The way the Awami League defines secularism is
misleading in the first place, which poses a
major impediment to secular growth of the
society, state and political culture. The party
claims that ’secularism is not non-religion’Š
Secularism is definitely non-religion when it
comes to running the affairs of a democratic
state while a secular democratic state endorses
the citizens’ right to practise religious faiths
within the private sphere of life.

THE political scene remains quite depressing,
particularly as regards the fate of the January
22 parliamentary election, due mainly to the
caretaker government’s visible reluctance to meet
its constitutional obligation to act in a
non-partisan way - the presence of the BNP
aspirant (for contesting
elections)-turned-election commissioner, Modabber Hossain Chowdhury, being the glaring example.
Even if the election is eventually held in a
situation acceptable to the contesting political
camps led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and
the Awami League, the parliament that will be
constituted through the polls could hardly be
expected to make any substantive contribution
towards the democratic growth of the society and
the state. The reason is simple: The political
parties, while giving nominations to the
candidates, have visibly preferred the rich men
to the not-that-rich dedicated political
activists. Besides, the parties have clearly
chosen not to distribute the candidatures among
the huge marginalised sections of the population
such as women and religious and ethnic
minorities. The result is obvious: The next
parliament is going to be a club of rich
businessmen who have hardly any commitment to the
democratic aspirations of the vast majority of
the poor, the women and the minorities for
political and economic empowerment. What is,
however, more depressing is that the politically
active sections of civil society, which generally
preaches ’representative democracy and good
governance’, has not even strongly criticised,
let alone creating effective pressure on, the
political parties in question for standing in the
ways of the democratic emancipation of the poor,
the women and the religious and ethnic minority
communities.

The only thing, a democratically significant
thing indeed, that some members of the mainstream
intelligentsia and a few social and political
groups have done on democratic direction is that
they have registered public protest against a
mediaeval agreement that the Awami League has
signed with an Islamist fundamentalist group
called Khelafat Majlish. The infamous accord,
signed on December 23, stipulates that the Awami
League, if voted to power, would not get any law
enacted which would be repugnant with the
dictates of the Qur’an, sunnah and shariah, and
its government would allow certified Islamic
clerics to issue fatwa [religious decrees] on the
citizens and consider a ’criminal offence’ to any
criticism of the prophet of Islam and his
associates, etc. No doubt, the clauses of the
agreement sounds like the manifesto of an
Islamist theocratic state with the promise of an
Islamist legal regime, and it is only natural
that the secular democratic sections of the
intelligentsia would protest against such an
obscurantist manifesto.

But the way the intelligentsia in question has
reacted to the League-Khelafat accord was, and
still is, quite misleading, as many of them were
’shocked’ or ’surprised’ over the League’s
action, as if the party has done something in
violation of the secular democratic spirit of our
war of national independence for the first time.
The approach is misleading because it stands in
the way of making the fact clear before the
people that no major political party of the
country these days is committed to secular
democratic principles, and the fact that the
marginalised left, the only force which has
consistently fought for secular democracy over
the decades, has started negotiating the
principle for the sake of crude state power.

The fact remains that the way the Awami League
defines secularism is misleading in the first
place, which poses a major impediment to secular
growth of the society, state and political
culture. The party claims that ’secularism is not
non-religion’. The claim is historically
baseless, as the concept of democracy originally
evolved in Europe through bourgeois’ movement of
the ’enlightenment’ against monarchical rule
backed by the Christian church system, while the
foremost political agenda of the democratic
movement was separation of church from the state.
Secularism is definitely non-religion when it
comes to running the affairs of a democratic
state while a secular democratic state endorses
the citizens’ right to practise religious faiths
within the private sphere of life. The members of
the intelligentsia in question did hardly make
any attempt, or failed, to take an unambiguous
stance on the intellectual proposition of
secularism.

There are some among the local intelligentsia
who love to defend secularism as ’not
non-religion’ by providing examples of the
present-day American and European states that
back, some officially and some unofficially,
Christianity as the religion of the state. This
section of the intelligentsia, one must say, has
developed the bad habit of arguing for argument’s
sake, ignoring a simple adage that one does not
have to indulge in a bad practice because the
other is not doing a good job. Besides, these
people seem unaware of, or unwilling to state,
the fact that there are strong social and
intellectual movements in these American and
European countries concerned against the practice
of providing state support to any religion. What
one actually needs to consider in this case is
whether or not it is better for all the citizens
to run the affairs of the state without being
bias to any particular religion, with all the
religions remaining within the private sphere of
the citizenry. If it is considered better, the
honest responsibility of the democratic
intelligentsia is to stand by the proposition.

However, the Bangladesh state’s deviation, as
far as secularism is concerned, began soon after
it came into existence, with the government of
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman defining secularism as ’not
non-religion’ and subsequently allowing the state
to create, sponsor and finance different
religious organisations on the one hand and
perpetuating the Pakistan-style non-secular
education curricula on the other. Notably,
retention of the anti-Hindu enemy property law of
Pakistan under the name of vested property act in
Bangladesh does not reflect on the League’s
commitment to secular/non-communal politics.

However, the secular democratic state then
received a decisive blow with the government of
Ziaur Rahman getting the constitution rewritten
on Islamic direction with the incorporation of
Bismilahir Rahmanir Rahim at the top of the
preamble of the constitution on the one hand and
lifting constitutional ban on religion-based, and
therefore communal, politics on the other. The
final blow, however, came from the government of
HM Ershad, when it made Islam ’state religion’,
virtually relegating all the people of non-Muslim
faiths to second-class citizenry.

Since then, the BNP has persistently played
the Islam card in politics, creating a political
environment conducive for anti-secular forces to
grow in society and state. Finally, the party
forged a political-ideological coalition with
Jamaat-e-Islami and some other political groups
who loudly profess their political objective to
set up an Islamist theocratic state in Bangladesh.

The Awami League, in the meanwhile, has given
some lip-services to secular democracy while
meddling Islam in politics, particularly in its
electoral politics to outsmart the rival BNP,
sometime with and sometime without success. The
party’s hobnobbing with Jamaat-e-Islami in the
early-1990s is not too distant a past. This time
around, the party has finally decided to abandon
even its rhetorical commitment to secularism,
which took first expression in its electoral
negotiation with Taliban-style Islamist leader
Mufti Shahid, who reportedly runs an Islamist NGO
called Al Markazuk and is named by the US
government persona non grata. The party then
negotiated with the fundamentalist groups like
the Islamist Constitution Movement that
frequently vows to do away with secular democracy
for the sake of establishing an Islamic state in
the country. And finally came the League’s
agreement with Khelafat Majlish to pledge
legitimisation of fatwa and laws not inconsistent
with the Qur’an, sunnah and shariah. Clearly, the
League has proceeded gradually, making one
compromise after another, over the years, without
leaving any scope for its so-called secular
democratic intelligentsia to get shocked or
surprised. That the intelligentsia got shocked
and surprised is their problem - not the League’s.

Until recently, it was only the leftwing
political parties that had fought for secularism
consistently. They even reacted rightly to the
League-Khelafat agreement by way of issuing a
threat to the League, on December 24, to quit the
League-led alliance in case of the latter’s
failure to scrap the deal. But the left gave a
second thought the next day, and decided to stay
back - thanks to its lately developed aspiration
for power devoid of democratic political
principles.

Understandably, the nation is now politically
destined to await a parliament, whichever
political camp get the victory in the ensuing
polls, an ’elected’ Legislature which could
hardly be expected to work for the democratic
rights of the poor, the women, the religious and
ethnic minority communities and the secularists -
rich or poor, men or women, Muslims or Hindus,
Bengalis or Chakmas.

The solution, distant though, lies primarily
with the democratic sections of intelligentsia
realising that Bangladesh lacks the existence of
any formidable secular democratic force at the
moment and then making attempts to start working
afresh to begin a new struggle - intellectual and
political - for secular democracy