Two weeks ago a national daily reviewed V Ramaswamy and my English rendition of Shahidul Zahir’s Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas. “Mojid’s sandal straps, the inauspicious dispersion of cut flesh to the ravens by Moulana Bodu, the murder of Momena, and Mayaraani’s [sic] Satanic chants are some of the snapshots among many others which reemerge through the span of the novel,” observed the reviewer.
What she termed “Satanic chants” were a Hindu woman’s incantation to God Shani. The novella describes: “On Saturday evenings, Mayarani chanted like a dirge, ‘Ashen Shoni boshen khate, possad debo haate haate. Come, Shani, sit on the cot, I’ll feed you the sacred offering with my own hand.’”
The editor, as I informed her, immediately supplanted that part with “incantations to God Shani” in their online paper. Much as I appreciated this gesture, in my mind, “Satanic chants” echoed like a siren until I decided to address the issue. This incident raises a problem that is deeply ingrained in our Muslim majority country: A disconnect between different religious groups. A disconnect that engenders stereotypes, rumors, generalizations.
During the late Middle Ages, when the concerted colonial expansions were yet to begin, medieval travelers wrote about the East as a place of monstrous and marvelous creatures. One such account is Honorius Augustodunensis’s Imago mundi which portrays the orient as populated with headless men who are eight feet tall, eight feet wide, and have eyes and mouths in their breasts.
How are these two incidents related? The gazes of the reviewer and the medieval travelers are cut from the same cloth. They are the products of ignorance and imagination. These seemingly inconsequential cases of ignorance have catastrophic implications. Otherwise, what else drives the zealots in Bangladesh to launch attacks on minority communities at the slightest provocation if not our existing communal tension that develops over time because of small events that we choose to overlook?
These everyday occurrences constitute the image of the “other” and we are all complicit in this construction process. Let’s recall how we treated our Hindu classmates at school.
The rhetoric of otherization finds its worst expression in the classroom. Some schools in Bangladesh have a separate section to accommodate students belonging to other religious minority groups. In my school, during the period for religious studies, these students were sent to another classroom. This temporary displacement leaves a lasting impression on the remaining students who begin to identify the handful of migrating students as people different from “us.”
Naturally, the Hindu students soon create their own clique, further reinforcing their status as “them.” In such an environment, statements like “you make an idol, you worship it and then dunk it in the water! Can your clay God listen to you?” or “Brishti Rani Mondol eats snakes and turtles, because she is Hindu, and she smells,” are common. Other, more threatening, remarks are: “Dost, try beef. If you can wear shoes made of cowhide, what’s wrong with eating beef?”
Who manufactures, legitimizes, and disseminates these notions? Religious hostility begins in our early childhood and is carried forward through various institutions throughout our lives.
Recently, a video went viral on social media where a mullah is seen delivering a speech, “Durga Debi, ki je shundor chehara… O jodi kotha koite parto ami ore biye koira loitam, Debi Durga, what a beautiful face!… If only she could speak, I would have married her!”
What legal steps have been taken against this speaker? Did our law enforcement spare Baul singer Rita Dewan from legal ramifications for allegedly hurting the ‘religious sentiment’ of Muslims?
The mullah’s remark yet again accounts for the systematic production of the Hindu Other. Our educational and religious institutions are instrumental in propagating this agreed-upon idea.
Ideology, claims Louis Althusser, is circulated and justified by means of a complex network of institutions he calls state apparatuses. Small incidents that occur within the domain of these state apparatuses build up to violent ends.
Likewise, replacing “Satanic chants” with “incantations” does not eliminate the problem altogether but creates a palimpsest. So, this tension resurfaces when the religious sentiment of the majority is hurt.
We remember what happened on October 13 last year.
Following a social media post claiming that the Holy Quran was dishonored at a puja mandap in Cumilla, communal violence broke out across the country and continued for days. Between October 13 and 17, 101 religious sites and 181 shops and residential houses were vandalized, reports The Daily Star. Another report by Ain O Salish Kendra adds that the Hindu community has been attacked about 3,679 times between 2013 and 2021.
After all this, is it surprising that our Hindu population is declining? As per the sixth “Population and Housing Census 2022,” they constitute 7.95% of the total population now. The figure stood at 8.54% and 13.5% in 2011 and 1974 respectively.
How far away are we from transitioning to a monocultural society? For how long shall we remain ostrich about this problem?
After Ramaswamy read the review on Shahidul Zahir’s novellas, he sent me an excerpt from Rabindranath Tagore’s essay titled, “Bangla Education for Muslim Students”:
“When Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh are closest neighbors, their happiness and sorrows are intertwined in manifold ways; when one has to rush to fetch water finding another’s house on fire, then each must have a complete understanding of indeed all matters concerning each other since childhood. If the Hindu boys in Bengal do not learn about the history and doctrines of their Muslim neighbors without bias and the Muslim boys, that of their Hindu neighbors, then, none will be able to perform their duties properly in life with such an incomplete education.”
I am unsure how feasible it is to introduce minority cultures in the classroom in today’s context. I choose to ignore how utopian it may sound. I suggest that schools can challenge our religious prejudice instead of perpetuating it.
Shahroza Nahrin co-translated Shahidul Zahir’s Life and Political Reality with V Ramaswamy.