowing themselves to be sucked into partisan politics. Instead of being the voice of freedom and democracy that they traditionally were, they became a tool of the two dominant political parties who, for their own narrow ends, flirted with fundamentalist forces whenever it suited them.
Civil society, especially the grassroots-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which were spread throughout the different corners of the country, also appear to have failed to grasp the spread of extremism. Ordinarily, they should have been among the first to sense what was happening on the ground in the remote areas. Here again, the government, deeply suspicious of the role of the NGOs and mainly considering them to be peddling a donor-driven agenda, probably ignored whatever warning they might have given.
The media must also accept its share of the blame for not going deep enough with investigative reports to challenge the government’s narrative that these were “isolated” incidents, and that everything was under control with the prime minister repeating for years her policy of “zero tolerance” for extremism. All the while it was growing under the very feet of the administration. A few who tried to project a different story were branded as trying to damage the image of the country and of working for interests inimical to that of the country.
The challenge now before all of us is to determine how deep and wide the spread of extremist ideologies is and how entrenched is the threat.
The first question to address is where is all this extremism coming from? So far, the culprit was thought to be the madrassas, the religious schools, which have generally been considered to be the breeding ground of fundamentalist ideals. But the killings at Holey Artisan Bakery showed that only one of the five kids that carried out the massacre came from a Madrassa. The other perpetrators came from middle and upper middle class backgrounds, were educated in expensive English-medium schools and private universities; one had even studied abroad. They were boisterous, modern kids who donned T-shirts and jeans, frequented hangouts like youngsters of that age do everywhere in the world. So what went wrong with these kids and at what point in their lives?
There is no denying the fact that the overall impact of religion in general has significantly risen in the country. More women are seen in religious clothing and more men sport beards. Friday prayers are far more widely participated in than ever before. Religion, no doubt, is in the air.
There is, of course, no correlation between rising religiosity and extremism but it is also true that there has been an overall corrosion of secular principles in Bangladesh. It is a fact that when bloggers, atheists, so-called “free thinkers” and LGBT activists were being murdered one after another there was a silent murmur that since they criticised religion and professed not to believe in any they somehow deserved to be “punished”.
So where do we go from here?
We are still to gauge the full impact of terrorism on our lives. But the “normal” is no longer so. Personal lives are restrained, social lives significantly narrowed and public gatherings are few and far between. Shopping malls and restaurants are almost empty and roadside shopping is down. Factories are running and our major export, the readymade garment sector, is still holding in terms of orders. However, most buyers are refusing to come to Bangladesh. Many countries and foreign businesses are considering declaring Bangladesh as a non-family post, with some having already done so. Some big international conferences – many business-related ones – are being shifted away from Dhaka.
The good news is that our government appears to have moved away from denial mode and from the large-scale anti-militancy operation that we are seeing, it appears that we have finally taken the threat seriously. So far the moves have been by the police and other law enforcers. Those familiar with religion-based extremist movements say that these are not mere law and order problems that can be solved simply by use of force. The challenge here is to “win the hearts and minds”. And for that you need motivational campaigns alongside the use of force.
Bangladesh has a long history of resilience and of beating the odds. From a country of disasters, we became a country of achievers, almost always proving our sceptics wrong. It is my deeply held belief that in fighting back extremism we can prove to be equally successful. The balance between religion and culture in our society, our unique blend of Islamic heritage and Bengali heritage, our fundamental nature of tolerance, our thousand-year tradition of openness and acceptance of the “other”, our rich heritage of political struggle have prepared us well to resist a fundamentalist and extremist upheaval. It is what makes us unique as Bangladeshis that will, in the end, help us win this battle against extremism.

The writer is editor and publisher, The Daily Star, Bangladesh.