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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