Bangladesh’s ‘liberation’ is breeding a new intolerance

Secularists such as Abdul Bashir have become the new outcasts, and experts warn of democratic backsliding amid growing influence of religion.

A slogan spray-painted on a gate to mark the recent anti-government protest that ousted then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in Dhaka University area, August 19, 2024. | Photo Credit: PTI

On August 19, professor Abdul Bashir, the dean of the Faculty of Arts at Dhaka University, was forced to resign by a group of students. This resignation was not a quiet, personal affair: it was recorded on video and circulated widely, turning it into a public spectacle.

Many in Bangladesh, including Muhammad Yunus, the chief advisor of the interim government, had described the student protests that led to the resignation of Sheikh Hasina as the nation’s “second independence.” However, this newfound independence is clearly not for everyone. It excludes the Awami League and those associated with it, including individuals who held significant positions during Hasina’s 15-year rule.

The current leaders have made it clear that anyone who served under the previous regime must step down. In the video that went viral, Bashir is seen being gheraoed by students in his office as he tenders his resignation with a sombre expression. A student haltingly reads out the letter for everyone, ascertaining its credentials. The letter is clicked on mobile phones, and once the reading is over everyone claps. This is followed by a student reciting the Quran.

The dean listens with downcast eyes, his hands folded. It is followed by an oath-taking ceremony in the name of god that the university return to peace and order and that fear be put in the soul of oppressors who harbour hatred against Islam and the Quran. The dean’s humiliation was triumphantly displayed as proof of the new sovereign power that students enjoy in Bangladesh. They can remove anyone in power simply on the basis of the office-bearer’s ideological or administrative association with the previous regime.

In Bashir’s case, he was accused of acting against the recitation of the Quran on campus during Ramadan. Bangladesh’s new liberators see Dhaka University as a religious and not secular institution and want the free expression of religious sentiments on campus. The students could have had what they wanted without forcing the dean to resign. After all, they currently enjoy unprecedented power in Bangladesh. But that would have ensured a change within the juridical order of things. The dean was considered an enemy of the new sovereign order.

In Bangladesh, there is a growing phenomenon that can be likened to the reverse of the Midas touch. Anyone associated with the previous regime is now seen as tainted by that connection. Secularists have become the new outcasts in the country’s political landscape. The political takeover in Bangladesh has come to mean the institutional restoration of religion and religious sentiments.

The Dhaka Tribune, on August 19, quoted an antidiscrimination student leader calling Bashir a provocateur and an autocrat, for allegedly punishing students for taking part in the Quranic recitation and issuing a show-cause notice to the chairman of the Arabic Department over it. After news of the dean’s resignation was announced, a constitutional lawyer from Bangladesh wrote on X: “Looks like the revolution in Bangladesh went deep...Poor Prof was forced to hear what he banned his students from reciting. I think they should go further and make him memorise 4 chapters.”

Protesters shout slogans as they vandalise a mural of Sheikh Hasina with paint and mud at Teacher Student Center (TSC) area of University of Dhaka in Dhaka, Bangladesh on August 3, 2024. | Photo Credit: REUTERS

A social media activist from Bangladesh on X called it, “Poetic Justice!” These sentiments betray the perverse enthusiasm the religious right in Bangladesh has gained from the anti-Hasina movement. There is silence from the interim government on Bashir’s forced resignation. Did Hasina’s government give secularism a bad name by its autocratic rule, or did religious conservatives and radicals in Bangladesh consider the government’s propagation of secular principles also autocratic?

The video of Bashir’s resignation holds alarming prospects. The young foot soldiers of the liberation exploited the voyeuristic feature of technology. They surrounded the dean in his office like a gang filming a man being stripped of his authority. This hostile act of shaming was meant to inflict a religious guilt on a secular man. It was a political act meant to spread obedience and fear. It was as though Bashir was being told, “Your religion is above you, you are nothing, and your secularity is nothing.” They wanted to show him his place in the new Bangladesh.

Naïve hopes

The students are high on passion and ideological rhetoric, they can break the house down and challenge power, but they are not mature enough to control the dangerous slide from idealism into intolerance. Bangladesh has a stormy and tragic history where even those who promised a secular democracy ended up being authoritarian. The shadow of retribution will not allow the country to think and act democratically.

After landing in Dhaka on August 8 after attending the Paris Olympics, Yunus had said students gave Bangladesh a new lease of life by their collective sacrifice. He went on to grant them the “freedom” to rebuild Bangladesh according to their desire, and teach the world how the youth of a country can take the responsibility to change society.

The Bashir episode does not tally with Yunus’ naïve hopes. Students cannot run a country. What we are witnessing is the spirit of freedom being undermined by petty arrogance. Instead of the student leaders trying to rebuild the country into an abode of peace, love and beauty, there is an alarming display of vigilantism, hatred, and ugliness. Bangladesh is currently witnessing the tyranny of liberation.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is the author of Nehru and the Spirit of India.