Lt General PS Mehta (veteran)
Despite the outwardly mask of “student protest,” the current political crisis in Bangladesh is driven, in large part, by the cunning political conspiracy of the powerful South Asian Islamist ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI). Its intention goes beyond the limited objective of dislodging the democratic government of Sheikh Hasina Wajid to converting the country into a Sharia run Islamic state. The same poisonous ideology was put in place to destroy India’s Kashmir Valley in the 1990’s.
The Jamaat-e- Islami’s ultimate goal is to make political Islam the dominant force in the South-Asian sub-continent. It searches out troubled areas and then works on a well-defined plan to spread its radical venom. It is with this concept that it first targeted Kashmir and has now targeted Bangladesh.
JeI is a South Asian Islamic organisation that subscribes to the radical ideology of Gazwa-e-Hind which aims at turning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and finally India into Islamic states that are run on the Sharia model of governance.
The political ideology of JeI has roots in India. It was founded by an upper caste Indian Muslim – Syed Abul Ala Maududi in British India as a political organization seeking to “reform” Islamic practices and making political Islam and Sharia the sole governing principles. This puritan Islamist ideology was based on Islamic supremacism that viewed Non-Muslim religions/faiths like Hindu, Sikh Buddhism and Christianity as “false.” The Jamaat ideology opposes democracy, secularism, liberalism and other political ideologies as “un-Islamic.”
The Jamaat actively opposed the partition of British India as the same would divide British Indian Muslims in three constituents and weaken their collective political bargaining power. Once Pakistan was created in 1947, it began its next mission of politicising Islam in both West Pakistan and East Pakistan. For this, it created various chapters like JeI (Hind), JeI (J&K), JeI (Pakistan) and JeI (Bangladesh).
Jamaat-e-Islami in Kashmir
The Kashmir Valley was a Muslim majority region which practiced its own distinct Kashmiri Sufi Muslim traditions based on the “Rishi” culture that mixed tenets of Islam with Hindu Shaivism. The ideology of Jamaat, though alien Islam to the Muslims of Kashmir, gained a foothold by money power and brute strength (terrorism). JeI described it as an “reformative” Islamic ideology that sought to rid Kashmiris of the so-called “corrupt, contaminated Hindu Shaivite influence.”
JeI provided Islamic religious guidance to the Pakistan backed separatist campaign against the Indian Union in Jammu and Kashmir. This is the reason why the campaign for Kashmir’s so-called “independence” was based on things like forced exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, closure of cinema halls, widespread propagation of middle eastern veils for Kashmiri Muslim women etc.
Kashmiri Sufi Muslim practices like visiting Sufi Muslim “cave shrines” where Kashmiri Muslim Sufis meditated in yogic postures were denounced, rejected and stopped through fear of the gun. A huge campaign of disinformation was launched, wherein, the syncretic Sufi culture was denounced as “Hindu Grave Worship.” Thousands of new Masjids and Madrasas cropped up to propagate Wahhabi/Salafi Islam. All this was done under the banner and guidance of the JeI.
The JeI propagation of regressive, orthodox and conservative practices in the name of preaching “pure” Islam gained momentum due to support of urban, upper caste Syed Kashmiri Muslims like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Omar Farooq and others who collectively called themselves the Hurriyat. A common factor in all of these so-called champions of the Kashmir Muslims was that they opposed Kashmir’s merger with the Union of India. Those who called themselves the moderate political parties of Kashmir, like the National Conference and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PPP), remained ambivalent as this cultural genocide carried on unabated for decades on end.
JeI’s ideology formed the benchmark and the bedrock of the Jihadi movement that fuelled the birth and exponential growth of Hizbul Mujahideen and other such indigenous terrorist organisations in Jammu and Kashmir. These Pakistan backed separatist terrorist organisations composed and led completely by ethnic Kashmiri Muslims had the mandate and the objective to destroy India, given to them by the JeI.
Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh
Even when the independent nation of Pakistan was formed, the toxic ideology of JeI did not die. It simply lay low looking for an opportunity to strike. In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), in 1971, the cadre of JeI called “Razakars” helped the West Pakistani administration and West Pakistani Army in butchering of moderate and intellectual Bengali Muslims and Bengali Hindus during the Bangladesh Liberation movement.
JeI Bangladesh has mastered the technique of covertly radicalising youth and others. It started raising its head as Bengali Muslims got divided between secular minded Bengali Muslims and radicalized Bengali Muslims. The latter were taken into its fold despite it being banned by the Sheik Hasina led Awami League government.
The current political crisis in Bangladesh is driven, in large part, by the cunning political conspiracy of the powerful JeI. It had the complete support of the right wing Bangladesh National Party and its fundamentalist leader, Begum Khalida Zia. As in other target countries, it had infiltrated the Police, the military and the government offices with its radicalised cadre.
JeI Bangladesh got and continues to get a lot of support and patronisation from Pakistan, especially its sinister military intelligence wing, the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It is from JeI Pakistan and ISI that JeI Bangladesh has gained ideological and monetary support to sustain itself and grow.
The main objective of the JeI in Bangladesh is disenfranchisement of Bengali Hindus, Buddhists and Christians of the country and imposition of the conservative Islamic Sharia way of life. Most importantly, it will abolish democracy and secularism as a political model in Bangladesh.
Concluding Remark
The might of the Indian security forces, led by the Indian army, and the trust reposed by the people of Kashmir in tenets of democracy and the Constitution of India, led to the failure of the evil machinations of the JeI in the region despite the attempt being much larger in scope than that which has been launched in Bangladesh.
What JeI tried in Kashmir it will probably succeed in doing in Bangladesh since the country, unlike India, does not have a strong enough secular army and other security forces to stop the incoming storm of radicalism instigated by the fundamentalist organisation.