Cry for Bangladeshi teachers

Sculptures on the Dhaka University campus, which were vandalised by Islamist fundamentalists in August 2024

Bangladesh observes December 14 as Martyred Intellectuals Day, when it remembers scores of academics, litterateurs and journalists whom the Pakistani army and its collaborators, as they faced defeat in the 1971 war, rounded up and shot dead. From memorialising intellectuals, Bangladesh is now arraigning them in fake cases of genocide and crimes against humanity, even arresting some on these charges.

A degree of anarchy was expected as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh, on August 5, because of the student uprising. Riding high on their success, mobs of students compelled, according to one newspaper estimate, 150 teachers countrywide to resign in the first month of Hasina's fall. The persecution of intellectuals, instead of abating, has become systematic, and sinister, under the interim government of Muhammad Yunus.

There is a distinct pattern to their hounding - Hasina tops the long list of former officials and politicians made the accused in cases involving students who died in police firing during the protests. To this list are added intellectuals deemed to have instigated State repression through their speeches and writings.

Among them is journalist and activist Shahriar Kabir, who was arrested in September for 10 separate murder cases. Prison is familiar to Kabir, for he was locked up, in 2001, for months because he defied the State to investigate attacks on Hindus. Seventy-three years old now, Kabir futilely pleaded in a remand hearing, "I can't move around without a wheelchair."

The artworks before they were broken

His travails only worsened, for he and historian Muntasir Mamun were made co-accused in a 2013 case involving bloody police operations against the siege of Dhaka by Hifazat-e-Islam activists. This case was, in November, referred to the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which was constituted in 1973 for trying Bangladeshis who assisted the Pakistanis in carrying out massacres. The ITC had been moribund for decades before Kabir and Mamun led the campaign to revive it; between 2013 and 2016, the ICT sent five Jamaat-e-Islami and one Bangladesh Nationalist Party leaders to the gallows. The two parties are perceived to be the invisible force that, to seek vengeance, sent the Hifazat-e-Islam case to the ICT.

Also referred to the ICT was a case involving the death of a 17-year-old in police firing; it has as co-accused academics Zafar Iqbal and Mesbah Kamal and 28 journalists, of whom two - Farzana Rupa and Shakil Ahmad - have been arrested. A popular science fiction writer, Iqbal was stabbed, in 2018, by a person who accused him of being anti-Islam. During last year's student movement, Iqbal was critical of students for chanting: "Who are we, who are we? Razakars, razakars." The word razakar means ‘volunteer', but is used in Bangladesh as ‘traitor' for the Pakistani army's collaborators. To Iqbal, the slogan symbolised the denial of the legacy of the 1971 War of Liberation. Iqbal said as much, inviting State retribution.

Kamal was, until August, the vice-chancellor of the Royal University of Dhaka, has written 30 books, conducted the first national survey of Dalits, and specialises in studies on the indigenous people, for whose rights he has consistently fought. Although Kamal had supported the student movement in TV talk shows, he seemingly displeased the Jamaat for writing with 41 others, early last year, to the Chief Justice of Bangladesh for banning the organisation. The invisible force retaliated: On August 13, students locked up Royal University staff, refusing to let them out until Kamal resigned. He did.

The witch-hunt is incredibly widespread. As many as nine faculty members of Dhaka's Jagannath University were made co-accused for allegedly attempting to murder Anil Biswas, a student. Mobs, says one estimate, have compelled at least 60 vice-chancellors and treasurers of universities to demit office.

Even the prestigious Dhaka University has reeled under mobocracy, as these examples establish. Its students compelled Islamic History scholar Abdul Bashir to resign as Dean of Fine Arts, incensed by his opposition to a Quran recital on the campus during last year's Ramzan. Nisar Hossain quit as Dean of Fine Art the day after his office received a letter saying since he had not participated in the student movement, he must share the blame for the bloodbath Hasina wreaked upon it. The price of atonement?

Resignation, obviously.

The Hindu identity of French professor Shishir Bhattacharja fuelled a whisper campaign against him for being an Indian agent. His tormentors deliberately misinterpreted a satire he posted on social media as an insult to Prophet Mohammad, and proscribed him from holding classes. Bhattacharja is now in another country, hoping to return once Bangladesh regains its sense and sensibility.

The evidence that it has lost both is a Dhaka University garden, where late sculptor Shamim Sikdar had installed her creations. Thirty-two of these sculptures were, in August, smashed on the mistaken notion that they promoted idolatry. The vandalisation represents a breakdown in the consensus over what Bangladesh should be - a secular, inclusive nation or an Islamic, exclusivist one. The clash between the two worldviews is truly underway, for when a group tried to demolish sculptures inside the Faculty of Fine Art, it was chased away. Sikdar's violated creations symbolically warn Bangladesh of a future it must resist; a future India, too, must dread for itself.

The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste

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