From Dhaka to London, From Cairo to Riyadh

Subhash Gatade

Abdul Bari had run out of luck. Like thousands of other people in East Bengal, he had made the mistake—the fatal mistake—of running within sight of a Pakistani patrol. He was 24 years old, a slight man surrounded by soldiers. He was trembling because he was about to be shot...

..General Yahya Khan's military government is pushing through its own 'final solution' of the East Bengal problem. 'We are determined to cleanse East Pakistan once for all of the threat of secession, even if it means the killing of two million people and meeting the province as a colony for 30 years',

(Genocide : Anthony Mascarenhas, Pakistani Journalist, The Sunday Times, 13th June 1971]

Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari, President of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, (Born in 1935), seems to be a learned man, at least that's what his biographical details reveal. Elected for the second time as Ameer (President) of the Jamaat he is known to have 'authored more than thirty books' and is 'considered an 'authority on human rights in general, and women and Islamic family system in particular'. Interestingly, despite his long innings in social-political life and exposure to the outside world his understanding of some crucial developments in this part of the subcontinent seems to be at variance from what can be said as a general consensus around the issue.

The manner in which he and the organisation he leads reacted to the recent developments in B'desh, the emergence of what is known as Shahbagh movement—the spontaneous movement initiated by youth seeking 'exemplary punishment to the war criminals' and banning of 'politics based on religion'—is an indicative of this disconnect between what Maulana Umari and the organisation he leads thinks and what actually happened.

To be fair to Maulana Umari can be added that neither he or nor for that matter Jamaat-e-Islami, Hind were alone in denouncing this historic movement of Shahbagh. Many Muslim leaders and their organisations were found to be vying with each other to stigmatise the protests knowing fully well that majority victims of genocide undertaken by the Pakistani army to suppress national aspirations of the Bangla people belonged to the same Umma (community) they seem more concerned about. The other prominent organisations which either maintained silence or opposed the 'war crimes tribunal' included:  All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat, All India Milli Council, All Bengal Minority Youth Federation, West Bengal Sunnat Al Jamaat Committee etc.

Kolkata could be seen as an epicentre of this anti-Shahbagh protesters. All Bengal Minorities Youth Federation and the dozen odd Muslim outfits had held a 'one lakh strong demonstration' there on 30th March to protest against the verdict of the 'war crimes tribunal' against Jamaat-e-lslami's leaders and demanding stepping down of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Haseena. The participants in the well attended demonstration had come from different parts of West Bengal. According to them the actions of the Bangladesh government was not only 'anti-Islam' but 'anti-humanity' as well. The organisers of the demonstration said that if their demands are not met then they would appeal to the Indian government to sever all ties with Bangladesh. The city had witnessed a more violent demonstration by the same forces earlier, albeit with lesser participation of people.

There was a similar demonstration held in Karachi in the second week of March led by the Jamaat-e-lslami (Pakistan) 'to protest the indictment of Jamaat-e-Islami (Bangladesh) war criminals of 1971 and the treatment of its activists by the Bangladesh government, judiciary and the police in the aftermath of the Shahbagh movement against the Islamists in Dhaka'. Leaders of many Islamic countries especially President of Egypt and Prime Minister of Turkey are reported to have written letters to their Bangladesh counterparts expressing their 'displeasure' over the war crimes tribunal. Few other Islamic countries have through informal channels also 'requested' the Bangladesh government to 'go slow' on the trials or ensure that 'violation of human rights' does not take place. Wittingly or unwittingly all such 'protests' or 'displeasures' about 'danger to Islam' or 'danger to humanity' or alleged concern over democratic rights violation which the ongoing trials have allegedly provoked make one thing very clear.

Interestingly, echoes of Shahbagh could be heard in far off UK as well which witnessed daily events in solidarity with Shahbagh. (The youth of Shahbagh: A Bengali spring? Ansar Ahned Ullah 15 February 2013. www.opendemocracy.net). In fact, on one of those days there was a direct confrontation between Bengali Muslim secularists and Islamists in East London. A number of young Bengali bloggers from London had called for a peaceful demo in Aftab Ali Park, Whitechapel in solidarity with Shahbagh movement. (8th Feb 2013) And when the young bloggers went there at the scheduled time, they found to their surprise that UK Jamaat-e-Islami activists had reached there in large numbers and forcefully occupied the sacred Shahid Minar. The standoff between the two groups continued for eight hours. During and at the end of the event Islamists pelted the secular gathering with eggs and stones, abused the women folk and physically attacked a number young bloggers and hospitalised them. No arrests by the police followed.

From Dhaka to London, from Cairo to Riyadh, it is not difficult to understand why Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind and many other Muslim organisations from this side of the border, as well as their counterparts in other countries felt so agitated and threatened over the Shahbagh movement and were going all out to defend the indefensible. It is also a marker of the large network established by the various communitarian Muslim organisations the world over and the influence they have on policies of different Muslim majority nations.

Their immediate interest was definitely to lessen the pressure on the Bangladeshi Jamaatis who were facing bad times inside B'desh, put on the defensive by the youth led uprising demanding capital punishment to the war criminals of 1971 coupled with the actions of the Awami League government against its leaders. A press release issued by the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami itself (http://www.jamaat-e-islami.org/en/newsdetails.php? nid=NzUO) on 20th March 2013 describeed how '[t]he leadership of Jamaat is either in jail or is living in fear of arrest'.

Its Ameer (i.e. President) is in jail. There are warrants of arrest issued against the Acting Ameer and he is now in hiding ....The party's Secretary General is in jail. The two people who were subsequently appointed (one after the other) to replace him have also been arrested and are now in jail. The third person appointed is now avoiding arrest in fear of custodial torture. Of the 7 Assistant Secretary Generals, 6 are in jail. 12 of the 16 member Executive Committee have been arrested. Of the 6 City Ameers in the 6 metropolitan cities, 2 are in jail, while the remaining 4 are in hiding.

At the grass-roots level, the situation is far worse. 54 of the District Ameers in the 64 districts of Bangladesh have been arrested. The rest have warrants of arrest issued against them. All of the sub- district (or Upazilla) Ameers in the 493 Sub-Districts of Bangladesh have warrants issued against them and are now in hiding.

They could also foresee that if the Shahbagh experiment for banning religion and religious organisations from politics—led by the seculars and democrats—succeeds in a country which is fourth largest in the world as far as Muslim population is concerned (160 million, 90 percent Muslims) then it can definitely start a chain reaction in other Muslim majority countries as well and then it would be extremely difficult for the forces of political Islam of various hues to suppress the democratic aspirations of the people there.

Today it might be the case that people in many of the Muslim majority countries are veering around the idea of giving more space to Islam in governance but it has not been the case earlier. In fact, during the 1960s, the predominant ideology within the Arab world was in fact pan-Arabism which deemphasised religion and emphasised the creation of socialist, secular states based on Arab nationalism rather than Islam. And in many other newly independent countries, with a significant population of Muslims which had their own genesis in leading anti-colonial struggles, there was still more space for running governments on secular principles.

Undoubtedly, in an atmosphere of growing religiosity and faith based practices the world over, where one witnesses increasing intrusion of faith and religion in matters of governance as well as societal functioning, the Shahbagh movement offers not only the Muslim majority countries but the rest of humanity as well not only a beacon of hope but a promise that things can be changed for the better.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 52, Jul 7- 13, 2013

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