Islam and the Evolution of National Identity Formation in Bangladesh

    In 1981, following Zia’s assassination, bureaucrats took up positions in public enterprises and the planning apparatus. Here the nature of economic development shifted again: the bureaucratic elites re-focused the nature of development by further outsourcing projects to the private sector. Riaz describes this as the pre-liberation project of “sponsored capitalism,” whereby the state would financially support private investors. While in theory this could have provided increased avenues for citizens to engage in entrepreneurial activities, the nature of state sponsorship resulted in a capitalist system characterized by patronage and represented a clear abdication of responsibility on the part of the state. For example, the withdrawal of a fertilizer subsidy triggered the cost to rise by 300 percent, affecting the poor and middle class most of all. This augmented the inequality of Bangladeshi society, as a small elite profited from the gains of deindustrialization while broad swaths of society suffered the consequences of price increases and the retreat of the state.

 What consequences did this have for the perception of Islam in the country? Islam was legitimized on a political basis because large quantities of foreign aid flowed into the country from the Gulf as well as international Islamic organizations. This seems to indicate that the rising prevalence of and respect for the religion could not have been on ideological grounds alone, but must have been rooted in a perception of political legitimacy due to Islamist groups spurring economic development in the country, filling a vacuum and showing responsibility to the people where the government had failed to do so. In particular, this provided an opportunity for Jamaat-e-Islami to take up space on the political scene. Since the mid-1970s onward, ties between Jamaat and the state of Pakistan had remained strong. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directly communicated with members of the Gulf states as well as Jamaat and the BNP, using this connection as a strategic maneuver to maintain influence in Bangladesh. The ability to bolster Islamist forces in Bangladesh thus provides a clear mechanism for Pakistan to counter India and foment unrest in the region. This thread is not a new alliance, but an example of continuity since the pre-independence days when Jamaat supported the then-ruling Pakistani state.

 The resumption of democracy after 1991 again caused major shifts in the political landscape. The two-party system established at this point raised the need for Islamist political allies. This meant that previously fringe Islamist forces were brought into the mainstream in a supporting role for other parties. Islamist political groups thus became key players in terms of coalition building, more clearly entering the mainstream political arena. This became evident when an alliance with Islamist parties provided the BNP with the required margin of victory in the 2001 elections. Furthermore, the influx of migrant workers returning to Bangladesh from the Gulf spurred the prevalence of madrasas, the adoption of visible Islamic symbols in dressing and in speech, and increased the public role of Islam in the country. Funding streams emerged from Gulf states such as the UAE as well as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This created a divergence in the educational system between secular schooling and Islamic schooling through madrasas. The proliferation of these schools is directly reflective of the government’s lack of investment in education.

Sure enough, the issues that had plagued the nascent state in 1975 returned in the early 2000s, and the short-lived democracy plunged back into authoritarian rule in 2007. This intervention was actually largely welcomed by the public as an emergency measure to stop the country from plunging into violent bloodshed. The resulting government had the profoundly difficult task of rehabilitating the political climate and stabilizing the foundations for future democracy. However, they were unable to shake the core political necessity of coalition-building with Islamist groups. Aside from this structural issue, economic problems including the escalation of food and energy prices diverted attention away from political reform. Again, the state had to attend to problems of basic economic necessity ahead of galvanizing and advancing the nature of the political system, a pattern that had persisted since the years just after independence.

Since the 1990s, the unique position of NGOs has been critical in explaining the links between economic policy and citizens’ relationship to the state. In Bangladesh, NGOs are heavily involved in every arena of social uplift. Indeed, they serve as an alternative to the state in terms of providing services and credit, particularly for women and the poor. Islamist groups have directly targeted NGOs under claims that they are secular organizations that actively empower women, something viewed as antithetical to some extremist elements in society. This is fully consistent with the idea that Islamists collaborated with the military-bureaucratic apparatus of the state: an attack on NGOs that are filling in certain functions of the state is an implicit rejection of forces that challenge the dominance and legitimacy of the government. Despite the Islamist challenge, however, NGOs have largely succeeded in improving development outcomes. Despite continuing governance issues, crucial low-cost public health measures are largely credited to the provision of such services by NGOs. Indeed, Bangladesh has actually overtaken India in terms of a variety of social indicators, such as life expectancy, enhanced immunization rates, and reduced fertility rates. NGOs, in addition to micro-credit institutions such as the Grameen Bank, can thus be considered crucial to the development of social welfare in Bangladesh.

NGOs therefore represent an avenue that challenges the Islamist sentiments that rose throughout the 1980s, and it is important to explore other social and cultural factors that played a similar role. Various segments of youth culture, such as ‘Bangladeshi rock music’ remained “diametrically opposed to the new Islamic sensibility.” Such music offered an alternative mechanism for expressions of political frustration and social commentary, and its popularity reflects part of the ongoing clash in Bangladeshi society between liberal and Islamic camps. Conflicts between these two groups occur at multiple levels of society, especially on university campuses. In some cases, student groups were armed by national parties and were responsible for many killings, as in the case of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s youth organization at the University of Chittagong. Thus, Bangladesh’s youth are divided along secular and Islamist lines, and political violence still occurs among young people despite pockets of secular cultural youth movements. Therefore, targeting the youth and attempting to increase recruitment to liberal causes could present a key tactic in weakening the recruiting power of Islamist political parties.

Ultimately, it is continuing to prove difficult for youth and other elements of society to integrate into politics due to the ongoing relevance of patronage, vote rigging, and party hierarchies. Political turmoil has continued from Sheikh Hasina’s election as prime minister in 2008 until the present. The recent 2018 election was dubbed a farce by many, as it showed Sheikh Hasina winning with 96% of the vote. There is thus no clear pathway to the establishment of competitive democratic elections.

It is interesting to consider Sheikh Hasina’s policy measures with regards to Islamism. In 2013, Hasina vetoed an Islamist bill that would have outlawed criticism of Islam. Subsequently, the state has cracked down on Islamist parties, convicting the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami of war crimes in 2013, banning the Islamist militant group the Ansarullah Bangla Team, and executing members of the Islamic State responsible for the deadly Dhaka cafe attack of 2016. However, consistent with previous history, this is a completely political and not ideological move. Indeed, in 2018 Sheikh Hasina declared that anyone pronouncing offensive comments against Islam or the Prophet Muhammad, would be prosecuted. Her crackdown on Islamists can therefore be viewed as part of a competing struggle over the utilization of Islam as a politically legitimating tool. By reinforcing the importance of Islam for the state’s identity and her own party’s power but simultaneously rejecting extremists, Hasina attempts to bring in Islamist elements into the state while eliminating those groups that are acting against the state. However, in other ways the government has actually appeased and contained religious conservatives who are not violent extremists. Government support for textbook revisions have both legitimized madrasas and appeased certain Islamist social forces. The current government’s stances, therefore, are based on political expediency and have failed to resolve the fundamental question facing Bangladeshi society today. In 2013, a massive popular protest demanded the state to abide by secularism, triggering counter-protests that involved the masses in the conflict between liberal secularism and Islamism. Thus, the conflict continues at both political and social levels.

I have argued that the shift of Bangladeshi national identity from emphasizing language to Islam has been directly tied up with the prevalence of military rule. The need to consolidate power incentivized politicians to form coalitions with Islamist forces, who offered an ideology and avenue for citizens’ economic and political frustrations. Although the current government has cracked down on Islamic extremism, the state faces the quandary of needing to ally with nonviolent Islamist conservatives for political reasons. Thus, the state has co-opted the discourse surrounding Islam as a legitimating tool, bringing religion to the center of politics and national consciousness. This has strengthened linkages between Pakistan’s ISI, the BNP, and Jamaat.

The many social, economic, and political cleavages that emerged shortly after the Liberation War of 1971 rendered the pre-independence national narrative based on the Bengali language largely incoherent. Today, Bangladeshi citizens and politicians alike face the major challenge of reshaping and re-narrating Bangladeshi national identity, and resolving the secular-Islamist conflicts that persist today.

(Final and concluding part)

Aditi Bhaduri

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