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The Great Identity Tussle: Bangladeshi or Bengali Nationalism

Updated: 4 days ago

As published in the Volume 2(2) of Ramjas Political Review


Abstract


The 2024 Bangladesh crisis has marked a reconfiguration of the idea of Bangladesh, breaking away from decades of partisan and ideological conflict between two contesting national identities, Bengali nationalism and Bangladeshi nationalism. The essay utilises qualitative analysis using secondary data to track the historic makings and trajectory of Bangladesh’s national identity and the underlying tensions that explain the 2024 crisis. The year marked not only a swift regime turnover, but also a reimagining of Bangladesh and recasting dominant narratives to suit a narrower form of national identity, unfolding challenges to Bangladesh’s secularism, democracy and diplomacy, with a rise in Indo-Bangladesh tensions.  


Keywords: Bengali nationalism, Bangladeshi nationalism, Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Islamisation.


Post-Hasina Bangladesh: Introduction


In August 2024, the ‘Bangabandhu’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s statue was toppled in Dhaka (PTI, 2024). The destruction of Mujibur iconography during the Bangladesh students’ uprising is symptomatic of the underlying shift in identity discourses from Bengali nationalism to Bangladeshi nationalism. Mujibur iconography bore the ire of this churn against the failings of his daughter, but also the rejection of his legacy of Bengali nationalism. While until recently the Hasina hegemony felt consolidated, the deepening legitimacy crisis, especially following the violence-marred 2024 general elections (ACLED, 2024), mass resistance became proof of bottom-up democratisation, beyond institutional means. Even as the Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus, leads the nation following Hasina’s resignation and flight, Bangladesh’s interim government has moved to lift the ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami party (Al Jazeera, 2024) that had been imposed under anti-terrorism laws. A free hand to religious forces has co-opted narratives in the public discourse of Bangladesh, outgrowing its longstanding duopoly in national imaginations. 


Increasing intolerance towards minorities and flaring ethnic tensions, have come to characterise post-Hasina Bangladesh. Three Hindu temples were set on fire (Times of India, 2024), with 24 people burnt alive (Business Standard, 2024); Chinmoy Das, an ISKON Hindu priest arrested, resulting in protests by Bengali Hindus (The Hindu, 2024), and exclusion of tribal populations as ‘alibashi’ (separatists)  and outsiders (Zahid & Srivastava, 2024). Further, the bizarre commemoration of Mohammad Ali Jinnah by the National Press Club in Dhaka, marked with Urdu poetry and songs, signals a nod to more Islamic interpretations of nationhood (Mukul, 2024). 


The nation with two nationalisms has responded to both domestic politics as well as regional strains, and now appears to have picked its favourite.


Who is a Bangladeshi?


The Bangladeshi national identity is an outgrowth of its independence movement and post-independence domestic and international responses. The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War was a fallout of the expropriation of East Pakistan into an agrarian colony under the postcolonial Pakistani state. Pakistan’s geographic anomaly, being divided into two by the vast Indian territory, was a cause of insecurities for the Jinnah government, which emphasised centralised administration, with Urdu as the uniting (homogenising) language for the diverse ethnicities that composed East and West Pakistan. The early death of Jinnah left a power vacuum, which the Pakistani military filled. These tendencies of centralisation and militarisation were reflected in the preeminence of the Punjabi-Pathans in both the government and the military. Despite East Pakistan being more populous, West Pakistan got the lion’s share in terms of economic capital, political dominance, and cultural disposition (Batabyal, 2021). 


Schendel (2009) puts forth that the Resistance against the marginalisation of the Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan came to the forefront through the Bangla Bhasha Movement (Bengali language movement) of 1950-60s against Urdu imposition. The homogenisation efforts exploded under an anti-climactic political miscalculation. The denial of the premiership to the populist Sheikh Mujibur Rahman despite Awami League’s landslide victory in the 1970 Pakistan general election gave fire to the East Pakistanis who were on edge after the 1970 cyclone, famine and the ethnic genocide conducted by the Pakistani military.


The 1971 war, that would separate East from West Pakistan, creating Bangladesh, also left open the question of: ‘Who is a Bangladeshi?’


Are they Bengalis? Or, are they Muslims? If they are Bengalis, then what was the need for the 1947 partition? And, if they are Muslims, then what is the need for  1971?  


One Nation, Two Nationalisms 


Mujibur became Deshobondhu (friend of the country),  becoming the symbol against  post-1947 injustices, the denial of representation and the linguistic autonomy of the state. He defined the newborn nation in terms of Bengali nationalism, a secular construct premised on the Bengali ethnic identity and language conscience. Mujibur’s definition was consciously light on novelty, indistinguishable from the Indian Bengalee sub-nationalism (about Bengalees inhabiting West Bengal, India). The Mukti Bahini (pre-independence Bangladesh liberation militia) having fought the Pakistani Army with the sentiments of “Joy Bangla” (hail Bengal), “Tomar desh, amar desh, Bangladesh” (your country, my country, Bangladesh) and “Jago, jago, Bangalee jago” (awaken, awaken, Bengalees, awaken) gave precedence to ethnolinguistic and territorial affiliations over religious ones (which they had in common with their West Pakistani opponents), responding also to the need for India’s aid in securing Bangladeshi independence and rehabilitation of its citizens  (Deb,  2021; Khan, 1974). 


‘Mujibism’ rested on the four pillars of nationalism, democracy, socialism, and secularism, firm to his need to parallelly delegitimise the “two-nation theory” or political Islam of 1947, and legitimise the 1971 independence movement against Islamabad’s autocratic rule. Secularism was a centrepiece, and became enshrined in the constitution of 1972, with Islamic parties propagating a theocratic rules-based order, which were declared as banned, as they were perceived to have pro-Pakistan leanings (Khan, 1974).


It was post-war domestic politics that sprang an antithetical counterpart in the form of Bangladeshi nationalism, by General Zia-ur Rahman, who took power following the assassination of Mujibur in 1975. Zia-ur found himself in a complacent position, lacking Mujibur’s popular support, and having an urgency to rehabilitate the East Bengal divisions of the Pakistan Army and disengage the Awami League’s Rakha Bahini (Bangladeshi para-military), in order to secure his position. At the same time, he needed to step out of Mujibur’s shadow and India’s looming influence over the newly independent country (Sheikh  & Ahmed, 2020).


Zia-ur addressed these by re-interpreting ‘Bengali’ nationalism into ‘Bangladeshi’ nationalism, making a clear-cut distinction between “our” (Bangladeshi) Bengali and “theirs” (Indian Bengalis in West Bengal). Bangladeshis were Bengalis plus Muslim–an ethno-religious identity. In line with this though, in 1977, secularism was removed from the constitution, and in 1988, Islam was made the state religion. However, Bangladesh as a country of Bengali Muslims leaves out a considerable number of minority groups. This includes the Buddhist hill tribes of Chittagong (Chakmas, Hojongs, et cetera), 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 marginalised from Bangladeshi society (World Bank, 2008). 


Secularism: Between Irony and Paradox 


The conflict between these two distinct strands of nationalism (Hossain, 2015) has been a durable feature of Bangladeshi national identity, and has been reflected in the decades-long two-party system. These competing values over time became personified by the two major parties, Awami League (AL), led by  Sheikh Hasina, Mujibur’s daughter, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Begum Khaleda Zia, Zia-ur’s widow. From 1991 till 2008, Bangladeshi politics had been defined by the intense competition between AL and BNP, with the country’s mostly homogenous ethnic composition (Minority Rights Group International, n.d.) and economic growth (Mahmood, 2021), enabling democracy’s survival.


While for the past five decades, Bangladeshi national identity was beset by two contesting conceptions of nationalism, the 2024 popular uprisings (Nagpal, 2024) and consequent removal of the Sheikh Hasina government have marked a paradigmatic shift. The initial protests by university students (Uddin, 2024) were against the reservation for the descendants of the freedom fighters during the 1971 war. These protests soon became an all-out mass uprising as attention expanded to the anti-democratic practices of the Hasina government due to the heavy-handed military responses to peaceful civilian protests and the participation of religious forces. Bangladeshi society mobilised against electoral malpractice, judicial harassment, extrajudicial killings, intimidation of media and civil society organisations, punitive practices against opposition voices, null cases against Khaleda Zia and activist Muhammad Yunus, packing courts with loyalists and corruption that had become the staples of the Hasina regime  (Hasan, 2024; Maîtrot & Jackman, 2023).


It is ironic how autocratic exclusion had resulted in the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, and now political marginalisation and democratic backsliding again have rebirthed a more defined sense of Bangladeshi identity. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s legacy has lost out on its argument for inclusivity and a secular republic (Zaheer, 2024). The father’s legacy has been hampered by the daughter’s blunders; while secularism had long been a contested attribute of the Bangladeshi nation (Ahmad, 2020), the founding ideals had held fast against a seamless Islamic interpretation of the national identity; yet, constitutional paradoxes have weakened secular structures over time. 


While Zia-ur had removed secularism from the Constitution of Bangladesh in 1977 and replaced it with “Absolute Trust and Faith in the Almighty Allah,” and revoked the ban on Islamic parties, the AL restored the secularism provision in 2011, though Islam continued to remain the state religion of Bangladesh (Habib, 2011). In contestations, secularism lies in a constitutional paradox (Ahmed, 2024). 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.


Islamisation of Bangladeshi Society


An erstwhile general in the Pakistan military during the 1965 war, Zia-ur had adopted the Pakistani handbook, entering a mullah-military nexus (Chakravarty, 2017). Unlike Mujibur, Zia-ur lacked charm, a populist image, and freedom fighter status to secure his position, thereby depending heavily on the coercive institutions of the state to enforce and religious agents of the society to sanction his regime. This led to a parallel Islamisation of Bangladesh through the conservative ulama (Islamic clergy), who gained prominence and alleviated their role in directing state policy, in turn serving as a regime institution (Hossain, 2012). This has subsequently eroded the heterodox, pluralist and more tolerant variants of Islam that had historically existed in the Indian subcontinent, substituting them, over time, with more hardliner religious narratives (Mostofa, 2021a). This has been reinforced by the recent import of the Farazi and Wahabi movements by Bangladeshi migrant labourers returning home from the Middle East (Mohsina, 2021), as well as by the active presence of radical actors like Hefazat-e-Islam and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in politics (Mahjabin, 2024). These fundamentalist forces have been further emboldened by narratives and upheaval in post-Hasina Bangladesh  (Upadhyay, 2024; Mostofa, 2021b).


The Zia-ur definition of Bangladeshi nationalism has not just become the domestic consensus, but also one that will result in the restructuring of relations vis-à-vis India. While Sheikh Hasina’s ousting has incapacitated proponents of Bengali nationalism, Mujibur’s legacy of the secular imagination of the Bangladeshi nation has been eroding over time (P. Sharma, 2024), parallel to the increasing Islamisation of Bangladesh; and in response to unique identity challenges in the subcontinent. Having a national destiny exclusive of India has been an exclusively subcontinental aspiration, where the “big brother” India has been seen to loom large in the backyard and intervene much in the affairs of other neighbouring states. For the caretaker government, India has become a scapegoat to abstain from deeper introspection of Bangladesh’s political faults; primarily, because of India’s uncritical support of the Hasina government (Bhushan, 2024). Taslima Nasrin, author and activist, expressed deep concern over the seeping Islamic radicalism that threatens to brainwash and indoctrinate the Bangladeshi youths to make them “anti-India, anti-Hindu, and pro-Pakistan,” turning Bangladesh the Afghanistan way (Nasrin, 2024).


Bangladesh in Subcontinental Insecurities


Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely populated states, lies at the crucial geostrategic juncture between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, being vital to security in the Bay of Bengal. While there was an undeniable trajectory of democratic backsliding under the Hasina regime, Bangladesh has simultaneously achieved impressive economic growth, especially from its booming textile industry. Restoring political stability is a regional necessity.


On the obverse side, the turnaround in Bangladesh has caused intensifying friction with India. Where domestic politics had already created a strong rhetoric against ‘Bangladeshi’ migration as infiltrators–a shorthand for electoral fearmongering by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dispensation (R. Sharma, 2024; Shamshad, 2018). And, there was already an ever-growing fear that Bangladeshi migrants encroach on physical and political spaces, jobs, land, and corner welfare resources meted out by the state, and place undue pressures on infrastructure. The fear has turned to outright hostility following 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) (Singh, 2024); and Indian doctors going as far as to refuse medical attention to Bangladeshi patients (Deb & Mittal, 2024). Protest marches in Kolkata surrounded the Bangladesh consulate (Bhattacharya, 2024), showing counter-mobilisation of Indians against Bangladesh, with mass hysteria often threatening retributive actions against Bangladeshis in India, even as migrants remain a universally vulnerable category in host countries. While Indians react against religious intolerance, the reaction itself can play into the hands of Islamist forces to reinforce negative rhetoric against India and further deepen divides in Bangladesh on religious lines. This turn towards religious nationalism (Mehta, 2024) has led to minorities, especially Hindus, finding themselves increasingly under siege, simultaneous to the increased visibility of radical Islamist groups in socio-political spaces. Moreover, Bangladeshi elites, instead of acknowledging and addressing the genuine concern for the safety and security of minorities, have been denying these challenges as mere Indian disinformation and Indian media’s propaganda to discredit the authenticity of the student-led protests and the newly formed interim government, which has been critical towards the country (Sen, 2024).  


Reclaiming Whose Democracy(?): Conclusion


Realignment of the idea of ‘Bangladesh’ has broken free from decades of bipartisanship and ideological conflict between Bengali nationalism and Bangladeshi nationalism. While the return of the AL is extremely unlikely, with the party suffering from the unpopularity of Hasina, concerns have been raised over the ‘neutrality’ and ‘intents’ of the non-partisan caretaker government led by Yunus, and its commitment to multi-party electoral competition due to the delay in holding elections. As elections are set to get slotted for late 2025 or early 2026, a strong appetite for democracy amongst Bangladeshis must prevail. There is a need for a constant civil society and government dialogue, with genuine bids to deepen mutual trust in democracy and democratic means of dissent. 


The end of a fifteen-year regime (Mahmud, 2024) has destabilised the very fabric of society and deepened the social and economic crisis. There lies a great deal of anxiety over the possibility of deep-seated polarisation in the upcoming election (Gupta, 2024). While Hasina has fled, her party, the AL, is still a contestant in the next democratic polls. Whether it will be a head-on contest between the AL and the BNP with Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) (a time-tested electoral alliance) or a military-blessed “King’s Party” (Das, 2024), is yet to be seen. Uncertain times push people to seek sanctity and shelter in established spaces. Religion can be a source of continuity, hope and community in such times of flux. With 91 per cent (US Department of State, 2022) of the country identifying as Sunni Muslim, and a sustained Islamisation of Bangladeshi society, the place of religion in society, nation and identity will be further strengthened in such times of crisis, increasing religious fervour and role of religious forces even in democratic processes. 


Moreover, the BNP-JI duo are well poised to win an upcoming election, with both having had a long and antagonistic history against secular interpretations of Bangladesh. Having a capable organisation, the BNP has held the status of the country’s largest opposition party for a long time. Coupled with anti-India tensions, majoritarian fervour, and 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. Radical Islam has been mainstreamed, with an apparent culture of violent hostilities against minorities being normalised. While global discourses clamour over the future of democracy in Bangladesh, the underlying shift in national identity has motivated the transition; with the BNP and JI well positioned to gain the most. This leaves whether the reconstituted democracy will be democratic for all, especially the tribals and Hindus. While it has been civil society activism that brought the fall of the Hasina-led AL  government for its excesses, there is cause to reason that civil society too would not be untouched by the shift in national identity, is prone to co-option and may be driven by mass sentiments that show a decisive turn, tossing a challenge to democratic reforms going ahead.


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The author, Allen David Simon, is a student at University St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), University of Calcutta.


Featured image credit: Text-book of Indian History

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