It is true that some bigoted organizations and political parties in Bangladesh take a stand against the minorities but this is not the complete truth. Even today, Bengali identity is considered more important than religion in Bangladesh. Durga Puja, Saraswati Puja is celebrated.
In many educational institutions like Dhaka University, Jahangir University, students and teachers of every department there celebrate Durga Puja by erecting pavilions and celebrating with feasts. The number of Muslim students is more in this. There are statues of Buddha in the campus of this university.
There are progressive movements in universities there, like the student movement at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India. Out of the total population of 17 crore 22 lakh, there is a diverse composition of Muslims 15 crore 36 lakh, Hindus 1 crore 31 lakh, Buddhists 10 lakhs 7 thousand, Christians 4 lakh 95 thousand.
With the exception of religious fundamentalist organizations, all common people live in peace and dignity. Many old traditional temples exist there even today. Minority Hindus follow their traditions without fear. This thing affects the religious organizations there. These organizations tried hard to break this multicultural tradition. But they have not succeeded.
Even today, Bengali literature, films, Indian Hindi films, Indian telecasts, artists from West Bengal are very popular there. The people of West Bengal and Bangladesh still have blood relations between them. Cross-border families still travel to meet them at relatives' homes. Given the deep roots of Bengali culture, it is not possible for long to control the people by forcefully imposing a particular religious system of governance. The real questions are irrelevant.
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Rising unemployment
More than five lakh government posts are vacant in Bangladesh. 11 crore people in Bangladesh are labor population. Three crore people out of them are unemployed. 18 to 19 lakh new youth enter the labor market every year. In such a situation, the plan to give well-paying and prestigious government jobs to Awami League workers in the name of freedom fighters' families was bound to be controversial. Moreover, there is a lot of corruption in this.
The method of determining who is a freedom fighter is opaque. The government declares its Awami League party workers as freedom fighters. In which people who had nothing to do with the freedom movement were also infiltrated. The outburst in Bangladesh came about because it was unacceptable for students to give reservation to Awami League political party workers as an alternative to the children and later grandchildren of such freedom fighters in a society already plagued by unemployment.
Of the total jobs in Bangladesh, 56 percent were reserved, while 44 percent were filled on merit. Out of this reservation for women (10 per cent), youth from backward districts (10 per cent), candidates from minority communities (5 per cent) and disabled (1 per cent) will continue, but the 30 per cent reservation for heirs of freedom fighters will now become history and 64 per cent seats will remain open. Hope so.
The challenge of fanatics remains
Activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and Bangladesh National Party attacked police stations and looted weapons from there. Now hundreds of them have weapons in their hands. Moreover, they have broken open large jails and taken out the criminals who were imprisoned under the most serious crimes. Therefore, the biggest challenge facing the army is to take action against them and confiscate those weapons.
The way the military has taken a suspiciously soft stance against these religious extremists makes the violence less likely to come under control. Therefore, the international community - especially the United Nations - should intervene.
How to avoid this?
The birth of this movement of students under the banner of Students Against Discrimination is only two and a half months. So it would be an exaggeration to expect him to offer some political thought and a broad alternative.
Therefore, eminent people of the civil society such as writers, thinkers, social workers, artists, retired chartered officers, retired judges, lawyers, education experts should take the initiative and create an ideological churn in Bangladesh. The first requirement is to create at least similar programs to satisfy the restlessness of students and people from different sections of the society.
The possibility of this movement going astray cannot be ruled out due to the burning of houses and killings of Awami League party leaders. Although the concepts of eruption, agitation and movement seem similar, they differ in terms of breadth and depth. What has happened in Bangladesh in the last one and a half months can be called an outbreak.
There is also the danger of foreign powers using it for their economic and political advantage. It is now the duty of the caretaker government to transform this outburst into an ideologically meaningful agitation and convert it into a movement and to devise public interest policies against the anti-people government policies. It is more important to reject the old system than to provide a viable alternative to it.
She is the former Global Vice President of the World Federation of Democratic Youth.