Legacy of history and Ramu incident

Photo: Focus Bangla

BENGAL'S Hindus, Bengal's Christians, Bengal's Buddhists, Bengal's Muslims -- we are all Bengalis." All classes of people of Bangladesh, irrespective of religion, fought in the Liberation War with this slogan. This highlighted a distinctive feature of our country, religious co-existence and communal harmony. Historically, there has been peaceful co-existence of all the religions in this country, though some groups of people have tried to tag it with a controversial identify only for the sake of their own interest.
Bangladesh has been an example of religious harmony for centuries. For instance, when Europe was struggling with confrontation of different religious dogmas which focused mainly on the dominance of the noble elite class, Gautama Buddha came up in South Asia with the ideology of fraternity, freedom and peace even though he belonged to the royal elite. As a result, people in ancient Bengal started to convert to Buddhism from sanatan religion without any pressure from the ruling class. During the 7th to 10th century, Buddhists held state power, but ensured peaceful co-existence of all religions. To some extent, they also patronised other religions along with their own. In the 11th and 12th centuries, although Hindus were in power they did not force the Buddhists to convert to Hinduism, which ensured religious harmony.
After the Muslim conquest, although Muslims were in power and Islam got royal patronisation, they never forced anyone to leave their religions. Rather, being influenced by the Sufis, saints, pirs and dorbeshes, a large number of people accepted the new religion Islam. In this way, people of all religions in Bangladesh always stayed side by side at least up to the end of the reign of Nawab Sirajuddoula, even to some extent up to the eve of the 20th century. This sort of religious harmony was there, except for a few scattered events. There was a very powerful bondage among different communities during various movements, e.g. Fakir-Sannyasi Movement, Indigo Movement, Sepoy Movement, Tebhaga Movement, and so on.
This communal harmony had been broken down by the 'Divide and Rule Policy' of the British government during the partition of Bengal in 1905, which provoked Muslims and Hindus to think differently about their interests. Most probably, this was the first use of religion as a means of manipulation and political motivation which really divided the Indians into two wings, Muslim and Hindu. Later, Muhammad Ali Jinnah took the advantage of this fragmentation by formulating the "Two Nation Theory."
We were not 'Muslim' or 'Pakistani Muslim,' rather we became 'Bengali Muslim' after the partition of India. During the Language Movement we moved one step forward towards our present identity, 'Bangali.' This identity led us to fight collectively, irrespective of religion, against the West Pakistanis, which proved that we were non-communal and traditionally diverse.
Bangladesh was never a communal country. That is why there never was any major communal clash or riot in the country over the last for decades, except the unexpected incident in Ramu.
Almost one year after the Ramu incident, we have the chance to wipe out the blot on our historical identity. The government has already taken some praiseworthy initiatives in this regard. It has rebuilt the broken temples and statues within only nine months. Nevertheless, we have to walk a long way to regain the faith of all the communities, to rebuild the everlasting, and to repay the legacy of history.

The writer is Lecturer and Coordinator, Bangladesh Studies, Brac University.
E-mail: shamsuddoha@bracu.ac.bd