Confessions of a secular nationalist

I

I believed in the secular nationalist Party-State. You can call me a hypocrite or fascist if you want. Whatever belief I had evaporated the moment I was confronted with the mass slaughter of our own children at the hands of the Awami League. Actually, whatever belief in the Party-State I had evaporated even before that. It happened when the students made their chant in response to Hasina’s fateful press conference: We’re all razakars now. This was the moment in which the entire ruling ideology was revealed to be a joke. Behind all these high-minded invocations of secularism and 1971 – they were just old, bitter people calling children traitors, slaughtering hundreds of students over a joke. Whatever else we could tolerate – the corruption, the lies, the secret prisons – we could not tolerate a state that could murder its own children so wantonly. And so they fell.

II

We are entering a phase of post-revolutionary anxiety. One of the student leaders has made a long post proclaiming his opposition to LGBTQ+ rights. Awami League supporters are subjected to violence, to public humiliation. Low-level BNP cadres have returned to old habits of extortion and thuggery. And Tarique Rahman is coming home.

Some of these anxieties are well-founded, others I feel are misplaced. And there is a lot of concern trolling by loyalists of the previous regime. It is perhaps time to do a proper accounting of valid and invalid concerns. 

III

Revenge is not justice, the demands for capital punishment will not bring justice. Hanging senior AL leadership will only turn them into martyrs. The only viable solution is a UN investigation and a trial in an international court. 

There is a risk that the politics of violent reprisal will return, fueled by vengeance and righteous anger. The only solution to this is to create a framework for due process that cannot be subverted by any future government, and to inculcate a deep cultural belief in all of us that these are things that must be preserved and fought for. As we reflect on how to construct such a system in the interim period it may be valuable to look back on David Bergman’s writings from the war crimes trial period. Bergman was driven out of the country for arguing that BNP and Jamaat members deserved due process. There is a special irony to the fact that he is now the one arguing for due process for Awami Leaguers.

IV

Bangladesh isn’t going to become Afghanistan, no serious person thinks this. The issue of violent jihadism – which we must keep separate from political Islam – is simply an issue of national security and should be kept within that realm. We have a tendency to conflate non-violent political Islam (Hefazat and Jamaat) with organisations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. This habit of thought must end 

The reality is that religious conservatism will exert itself more forcefully now, as a backlash against the corrupt elite secularism of the Awami League. The reality is that most of the country is quite religious and conservative, not in an extremist way, but in a more quotidian, middle-class way. There will be a need for people who work against these cultural tendencies. But when I see the young people of Bangladesh express themselves online, I don’t see a sea of beards and hijabs demanding the stoning of adulterers. I see kids making dirty sex jokes and talking about drugs. I don’t think we will have a shortage of progressive, secular voices in the younger generation. A robust culture of free expression – something that the students feel strongly about – will allow these progressive voices to assert themselves over majoritarian tendencies.

Speaking for myself, I am interested in engaging more directly with organisations like Jamaat and Hefazat, to learn how to respect them on their own terms and work productively with them. Maybe others can take on the role of progressive firebrand, I feel I have some personal demons to exorcise after all these years of elite Islamophobia. 

I keep thinking about Islami Bank. I supported its expropriation, once. Then I saw the Awami League loot and destroy what was the most well-run bank in the country. There is a lesson there. I would like to engage seriously with the idea that religion will play a positive role in a broader middle-class awakening. 

V

The most valid fear is that an increased tendency towards majoritarianism will harm our minority communities. 

We have seen an explosion of anti-Indian sentiment. On the one hand, this sentiment is completely justified and shared even by non-Muslim SAARC countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka. On the other hand, we must confront the fact that we have a large Hindu population and that most of them are supporters of both AL and the BJP. We cannot accuse these people of dual loyalties and start seeing RAW agents everywhere we look. As with jihadists, the issue of RAW infiltration is simply one of national security, not a cultural matter for the general population. Let our Hindus be Hindu Nationalists, let our Muslims be Islamists, treasure Hinduism as part of our cultural heritage.

We have also seen an explosion of goodwill towards the army, who ended up playing a very positive role in the revolution and made it very clear that they have no interest in taking political power. This should be commended. On the other hand, this is the same army that ethnically cleanses minority communities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. I hope that this interim period could be an opportunity to give those communities greater autonomy and political power.

VI

Finally, there is much anxiety about the return of Tarique Rahman, who was a byword for violent psychopathy and corruption in my own youth. 

Tarique has been making some very well-written posts on Facebook to align his values with the spirit of the revolution. I am uninterested in debating whether these posts are sincere – he is a politician. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now, and to begin imagining ways of productively working with the BNP rather than seeing them as a purely oppositional force that must be defeated. 

Ultimately, the biggest task for the interim government and civil society moving forward will be to finally deconstruct the “only choice is to win” attitude that has characterised our politics for so long. The students have to fully emerge as a new political force, the interim government must reform institutions. And we ourselves must collectively exorcise our own personal habits of elite autocracy. If this can be achieved, we have nothing to fear from Tarique becoming PM.  

I suspect some readers will find all of this too optimistic and Pollyanna. I cannot predict the future and the road ahead will be very long, but I am hopeful. The students make me hopeful. They overthrew a 15-year regime in a matter of weeks. What else are they capable of? ●

Zain Ali is an analyst and commentator.