Secularism in the Context of the Two-Nation Theory

Hypocrisy in the Pakistani Media and Crimes against Minorities in Bangladesh

Discussions pertaining to communal strife in the Indian subcontinent in liberal media outlets (whether in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh) usually tend to focus on crimes committed against Muslims in India. In the violent aftermath of the gruesome crime in Godhra, this may be somewhat understandable. But the hypocrisy of the mainstream media in Pakistan can be particularly galling. For instance, in any discussion of secularism, no media Pundit in the Pakistani press ever acknowledges that Pakistan's very creation and its unending hostility towards India is the greatest hindrance to secular amity in the subcontinent. Nothing could have been a more egregious rejection of secularism than how the overwhelming majority of Sikhs and Hindus were brutally expelled in a wave of unprecedented terror. In many other situations - this could have even been described as a genocide.

Thus, Pakistani journalists who now write smugly about how India is not really a secular nation have no moral standing in lecturing to India about how to preserve its secular fabric. In fact, such cynical diatribes against the Indian nation are often masks to conceal a pathological hatred for Hindus, and the pre-Islamic Indian tradition. This is not to deny that secularism in India faces enormous challenges. But no secular nation can ever guarantee that its citizens will never commit crimes against others. Neither can it guarantee that's its elected officials will always be fair and just towards all the residents of their constituency. What is more important is if there are legal and constitutional safeguards, if institutional mechanisms exist to monitor and ameliorate the plight of victims of communally motivated crimes, if there is a vibrant press that defends all sections of the population, if there are political and non-governmental organizations that step in at the right time to defend the innocent, and if the general sentiments of the masses are in favor of secularism.
Nations must be judged as much by the sum total of their institutions as by particular responses by particular individuals (or groups) to specific situations. In this regard, it must be noted how immediately after word of the retaliatory violence in Ahmedabad and other cities in Gujarat reached out, virtually all the major media outlets began to carry accounts of what was happening. And if there have been any complaints about the reporting in the major national dailies, - it is that they have often omitted stories where Muslims in some communities initiated retaliatory violence against Hindus, or when the local police tried to protect Muslims from mob-violence. Generally speaking, the Indian national press took the crimes committed against Gujarat's Muslims with great concern and seriousness.

The entire political opposition, including some members of the ruling coalition condemned the violence, and called for an immediate halt to acts of communal retribution. Even some members of the BJP were alarmed by the situation in Gujarat, and were reportedly critical of the Modi administration. The Prime Minister felt obliged to use the words "National Shame" to summarize the events. Numerous NGOs, citizens groups, and prominent individuals became activated. Protests were organized in front of Indian embassies and consulates throughout the world. National Human Rights organizations filed critical reports of the State Government. But most importantly, it was the Indian public who demonstrated its abhorrence for the savage acts of retribution that had taken place in Gujarat by decisively rejecting BJP candidates in subsequent local elections. Most notably, the residents of Delhi presented the BJP with its most humiliating defeat in recent history.
Hence, contrary to how some Pakistanis may argue, the desire to defend secularism in India runs deep, and any unbiased examination of communal violence in India will reveal that in most instances, even the most militant of India's Hindu groups don't get activated until there is a catalyst, and certainly in the Gujarat case, the provocation for such militant groups could not have been more extreme. Neither is it ever acknowledged by self-styled "secularists" in Pakistan how the unrelenting attacks against India on PTV, the daily incidents of Jehadi terror in Jammu and Kashmir might provoke a section of India's Hindus into losing their balance.
The situation in Bangladesh is marginally better, in that crimes committed against Bangladesh's Hindus at least make it to the press. But all too frequently (barring the small vernacular papers), such stories are buried in the middle pages, and in most cases, when Bangladeshi intellectuals discuss the situation in India, they seem to forget that Bangladesh played no insignificant role during partition. That its existence as a separate nation can only be justified on the basis of the two-nation theory, or that Bangladesh's Hindus and other non-Muslims survive as second-class citizens in the nation. Not only is discrimination against Hindus in Bangladesh deeply institutionalized, in the recent wave of communal terror that has gripped the nation, it has resulted in tens of thousands of Bangladeshi Hindus fleeing to India. But significantly, and most unfortunately, there has not been even a fraction of the response seen in India.

By and large, Bangladesh's minorities have been left to fend for themselves, and their battle has primarily been taken up by the non-Muslim Bangladeshi Diaspora. Although small groups of courageous intellectuals have attempted to organize forums and distribute literature documenting some of the grave human rights violations that have been taking place since the last elections, it does not appear that this crisis has drawn the attention of the political establishment, or received the broad and intense coverage that communally motivated crimes of such magnitude would receive in India. The ruling BNP even refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem. Unlike in India, where non-Hindus are to be found in all spheres of public life - in politics, in the judiciary, in the military, and especially in the media and entertainment industries, minorities are almost invisible in Bangladesh. One could even argue that India's Adivasis and Dalits carry more political clout than Bangladesh's Hindus, Buddhists and Christians.

In fact, there are virtually no influential advocates for minorities in Bangladesh. But tragically, rather than compensate for their immense vulnerability, Indian political parties have been mainly indifferent to their plight. Hindu trade union activists and communists from Bangladesh are especially demoralized and bitter at how even as leftists and progressives they have found little support from Bengal's Left Front government. By and large, India's liberal media, and Indian secular groups have virtually ignored the enormous human rights crisis that has developed after the victory of Khaleda Zia and the BNP, let alone document the systematic and all-pervading discrimination that takes place against non-Muslims in Bangladesh.

Most recently, (Apr 23, 2002) the Bengali-language Janakantha reported that Gyan Jyoti Barua - a Buddhist monk looking after an orphanage in the Hingala hill track was hacked to death after repeated demands for ransom and threats to vacate the orphanage. This followed the burning down of a Buddhist temple in Ukiya (purportedly by cadres of the ruling coalition - as reported in the Janakantha, Mar 23, 2002)

A March 25th report in the Ajkerkagoj (also Bengali-language) cited the HBCUC (Hindu, Buddha, Christian Unity Council) highlighting how in February 2002 alone there were 131 cases of extortions and oppressions against minorities resulting in at least 15,000 minority citizens (mostly Hindus) becoming homeless in Sandip, Natore, Narshingdi and Mirsarai. The HBCUC came to this conclusion after compiling reports from several sources, and noted that there were at least 25 cases of gang rape of minority women, and that all the accused were cadres of the ruling BNP. According to the HBCUC, at least 5 women were driven to suicide due to denial of justice by the government.

Attacks against non-Muslims have continued through April, with the Ittefaq reporting on April 12 that BNP cadres went on a rampage against a Hindu family in Coxbazar, looting their belongings and beating up the family members. Residents of a largely Christian village had suffered a similar fate a few weeks earlier. In Adhampura village, celebration of a Hindu festival NamJagga resulted in acts of arson. In Alipur village, a Hindu woman was forced to go naked, and her husband beaten up. Earlier in March, the Daily Sangbad and the Daily Jugantor (two other Bengali-language newspapers) had filed other stories of atrocities committed against Hindu villagers .

Although both Tehelka and the Far Eastern Economic Review spoke of increasing fundamentalism, and of groups actively recruiting anti-Indian Jehadis and other terrorists in the Cox's Bazar region, there have been few reports of atrocities being committed against Bangladesh's non-Muslims in the international press since the BBC reported on the horrific stories conveyed by fleeing Hindu refugees from Bangladesh on November 22, 2001. Earlier, on November 8, the BBC cited Shahriyar Kabir of the South Asian Coalition Against Fundamentalism who spoke of widespread atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh, and also of Hindus being prevented from voting. Shahriyar Kabir was reinforcing what many fleeing Hindus had repeatedly alleged - that tens of thousands of Bangladesh's Hindus were prevented from voting by armed gangs and local thugs aligned with the BNP.

This came after a team of international "election observers" from the EU nations declared that the election of Khaleda Zia was free and fair in spite of numerous reports of widespread rigging and serious election violations. Jimmy Carter from the US and a Japanese team echoed the EU team's conclusions. The statements and reports issued by these supposedly neutral teams show how such election observation missions are utter shams. These teams monitored election procedures in a few hand-picked constituencies, interviewed a handful of pro-BNP election agents and concluded that the process had been free and fair.

That Bangladesh accepted international election monitors in the first place is in itself indicative of how (in spite of rhetoric to the contrary) the country has not fully shaken of its colonial legacy. To date, India has always rejected any suggestion of international monitoring as a violation of Indian sovereignty, and no political party (other than the highly discredited Hurriyat) in India would dare call for international monitoring of any Indian election. That the BNP raised such a demand, and it was accepted by the previous administration points to the weakness of the political system in Bangladesh. Evidently, the Awami League government must not have been very popular with the world's big powers (such as the US, the EU and Japan), and must have been under tremendous pressure to accept monitors from these former colonial nations.

Given Bangladesh's history, one would think that any truly unbiased team would be most concerned about whether the nation's minorities, particularly Hindus and Buddhists had been given the opportunity to vote freely, without fear of violent reprisals or repercussions. But it does not seem as if any of these observer missions spoke to any Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, or their political representatives. Neither have these election observers shown any concern for continuing human rights violations in Bangladesh now that a government supposedly friendly to their interests is in power.

The work of trying to document the tragic plight of Bangladesh's minority citizens has thus rested on organizations such as the The Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities. Reports by such human rights monitoring and advocacy groups suggests that although crimes against minorities have increased dramatically since the new government took office, the situation was never good for Bangladesh's minorities. Mayer Dak (Kolkata, Mar 12, 2001) of the Nikhil Banga Nagarik Sangha mentions how Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Ahmediya Muslims have been complaining how their names are being excluded from a roster of freedom fighters being compiled by the government so that they may be deprived of potential benefits. The Mayer Dak (Dec 24, 2001) also reported that freedom fighter and educationist Gopal Krishna Muhuri was murdered, his family tortured and looted. Once again, the perpetrators were believed to be associated with the ruling coalition.

But it is the analysis of the Delhi-based Asia-Pacific Human Rights Network which is most damning. It provides a chilling analysis of the situation of Hindus in Bangladesh. A January 2000 report titled: "The Hindu Minority in Bangladesh: Legally Identified Enemies", begins with the statement: "In the last three decades, human rights abuses against the Hindu minority in Bangladesh, have largely gone unreported.", adding that "Notwithstanding the fact that India was a determinant factor in the liberation of Bangladesh, the fate of the Hindu minority changed little after independence from Pakistan.". The report goes on to cite how a 1965 law that allowed the state to grab the property of anyone considered an enemy (typically any Hindu family still residing there) was modified but never repealed in 1972, as a result of which minority Hindus have effectively no legal rights to their ancestral lands. About 30% of Bangladesh's Hindus are potential victims of this law, and the estimated total of the land dispossessed would be 1.05 million acres. The application of this law has led to an acceleration of the out-migration of Hindus from Bangladesh. The report observes that "The estimated size of such out-migration (missing Hindu population) during 1964-1991 was 5.3 million, or 538 persons each day since 1964, with as high as 703 persons per day during 1964-1971. If the above estimates are close to reality, then it would not be an exaggeration to conclude that the Enemy / Vested Property Acts acted as an effective tool for the extermination of Hindu minorities from their motherland."

In other words, roughly one third of the Hindu population has been forced to flee Bangladesh, and has somehow taken refuge in different parts of India, often at great risk of being re-deported. This, over and above the millions of Muslims from Bangladesh who have migrated to India to escape its terminal poverty. But whereas the situation for Muslim Bangladeshis typically improves after migration, such is not the case for those forced to flee due to politically motivated persecution. Naturally most of such refugees have to start life at the very bottom of the totem pole, and what is worse, receive little attention or support from the majority of India's political or media establishment.

Although the Bangladeshi government continues to stonewall any attempts at redress,
in a recent filing with the United Nations - Commission on Human Rights (Jan 15, 2002) the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) countered the denials of the Bangladeshi government. The report quotes the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, Abdelfattah Amor who (after his visit to Bangladesh from 15-24 May 2000) stated: "Furthermore, to this day, interest groups and individuals continue to appropriate property belonging to the Hindu community, and indeed to do so with the complicity of the authorities and of influential people. In a significant number of cases, Hindus are dispossessed of their property, even when they are the legal owners of such assets." The SAHRDC also quotes from the Ain O Salish Kendra (Law and Arbitration Centre), a Bangladeshi NGO, in its report, 'Power, Safety and the Minorities: A Brief Report,' May 2000 to summarize: "Statistics as cited in the ASK Human Rights Report (p.193-194) show that in 1995, 72 per cent of all vested property (property seized from Hindus) was acquired by members of Bangladesh National Party (BNP); and in 1998, 44 per cent was acquired by the Awami League and 32 per cent by the BNP."

According to the SAHRDC filing, large number of Hindus fled their homes, becoming internally displaced and many others fled to Assam, Tripura and West Bengal. The filing also noted: "The Government's response to the monitoring of atrocities on minorities has also been characteristically brutal. Mr Shahriar Kabir, an independent documentary filmmaker, was arrested on 22 November 2001 at on his return from Kolkata, India. He was later served a notice under the draconian Special Powers Act. Mr Kabir had gone to India to investigate the condition of Bangladeshi refugees who had fled to India and had collected evidence of their plight."
Thus, unlike in India, discrimination against Hindus and other minorities (even some categories of Muslims) is deeply entrenched, and the situation is becoming steadily worse, not better. Unlike India, where recent election results give hope that the communal menace can be arrested because that is what the overwhelming majority of the Indian people want, there appears to be no such hope for Bangladesh.