Every human being is born with his or her own identity. This makes us unique from one another. This uniqueness is manifested in us through various characteristics like personality, physical constitution, culture, etc.
However, the differences that arise between us due to this uniqueness should not prevent us from living together in society. We, naturally, tend to be tolerant of differences.
It is sad, however, that the level of tolerance among people of different faiths in Bangladesh has dropped at an alarming rate over the past few years. It is only getting worse in the post-Covid-19 era.
Hate speech and misinformation are the most common things on social media. Yet, those who are posting on social media are often not so hostile to their acquaintances or friends of different religions face to-face. Rather, they are friendly and cordial.
So why is communal animosity growing?
We need to go a little deeper to find the answer to this question. In this context, there is room to discuss four aspects: Historical, cultural, structural, and direct.
First, the hostile history of the subcontinent inevitably comes to the fore. There may be controversy as to where this enmity originated, but it took a terrible turn during British rule. Their “divide and rule” policy was responsible for sowing the seeds of animosity in the minds of the people of the region.
The people of this country have not been able to come out of this black shadow of colonialism even today. That is why in Bangladesh, as in India, animosity between followers of different religions has become almost a part of our culture. This is why I call it the cultural aspect of communalism.
It is this sick culture that has largely introduced communalism into most of the families in the region. I was listening to the experience of a participant from Dhaka University in an interfaith dialogue recently organized by Right to Peace (R2P). From an early age, her family taught her only about how the people of other religions were different from them. She never had a chance to find out about the similarities.
Similar stories can be found in most Bangali families. In other words, it can be said that a feeling of “us vs them” has been built in our minds since childhood. As a result, mutual animosity has become more consolidated.
The structural aspect that I have mentioned is mainly due to the social, political, and economic conditions of a country, which play an important role in inciting communalism.
If people do not realize or express their grievances properly due to social and political reasons, if they do not get a “level playing field” in various cases, if there is a lack of participation at all levels in decision making, then a feeling of relative deprivation may take place in their subconscious mind and its intensity tends to increase over time. In many cases, they even consciously realize that they are being deprived. But not seeing the possibility of a remedy, they are somehow putting up with it.
For example, in a number of recent violent incidents, the tendency to not seek justice for the victim indicates that people do not follow the institutional way of addressing grievances. There may be various social, political, and economic reasons behind this. But not seeking justice does not mean that the grievances are going away.
Since they are not getting proper institutions to express these grievances, it is slowly taking a distorted form, and from being distorted, at some point it is moving towards communalism.
The role of social media
And in this case, social media, which I have identified as the fourth factor behind the rise of communalism, is acting as fuel for the fire, and it is working much more directly than the other three factors.
In terms of social media, Facebook plays the leading role here. It is a platform where you can deliver a message to hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of moments without having to directly contact anyone. Since it is a place of indirect communication, it is inevitable that there will be a communication gap. As a result, people often get involved in arguments with others due to misunderstandings. This is less likely to happen in the case of direct communication.
For example, when you open Facebook, you will see that many people make offensive comments on the posts of different celebrities. Probably the most horrible victims are the cricketers, actors, and actresses of Bangladesh. If it were a normal face-to-face conversation, they might not have made these offensive remarks intended for celebrities. People easily show the distorted form of their mind on social media and get away with it without any punishment.
On the other hand, social media is being used as the main medium for spreading hate speech, fake news, clickbait news, misinformation, etc. In the past, spreading any kind of fake news on a large scale needed significant effort, but today it is being spread among millions of people with just a few lines of captions and some distorted posters or pictures.
There are some fake Facebook pages, online portals, and Facebook posts that have been created due to people's ignorance (though some of the posts are intentional). Thus, fake news and hate speech from social media are creating an unstable environment all over the country.
We can see the recurrence of such a misuse of social media in all the recent incidents of communal violence. These problems cannot be solved overnight. However, identifying problems can be the first step in solving them.
Possible solutions and precautions
In order to deal with historical and structural factors, people must first be aware of and learn from history. At the same time, state institutions have to come forward to ensure justice and good governance. Interfaith dialogue can also be a good option to address the cultural problem that is fuelling communalism. Through dialogue, people of different religions can learn about the similarities of each other's beliefs, which is not possible on any other platform. This will increase mutual respect and tolerance.
I see a direct example of this in organizing the inter-religious dialogue of Right to Peace. The more participants became aware of each other's similarities, the more their previous misconceptions disappeared. As much as there was a sense of camaraderie among the participants before the beginning of the dialogue, we realized in the post-dialogue survey that it had increased a lot at the end of the dialogue.
However, some precautions must be taken in this case and we must be aware of sensitive issues. One has to make sure that one's religious feelings are not hurt. The main goal of this dialogue will be to make the participants realize that there are more similarities than differences between us as human beings.
Last but not least, the proper use of social media, which is directly involved in inciting communalism, must be ensured. Therefore, workshops on media literacy can be organized in every region of the country. Participants in this workshop should be everyone, from senior citizens to teenagers.
The message needs to be conveyed to the people that proper training and skills are required for using social media. Now is the time to learn about rumours, hate speech, misinformation, etc, and to ensure basic knowledge about the ways to prevent them. If this knowledge can be integrated with the school and college curriculum, more effective results will be obtained.
To eradicate the root cause of communalism, it is necessary to come out of mutual blame and look at its real influencers and then act accordingly. If we are not aware of these sources, the level of communalism will increase day by day, and the complexity of the solution will also increase. Therefore, starting from the policy-making level of the state to social organizations at the grassroot level, everyone must come forward to increase social harmony and tolerance.
Md Zarif Rahman is a research enthusiast and an active development worker. He is the current president and program manager of Youth forum of Right to Peace (R2P), a research-based organization. He is also a Senior executive of Kolpojontro Foundation and working as the Project Manager of its project named Probinchaya.