In her op-ed in the New York Times (March 5, 2015), Lipika Pelham expresses concern about the state of secularism in Bangladesh in the wake of Avijit Roy’s murder. She sees worrying signs of Bangladesh’s regression from secularism in the threats against and/or attacks on writers such as Avijit Roy, Rajib Haider, Humayun Azad, and Taslima Nasrin.
For reasons that I struggled to articulate, the op-ed didn’t sit well with me, even though I too see secularism as indispensable for a just and pluralist society.
Perhaps I couldn’t digest the op-ed because of its juxtaposition of a secular past in which students could sit around and discuss atheism with an anti-secular present. This juxtaposition flattens context and complexity. Surely, even today, there are pockets where people can proclaim their atheism in Bangladesh and surely, even during Pelham’s student days 25 years ago, there were those who sought to silence outspoken writers such as Taslima Nasrin.
Violence is neither confined to battles between secularists and self-appointed defenders of religion nor is it the only mode of exchange between ideological adversaries. There have been instances in which people have been attacked and threatened for reasons other than their religious views, as well as instances in which people have criticised religion without penalty.
A discussion about the stifling of leftist proponents of secularism in Bangladesh and the world, as well as the top-down processes that have also moulded secularism would have helped provide context to Pelham’s concerns. An op-ed is perhaps not the place for a review of history, but if we want to diagnose the current challenge properly, it is important to pay attention to how secularism’s status has varied over time and how it has reflected changing political interests and contexts. Such an approach can help de-mystify both secularism and desecularisation and show how both operate alongside each other, reacting to each other, shaping and reshaping each other.
Secularism has had a turbulent trajectory in Bangladesh. It has not been static as an institution or as a concept. As in other countries, secularism has been inextricable from politics. The 1972 Constitution enshrined secularism as a founding principle of Bangladesh, but studies soon thereafter found that secularism as defined as the separation of religion from the public sphere had little resonance among those surveyed. This does not necessarily mean that people rejected pluralism or did not want to live peacefully with their neighbours of different faiths.
After independence, the persistence of laws and policies that disadvantaged religious and ethnic minorities in terms of property rights, provided lucrative opportunities to those who have sought to divide people to facilitate land-grabbing and gain access to resources. Human rights activists have been engaged in long-standing struggles for the reform of such policies that toil against pluralism.
After independence, various meanings and interpretations of secularism could also be found among elites. To some, it entailed the separation of religion and the state. To others, it meant religious pluralism. The insertion of secularism in the Constitution also sent important signals about the new country’s ideological orientation amidst regional and global politics in the context of the Cold War. It marked a clear break from the ostensibly religious rationale that had bound East Bengal to West Pakistan.
In the late 1970s, political expediency and economic pressures led to the omission of secularism from the Constitution as political leaders sought to bolster their religious credentials from domestic support and strengthen ties with oil-rich Gulf countries on the basis of religious identity. In 2011, the ruling party passed a constitutional amendment that restored secularism in the Constitution and made it unamendable.
Pelham’s op-ed touches on the political context when she mentions the government’s arrests of bloggers over allegations of hurting religious sentiments, but rather than focusing on such factors, she summons the religion vs secularism binary. I do not deny that this binary is one that politicians, movements, and citizens also deploy, but those who want a pluralist society cannot afford to banish anyone who appears different to an anti-pluralist camp on suspicion.
During a trip to Sadarghat, when Pelham’s daughter asks her whether there are no women in Dhaka, Pelham looks around and realises there are women on the streets but they’re wearing black burqas or hijabs, rather than the colorful clothes she remembers from years past. To those unfamiliar with Bangladesh, Pelham’s personal observation about the transformation of one street may lend itself to generalisation.
In an attempt to do justice to the diversity of countless Bangladeshi streets, I could post pictures of women in various types of attire, from colourful burqas to monochrome salwar kameezes, battling strikes and the threat of petrol bombs to go to work and attend classes every day. Or I could direct people to the Facebook pages of the British and US embassies for photos that capture the diversity of Bangladesh more effectively. Pelham’s construction of the “non-secular other” and innuendos about people wearing particular types of clothing over-predicts anti-pluralist sentiment.
While ads addressing “True Muslim Women” clearly seek to restrict pluralism, wearing burqas and hijabs does not automatically translate into opposing secularism and/or pluralism. A lot of research has cautioned us against making assumptions about people’s attitudes based on their choice of attire. The relationship between clothing, religion, and attitudes towards pluralism is complicated and the implied suggestion that women in burqas and men in dishdashas signal the end of a secular Bangladesh ignores such complexity.
In expressing concern about secularism, Pelham pointed to a decline in tolerance and respect for other points of view. I don’t know if there has been a decline because I don’t know what the level of tolerance and respect has been over time.
I do know that there are many Bangladeshis who are fighting for pluralism and want to build a society in which people can share and discuss their ideas about faith and politics without fear of violence. The harsh and tragic reality is that few people, whether religious or atheist, enjoy security and freedom from fear in the current context.
We don’t need any more “others.” We do not need simplistic binaries that set up religiosity and pluralism as mutually exclusive categories. Where the supporters of secularism and pluralism have constantly failed in Bangladesh among other places is building broad based support and solidarity for the respect of different viewpoints. We need allies and should have seen them in the voices that condemned Avijit’s killing. When Pelham mentions the powerful banners that declare, “If the Avijit Roys lose, Bangladesh loses,” she could have also mentioned the wide range of voices that expressed solidarity with Avijit and condemned his killers. Otherwise, the strength of intolerance is overstated and the potential for pluralism understated.
We desperately need pluralism -- political pluralism, religious pluralism, intellectual pluralism, and ideological pluralism. Narrow-minded people, whether religious or secular, seek to create and reinforce differences among people. History has shown that political experiments that do not instrumentalise religion, if not paired with pluralism, can also lead to death and destruction as they did under Stalin and Mao Zedong. The issue isn’t whether ISIS has killed or will kill more and fewer people than Stalin or Mao; the issue is that emphasising religion as a static culprit across time and space generates faulty diagnoses and prognoses.
Pelham’s daughter’s apparent inability to “see” women in burqas is perhaps symbolic of our inability to “see” past the superficial and engage with the complicated. One of the great strengths of Avijit is that he recognised the humanity in those who were ostensibly different from him, such as the victims of the Chapel Hill shooting, and expressed solidarity across constructed boundaries in struggles for justice. That’s the approach that should inspire us and the approach that increases the odds of a pluralist Bangladesh.