Though every
situation of religious activism has a social context in which economic and
political issues have been important, these issues have never been the whole story
- an ideologically religious perspective was grafted onto them. The religious
ingredient, personalizes the conflict. It provides personal reward - religious
merit, redemption, and the promise of heavenly luxuries - to those who struggle
in conflicts that otherwise have only social benefits. It also provides
vehicles of social mobilization that embrace vast numbers of supporters who
otherwise would not be mobilized around social or political issue. Even more
important, it provides justification for violence that challenges the state's
monopoly on morally-sanctioned killing. Present day nation-states, thus are
both criticized and propped up by their former competition, religion. In some cases religion as we pointed out in our
earlyier research project about Europe titled
Sociology of Religious Nationalism in Europe, see underneath here. Elsewhere became an ideological glue that held
together a sense of nationhood and supports a new kind of religious
nation-state.
And as for S.Asia, Nationhood for example became a defining part of
the Sikh rebellion in Punjab - the "Khalistan" movement, as it came
to be called (the concept of Khalistan was coined among expatriate Punjabis in
London, and the first currency for the cause was printed in Canada). Elsewhere,
although even more extremist in nature (including apocalyptic as we have seen), there where examples of the
religious agenda of the revolution in Iran and the Hamas movement within
the Palestinian liberation struggle and so on.
In fact as shown on
the example of 9/11 five years ago, for many who lost faith in the idea of
secular nationalism, religion has once more, become the vehicle of collective
identity expressing ‘peoplehood’, the essential ingredient for the
Enlightenment idea of the ‘nationstate’. (See John
Lie, Modern Peoplehood, Harvard University Press, 2004.)
With increased
mobility (see for example the recent growth of budget airlines) localized satellite TV, and easy communication religious communities
dispersed across the planet, religious activism can more quickly become
transnational in its networks of operation and its bases of support. But like
we suggested several times before, we need to move beyond images of ultimate
confrontation like "war on terrorism" for the more we can resist
appearing like the evil enemy that the bin Ladens of this world say we
are, the better off we are in diffusing the vicious spiral of violence and dissipating images of cosmic war.
In reference to our
mention of the explosions in Malegaon yesterday, the most complex
historical legacy that afflicts India is indeed the record - of Hindu Muslim
interactions. Some
historiography has sought to portray the relationship between these two
communities as fundamentally adversarial. Other scholarship has emphasized the
role of British colonialism in promoting Hindu-Muslim discord through the
artifacts of the colonial census, the creation of separate electorates, and the
promotion of anthropological stereotypes. Both positions are problematic.
Hindu-Muslim disharmony certainly did not ensue solely with the advent of
British colonialism, nor is there an unbroken record of Hindu-Muslim
intransigence. Instead, both antagonism and collaboration characterized
Hindu--Muslim relations prior to the arrival of the British in the
subcontinent. There is, of course, little question that certain British
colonial administrative practices did reinforce and strengthen notions of
cultural and religious exclusivity. For example, the British decision to create
separate electorates in 1909 under the aegis of the Minto-Morley reforms had
pernicious effects for Hindu-Muslim accord and collaboration. First, it
undermined the prospects of a common nationalist platform against British rule
as it privileged religious identity over other cultural markers. Second, it
conceded a long-standing demand of some members of the Muslim intelligentsia
who had claimed that the Muslims of the subcontinent constituted a distinct,
discrete primordial nation. It thereby provided a foundation for Muslim
separatism and ignored the many differences within the Muslim communities of lndia. (see among others, Mushirul
Hasan, "The Myth of Muslim Unity: Colonial and Nationalist
Narratives," in Legacy of a Divided Nation: India 's Muslims since
Independence , Oxford University Press, 1997).
The origins of Muslim
separatism can be traced to the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was
during this period that British imperialism was at its apogee in South Asia.
The spread of British colonial power across the subcontinent along with concomitant
changes in social, cultural and religious mores spawned a series of revivalist
movements. Some were explicitly religious, such as the emergence of the Arya Samaj under the tutelage of Swami Dayanand Saraswati in Punjab, which sought to purify Hinduism and
return it to its Vedic roots. Others were more acculturative, such as the
Brahmo Samaj in Bengal under the aegis of Ram Mohan
Roy. (Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India,
Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Plus some movements
had a more distinct political agenda then others, like we explained already in
part one, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan for example, a Muslim intellectual from the
United Provinces, was a principal exponent of the movement for Muslim
separatism. Khan's attempts to mobilize and create solidarity amongst the
Muslims of South Asia stemmed from two distinct sources. At one level, he was
increasingly dismayed with the growth of Hindu revivalist movements in India.
At another, he had deep misgivings about the erosive effects on the Muslim
intelligentsia and culture of the growth of British secular education.
Ironically, centered
on widespread Muslim discontent the abolition of the Turkish Caliphate in the
aftermath of World War 1, attempts at Hindu-Muslim unity emerged in the early
part of the twentieth century as the Khalifat
movement spearheaded by no other than Mohandas Gandhi. This enterprise in
1920 by Gandhi (along with two key Muslim notables), proved to be mostly
fleeting entered on widespread Muslim discontent against the abolition of the
Turkish Caliphate in the aftermath of World War 1. Mohandas Gandhi, one of the
principal exponents of Indian nationalism, spearheaded this enterprise in 1920
along with two key Muslim notables.
During the inter-war
years then, the Congress Party for a 2e time sought to enlist Muslim support
through the famous "mass contact" campaign. However Congress was
not able to reassure Muslims that their rights and privileges would be
guaranteed in an independent India. This failure of Congress, the dominant,
secular Indian nationalist organization, to provide explicit guarantees to
protect the rights of India 's Muslim population in the aftermath of British
rule, no doubt bolstered new separatist proclivities. This was among others
because, electoral politics necessitated Congress to make compromises with
Hindu notables to gamer the popular vote. Plus key individuals within the party
did not embrace Congress's commitment to secularism. But most important as
seen in part one represented the dominant, democratic, and secular impulses of
the Indian nationalist movement. See our case study next, that describes for
the first time, the social environment during which the two opposing ideologies of both Hindu- and
Pakistani (meaning Muslim Nationalism) started to emerge.
However, another
strand of the nationalist movement was explicitly anti-secular, pro-Hindu, and,
arguably, even anti-democratic. This was the Hindu nationalist dimension of the
anti-colonial movement whose principal political manifestation was the Hindu Mahasabhay Despite the political dominance of the Congress,
the existence of the Hindu Mahasabha and its popularity in certain parts of
India were of understandable concern to the Muslim minority. The Muslim League,
which represented a crucial segment of Indian Muslim opinion, embellished these
fears and misgivings to generate support for the creation of Pakistan. The
success of the Muslim League in creating a separate state of Pakistan
embittered significant numbers of Indians. To them the creation of Pakistan, on
the basis of religious affiliation, was tantamount to the breaking up of an
existing, natural entity and homeland. The veracity of their beliefs is of
little significance.
The haphazard,
clumsy, and disorganized process of partition and its consequent horrors simply
reinforced and adumbrated these beliefs. The British, unable to forge some last-minute
accord between the Congress and the Muslim League, agreed to partition the
subcontinent. However, the arrangements for the transfer of power to the two
emergent political entities of India and Pakistan were inadequate and hasty.
The human and material costs of the partition of British India were
incalculable. At least ten million individuals moved across newly demarcated
borders and at least a million lost their lives in the communal carnage that
accompanied the process of partition. No community, in particular,
displayed much compassion for the members of other communities, though
individual acts of heroism and decency did exist. The memories of the
experience of partition scarred individuals and groups in both India and
Pakistan. They also had a profound impact on the future course of
Indo-Pakistani relations. Individuals who lived through the searing experience
of partition found it exceedingly difficult to reconcile themselves to the new
political order in South Asia Their
sentiments were almost uniformly partisan. These nascent citizens of both India
and Pakistan viewed their counterparts across the border as intransigent,
untrustworthy, and deceitful. These images of each other converged on the
critical and yet unresolved question of the final status ofthe
disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. (Radha Kumar, "The Troubled History
of Partition," Foreign Affairs 76, no. 1, January/February 1997, 114-30.)
After the collapse of
Pakistan in 1971 following the brutal civil war in East Pakistan and the emergence
of Bangladesh, Pakistan 's moral claim to Kashmir became hollow. If religion
alone could not serve as the basis of Pakistan 's unity and territorial
integrity, it could not legitimately claim Kashmir on the basis of its
Muslim-majority status. Simultaneously, with India 's flagging practical
commitment to secularism in the 1980s, India 's claim to Kashmir on the basis
of secularism also lost ground. Today, grand moral and ethical claims
notwithstanding, both states claim Kashmir on the basis of statecraft and
little else: neither is willing to concede territory that it deems an integral
part of its nationhood.
The internal
dimensions of the Kashmir problem are inseparable from its external features.
Following its highly contested accession to the Indian Union after the first
Kashmir war, India worked out a complex federal arrangement with the state
recognizing its unique status under the Indian constitution. This was codified
under the terms of the Delhi Agreement between Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
and Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, the leader of the largest, popular and secular
political party in the state, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. Under
the terms of this agreement, the government of India would limit its writ in
Kashmir to questions of defense, foreign affairs, currency, and communications.
The Delhi Accord,
however, proved to be quite short-lived. Abdullah was dismissed from the prime
minister ship of the state in 1953 when Indian intelligence agencies alleged
that he was planning on declaring independence. Following Abdullah's dismissal,
New Delhi propped up a series of governments of dubious legitimacy in Kashmir.
As long as these regimes did not raise the secessionist bogey, national
governments in New Delhi granted them considerable latitude in matters of
governance. As a consequence, unlike in the rest of India, the National
Conference was allowed to freely engage in various forms of political
malfeasance including the intimidation of political opponents, electoral
corruption, and raiding of the public exchequer. Simultaneously, New Delhi, in
an attempt to win the sympathies of the Kashmiris, poured enormous
developmental assistance into the state. These two contrary processes would
amount to a potent and corrosive amalgam in the future. As political
institutions were stultified, New Delhi 's economic largess contributed to the
growth of political mobilization within the state as a new generation of
better-educated and politically conscious Kashmiris emerged. By the 1980s, unlike
previous politically quiescent generations, this new cohort found New Delhi 's
political machinations to be intolerable. Lacking an alternative model for
social protest and finding the existing institutional channels for political
dissent blocked, they turned to violence. (J.N. Dixit, India-Pakistan in War
and Peace, 2002).
Once the uprising
started, Pakistan, which for all practical purposes had abandoned any hope of
wresting Kashmir from India through the use of force, quickly entered the fray.
Pakistan 's deep involvement in the Kashmir insurgency has broadened its scope,
increased its lethality, and undermined the Indian state's efforts to restore
order if not law in the state. numbers of Indians. To them the creation of
Pakistan, on the basis of religious affiliation, was tantamount to the breaking
up of an existing, natural entity and homeland. The veracity of their beliefs
is of little significance.
The haphazard,
clumsy, and disorganized process of partition and its consequent horrors simply
reinforced and adumbrated these beliefs. The British, unable to forge some
last-minute accord between the Congress and the Muslim League, agreed to
partition the subcontinent. However, the arrangements for the transfer of power
to the two emergent political entities of India and Pakistan were inadequate
and hasty. The human and material costs of the partition of British India were
incalculable. At least ten million individuals moved across newly demarcated
borders and at least a million lost their lives in the communal carnage that
accompanied the process of partition. No community, in particular,
displayed much compassion for the members of other communities, though
individual acts of heroism and decency did exist. The memories of the
experience of partition scarred individuals and groups in both India and
Pakistan. They also had a profound impact on the future course of
Indo-Pakistani relations. Individuals who lived through the searing experience
of partition found it exceedingly difficult to reconcile themselves to the new
political order in South Asia. Their sentiments were almost uniformly partisan.
These nascent citizens of both India and Pakistan viewed their counterparts
across the border as intransigent, untrustworthy, and deceitful. These images
of each other converged on the critical and yet unresolved question of the
final status of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. (Radha Kumar,
"The Troubled History of Partition," Foreign Affairs 76, no. 1
,January/February 1997, 114-30.)
The sources of this
dispute, unlike other inter-state disputes, do not involve vital commitment to
secularism would be beyond question. For Pakistan, it was equally important
strategic commodities or a region of great geopolitical significance. Instead
the underlying source of this dispute can be traced to the markedly different
conceptions of state-construction in South Asia. India, as a state committed to
secular nationalism, sought to incorporate this predominantly Muslim state in
an attempt to demonstrate its secular credentials. The argument ran as follows:
if a Muslim-majority region could thrive within the confines of a predominantly
Hindu polity, India's to incorporate Kashmir into its realm. As the professed
homeland of the Muslims of South Asia, its leaders argued with equal force that
without Kashmir their nation was incomplete. In effect, Pakistan's claim to
Kashmir was irredentist. (Naomi Chazan, Irredentism and International Politics,
1991).
After the collapse of
Pakistan in 1971 following the brutal civil war in East Pakistan and the
emergence of Bangladesh, Pakistan 's moral claim to Kashmir became hollow. If
religion alone could not serve as the basis of Pakistan 's unity and
territorial integrity, it could not legitimately claim Kashmir on the basis of
its Muslim-majority status. Simultaneously, with India 's flagging practical
commitment to secularism in the 1980s, India 's claim to Kashmir on the basis
of secularism also lost ground. Today, grand moral and ethical claims
notwithstanding, both states claim Kashmir on the basis of statecraft and
little else: neither is willing to concede territory that it deems an integral
part of its nationhood.
The internal
dimensions of the Kashmir problem are inseparable from its external features.
Following its highly contested accession to the Indian Union after the first
Kashmir war, India worked out a complex federal arrangement with the state
recognizing its unique status under the Indian constitution. This was codified
under the terms of the Delhi Agreement between Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
and Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, the leader of the largest, popular and secular
political party in the state, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. Under
the terms of this agreement, the government of India would limit its writ in
Kashmir to questions of defense, foreign affairs, currency, and communications.
The Delhi Accord,
however, proved to be quite short-lived. Abdullah was dismissed from the prime ministership of the state in 1953 when Indian intelligence
agencies alleged that he was planning on declaring independence. Following
Abdullah's dismissal, New Delhi propped up a series of governments of dubious
legitimacy in Kashmir. As long as these regimes did not raise the secessionist
bogey, national governments in New Delhi granted them considerable latitude in
matters of governance. As a consequence, unlike in the rest of India, the
National Conference was allowed to freely engage in various forms of political
malfeasance including the intimidation of political opponents, electoral
corruption, and raiding of the public exchequer. Simultaneously, New Delhi, in
an attempt to win the sympathies of the Kashmiris, poured enormous
developmental assistance into the state. These two contrary processes would
amount to a potent and corrosive amalgam in the future. As political
institutions were stultified, New Delhi 's economic largess contributed to the
growth of political mobilization within the state as a new generation of
better-educated and politically conscious Kashmiris emerged. By the 1980s,
unlike previous politically quiescent generations, this new cohort found New
Delhi 's political machinations to be intolerable. Lacking an alternative model
for social protest and finding the existing institutional channels for political
dissent blocked, they turned to violence. Once the uprising started, Pakistan,
which for all practical purposes had abandoned any hope of wresting Kashmir
from India through the use of force, quickly entered the fray. Pakistan 's deep
involvement in the Kashmir insurgency has broadened its scope, increased its
lethality, and undermined the Indian state's efforts to restore order if not
law in the state. (J.N. Dixit, India-Pakistan in War and Peace, 2002).
The principal stated
purpose of the creation of Pakistan was to provide a homeland for the Muslims
of South Asia. Had the Congress or the British been able to make a credible
commitment to the protection of the Muslim minority in South Asia in the waning
days of British colonial rule, the state of Pakistan may never have
materialized. (Steven 1. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition
and Ethnic Riots in India, Cambridge, 2004).
Historical legacies
have shaped questions of ethno-religious violence in Pakistan. First, the
Indian nationalist movement which the Indian National Congress had dominated,
was transformed by Mohandas Gandhi in the 1920s from an elitist, upper-middle
class, and predominantly Hindu entity, into a mass-based political party
seeking to represent all segments of Indian society regardless of cultural
background, religious orientation, or class origins. (Granville Austin, Working
a Democratic Constitution: the Indian Experience, Oxford University Press,
2000).
The principal vehicle
for the movement for Pakistan, the Muslim League, however, failed to develop a
similar grass-roots organization. As British colonial withdrawal approached,
the leaders of the League resorted to populist mobilizational strategies to
widen its political base. Unlike Congress, however, it did not develop
institutional mechanisms for political representation within the party.
Consequently, intra-party democracy, which was a hallmark of Congress, simply
did not exist within the Muslim League. Until the time of the transfer of power
the principal support base of the Muslim League remained confined to the
upper-class Muslim gentry of the United Provinces. (Steven 1. Wilkinson, Votes
and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India, Cambridge
University Press, 2004).
The second factor
that profoundly influenced the course of events relating to ethno-religious
conflict in Pakistan was the searing effect of partition. British planning was
woefully inadequate and carried out in a most haphazard and slapdash fashion.
As noted above, close to a million individuals perished at the time of
independence and partition, and another ten to twelve million were displaced,
though no accurate figures can be adduced. There was mass violence as Hindus,
Muslims, and Sikhs all preyed on vulnerable segments of one another's
communities.
The memories of
partition came to haunt elites and masses to varying degrees on both sides of
the border. In Pakistan, the effects were even more acute. It was a far smaller
state, it was bifurcated by several hundred miles of Indian territory, and it
was a fragment of the erstwhile British empire in India. Since it started its
independent existence as a secessionist state, it had to forge a distinct
national identity, a task that proved exceedingly difficult. Though Islam was
one binding factor, other differences of sect, language, region, and social
class soon came to the fore. (Suvir Kaul, ed., The
Partitions of Memory: the Afterlife of the Division of India, 2001).
Ironically, few
remember today that Pakistan at its founding was declared a secular
republic; one of founder be reflected in the country's constitution. Indeed,
the first constitution of Pakistan, which was tabled in 1954, ensured that the
sentiments of religious leaders and parties were suitably addressed. Islamist
leaders, who had never supported the Pakistan Movement under the rationale that
Muslims should not seek a state of political sovereignty but rather an ummah in
which sovereignty would reside with God, began political agitations as early as
the 1950s, demanding that the state intervene in matters of religion. (Seyyed V. Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: the
Jama 'at-iIslami of Pakistan, University of
California Press, 1994).
Example Ahmadis
The Ahmadiyya, or
Ahmadi, community (also known as Qaidianis) are the
followers of a late nineteenth century religious reformer named Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad (1835-1908), in Indian Punjab. In theological terms, Islamic orthodoxy
objects to the Ahmadis because Ghulam Ahmad declared himself to be the second
messiah, considered a blasphemous statement by those who believe in the
finality of prophet hood claimed by Muhammad. Yet Ahmadis were not persecuted
in a widespread way or with state sanction, either in pre-independence India,
including the territories now comprising Pakistan, or in Pakistan immediately
following independence. One must acknowledge that the theological complaint of
Ahmadiyya blasphemy appeared to gain sociopolitical ground only from 1949
onward. Indeed, Pakistan’s first foreign minister was a member of the Ahmadiyya
community. For convincing argument that the Ahmadis do not differ much from
other Muslims, see “The Ahmadis” (2004) by Antonio Gualtieri.
But the new state
of Pakistan had a tenuous foothold on the ideological ground of secularism. It
would take only two years before members of Sunni Islamist movements began to
focus on steering the Pakistani state toward implementation of a version of
Islamic practice acceptable to them – abandoning their earlier position that
the creation of Pakistan itself had no legitimacy in Islamic jurisprudence. In
1953 the Jamaat-I-Islami led the Punjab riots, riots
which targeted the Ahmadiyya. Apart from the violence which accompanied
Partition, this was the first instance of violence against a community in
independent Pakistan justified by its perpetrators on religious grounds. While
the Pakistani state initiated an inquiry into the riots, the political effect
would be to force the Pakistani state towards closer legal imbrications with
Islamic law – for no one wanted to appear against Islam.
The reason why we
mention this however is because the case of the Ahmadiyya represents the first
wave of targeted religious violence in Pakistan , a close second if not
parallel to the former where Christians followed by Shia Muslims. Anti-Shia
violence castigated Shia Muslims for being “infidels” and therefore acceptable
targets for execution. Within this ideological climate, it is hard to remember
that Jinnah himself was a Shia of the Bohra community.
This account can be
located in the changed climate of state policies, related to arms supply as
well as ideology, instituted during the Afghan War. This narrative underscores
yet again the difficulties of any attempt to discuss religious violence using
only a national framework – for the macro framework in which the rise of
sectarian conflict has occurred in Pakistan has a great deal to do with
transnational flows during the Afghan War, which lasted officially from
1979-89, but which continues to exercise its effects on Pakistan.
Specifically, by
employing holy warriors against the Soviets, and supporting them financially as
well as with arms, the US in partnership with Pakistan (and Saudi Arabia)
created a new class of monied Sunni mercenaries. It is hard to overstate the
destabilizing effects this has had on the region. (Steve Coli, Ghost Wars: The
Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and bin Laden From the Soviet Invasion
to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Books, 2004)
It contributed to a
severe decline in law and order, and to what Pakistanis themselves refer to as
the “Kalashnikov culture,” about which there is rising public concern. An
initiative of 2001 to reduce the flood of small arms throughout the country has
to date been ineffectuaI.
Popular
understandings of Pakistan’s political trajectory tend to attribute the country’s
Islamization to the dictatorial rule of General Zia ul-Haq
(1977-88), but in fact it was under the democratically-elected regime of
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1972-77) that formal changes to Pakistan’s constitution
were introduced, as well as new education policies which began to narrow the
nation’s ideological framework. In the wake of another series of anti-Ahmadi
riots in 1974, an amendment to the constitution was introduced which explicitly
defined a category of non-Muslim citizens, and included Ahmadis among the list.
Four years later, General Zia would use the list of non- Muslims to generate
separate electorates, a situation of outright discrimination although one not
necessarily indicative of sanctioned violence against religious minorities.
However, it signaled the closing opportunities for religious minorities to
participate as full citizens. In 1984 Zia again amended the constitution in
such a way as to accord Islamic law supremacy over national jurisprudence. Zia
also included amendments which specifically targeted the Ahmadi community, and
created legal grounds to prosecute any person “posing” as a Muslim or
professing faith in the Ahmadiyya religion openly. These grounds for
prosecution would take place under laws against blasphemy, offenses punishable
with life in prison if not death. Perpetrators of violence against Ahmadis are
never prosecuted, and Ahmadis can theoretically be jailed or executed for
carrying a Quran or uttering the Islamic confession of faith. In this sense a
political climate against a religious minority forced the state to craft laws
which sanction violence against this targeted group. Hat
explains the Pakistani state’s seeming unwillingness and obvious inability to
protect these two vulnerable minority communities?
One of the reasons no
doubt is that Pakistan ‘s political institutions, from the outset, have faced a
fundamental crisis of legitimacy. It took Pakistan ‘s leaders seven years after
independence to forge a new constitution. From the outset, there was
significant opposition to this constitution from a variety of quarters. The
most important dissenters were Hindu politicians from East Pakistan who
considered the constitution to be Islamic. The constitution that had taken so
long to draft proved to be stillborn, as a constitutional coup took place with
the aid of the army in 1954. The army, key elements of the elitist Civil Service
of Pakistan, and some West Pakistani politicians had deemed the constitution to
be too democratic for their liking and preferred a more centralized polity.
Consequently, from the outset, Pakistan ‘s political institutions proved to be
both unrepresentative and lacking in political legitimacy. It was precisely
these two features of its polity which would create conducive conditions for
unscrupulous politicians and military dictators to pander to religious
extremists throughout Pakistan ‘s subsequent history. The debility of the
nation’s political institutions gave them considerable latitude for
scapegoating and marginalizing minorities in an effort to bolster their own
dubious and tenuous political standing.
Enter Bangladesh.
The state of
Bangladesh emerged in 1971 from the break-up of Pakistan following a
particularly vicious civil war. India, the principal neighbor of East Pakistan,
became embroiled in the civil war because of the flight of several million
refugees from East Pakistan in the aftermath of the brutal Pakistani military
crackdown. The origins of the civil war have been examined in some detail
elsewhere. Suffice it to say that its roots can be traced to the grossly
inequitable social and economic policies that the West Pakistanis had pursued
toward their eastern counterpart. Bangladesh started its independent existence
as an avowedly secular state. Its founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, significantly
beholden to India because of its role in the creation of Bangladesh, could have
hardly chosen to have drafted a non-secular constitution. More to the point,
for much of the Bengali-speaking Muslim world there existed an intriguing
tension in their social identities. On the one hand, their identities were
distinctly Islamic; on the other hand, their initial quarrel with the Pakistani
state had emerged from the imposition of an alien language, Urdu, as the
national language of Pakistan in 1952. There was no gainsaying their attachment
to a distinctive linguistic identity along with all its cultural accoutrements.
(Amena Mohsin, "Language, Identity and the State
in Bangladesh," in Fighting Words: Language Policy and Ethnic Relations in
Asia, ed. Michael E. Brown and Sumit Ganguly, 2003).
Jamaat-I-Islami, a political party fundamentally opposed to the creation
of a separate, independent state of Bangladesh. Finally, his administration had
to contend with the simple but compelling matter of curbing the powers of local
condottierri who had emerged in the wake of the civil
war. All these factors undermined the stability of his regime, and he was
assassinated along with most members of his immediate family in a sanguinary
military coup in 1975. See case
study:
Thus, military regime
led by General Zia ur-Rehman justified its takeover
on the usual grounds: the previous government had failed to curb growing
lawlessness, had been involved in corruption, and had failed to address a
number of pressing social and economic needs. To some small degree Zia's regime
did indeed deliver on his promises as economic development did take place, some
of the cronyism of the Mujib years was curbed and efforts to limit population
growth, a bane of Bangladeshi society, were put into place. Yet civil liberties
and personal rights were squelched and the Zia regime displayed scant regard
for the rights of the substantial Hindu minority (approximately 10 percent of
the population). The formal commitment to a secular state which promised
equality before the law for all citizens, regardless of religious affiliation,
evaporated under General Zia's military dictatorship.
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