Every December 16 is a victory day for us, but it is also a stark reminder of what we had fought for and a retrospection of where we are from the ideals and values that ushered us into the world as a free nation. 16th December is not only a day when we defeated the junta that had unleashed an unjust war on our people, but it is also a fulfillment of our decades long yearning to set up a country based on democratic values of human rights, equality, and justice for all irrespective of religion and ethnicity.
That is why our Liberation War was fought, and the subsequent constitution was founded on these four principles -- nationalism (Bengali), democracy, socialism (equality), and secularism.
“We believe in secularism. Secularism does not mean the absence of religion. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists -- everyone will perform their own religion. No one can interfere with others' religious beliefs. The people of Bangladesh do not want interference in religion.”
This quote from the founding father of the country, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from a speech in Bangladesh Parliament in November 1972, formed one of the cornerstones of Bangladesh state policy since its formation. Respect and equality of all religions and right of everyone to live as equals irrespective of their religious belief gave this land a new identity, different from the one that it had acquired since partition of the subcontinent.
That is what the Bangladeshis fought for and wanted for their country. Today, when we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of that joyful Victory Day, we need to ask ourselves: Are we in danger of moving away from the ideals and values on which this country was founded?
The generation that participated in the War of Liberation and witnessed the trauma of our birth may be receding or fading away, but should the values and ideals that guided us in the war also recede or take a backstage? Our history, our culture, and our abiding faith in the rights of all citizens to live as free citizens should remain the same for generations to come. Our constitution guarantees that. However, from time-to-time, events occur that make us fearful, if the foundation of equality across faith and religion is showing signs of stress, or even threat.
Why do we have these fears, 50 years from the day we achieved our freedom? It is because of what we have witnessed in the last 50 years in our political scene. We did not change the four fundamental principles of our constitution, but one of the main pillars of the constitution -- secularism, separation of state policy from religion -- lost its teeth when in 1989, Islam was declared as the State religion. It was a change for a country that drew much of its strength from the assertion that Bangladesh would be a religion-neutral country, where all religions, irrespective of their numerical strength or weakness, would coexist as a monolithic nation.
If someone were to point a finger at a fissure in the faith and loyalty to secularism, it could be this time. But this change did not happen simply at the whim of the political high priest at national level. It happened when there was a palpable mutation of our Bengali national identity, with a resurgence of religion-backed politics that was slowly creeping back in our national mural. The secular image of the country of 1971 started to fade.
But we marched on, ignoring the potential dangers to our monolithic nationhood that we had built on the goodwill and harmonious communal relationship in the country since the War of Liberation. We continued to hope that we had buried for good the ashes of a communal past that was used from time to time by our rulers from 1947 to 1971 to misguide our politics and our people.
We had hoped that, never in the future, our next generation would be guided back to the dark days of communal intolerance and disharmony. Despite populist acts of some of the political leaders who would wrest power from time to time by illegal means to draw support from religious groups, our country remained largely a religiously tolerant country, not moved by such nefarious moves.
But then there are fissures within a community caused by external events, propaganda, and these days, by misinformation. Our history has shown that our communities have often fallen prey to communal intolerance and bigotry, driven by partisan politics and predatory instincts of property grabbing. Many times, these have been exacerbated by false propaganda that incited one community against another, leading to situations that went out of control.
In many such cases, these were preventable but were not contained. One wonders why such outbursts of communal intolerance should occur in countries that have a professed policy of equality of all communities across religion and ethnicity. Why should there be fear and suspicion of one community or religious group, and least of all, unleash violence toward them?
Are we so vulnerable to propaganda because of some inherent weakness in us, or is it because there is something fundamentally wrong in the way we educate and train our young generation in the values that are ingrained in our constitution? Why can’t we inculcate the values of human rights and equality of religion across all faiths?
It is a lengthy list of questions, but the answers are not far to seek. The answers lie in the politics of every country and the education system the politics nurtures. A secular society cannot be built by diktat or simply enshrining the constitution with it. The founder of the country and the framers of our constitution inserted secularism in the constitution not because they thought it looked good for a country, but because they also believed that, to take a country ahead, we must build a monolithic nation which is not fractured by communalism.
We are not in the stage of impoverishment or insecurity that we found ourselves on December 16, 1971. We are now an internationally-recognized developing country, about to graduate from least developed country or LDC status. Our people can proudly call themselves a nation of achievers.
We have passed beyond the stage of inciting one community against another, provoked by misinformation or propaganda. What we need is more training and education in religious tolerance and learning about each other. We must do this through our schools and madrassas, and institutions of higher learning. This is the only way we can educate our next generation in making the fourth pillar of our constitution stronger so that any political leader cannot take a whack at it in the future.
This should be our commitment on this 50th anniversary of our Victory Day.
Ziauddin Choudhury has worked in the higher civil service of Bangladesh early in his career, and later for the World Bank in the US.