What is a Bengali Muslim Country?

The presence of violent religious intolerance in Bangladesh is by no means a shocking new reality.

From the attacks in 1999 on a cultural troupe to the many more that have followed in fairly consistent succession -- on cinema halls, on writers, on Bengali New Year celebrations, on Bauls, on artists, on minorities, on Sufis, on shrines, on temples, on women-centric policies, on Holey Artisan Bakery, on Ahamdiyyas and on the general population for actions deemed as contrary to Islamic mores -- several attempts have been fielded to replace the People’s Republic with an Islamic one.

And though our People’s Republic of Bangladesh has thus far succeeded in thwarting these efforts, contentions that the Bangladeshi state is an aberration until it conforms to Salafi interpretations of Shariah Law make this an issue that remains a potent one in a Muslim majority county, and one which has clearly risen to the fore once again.

These are not unfamiliar circumstances. Bangladesh never quite made peace with the strains of Islamism that were injected into its political corpus during the creation of East Pakistan in 1947. The term Islamism was not used in those days of course, and is controversial in any case because of the aspersions it casts upon the word Islam.

Still, in lieu of a satisfactory alternative, it serves to describe a political ideology which puts religious identity at the heart of nationhood.

During the war between Bangladesh and Pakistan, although the conflict had nearly nothing to do with religious identity, these were given voice in convenient arguments made by the religious right, manifested at the time as the Jamaat-e-Islami. These arguments placed Pakistan on the side of Islam and Bangladesh on the side of forces hostile to Islam.

This narrative was never completely defeated and has resurfaced, bolstered by a global, militant Islamism that positions itself as the moral alternative to the international status quo. Beginning in the late 1990s and carrying on through the first, second and third decades of the twenty-first century, a rising tide of the Salafist interpretation of Islam is pushing at the gates of the Bengali state, placing demands that are often at significant odds with its social and legal orthodoxy.

To understand these contrasting perspectives on statehood, we need to spend some time examining the historical orientation of Bengali Muslim society and the subsequent kingdom it established in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This will show the direction it took in its aspirations to a polity that preserves its distinctive national character.

Genesis

A little over a hundred years after the Sultanate of Delhi took the throne of Bengal from the Hindu Sens, the Sultanatiya-i-Bangala, or the Sultanate of Bengal began in 1352 as a sovereign Muslim kingdom which stood as an independent country in the medieval era for some 230 years. Much of what Bangladeshis can identify as their cultural and political heritage is rooted in this period. Beginning with things as basic as its name (Bangala, now Bangla), currency (Tanka, now Taka) and state language (Bengali), to more personal elements like literature, music, folk culture and spiritual traditions, Muslim Bengal’s socio-political identity stems, in significant amounts, from the Sultanate of Bengal.

When Muslim forces arrived on the Bengal delta, Hindus and Buddhists had already been engaged in a centuries’ old struggle for dominance, with the Buddhists all but defeated following the fall of the Pala Empire. According to the Shunya Purana by Ramai Pandit, supposed to have been written during that time, Buddhist persecution at the hands of a resurgent Brahmanism in Bengal was halted by the arrival of the Muslims, who were initially were expected to weigh in on the side of the Buddhists and, though they didn’t exactly do that, their arrival shifted the balance of power decisively away from Brahmanism.

It gave Buddhism in Bengal a renewed lease on life and 200 years after they conquered the country, Bengali Sultans were sending Buddhist monks to China to propagate their religion on the Chinese Emperor’s request. The Bengali Sultans were generally appreciative of both Hinduism and Buddhism, culturally at least, and eventually absorbed much of their art and mysticism, grafting chunks of the older culture onto their own. This is the syncretism that has characterised Bengal identiy, its politics as well as its Islamic theology -- a theology that was developed, in no small part, by conversations between Muslim Sufis, Hindu Sadhus and Buddhist Sahajiyas.

Syncretism

Mutual curiosity between different religious orders has existed in Bengal since the twelfth century, when the Amritakunda (The Pool of Life), a Sanskrit manual on tantric yoga, was translated here into Persian and Arabic and circulated across the Muslim world. While the Sufis of the time sought to incorporate the esoteric philosophies and practices of local yogis into their own religious lives, the Hindu mystics began redefining their devotion according to Sufi doctrines of divine love. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the enigmatic fifteenth century Hindu reformer, was influenced by the Sufi love of music, and adapted his own mystical practices to include the use of kirtans -- musical tributes to God. Sri Chaitanya’s reforms led to what has become known as Gour Vaishnavism, a Monist tradition, which also contributes to the existence of Bauliyana, Bengal’s entirely indigenous mystical order.

Bauls draw from both Islamic and Hindu but also from Buddhist mystic references that are found in the Charyapadas (a collection of mystical poems in the Vajrayana tradition), and their music has historically been among the most relevant vehicles for spiritual enrichment on the Bengal delta.

Of the Sufis, the Chishti order did particularly well. In fact, it is probably safe to say that Bengal’s majority Muslim population is a direct result of the mass appeal Chishti mystics had in the area. Akhi Sirajuddin Usman, a disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya, established the silsila (spiritual genealogy) in Bengal and it was quickly endorsed by the people as well as the rulers of the Sultanate.

In a lecture about the Chisthis at Leiden university, the researcher and journalist Peter Custers, described them in the following way:

"The Chishtis’ openness is reflected in several striking practices. Among the different Sufi brotherhoods that spread their influence in India from the thirteenth and fourteenth century onwards, the Chishtis appear to have stood out as especially eager to communicate with Indian yogis.

At Chishti khanqahs "in each and every city" where these were established, yogis were welcome guests. Again, historians recount that the Chishtis encouraged the reciting of Vaishnav poetry at sama gatherings held at the hospices -- surely yet one more proof, if needed, of their spirit of liberalism."

Akhi Sirajuddin was succeeded by Alaul Haq, who was a wealthy member of the ruling elite, and his spiritual transformation from nobleman to mystic strengthened ties between the Sultanate’s throne and the Chishti khanqah. The close personal relationship between the Sultans and the Sufis had an impact on the kingdom’s character and the influence of Chishti Sufis on the Sultanate’s rulers and consequently its social climate cannot be overstated. They were instrumental in forging a polity that was representative of the various traditions which existed on the delta at the time, and in encouraging a society that was based on an appreciation of differences.

One of the areas where this is evident is in the transition from solely Persian to both Bengali and Persian as official languages of the realm. Nur Qutb-e-Alam is credited with beginning this trend by introducing the Rekhta style in Bengali, where half a composition was rendered in Farsi while the rest was written in Bengali. Nur Qutb was Sultan Ghiyasuddin’s friend and this connection served to propel Bengali into the Sultanate courts and ultimately into official usage. Jalaluddin Shah furthered state patronage of Bengali so that by the 1500s edicts of Sultan Hossain Shah were being issued only in Bengali and the Chishti Sufis had adopted Bengali as their own first language.

Another area is in architecture. When the second Sultan, Sultan Sikander Shah, undertook to build the largest mosque in South Asia at the time, the Adina Mosque at Pandua, he used a blended style of Pala, Sena, Islamic and pre-Islamic Persian influences. In his phenomenal book, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, Richard Eaton writes:

Stylistic motifs in the mosque’s prayer niches reveal the builders’ successful adaptation, and even appreciation, of late Pala-Sena art ... these kings yielded so much to Bengali conceptions of form and medium that, as the art historian Percy Brown observes, ‘the country, originally possessed by the invaders, now possessed them’.

From the very beginning of the Sultanate’s existence, pre-Islamic articulations of political authority were also readily adopted by Muslim kings. The titles Raja and Ishwara were liberally used instead of Sultan, and Muslim Bengali kings were lauded by Hindu poets like the poet Vijay Gupta who writing in 1494, was full of praise for Sultan Allauddin Hossain Shah:

Sultan Hossain Raja, nurturer of the world:

In war he is invincible; for his opponents he is Yama [god of death]. In his charity he is like Kalpataru [a fabled wish-yielding tree].

In his beauty he is like Kama [god of love].

His subjects enjoy happiness under his rule.

Hossain Shah was also well known for his patronage of non-Muslim literature. A couple of translations of the Mahabharata, along with a number of Vaishnava padas and a few works on Manasa the snake-goddess, were published during his reign. But he wasn’t the first to support Hindu writing. His forebearer, Ruknuddin Barbak, patronized both Hindu and Muslim writing in Bangla, and before that, in the 1300s, Bengal’s most flamboyant Sultan, Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah funded the poet Krittivas Ojha’s publication of the Ramayana in Bengali.

By contrast, the Sen dynasty that preceded the Sultanate refused to allow literature, especially religious literature, to be translated from Sanskrit into Bengali. Rulings forbidding the use of Bengali were issued, resulting in Hindu scripture being out of reach for most of the population. When Muslim Sultans commissioned Bengali translations of Hindu scriptures, they became commonly accessible to Hindus, in a Muslim Kingdom.

Dinesh Chandra Sen, a scholar from the early 1900s writes:

This elevation of Bengali to a literary status was brought about by several influences, of which the Mohammedan’s conquest was undoubtedly one of the foremost. If the Hindu kings had continued to enjoy independence, Bengali would scarcely have got an opportunity to find its way to the courts of kings.

The point of saying all this is not to give the impression that Muslim Sultans were patronizingly enamoured of Hindu-Buddhist exotica, but to reveal that they were not encumbered by the communal prejudices that dominate the religious discourse today.

This connection between Bengali and Muslim rule becomes relevant when one considers how the Bengali language was regarded as too "Hindu" for the leaders of pre-1971 Pakistan, who even attempted to "purify" Bengali by suggesting its script be changed from Brahmi to Nastaleeq or by purging it of its Sanskritic vocabulary. Poetically, it was an Islamic organization, the Tamaddun Majlish, which first took up the cause of defending Bengali in East Pakistan and pioneered the Language Movement which became a full-blown revolution by 1952.

But those communal notions haven’t entirely gone away. As recently as 2014, an Islamic talk show on Bangladeshi television considered whether some words in the Bangla language -- like lokhkhi, term of endearment -- should be replaced because of their connections to "un-Islamic" elements -- in this case the goddess Lakshmi’s name. And of course, we are all aware of the furor that erupted this year over the use of the word Mongal.

Islamist pedants bemoan what they perceive as the Kolkata-centric "Sanskritization" of Bengali, preferring to use Arabic, Farsi or even Urdu alternatives wherever possible. And the fact that such conversations are had in a nation that places a premium on its linguistic heritage speaks volumes about the power of the Islamist narrative.

Reaching into literature, Bangladeshi society’s respect for the likes of Jibonanondo Das and Rabindranath Thakur, whose own faith was syncretic through and through, has been objected to, and the fact that Kazi Nazrul Islam is Bangladesh’s national poet makes some people uncomfortable because he wrote tributes to Shiva and Krishna

Just as an aside, it would be wrong to suggest that the Bengali Sultans were not aware of themselves as Muslims or that they were not aware of Bangala as a Muslim Sultanate. They affiliated themselves with the larger Islamic realm, paying homage to the Caliph in Cairo, and donating money for the building of mosques and madrassas in Mecca.

When the Hindu landlord Raja Ganesh overthrew the founding dynasty of the realm in the early 1400s, the leading Chishti saint of his day, Nur Qutb-e- Alam threatened to facilitate an invasion from neighbouring, and allied, Muslim Jaunpur if the throne of a Muslim kingdom was not returned to a Muslim ruler.

In spite of this, such was the decidedly multi-religious nature of that early Bengali state that when Sri Chaitanya ran into trouble with the Hindu orthodoxy for his unconventional ways, it was the venerable Raja Hossain Shah who protected him and ordered his court to provide the preacher with assistance in propagating his Bhakti creed anywhere he wished. Two of Hossain’s Hindu cabinet Ministers were even celebrated gurus of the Bhakti movement.

Secularism

These throwbacks to an idealized Islamic Republic have drawn strength from the steady Islamization of Pakistan, as revealed by last month's gathering at Suhrawardy Uddayan which called for a national labelling of Ahmmadiyas as non-Muslims, a gathering that was addressed by Pakistani Islamic scholars who, no doubt, bear some responsibility for the government policy in Pakistan that does exactly that.

But Bangladesh and Pakistan were meant to have different trajectories. Even as East Pakistan came into existence, a significant portion of East Bengali’s Muslim society was never completely comfortable with Pakistan’s national lashings, which were inconsistent with Bengal’s own interpretations of religion and culture.

There was always an insistence that Muslims are one nation and Hindus another, regardless of the fact that there are many Muslim nations and many Hindu nations, and many unique ways of being both Hindu and Muslim.

This reductionism created for Pakistan, especially in its relationship with East Pakistan, an identity crisis regarding its roots and orientation, the tensions of which were felt from the start.

Since breaking from Pakistan, Bangladesh has consciously tried to steer in an opposite direction, away from the communal maladies of 1947. And so, one would have thought, it would be somewhat more difficult to peddle Salafism in a country that is not officially Islamic, as opposed to one which is.

Much of Bangladesh’s political DNA is relatively non-communal. The Sultanate administration had numerous Hindu ministers, officials, administrators and judges in positions of power and influence. The commander of Jalaluddin’s army was Hindu. Successive Sultans continued to appoint people to high positions based on merit rather than religious orientation. The jizya tax on non-Muslims was also lifted. The umara, or nobility, consisted of Hindus and Muslims as well as of Bengalis and non-Bengalis.

That is not to say there weren’t periods of religious bigotry, as in the case of Raja Ganesh, who after capturing the throne was particularly intolerant of both Muslims and Buddhists, or during the reign of Sultan Shamsuddin Yusuf, who enacted strict Hudud laws. But these were exceptions rather than the norm and ran contrary to the political maturity upon which the kingdom was built.

Religious jurists, too, seem to have preferred pragmatism to passion, as was demonstrated in the city of Shonargaon where, during the late 1300s, madrassa students brought a case against the use of oyster shells in the production of slaked lime, claiming that it was against the Shariah. The leading mufti of the city issued a fatwa allowing the use of oyster shells on the basis that it was integral to the production of lime and that lime was a product that people had come to depend upon.

Proto-Islamism

But Sultanate polity notwithstanding, it is hubris to believe that Bengal’s political DNA doesn’t also contain indigenous and entrenched Islamist elements. After all, Bengal was the scene of the very first communal riots in undivided India following the 1946 Direct Action Movement, which unleashed terror and violence across India -- and was largely instigated by Bengali Muslims.

East Bengal also overwhelmingly supported the Pakistan Movement more so than most of what was then West Pakistan -- the Muslim League was created in Dhaka -- meaning Bengali Muslims were among the people most eager to live in an Islamic polity.  

Bengal was one of the few places in the world that took up Wahhabi founder Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s call for a puritanical purging of culture and hosted Haji Shariatullah’s Faraizi Movement which attempted to undo history and purge Bengali Islam of "pollutants" that had entered its body through Hindus and Europeans.

Several governments of Bangladesh have flirted with Islamism as well, for example by failing to condemn the persecution of Ahmadiyyas or by inserting an official religion into the Constitution of the country. And so, Islamists can also find, if they were intent on looking for it, an historical legitimacy to their aspirations.

The area that now constitutes Bangladesh, more than most other parts of South Asia, has entertained these competing notions of statehood in an almost schizophrenic manner, however, it was the non-Islamist version that gained ascendency after 1971, and is, for all intents and purposes, the foundation of the Bangladeshi Republic. This foundation is the very thing that is now on shaky ground.

The efforts by Islamists to create a Salafist atmosphere and carry out Faraizi-style purging of Bangladeshi Islam accelerates every day. Sufi mazaars are attacked, Sufi thought dismissed as heretical and Sufis themselves attacked or killed.

Customs like marriage rituals and mourning ceremonies have been subject to intense criticism for their inclusion of practices that are either pre-Islamic or contain elements of Islamic flourish, such as milads -- pejoratively called bida (innovation) by Islamist puritans. Pre-Islamic traditions are deemed jahil (ignorant), and both of these terms, along with shirk (polytheism) are routinely used to discredit anything at all that goes against stringent, Salafist notions of orthodoxy.

Minorities are increasingly being attacked, with an intention to eliminate their traditions, and secular, liberal lifestyles of a more irreligious nature are view as an indulgence in sin. The rising intolerance is setting the country up for an existential battle of epic proportions.

The previous government contributed to this rise by attempting to appease the religious right, but one wonders what they had hoped to gain from this sort of posturing. If it expected to be able to win them over by appearing to share their values it was mistaken, because the Islamist endgame has no room for current democratic traditions, secular institutions or secular legislative bodies – it certainly has no room for a female head of state. This should be a lesson for the current and subsequent governments of Bangladesh.

On the other hand, that government also consciously antagonized the religious establishment through its controversial execution of alleged war criminals, many of whom were regarded as religious scholars. Leaving out the issues of due process that besmirched the War Crimes Tribunal, the fact that several senior members of the Jamaat-e-Islami were among those found guilty served to provide the religious right with a narrative that the state is waging a war of attrition against political Islam, if not against Islam itself -- in other words, the original Jamaat-e-Islami narrative during 1971 The brutality meted out against Hefazat-e-Islam during its Shapla Chottor rally only added to that in spades.

These pendulum swings, which continue to this day, have caused damage to the position of the Republic, leaving gaps that can be readily exploited. But while Bangladeshi governments have found it politically expedient to oscillate between accommodating and opposing Islamist demands, there should be no ambiguity about what the state of Bangladesh stands for. In other words, sets of values must be upheld which can go well beyond raison d'état and firmly into raison d’être.

By drawing on the example of the Bengal Sultanate and by positioning itself as an heir to it, Muslim Bengali society may be able to find the political depth it needs to make these claims. And though it will not matter much to people who are convinced that a Salafist Islamic state is morally superior, it will go a long way towards denying them historical legitimacy in the public eye.

Equally if not more important, it will defeat the Islamist assertion that a pluralist, liberal Bangladesh is a post-colonial and therefore Western creation, divorced from its original orientation as an Islamic kingdom.

By associating Bangladesh with Bangala, Bengali Muslims will be able to show just how well their state is aligned with its origins, which is indeed in an Islamic country -- just not an Islamist one.

Zeeshan Khan is the author of 'Right to Passage -- Travels Through India, Pakistan and Iran' and a barrister from Middle Temple