Bangladesh: Islamic Resurgence, Shift In National Identity And Rising Tensions With India – Analysis
The 2024 Bangladesh crisis has marked the re-defining of national identity in Bangladesh, a final break away from Mujibur’s legacy of the secular imagination of the Bangladeshi nation. Even as the Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus, leads the nation following Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and flight, Bangladesh’s interim government has moved to lift the ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party that had been imposed under antiterrorism laws indicating a mainstreaming of radical Islamist groups.
With this turn towards religious nationalism, minorities, especially Hindus, have faced ethnic tensions and violence in post-Hasina Bangladesh. With three Hindu temples set on fire, 24 people burnt alive; Chinmoy Das, an ISKON Hindu priest arrested, and a narrative of exclusion of tribal populations as ‘alibashi’ (separatists).
Religious nationalism: Challenges to secularism and democracy
The Awami League (AL), led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had secured Bangladesh’s independence in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War: which was fought against the in the post-partition Panjabi-Pathaan hegemony over the Pakistani government and the military, political exclusion of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and an imposition of Urdu as the national language. Built on the back of the Bangla Bhasha Movement (Bengali language Movement), linguistic autonomy defined Mujibur’s secular construct of the Bengali ethnic identity.
However, the assassination of Mujibur in 1975, and the subsequent military-government led by Zia-ur Rahman, introduced a religious difference to distinguish the Bangladeshi nation from Bengalis who inhabited West Bengal in India. A Bangladeshi was not only to be an ethno-linguistic Bengali, but also a Muslim, marking a more distinct national identity from both, the Bengalis (but Hindus) of India and Muslims (but not Bengalis) of Pakistan.
The Islamization of the Bangladeshi society through the conservative ulama (Islamic clergy), who served as a regime institution for the Zia-ur regime, resulted in the subsequently erosion of the heterodox, pluralist and more tolerant variants of Islam that had historically existed in the Indian subcontinent, substituting them, overtime, with more hardline narratives. This has been reinforced with the recent import of the Farazi and Wahabi movements by Bangladeshi migrant laborers returning home from the Middle East, as well as by the active presence of radical actors like Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam in politics, which has been in an alliance with BNP since.
While secularism had long been a contested attribute of the Bangladeshi nation, founding ideals held fast against a seamless Islamic interpretation of the national identity. While Zia-ur had removed secularism from the Constitution in 1977 and replaced it with “Absolute Trust and Faith in the Almighty Allah,” and revoked Mujibur’s ban on Islamic parties, the AL had restored the secularism provision in 2011, though Islam continued to remain the state religion of Bangladesh. In contestations, secularism lies on a constitutional paradox. While Article 2A of the Constitution of Bangladesh reads that “Islam is the state religion, but the state must ensure equal rights and status to other religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity,” Article 12 of the same constitution establishes Bangladesh as a secular nation, imposing an obligation upon the state to ensure that religious authorities of no particular religion can dominate over the state itself.
As two distinct strands of nationalisms remained a durable feature of Bangladesh society; Bangladesh’s politics came to be defined by intense bipolarity between 1991 till 2008. A two-party system prevailed, with the Awami Leage (AL), led by Sheik Hasina, Mujibur’s daughter, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Begam Khaleda Zia, Zia-ur’s widow. With the post-2008 Hasina regime being characterized by rapid democratic backsliding – including, election malpractice, judicial harassment, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, intimidation of media and civil society organizations, punitive practices against opposition voices, null cases against Khaleda Zia and activist Muhammad Yunus, packing courts with loyalists and corruption.
The 2024 popular uprisings and consequent removal of the Sheikh Hasina government has marked a paradigmatic shift. While the initial protests by university students were against the reservation for the descendants of the freedom fighters in public institution, it soon became an all-out mass uprising as attention expanded to anti-democratic practices of the Hasina due to the heavy-handed military responses to peaceful civilian protests and the participation of religious forces. The increased visibility of radical Islamist groups in socio-political spaces in post-Hasina Bangladesh has emboldened a clear narrative of Islamic nationalism in the country. The destruction of Mujibur iconography in August 2024 in Dhaka, signified a departure from his ideation of Bangladesh as a secular nation.
The end of a fifteen-year regime has destabilized the very fabric of society with a great deal of anxiety over the possibilities of deep-seated polarization in the upcoming election. While Hasina has fled, her party, the AL is to contest the polls to be held under the caretaker government. Be it a head on contest between the AL and the BNP-JI or a military blessed “King’s Party” is yet to be know. While the return of the AL is extremely unlikely, suffering from the unpopularity of Hasina, concerns have been raised over the ‘neutrality’ and ‘intents’ of the Yunus non-partisan caretaker government and its commitment for multi-party electoral completion have been raised due to the delay in holding elections. As elections get slotted for the late 2025 or early 2026, a strong appetite for democracy amongst Bangladeshis must prevail, with an urgent need for a constant civil society and government dialogue, with genuine bids to deepen mutual trust on democracy and democratic means of dissent.
With 91 percent of the country identifying as Sunni Muslim, and a sustained Islamization of the Bangladeshi society shall be strengthening the place of religion in society, nation – identity. Bangladesh as a country for Bengali-Muslims also leaves out the considerable number of tribal groups, including the Buddhist hill tribes of Chittagong (Chakmas, Hojongs, etc.), and even the non-Bengali Muslims from post-partition Assam and Bihar, who having aligned themselves with the Pakistani regime during the Liberation War were retributively marginalized from Bangladeshi society. Moreover, with the BNP-JI, being well poised to win an upcoming election, majoritarian fervor and further dampening of minority security may consolidate Bangladeshi society upon a more fundamentalist version of Islamic identity. Fringe forces, like the JI, are fringe no more, and now are a staple of mainstream politics, pushing a more radical Islamic narrative of the nation.
These leaves open question on whether Bangladesh moving towards a democracy? And, if and when a democracy is reconstituted, will be democratic for all or not? Even for the minority Hindus and tribals?
Indo-Bangladesh tensions & South Asia, a region in flux
Bangladesh lies at the geostrategic juncture between South Asia and South East Asia, vital to security in the Bay of Bengal. Even though, the restoration of political stability in Bangladesh is a regional necessity, the turnaround in Bangladesh, however, has been a cause for intensifying friction with India.
Indo-Bangladesh relations have stood strong since the War of Liberation, in which the Indian Army played a crucial role alongside the Mukti Bahini (pre-independence Bangladeshi liberation militia) to fight against Pakistan. However, tensions between the two nations have heightened following the violence against Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. With Indian doctors going as far as to refuse medical attention to Bangladeshi patients and protest marches in Kolkata that surrounded the Bangladesh consulate, showing clear signs of counter mobilization of Indians against Bangladesh and growing discontent against Dhaka amongst Indians. While the presence of Bangladeshi Hindu refugees from the 1971 War of Liberation had continued to foster a close and cooperative relationship between Indian and Bangladesh, the same refugees, now generational residents in border towns, have increasingly been tagged as “infiltrators” in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s nationalist rhetoric and civilizational reinterpretation of India, as against the ethno-linguistic affinities that Indian Bengalis seem to share with their cross-border Bangladeshi brethren.
Outright hostility following incidents of violence against Hindu minorities in Bangladesh and irredentist rhetorics by Bangladeshi politicians seeking to merge erstwhile colonial Bengal (a territory spanning Bangladesh, as well as West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha in India) have dampened relations between New Delhi and Dhaka. While Indian domestic politics had already created a strong rhetoric against Bangladeshi with an ever-growing fear that Bangladeshi migrants encroach on physical and political spaces, jobs, land, corner welfare resources meted out by the state and place undue pressures on infrastructure.
The tensions between India and Bangladesh have only strengthened anti-Bangladeshi rhetoric and narratives amongst the Indian public. At the same time, Bangladeshi elites, instead of acknowledging and addressing the genuine concern over the safety and security of minorities, have sought to deny these challenges as mere Indian disinformation and Indian media propaganda to discredit the authenticity of the student-led protests and the newly formed interim government which has been critical towards India. Mass hysteria, mutual suspicion and aggression that often threatens retributive action is a cause for concern in both countries, especially as both migrants and minorities remain a vulnerable category in host countries.
There have been evermore increasing demands by the Bangladeshi government to extradite Hasina, who having fled the country has been in refuge in India, becoming another point of confrontation. While Chinese involvement with the Chittagong port has already been a source of discomfort to India, threating maritime security in the Bay of Bengal. The rise of BNP as the most important party in the interim coalition, a party that is seen as more sympathetic towards China by New Delhi, and the constant and rapid diplomatic efforts by Beijing to sooth Dhaka, leaves room for increased Chinese influence in South Asia, pushing India to take a more cautious approach towards the interim government.
South Asia has been rocked by a series of crises, with old problems resurging in new forms. Be it the rise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan following withdrawal of American troops in 2021. Or the economic recession and removal of the Rajapaksha dynasty after mass protests in Sri Lanka. The removal, imprisonment, and assignation attempt on P.M. Imran Khan in Pakistan and a military sponsored Sharif regime, or political instability in Nepal. The flux in South Asia exhibits a general global pushback on democratic incumbents in 2024. The upsurge in mass discontent makes Bangladesh a case study on how national movements not only have domestic impact but also international repercussions on human and regional security.