Five political lessons for South Asia from Bangladesh’s unrest

We in India have a multitude of problems, but unlike our neighbours, we have never had a military takeover of civilian rule.

Bangladesh has slid into anarchy on such an epic scale that currently it’s hard to see purposeful revolution through the haze of mob attacks on the minority Hindu community, and the roaming and looting that continues along with calls to boycott India.

What we can, however, say is that certitudes about ideologies that underpin a nation, can be upended in a trice if a regime is authoritarian. As in Sri Lanka two years ago, in Bangladesh now the lid has blown off the pressure cooker because the whistle for letting out steam was blocked by the Sheikh Hasina regime.

The spectacle in Bangladesh is a political and social conundrum as it is a nation that has been noted by world agencies for doing well (and overtaking India) on human development indices. As we head to our 78th Independence Day on August 15, let’s note five rules of ‘What Not to Do in South Asia’.

First: religion is no basis for nationhood. As the colonial powers receded post-World War II, they also drew highly problematic boundaries, and as a consequence created eternal conflicts. Two nations were created based on religion: Pakistan that translates to Land of the Pure (implying non-Muslim are impure) in 1947; and Israel in 1948 as a homeland for Jews after their genocide in Europe. Both nations have been in perpetual conflict and the International Court of Justice noted some months ago that it is plausible that Israel’s current actions amount to genocide of Palestinians.

Second: the Two Nation Theory that held the Hindus and the Muslims to constitute separate nations, very quickly turned out to be a bogus formulation. Within Pakistan itself there have always been clear divisions between Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans, and Baluchis. That religion does not unite over other identities became self-evident when Pakistan was unable to accept a Bengali leadership which led to the formation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Third: language is a more robust basis for nationhood and at its founding Bangladesh declared itself as committed to secular values (around 8% of the population is currently estimated to be Hindu). But this was eroded during the military dictatorship of Ziaur Rahman in 1977, and secularism was removed from the Constitution. In 1988, Islam was declared State religion under another military dictator, General Ershad (although in 2010 the court reinstated secularism in the Constitution where it co-exists with the State religion of Islam).

When there is a State religion, including the word secularism in the Constitution is meaningless. If we examine the second-class status of Hindu citizens of Pakistan in the past and the current attacks on them in Bangladesh, we must conclude that any proclamation of a theocratic State leaves minorities vulnerable.

In Bangladesh, we hear of linguistic unity but although cultural gestures are nice, unless all citizens, regardless of their faith, stand equal before the law, things fall apart very quickly for minority communities in South Asia. This extends to the Tamils in Sri Lanka besides the Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Indian Muslims face many discriminations and prejudicial mobilisation, and have been victims of terrible cycles of communal violence. But they do in theory, stand equal before the law, and India is not legally a Hindu Rashtra. Every inch of push-back to this vision counts. It is also worth flagging that V D Savarkar, the most prominent ideologue of the Hindu Right, had also famously supported the construct of the Two Nation Theory that was the ideological basis for Pakistan.

Fourth: Army rule corrodes the very foundations of a nation and both Pakistan and Bangladesh have had their democracies subverted by military coups, assassinations, and removal and incarceration of popular leaders. This is the original sin, and it is one that has never touched India (where there is a strong military presence such as Kashmir there is also alienation). We in India have a multitude of problems, be it the graded inequality in society, the glaring distance between the rich and poor, and the subversion of democratic institutions. We have had the 1975 Emergency and we have seen elected leaders behave like autocrats and in the process undermine Parliament, send agencies to arrest and harass Opposition leaders and corner all the political finance through now-banned means such as electoral bonds. But unlike many nations of the world that came out of a long stretch of colonial rule, we have never had a military takeover of civilian rule.

Fifth: we have the magnificent Constitution that saves us every time there’s a suggestion of tyranny or majoritarianism in the air. The ideologies of nationhood divined from faith and religious identity lurk in the atmospherics. But the only lesson for us in South Asia is that it is pluralism, secularism, and the way of the Constitution that works even as the absolute authority of one individual is an ill fit in any democracy. We have already self-corrected in India, and let us hope that after the days of chaos, Bangladesh finds a more humane way. Let us also hope that it does not harden as a theocratic State.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.