On the way to office, I tuned in to BBC radio and there was a program being aired on secularism in Bangladesh vis-a-vis the recent killing of outspoken bloggers. It was interesting, though I was a bit puzzled when very little scope was given to a university teacher who had spoken out against derogatory comments made against religion in general.
The father of one of the slain persons was talking. He said that his son, with a huge following, wrote on a site called Muktomona, and was a target of Islamic extremists due to his truculent anti-religious views.
I am compelled to ask -- did this blog, where the so-called secular opinion was aired, target one religion, or all faiths?
As for a huge following, one is unsure as to who reads these; I haven’t met anyone who had even heard of Muktomona before the fatal attack on the blogger, which has to be condemned from all moral angles.
In recent times, whenever there is talk of reprisals by hardliners against advocates of free speech, the issue of one religion, Islam, comes up. So then, are we to assume that these blogs only attack one faith, leaving the others out?
In the program, words like “atheists,” “free speech,” “hardliners,” and “religious bigots” were being used, though never for once was it underlined if the whole topic was surrounded by one religion, or all the other major faiths that are firmly represented in the country. Do free speech anti-religious advocates write against Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism?
In the radio program, the minister for information said Bangladesh is a country where respect for all faiths is central to an integrated, peaceful existence, which is a fact.
I am not saying we haven’t had community clashes divided by religion, but these incidents have never undermined a general desire for harmonious co-existence. In Bangladesh, all major religious festivals of other faiths are celebrated with equal fervour, resulting in different sections of society, belonging to multiple faiths, coming to unite.
Therefore, Eid, Durga Puja, Buddha Purnima, and Christmas are held in esteem by all; if that is not secularism, then one is perplexed as to what is.
In fact, the word secularism in Bangladesh carries curious, though hardly harmful, contradictions. The other day, I was talking to an English daily editor, praised and respected for his erudition, and he pointed to something which no one ever takes into account while trying to define secularism in Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, most people are open-minded; we see a lot of people who drink socially all year round while refraining from taking alcohol during Ramadan, but then celebrate Eid with a bottle and friends.
On Thursday nights, plenty of people have a drink and the same bunch religiously go to the Jumma prayers the next day.These easy-going men and women enjoy the religious festivals of other faiths, take part in the Pohela Boishakh rallies, and, when someone dies, also take it as a moral duty to attend a post-burial milad seeking eternal peace for the departed soul.
Would I be wrong in calling these the enlightened of the country? Of course, many do not touch alcohol, though they do not shy away from having fun at social gatherings, irrespective of what religious tag it carries. But most of these liberals would recoil at the idea of denigrating a faith which many of the so-called blogs do. The occidental idea of atheism is an anathema in Bangladesh.
There are those who only go to mosques twice a year for Eid and never wear the religious identity on their sleeves, yet they understand very well that attacking a faith or valiantly flying the non-believer flag is hardly a civil move. It’s baffling as to why the European idea of extreme secularism is being used time and again in the Bangladeshi context.
Curiously, most international media outlets, while reporting on free speech in Bangladesh, appear to be motivated by a single-minded desire to prove that people here are killed if they speak their minds.
This is certainly not the case; our society, that includes all faiths, never talks openly about atheism or apostasy. If someone wishes to be one, no one is stopping him or her. Just the act of propagating one’s views, when they border on the unorthodox, is not welcome, simply because they have the potency to create schisms!
Just in the same way, we never talk of gay people or same-sex relations in Bangladesh. It’s common knowledge people in same sex relations are present in society, though no one openly talks about or espouses it.
People having same-sex bonds are not being hounded out; most in urban areas turn the other way when they see one and, as for me, I have many friends who are involved in such relations, though they do not harp on about it. Nor are they stigmatised.
The social approach in this case is rational: Do what you want but since there is an eventual religious loyalty, no matter how liberal, public disclosures are deemed insulting.
A sort of South Asian “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach.
The BBC, while covering an attack on a gay pride rally in Turkey in late June, reported that, while Turkey always took a lenient stance on such processions, permitting it to take place every year, it’s not understood why this time the reaction was so severe.
It’s obvious this way because the march was being held during Ramadan, much to the bother of devout as well as the open-minded.
It’s certainly not right that people were killed for their writing. However, before Western-style free speech is imposed on Bangladesh, the rather unique form of liberalism that we have needs to be understood.
In a country where all four major faiths have a strong presence in the lives of millions, along with all the contradictions mentioned earlier, emphatic declarations of atheism cause disquiet.
Let’s be secular the moderate Bangladeshi way, instead of aping some other radical format!
