Culture and Religion

I have often thought that Bangladeshi culture was retroactive in the way it fetishises Rabrindranath Tagore and Nazrul Islam. I have written somewhere else that when you watch state TV in Dhaka (Bangla TV) its as if the local culture is frozen around 1920, and I struggled to explain this.

I have recently acquired Jeremy Seabrook's Freedom Unfinished: Fundamentalism and popular resistance in Bangladesh today (London: Zed Books, 2001), which on one level is about his experiences with Proshika, a major local NGO in Bangladesh. At another level the book helps me understand what I have dubbed the 'fetishisation of culture past'.

Two quotes as illumination.

On the other side, the defenders of the Bengali tradition want to see religion subordinated to an inclusive Bengali identity. They invoke great literary figure - national poet Nazrul Islam, Rabindranath Tagore - social reformers such as Begum Rokeya, pioneers of women's education such as Sufia Kemal, as well as fighters in two liberation struggles ...(p.7)

and

The struggle against fundamentalism does not always appear overtly political. Invoking religion, fundamentalists make it a psuedo-spiritual and moral crusade. This creates obstacles for thise who resist the political imp[lications of what appears as a religious movement. But since fundamentalists object to Bengali culture, a main arens of resistance is cultural. (p. 17)

In short it is Bengali culture that is the defence of the secular, the moderate and the humanists in the face of Islamic fundamentalism. But this in turn can cause problems: in discussions, my students often expressed confusion about their identity; whether they were Bengalis first or Muslims first. They were also at great pains to explain that one can be a devout Muslim without being a militant. However, from my perspective, while this is a defence the bifurcation can be a point of vulnerability to the militant attacks. One unavoidable fact in Dhaka is that whenever the cry of 'Islam under attack' is raised the militants come out in force. They are well organised and focused and exert influence well beyond their numerical strength whereas the secularists always seem divided and ineffectual. Invoking Tagore doesn't save you from a prison sentence if you are accused of insulting the prophet!

Finally, you will notice a shift from the term 'fundamentalist' to 'militant' reflecting current usage in the Dhaka English language press. This also needs looking at.