A belligerent rally in
Kolkata by 16 Islamic organisations in support of Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, one
of the prime accused in the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh,
is indicative of West Bengal’s liberal space
shrinking, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
Something
unprecedented happened on March 30 in Kolkata. Sixteen Islamic organisations
came together at the Maidan, the second largest public ground in the city, in
protest against the ongoing war crimes trial in Bangladesh,
against the Shahbag sit-in and in support of the vice-president of the
Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, Delwar
Hossain Sayeedi, one of the prime accused in the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh.
It
was astounding to see a huge and belligerent crowd gather from all over the
state to support one of the best known razakars and collaborators with
the Pakistan Army in its genocide against Muslims and Hindus in East Pakistan.
Speakers
addressing the gathering attempted to whip up hysterical support for the Jamaat
and its leaders and pledged that just as West Bengal’s Muslims prevented Salman
Rushdie from the entering the state and hounded out Taslima Nasreen in 2007 they would generate a movement
against the pro-war crime trial bloggers in Bangladesh and would take on their
supporters with the same zeal. They even threatened to block any future visit
of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
to India.
But
most shocking was their brazen support for Sayeedi, a known vocal anti-India
preacher, a rabid anti-Hindu who has been active in organising pogroms against
minorities in Bangladesh
over the years and one of the most avid collaborators in Pakistan’s genocide against fellow
Muslims.
They
openly declared their support for Sayeedi saying that a death sentence for
Sayeedi in effect meant a death sentence for the Koran and Islam. These
speakers chose to ignore the fact that Sayeedi was being tried for killing in cold
blood their fellow religionists. It was for the first time that such a
mobilisation took place in Kolkata and it simply reinforced an emerging mindset
which has begun trying to consolidate a pan-Bengal Islamic identity.
Incidentally,
it was from the Maidan in August 1946 that the call for ‘direct action’ was
given by the Muslim League. The result of that call on the history of both
parts of Bengal is too well known to even
require a passing reiteration. But our politicians have deliberately chosen to
ignore that past.
Not
a single political party, and in them especially those who at the first
opportunity, jump to dissect delusional dimensions of Hindu fascism and
habitually get into describing various conjured Hindutva theatres of genocidal
experiments or pontificate on the need to maintain the secular and syncretic
texture of our nationhood, came forward to condemn the positions taken in the
meeting.
Not
one political party even recalled that Sayeedi and his ilk were part of those
criminal groups which selectively hunted out and massacred Hindus, fellow
Bengali Muslims and helped to sustain Pakistani resistance to Indian soldiers.
The Shahbag protesters have been calling for the establishment of a truly
secular and constitutional Bangladesh
where religious bigots would be reined in and their anti-national tendencies
curbed and yet they find no support from our political secularists.
Both
the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress have maintained a studied silence
having mortgaged over the years their politics to Islamic fundamentalist
elements in the state. Comrades who jump at every opportunity to display their
secular credentials in order to keep communal forces at bay through organising
rallies, sit-ins, and seminars have not issued even as much as a statement.
In
fact Sayeedi himself had a very clear benchmark for Communists, “Leftists are
not Muslims. They don’t believe in prayers,” he had declared. It has always
been an axiomatic truth for him that no non-Muslim could be allowed to live in Bangladesh. He
assiduously worked for it ever since the War of Liberation in 1971. No wonder
comrades in Bangladesh
find it difficult to survive on their own and have prudently sided with Sheikh
Hasina.
The
Congress believing that it shall gain space with the electorates’ gradual
disillusionment with the TMC has obviously kept quiet. Its studied silence is
part of its larger grand design of mobilising country wide minority support.
Nor has the Indian media come forward to debate the phenomenon; it is still
incapable of visualizing its status once congregations such as these begin
spawning Sayeedi clones all over India.
For
the media and journalists Sayeedi had a simple equation, “Journalists write
lies. They are the enemies of Islam”. It is well documented as to what Sayeedi
did to those whom he considered as enemies of Islam. It is this stoic silence
in face of a rising vocal Islamic fundamentalism which is worrisome and
condemnable. The liberal space in Bengal
is fast shrinking and we have paid a heavy price for such a constriction in the
past.
Those
in whose support the Maidan congregation was organised were at their vicious
best when it came to treating minorities in their own country. Sayeedi himself,
as head of the local Al Badr and Al Shams, has been convicted of killing
Hindus, burning their homes and businesses and of forceful conversion. He
assisted the Pakistan
army in its operation of decimating Hindus.
Sydney
Schanberg, then correspondent of the New York Times, noted this
selective approach, ‘the [Pakistani] army is now concentrating on Hindus, the
killing is more selective, [and] has not stopped.’ Schanberg further recorded
how the Pakistan
army had ‘painted big yellow H’s on the Hindu shops to identify the property of
the minority, eighth of the population that it has made it special targets.’
Archer
Blood, the ‘dissenting diplomat’, then American Consul General in Dhaka cabled
on March 29, 1971 on how the ‘Hindus [were] particular focus of [the] campaign
and how the army was ‘going after Hindus with a vengeance.’
Veteran
Pakistani journalist Anthony Mascarenhas, who fled to London
in order to tell the truth about the Pakistan
army wrote in exasperation in his columns in the Sunday Times that the
Pakistani military operation had two distinctive features: ‘ One, the cleansing
process’, the other ‘rehabilitation effort’ -- ‘turning East Bengal into a
‘docile colony of West Pakistan.’ Sayeedi and
his political colleagues had wholeheartedly facilitated all of these; the
Maidan congregators were silent on that.
It
was Sayeedi who had once said of the Hindus of Bangladesh, ‘Why should we feel
sad when the Hindu brothers choose to leave our country? Do we mourn when we
have indigestion and materials leave our bodies?’
Do
we then assume that those in West Bengal who
have organised the Maidan rally in Sayeedi’s support and those who have,
through their silence given consent to their demands, really support that line?
So, given this state of affairs, what are we going to do about it?
ReplyDeleteAre we going to quietly watch our brothers and sisters getting raped and killed?
Or are we going to act?
The time is now. Before there is nobody left to defend.