My childhood was spent at the village, where there was only one family of Hindu belief. They would earn their living cutting our hair. Of course one couldn’t exactly call it ‘earning a living.’ They would plop us children inbetween their knees to keep us in place as they went to work on our top. It was an arduous process but it helped with unnecessary cuts, for we were permitted to not fidget as much. For generations, the family had been our adept barbers, the job brought them comfortably within the confines of our front-yard and kitchen. Since a fair share of their customers were children – which included girls till the age of eight or ten – they were trusted by our mothers. Sometimes they would sit in for a haircut as well. During Eid days they were seen quite busy. On weddings, the clinking of their instruments were a welcome addition to the music of happiness around them. Perhaps the most fun was when they would begin to work on the Groom’s beard and stop after the first snip, folding their hands back until they were paid an adequate baksheesh. There was little exchange of cash, unless a festive occasion demanded it. They would arrive at the start of the monsoon season and again at the end of winter to collect their accumulated fees from every house. There was, of course, prior understanding of the nature and amount of this fee. They never asked for more than they received. This was how most work was carried out in the village; from the laborers to the village doctors, they all were paid in such manner. Of course, in our village, apart from the cutting of hair, all other work was done by Muslims. The line of work never played into how we behaved with someone back then. Of course, though it is undeniable that one’s occupation determines their respect in the community.
North of our village, one could find more Hindu settlements. There, you could find them as school-teachers and other aspirational posts. I had seen many of them in their white dhotis. The others referred to them as Babu and talked with them with respect. These instances were observable even after partition, though it began to dwindle, and by the eighties, they had vanished. Does this mean that until Pakistan rule, the Hindu community was able to live with full dignity! Created on the basis of a two-state theory, how could Pakistan not undermine their social structure? Or did they not want to? It could very well be that, though, theoretically Muslims were committed to a nation built around their belief system, the Bengali realities of being too enmeshed in one community proved to be an obstacle to this. Moreover, after the creation of Pakistan, the Bengalis had tried their best to organize themselves as a separate entity. They had their language as the main crux. And there was no way of dissecting away the Hindu contribution to Bengali literature and language. More than that, one couldn’t simply begin to think of people who lived right beside them as abstract “others”. While the possibility of integrating into each other’s family was mostly never the case between the two communities, there was a close relationship of language between the two. And this relationship only deepened with the passing of generations.
The permance of this relationship was minted in the division of labor. Everyone was connected to one another through their work. Till the bonds of their profession was left unchanged, there was no possibility of a breakdown of civility. Religion and caste weren’t regarded as pathways of hate. Even though there was subjugation imminent structurally in society. Yet most of the later evil weren’t needed to be dealt with.
There was an era of self-sufficient villages in the Indian subcontinent. Man did not have to depart from their homes to look for work. Everything necessary to live their lives were produced in the villages. Anything that wasn’t possible to be made, was acquired at the Haats from nearby villages. Once the tax to the Zamindar or local Raja was paid, they did not have anything else to worry about. The whole village operated as a family to some extent. There was a tradition of social labor and local government, who mediated disputes. Really, the village itself was a small republic. These villages had their own system of defense and they would all be trained in self-defense. Even the women weren’t that far behind in this regard. Governance of this sort had benefits, they were brought up strong from down below. The center wouldn’t have to help and interfere that much. Yet since the system was attached to the center, the best candidate wasn’t likely to be chosen leader, as they all often ended up trying to please the center. In those days, there was very little scope for religious strive. Everyone was connected to each other. As soon as there was dusk, one had to find their way to their fishermen, grocer, etc. Of course, there was very little development in those professions themselves.
Anyway, the family of barbers that I talked about had moved to a town in Gopalganj in the eighties. At present, this had made me question: why did they have to leave the land of their forefathers and build a home at a strange, foreign place. Migration had always been part of a human being’s life. We’d been migrating since the ancient days to make life easier and safer, yet, in the end, we were nothing but trees without roots. No matter how far we leapt, the place of birth was often on our minds. We always came back to the dialect; to the people we had played with in our childhood. I mentioned all this because the oldest living member of that Hindu family, Girendranath, whose age would now be about eighty, had visited his old village recently and seated beside his old land had seemed quite restless about the whole ordeal. This wasn’t anything new. Whether it was Rabindranath’s Dui Bigha Jomi or the promised land of the Jews, the same emotions worked everywhere.
But the reasons that made Giren abandon his old plot of land, as one found out from his answers, were the latent insecurities, the fear of strangers and the loss of one’s job.
They weren’t aware that the land had been dissected back in ’47. Even though many had left for Inda then. Those who remained had stayed because of the friends and neighbors they had. They couldn’t possibly leave their work, too. They had brought up their prayer mandaps right there. The women in the house would go over and spray water over the Tulsi tree to ward off any evil spirit. But they noticed a difference after the independence of Bangladesh. As if this awareness that they were something different, separate as Hindus had taken ground only after the Pakistanis, who considered “Hindus” enemy of their state, had left. Then, when a new hair salon would pop up, many began to wonder: wasn’t it impure getting your hair cut by a Hindu? Some even went ahead and proclaimed that our prayers wouldn’t be answered if we had touched a Hindu. With such a declaration, the customers for these salons would increase too. Those who had for generations had their hair cut by Giren were now ashamed to do so. Those serene relationships began to crumble piece by piece until one was only a stranger to another. Though the village had often seen murderious behavior take place regarding hair-splitting discord, this sort of intolerance was never observed. Moreover, their neighbors, who were their partners in times of happiness and strife had changed. The young seemed too restless, storming into the others’ house when the women were ill-prepared to receive them. It had become unsafe to live there. When the neighbor’s boys needed to build new houses for them, their Hindu neighbors’ house looked like the perfect replacement. Did their majority-religion help them in anyway here? Perhaps the Hindu family could very well move to India and reap the benefits their neighbors reap off them here. Yet those who didn’t have this opportunity could merrily relocate themselves to the city or at places where there were more of their kind. That a large number of them had moved away to India after ’47 is no secret. This could only be possible where the nation is surrounded on three sides by a sympathetic externality. In a country of hundred million people, it shouldn’t seem difficult to assimilate another million or two. But that isn’t the reality, either. Modi had opened his country for the Hindus, but closed it shut for the Bengali muslims, even as both their grandfathers were of the same land during the British and Mughal eras. Who would really take blame for this division that’s severed a millennia of togetherness? One couldn’t simply erect a fence in-between two neighbor’s compound and bring to light their two-state theory. Why was such a rush for this sloppy surgery? If a land belonged to muslims merely because fifty-one among a hundred of those living there were muslims, what would happen to the other forty-nine? One can find no other instance of such divisions based on religion, and that too in the name of democracy. The young could realize that it was political suicide for the muslim leaders. Only in undivided India could the Muslim argument get a fair hearing. A few considerations were enough to clear the matter. How could the Muslims who had ruled India for 800 years, from whom the British had taken over the reigns, could market themselves so adeptly as a fragile minority under threat of assimilation? The muslims had been a minority in the country since the start, yet this hadn’t disrupted the continuity of their rule, which never depended on their numbers. Moreover, the large muslim population that stayed back were left to Hindu rule by the muslim overseers. One could see, then, that the underlying character between the so-called Hindu state of Hindustan and the Islamic state of Pakistan were the same and did not adhere to any of the idealism prevalent in their rhetoric. Both states, in the end, maintained a “secular” administration. One could analyze this by looking at both Nehru and Jinnah’s words. This was a division for the quest of leadership, not out of any public consciousness. But the damage was done. At least, morally, the Hindus and Muslims have strayed apart, for this they had to put in a national effort to run their respective nations. This they termed as secularism.
This secularism as a political tool was worth a lot and used as a sharp weapon. People of the region had always had a deep relationship with one another, irrespective of religion and they didn’t have much to do with this terminology. They didn’t have to officially don the costume of secularism. Like a single unit of family with all their differences, they were part of a community. The question made me think deeply: was this division really to the benefit of the Ullemas? Or was it just a pawn to be sacrificed in their quest for power? Had they played into the hands of the British and their foresight? Let’s assume India became independent without being partionioned, mirroring the once conquered domain of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Where would the Muslims stand in that nation? About half of the world’s muslims would live in this one land. And because of India’s standing as a powerful nation, there won’t be any of the internal terrorism so prevalent now. This India would always be in a bargaining position. And the so-called riots that have always seemed to be a cause of fear had historically been a non-issue. The issue of communal riots was only so that one could legitimize their cause. This is what Jinnah and even Gandhi used to proclaim that there were two nations in one. Yet after the partition both nations had fought three big wars against each other, innumerable people have died, there has been border clashes and a fortune is spent from both ends to keep up military expenses. Every year a big chunk of the budget is spent on the military when many of the general populace do not see adequate development in their communities. A result of this is that in the name of protecting one from the other, there’s a sizable military industrial complex at work.
However, one should also be led to believe there was no reason for the two communities to be partitioned, even theoretically. It was true, to a certain extent, that the Hindu working class had to clerk for both the Muslim rulers and their later English replacements, operating as cogs of the vast imperial bureaucracy. A reason why they were ahead of their muslim contemporaries in academic literacy, whether the court language was Persian or English. It was only after the English came to play that the muslims had to enter the competition. But it wasn’t that easy to keep up. This was the very same reason behind Lord Curzon’s plan in dividing Bengal at the start of the twentieth century. To look down on this temporary win for the Bengali muslims is to deny the truth of history. Of course, administrative divisions under a country and drawing borders between one is quite a different matter. We can come to the conclusion that partition wasn’t merely the English trying to temporarily mend the political problems that befell during that time of chaos, but rather a methodically executed plan to curb any nationalistic power. Perhaps the project had started a hundred years ago with the partition of Bengal. When the Muslims who had ruled the province during the Mughal years are satisfied with receiving an eastern portion devoid of Bihar and Orrissa, then the Bengali spirit really must’ve had lost their way. As a result, Tripura, Orrissa, Bihar, Chattisgarth were sliced out of Bengal forever. If we had all stayed united, perhaps only the Mandarin Chinese would’ve outnumbered us as a race.
Therefore, the Bengalis should have reasoned that if the nation had to be independent it must have a united Bengal at its core. Perhaps during the time, Bengal couldn’t give birth to a leader who could sow the seeds. This is true for both Muslim and Hindu Bengalis. The upper-middle class Hindus who had fought to re-unite Bengal during the colonial era didn’t care when the land was partitioned for real in 1947. Class had shown to be the ultimate loyalty in this partition, even as for a thousand years Bengal had remained unscarred amid all its revolutions and change of empire. The worth it had during the rule of the Senas and the Palas did not dim during the independent Sultanate years. It didn’t have to lose any of its individuality. For many Bengal had seemed like heaven and hell alike. Foreign travelers had written about its endless resourses, its fish and meat, it’s fruit that abounded everywhere. There was no need of money to get any of this. Those who had come from Delhi to rule the land had found it dispiriting. They couldn’t run their horses everywhere what with so many rivers crisscrossing the land. Yet those had come here for good couldn’t help being in love with it. They didn’t want to leave for any place else. Shah Suja, Bughra Khan were among many to belong to this group. For this reason, Bengal was able to bring about a different kind of populace, unlike any of the Muslims and Hindus elsewhere in the subcontinent. Their belief systems and philosophy developed and intermingled differently, too. English rule had provided the first obstactle to this Bengali spirit. The exchange of ideas between the West and the East had brought the Bengali out of their assimiliating belief system.
Of course, religion was not absent in the creation of an Indian consciousness. Everyone had taken use of it – from Ashoka to Aurengjab. Akbar tried to provide a secular age of religion, but that ended up becoming a new, separate stream of religion. His Din-e-Ilahi was an attempt to bridge the differences between his Hindu and Muslim subjects, to assure his Hindu majority subjects that they wouldn’t be considered second-class citizens of the empire merely due to their beliefs. The mandaps were preserved for his Hindu begums, who had given birth to Mughal emperors. Yet one could really say that this was a sort of proto-secularism seen in the subcontinent before the arrival of European ideas. However, the reason this system did not stay for long was because the public, perhaps, had no need for it. In Europe this consciousness was a result of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. They could separate religion from the state, even with blasphemy laws intact. Religion was refashioned as a personal matter. The state wouldn’t bring in religion in any form of their rule. Human evolution, the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun – these were facts brought to us by the institution of science and religion didn’t seem a necessary component anymore. Even as many of the science was yet unproven, which the common people had to believe at face value. Did we really come from ape-like creatures or tumbled forth from the heavens? Questions like this did not matter much in the grand scheme of their lives, yet the way of life on Earth mattered, for in it depended the deal one got in the afterlife. Herein lay the importance of religious instruction, which, though for the most part personal, had a collective component. Especially in the modern era where many nations, not only in the Islamic world but also in the Christian West, are grappling with issues such as abortion and LGBT rights. Additionally, there is the issue of interest in banking, women getting their fair share of the inheritance and their dresscodes making waves in the Muslim world. Therefore, secularism and state is by nature a complex relationship.
The Indian subcontinent, since its partition, had tried to hold onto its secular character in the beginning. Nehru’s essense of secularism, democracy and socialism was maintained, even if only in spirit, in India. Pakistan, perhaps not as explicit, still had Jogendranath Mandal, a Dalit, as its first Law Minister. Yet in the end it is quite hard to prove Pakistan as a secular nation. Mr. Mandal himself had migrated to India citing the anti-Hindu bias later in his exile. There was an idea prevalent that the creation of Pakistan would bear good news for the lower caste Hindus, but it wasn’t just the Hindus but the Bengali Muslims as well who were a victim of the discrimination. Pakistan’s ethnic strife made Bangladesh’s early secular character a reality. Secularism was among the four principles upon which the Independent Bangladesh’s constitution was written. But it was quite clear later that a secular policy did not automatically translate into a secular society. Firstly, it was impossible to gain votes without playing into the religious values of the majority public. As a result, the ruling class tactically maintained the old values anti-thetical to secularism. Therefore, secularism, really, was only available in the constitutional text. Parties that professed of secularism would still have to gain the public’s confidence and pay lip service; they would have to explain how much they had done for Islam, how well they had kept relations with other Islamic countries. The Roman Emperor Constantine, too, had established Christanity as the imperial religion without changing much of the administrative outlook just to keep his hold and preserve the empire.
As a result, despire the emphasis on secular values, Bangladesh went the way of Pakistan, treating it as a superficial construct. Moreover, secularism became an adversary for the religious class, due its place in society. Before, Hindus and Muslims were considered as separate, but now that mantle had been replaced with Seculars and the Godly. This can be seen with the assasinations that took place in the mid-seventies, and the ascendence of Islam as a national symbol of the country – the state religion. Of course this wasn’t the end of secularism. We have the magpie robin as a national bird, that doesn’t nullify the existence or importance of the other birds living within our borders. Then Friday, the day of Sabbath for Muslims, was instituted as the weekend, something that needn’t be done in Islamic Pakistan. Religion based political parties were also granted permission to take part in politics. One could question the need for them in a secular country.
Secularism in this country was due to the nation’s attitude of non-violence between its Muslims and Hindus. One wouldn’t find a political party based on Hindu-values as one finds several with Islamic values, that of various sects. There is no way one could deny, therefore, that this wasn’t to get votes. Yet there is a sense of belonging one can make use of in a party based on religious identity. A similar thing can be noticed in India, where Hindu fundamentalists are able to tactically use this as part of their strategy. The religious class feel comforted by this fact. People of both religions find this superior to the compromise of secularism. Even as the Muslim groups were supposed to work with the others and gain the lord’s pleasure through their guidance. Yet all they do is create an idealogical enmity and propagate the advantages of their sects. In this regard, the two nations have merely prioritized the majority to win by the vote.
The modern concept of secularism had upturned the tolerance of the olden times, replacing it in practice with religious intolerance and rule of the majority. Yet this was the very India where Hindus and Muslims had lived in relative peace for a thousand years. Two sets of people who had such diametrically opposite ways of living had no problem living in one community, yet in the age of secularism one has to hear of all this intolerance. This, clearly, hadn’t happened before. They should have known that far from being able to destroy one another, they would only be able to bring light to the truth about the oft-touted secularism of the country.
Indian society had benifited from this clash of Hindus and Mulsim. There has been a resurgence of thought and knowledge and even society. A new way of thinking has come out of these two. In the face of Hindu polytheism, Islam had to abdandon their unadulterated monotheism and take the help of the pirs, sadhus and Sufis. Hindus on the other hand had Vaishnavism and Shaivism, which are reminiscint of Islamic sensibilities. Besides them, there was Guru Nanak, Swami Ramanand, among others, who acted as a bridge between the two. Nanak had managed to found a different belief system on its own right, Sikhism, born out of both Islam and Hindu values. Of course, in the beginning all religions tend to be liberal towards their predecessors. Islam, too, recognizes all prophets that predated the Prophet. Perhaps this is done in a bid to exist among the old systems. Yet once the religion becomes dominant of its own right, then its adherents feel no need to continue with this generosity. They might compromise with a fellow sect and turn a blind eye to a minor difference, but that same benefit isn’t granted to someone who professes another belief. Even though it is true that there are many places in the world where Muslims are fighting among one another. The western, secular, nations have been blamed for a lot of these clashes, but it is true that at the end of the day, it’s the muslims themselves who are doing the fighting.
Some families or military personnel use others as toys and a lot of it is done under the guise of religion.
Secularism has become a challenge that even the genuinely secular countries face. Even in the United States, the republican party had given credence to the racist call of no muslim being able to qualify for an election. That this went against their constitution wasn’t of much worry. They use this to attack the former president Obama, who had a muslim father even though he wasn’t one himself. There is very little chance the U.S. would see a muslim leader in the near future. Surely, then, the rhetoric is in use as a tool, a way for the republicans to cash in on the anti-muslim sentiments of much of their voter-base.
Secularism has also lost its muster as a political tool. Even the European countries have had to face this. Though we’ve all been quite aware of the materialism that came out of this, politically it’s come to an impasse. In the early years of the 21st century, a new opportunity was beginning to arrive. Constitutions were being amended. Secularism, with Islam as its state religion, began to return. The ullemas, too, were building up their institutions. The bloggers and free-thinkers were given relative freedom while at the same time, the killers were also thought of having good reasons to machete them. Yet today it has become increasingly hard to diagnose the right and wrongs. The knot of secularism and religious patronage has made it hard for a state to breathe. One of the reforms that were needed for a nation to be truly secular could’ve been the Islamic family law, where the government may comment about women and their rights to inheritance but ultimately wouldn’t want to disrupt anything. Come to think of it, in Ayub Khan’s Pakistan, there was considerable amendments made to this law, additions that are still in our law, one of which is setting the age of marriage for women and the rights of grandchildren to their grandparents’ inheritance if their parents pass away beforehand.
But the Koranic law wasn’t a strict sytem set in stone, but one made to accommodate human morality. The law itself has reform built into it. A lack of epoch-defining ullemas had led to the decrees staying as they were for a thousand years, without taking into account the deprivations women had to face in the meantime. Here the state hasn’t done anything. Though the mantle of secularism is still valued, it is used to take the votes of the minority. The two parties take turn in this dance of indulging the majority and the minority. When one sticks in their nationalist jingoism, the other takes refuge in the vapid support of liberal causes.
In fact, we could say that secularism has remained a confusing object. The so-called secular people had never really been secular. Moreover, secularism itself has transformed into a dogmatic belief system. In the middle ages, the reformers like Nanak did not come out of the polarity of Islam and Hinduism from a secular point of view. Religion was a part of their lives. They might have not criticized their own, but would ridicule the others’. At present, secularism isn’t part of the culture, but only used in the sphere of politics. Whether constitutional secularism really helps in matters of communal strife is a question being asked by many. Everyone had noticed the destruction of the Babri Mosque, which had happened in full accordance of a secular constitution. The secular constitutions did not protect the deaths in Gujarat, for when one party claims for itself all the secular ideals, its opponent would need to come to power professing the opposite. In such ways the democratic spirit of a nation is left crooked. In this regard there isn’t any difference between the Congress in India and the BJP, which has a sizable Muslim memebership regardless of its rhetoric. Nepal on the other hand had constitionally been a Hindu state for a long while with a considerable absence of communal strife. The Indians on the other hand view them with contempt, controlling much of the small nation’s businesses and trade. Of course, their recent pull toward secularism is also no guarantee of peace. Instead, there has been restlessness among its population. Religious militancy and intolerance has had a worse track record under supposedly secular leadership. Therefore, it has become a matter of debate whether one should really hold onto a constitutional secularism. It has become urgent to settle this matter of how a state’s relationship with its citizen be. The citizenry has little to no need of the symbolism present in text. It is sufficient to clearly define the fundamental rights of the citizens, of their right to freedom of expression, trade and movement, of their being a free press. The independence of airing one’s thoughts and the right to choose one’s leader and bring justice to crime is enough. However, one should understand that this does not devolve in majority rule, as even the lone ideals of a single person should be held with the same importance as that of any other. The state shouldn’t interfere in everything, especially where the nation or citizen isn’t being harmed. We, here, are too used to considering the state and the governing party as the same.
I began this essay with the story of the barber family in my village because I wanted to start with an experience instead of abstract research. The disintegration of that family isn’t confined to villages like mine, but is a testament to the European system. For globalization itself has made a stranger out of most of us. And a stranger is of course someone we don’t care about it.
In the middle ages, even though there was religious strife, it took an indeginous form. The Indian Muslims did not have to renew the purity of their religion in the hundreds of years of their rule. No one had demanded a patent of it either. In this age, we’ve regressed to claiming: this tree is mine, that tree is mine. We weren’t always pivoting toward profit. Perhaps in this new era of communications and information-technology, religion has more room for interpretation. What was before a system of practice and co-operation has become arbitrary, textual, and commercial. It is true for Hinduism as well. No one had a headache worryin who was Rama and who Laxman, yet now the ten heads of Ravana and the ten hands of Durga bring comfort to the Hindu mind. As a result, the barber family would only have to pay a steeper price to live in this era of packing in old things as brand new. Secularism, here, is merely hogwash.
Mozid Mahmud is a poet, essayist, and novelist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His works include Mahfuzamongol (1989), Toward the Pasture (1995),The Birth of the Maternity Clinic (2006), &Rabindranath’s Travelogues (2010), among others. He has been awarded the Rabindra-Nazrul Literary Prize in 2006, the National Press Club Award in 2008, the Bengali Writers’ Honors in London, 2010, and the Binoy Mazumder Literary Award in 2011, among others. Recently, his fiction and essays have appeared in Singapore Unbound, Provenance Journal, Indian Quarterly, Borderless, and Commonwealth Writers’ Adda forum.
