Author: Bikash Sarmah
Publication: Sentinel Assam
Date: January 13, 2005
While there are many in India, mostly
religious minority leaders championing the cause of their well-defined
"suppressed community" and befuddled Congressmen getting motivated by the
defunct Left ideology every new day, who constantly set up socio-political
warning systems of the kind that pseudo-secularism would like being attuned
to, it escapes the conscience of a whole lot of politicians here as to
what obsessive secularism, distorted and moulded anew to suit petty political
interests, might mean - spelling a doom for a nation battered in all ways.
If it is a tragedy that the Sangh Parivar wants India to return to the
folds of Hindutva on the ground that Hindutva alone could save the Indian
identity and reshape all past glories, it would turn out to be a greater
tragedy if our leaders, particularly from the North-east, do not yet learn
the practicalities of politics and hear what Bangladeshi dissident writer
Salam Azad has to say about his own homeland.
Salam Azad at 38 would have loved
his homeland embracing the ideals of their founding father, Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, who though he had to pay a heavy price for what he doggedly stood
for - a Bangladesh respecting its creator, India, and liberal enough to
tolerate and accommodate all opinionated intellectuals and activists. Salam
Azad would want Bangladesh to be secular - and let us not be again hypocritical
to surmise how good it would be if Salam Azad weaves a pseudo-secular pattern
for Bangladesh as well. Salam Azad would have loved dying in a Bangladesh
that tolerates the tenets of other faiths, especially those of Hinduism,
exactly like India that does tolerate all faiths and that goes a step further
too. Salam Azad would love to write brilliantly for a Bangladesh that does
not send Islamist mercenaries to India's North-east, that does not imagine
of a greater Islamic state where Hindus would be mercilessly butchered,
and that does not shelter the terrorists (are they insurgents?) of a land
as democratic and secular as India.
In December 2003, his celebrated
book Contribution of India in the War of Liberation of Bangladesh was published
only to be banned by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led government
of Begum Khaleda Zia whose ally today is the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami
as well as Islami Oikkya Jote. And why should not the book be banned? After
all, it speaks of India's contribution! And anything that is contributory
from the Indian side, even if that had happened 34 years back, should be
scoffed away in Bangladesh in utter disregard to what historical realities
might force upon it. That is today's Bangladesh. But that will not be tomorrow's
Bangladesh. Because it will then be fully Talibanized by the likes of Bangla
Bhai (whose real name is Siddiqul Islam) who leads Jagroto Muslim Janata
Bangladesh (JMJB), an Islamist organization working on designs of a Taliban-like
State in Bangladesh.
That is why the book Hindu Sampraday
Keno Bangladesh Tyag Korcche (Why the Hindu community is leaving Bangladesh)
evoked such widespread condemnation in Bangladesh. By choosing such a title,
Salam Azad was being audacious enough to confess what Talibanized Bangladesh
would like to glorify - that from Bangladesh the minority Hindu community
is fleeing not for reasons like poverty (of course, most Hindus are rich
there, and well-educated, which peeves the Talibanized mindset), but to
escape any possible carnage of the worst kind, though incidents like rape
(of Hindu women) are not of the type to hit headlines there. Naturally
then, why should a writer like Salam Azad be tolerated? Do we not remember
what happened to Taslima Nasreen? And why should we not conclude that today's
Bangladesh needs the Talibanic jehadis more than progressive and secular
thinkers like Salam and Taslima?
To get a synoptic view of what really
is happening there and how the portents endanger the security set-up and
demographic stability of the North-east, let us hear what Salam Azad blurts
out: "I have compared Bangladesh as it existed before 1947 with its present
identity. One reality of our present-day lives is the flourishing madrasas
patronized by this fundamentalist government (of Begum Khaleda Zia). What
do you think is taught in these madrasas? Children are taught that Muslims
are the most superior community in the world. They are also brainwashed
that converting a non-Muslim to Islam is an act of faith."
"I don't agree with this kind of
fundamentalism. Can humanity accept it? At the time of graduating from
the madrasas, the youth are told that if you kill a non-Muslim, then the
doors of paradise are open to you. They are also told that if they bring
a non-Muslim woman into the fold of Islam through marriage it is another
way of serving your religion."
This is what Salam Azad tells Tehelka
(December 18, 2004 issue). According to him, the Christians escape the
Talibanic onslaught primarily because Bangladesh, a wretch economically,
depends on Christian non-governmental aid for sustenance. That means since
Christian organizations and agencies are feeding the growing breed of Talibanic
jehadis, their definition of Islamic culture allows only the Hindus to
be chased and chastised. Salam Azad adds: "The Hindus are being targeted
because they own large property. They are also the ones who are most educated
and hold white-collar jobs. You won't find a single Hindu rickshawallah
in Bangladesh. You won't find a Hindu beggar. There are no bekaar (unemployed)
Hindus simply because if they were so who would give them anything to eat.
On the other hand, there are many government organizations and NGOs wishing
to dole out support to the Muslim unemployed."
Salam Azad candidly speaks of two
things more. According to him, if a Hindu women is raped, no police station
in Bangladesh would take "cognizance of the crime," and worst, even the
judiciary makes it a point to 'not' entertain any such case. Secondly,
he goes political: "Nowhere in the world is there a national law that permits
the government to take over property of ethnic minorities without assigning
any reason whatsoever. The Hindus in Bangladesh are being stripped of their
property. Everywhere else in the world, minorities are given special protection,
but in Bangladesh the Hindu minority is subjected to State-sponsored suppression.
I have addressed these realities in my books."
Is secular India listening? It does
not matter to mainland India though, because a Bangladeshi jehadi drugged
by the Talibanic dose would hardly venture out to North or South or West
India and declare any jehad there. But when it comes to the North-east,
the possibility is that any such fanatic from Bangladesh, religiously well-trained
in stealthy warfare by JMJB operatives and backed politically by the BNP-led
government, could play havoc with indigenous lives here for three main
reasons. First, the North-east, especially Assam, entices a typical Bangladeshi
to come and settle in lot many open 'geographical' spaces safeguarded well
by as many 'political' spaces, and this truth is as evident as anything
if one realizes the geographical proximity of the North-east to Bangladesh.
Secondly, an already settled Bangladeshi population, legal or illegal (but
mostly illegal by all means), would lend a helping hand to that typical
Bangladeshi infiltrator on the ground of either historical nostalgia or
religious kinship or possibly similar "final goals." Thirdly, in Assam
where the ruling Congress government seems to conceive of newer plans to
appease the religious minority every other day, our typical Bangladeshi
would be welcomed by the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals)
Act, 1983. To summarize, the notorious IM(DT) Act (which the scholar in
Dr Manmohan Singh finds highly humane) would pave the way for a glorious
life for any illegal Bangladeshi in Assam and who then would go about his
clandestine designs in utter "humanitarian freedom."
Is the North-east listening then?
Does Assam, in particular, realize what Salam Azad signals? One needs to
be politically imaginative too, to analyse Azad's worries. This bold writer
talks of Talibanization of Bangladesh in the sense that many illiterate
or semi-literate or sometimes even literate Bangladeshis are being cocooned
rapidly in the warp of un-Islamic Islam in the land of Mujibur Rahman.
The basic reason why the North-east, in particular Assam, must read Salam
Azad is that while a huge Bangladeshi population has already boomed illegally
in this region under the very nose of a secular regime, this very population
might very easily be Talibanized as well, given that so many Islamist mercenaries
are reportedly having their field day in areas like Karimganj and Hailakandi.
What is it that prevents us from not accepting that even the madrasas in
the Barak Valley are being influenced to further the Talibanic ideal of
a greater Islamic State formed by carving out 'suitable' areas from the
North-east? And to be true to Salam Azad, such a State would persecute
all minorities who now would be mostly Hindus, and remotest of all, Christians
too, in most areas of Assam. Surely, it is time!
