Sujit De
In Bengali there is a saying ‘satkanda ramayana shune sita kar bap’. It means asking a question ‘whose father was Sita after hearing all the chapters of the Ramayana’. Similarly, some people always question whether secularism or the idea of harmony is at all practical and wise for a country’s development and progress, even though every chapter of a history book shows that it is secularism that ensures a country’s all round development. Now Bangladesh is witnessing the danger of deviating from the path of secularism.
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Previously, any attack on the minorities had firmly been dealt with by the Sheikh Hasina administration. It helped Bangladesh witness the fastest growth among South Asian countries in economy in that period.
Bangladesh went past India’s position in the Global Hunger Index (105) and secured 84th place. It achieved 129th place ahead of India’s 134th in the human development index.
After Sheikh Hasina’s ouster on August 5, there were attacks on religious minorities in Bangladesh. What is the result? Its economy is now witnessing a downside.
There is no wonder in it as this year’s Nobel laureates in economics have demonstrated that societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better.
There are people in our country who hate secularism. They must learn from Bangladesh how secularism and development are synonymous.
These people ridicule secular ideals as “sickular” and humanitarian approaches as utopian. On the other hand, they regard machismo and majoritarianism as panacea. But history teaches us that exactly the very opposite of this is true. Hatred only spelt disaster everywhere. On the other hand, the road to tolerance, harmony, and fraternity took countries to prosperity.
It is not just enough to appreciate or criticise the policies of other countries. We need to imbibe good things in other countries and avoid falling into the traps of some countries’ suicidal actions.
It was because of the liberal attitude of the Britons that made it possible to elect a Hindu as their Prime Minister in their previous government. Hindu and Muslim ministers are there in the present UK cabinet also. This liberal attitude is one of the main reasons behind their scoring high in the human development indices and getting the 15th rank.
This should encourage us to rectify our fault lines. For the first time in India, a Union Cabinet has been formed without a single Muslim minister in it, even though India has the third largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan.
The second fault line lies in the Human Development Index rank of 134, which indicates that India must improve two most important sectors, namely education and health.
While we must condemn the attacks on minorities and temples in Bangladesh, we also need to rectify our faults. We need to ensure that not a single instance of hate speeches against minorities, attacks on mosques and churches, and vilification and lynching of poor workers who belong to minority communities take place in our own backyard.
Hitler showed the world the danger of pursuing an idea of hatred after labelling the people of a particular religion as bad elements. Hitler left Germany in tatters. Now, we must embrace the idea of harmony with zero hatred against minorities so that the bad chapter of history may not repeat and damage our country’s unity and progress.
