Intimate enemies

While powerful sections of the political class in the Indian Union and a powerful mass media are trying to whip up the demand for taking stern action against Islamic televangelist Zakir Naik, the government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh has gone ahead and banned Peace TV Bangla, the Bangla language channel in Zakir Naik’s Peace TV stable. With Zakir Naik’s often deeply problematic preaching and his Peace TV transmissions emerging as a one-stop explanation for Islamic radicalisation amongst ‘innocent’ folks, it was rather rich to see even ex-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi using the opportunity to refer to other human beings as “preachers of hate and violence” at a time when more than 30 Kashmiri protesters have been gunned down by Indian armed forces in a matter of days. While calls for the defence of freedom of expression have been curiously muted in the context of Zakir Naik and the pre-existing ban on his Peace TV in the Indian Union, the ban in Bangladesh has been relatively easy in the context of the recent murderous Islamist attacks in Dhaka. Freedom of all kinds, including freedom of expression, is best curtailed in times of “emergency”. But in Dhaka too, the nature of the by-now significantly loud murmurs that have opposed the ban on Peace TV provide an interesting insight into the Subcontinental politics of attacking supposed enemies by proxy.

Zakir Naik came into focus in the aftermath of the Dhaka killings when it was alleged by numerous reports that some of the killers were inspired by his preaching. The largely affluent Dhaka killers evoked a rather typical ‘innocents led astray’ response that has been unheard in the case of other such killings in small towns and villages away from Dhaka, where very few tried to ponder upon the phenomenon of radicalisation amongst less affluent militants. Be that as it may, at a special meeting of the cabinet committee on law and order chaired by senior Awami League minister Amir Hossain Amu, the decision to ban Peace TV Bangla was taken.

This ban has led to discontent from a section of Bangladeshi society who have argued either along the lines of freedom of expression or from a positive warmth for the kind of religious preaching that Indian citizen Zakir Naik has been indulging in - or both. This discourse has emerged largely from studios and venues in the Indian Union. What is relevant to note here is that opposition to what is perceived as an invading “Indian culture” in the form of TV channels with content from India (largely in the form of Hindi films and Bangla serials and shows produced in West Bengal) is extremely high precisely among this very sector of society. This Emanul Haque Khan says, “Those who used to badmouth India a couple of days ago and were ready to launch jihad on Facebook to boycott Indian products and Indian channels, I am seeing them sitting angrily with red flared nostrils in support of a solid Indian product like Zakir Naik!” (quote translated from Bangla). It is relevant to mention the technical point that Peace TV is actually broadcast to the world from Dubai, though most of its video productions happen out of a rather shabby building in the Dongri area of South Mumbai.

Seeing Bangladesh as a Muslim land that is incidentally Bengali or South Asian is one of the competing narratives in Bangladesh

Notwithstanding Khan’s broad generalisations, this goes to the heart of a certain tension - the question of what can be deemed ‘own’ (even if it is of Indian origin) and more importantly, what is actually meant by ‘Indian’. When the boycott of ‘Indian’ content comes with an Islamic exception clause, it shows that it is ‘non-Muslim’ ‘Indian’ content that is deemed a threat. In the context of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, ‘non-Muslim’ is largely a code-word for ‘Hindu’, just like in the Indian Union, the term ‘minority’ is a code for Muslim. Thus, in this worldview, things ‘Islamic’ can be deemed acceptable even if they originate from India while the Indian content that needs to be boycotted is deemed essentially ‘Hindu’ in character and content. This distinction between Zakir Naik and ‘Indian’ also privileges Muslim-ness as being less ‘foreign’ for a particular segment of Bangladeshi opinion. Indeed, this understanding of Bangladesh as a Muslim land that is incidentally Bengali or South Asian forms one of the important competing narratives around the meaning of a sovereign Bangladesh and its raison d’être.

Such dog-whistle messaging that conflates ‘Indian’ and ‘Hindu’ becomes a particular predicament for those ‘patriotic’ Bangladeshis whose opposition towards things deemed ‘Indian’ to the extent of calls for boycott are not predicated on religious prejudice or communalism. And there are many reasons for discontent for a Bangladeshi vis-a-vis the Indian Union, the giant neighbouring hegemonic super-state. This includes regular border killings by India’s Border Security Force, ruthless Indian corporate expansionism including those in ecologically fragile areas of Bangladesh in the face of fierce local opposition, unilateral intervention into riverine lifelines (like building the Farakka barrage), mistreatment of visa applicants, alleged shadowy intervention into Bangladesh’s domestic political scene, the nasty portrayal of Bangladeshi citizens in mainstream Indian political and media narrative (with few notable exceptions) as criminal, communal, fast-breeding, illegal immigrants, etc. Thus one observes the phenomenon of certain left and/or non-communal patriotic political forces often ending up making common cause with Islamists - arriving at that point by radically different inspirations and very different ideas of the concept of ‘foreignness’. However, there exists like in any society, a class of powerful people who can’t espouse sectarian positions openly due to existing norms of decency and fairness, and end up channelising their energies towards such proxy issues, which appear to be about about ‘foreignness’ at first, but turn out to be actually about religion. This rests on a smoke-screen of plausible deniability that is created to obfuscate the somewhat sectarian inspiration behind a populist stance on such issues.

The Zakir Naik episode is part of a vicious Subcontinental political game: using religion-based code words

So the Zakir Naik episode adds the latest entry to the vicious Subcontinental political game that revolves around religion-based code words. Just like in the Indian Union, ‘Pakistani’ is a code word: to some it means the actual country of Pakistan, to some it means  any Muslim, to some it is a way to say ‘Muslim’ without ever publicly acknowledging to have meant it as such. It is not accidental or without reason that then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, during some of his earlier election campaigns, talked repeatedly about and often even addressed directly ‘Pakistanis’ and Musharraf, in elections where not a single Pakistani citizen was eligible to vote. ‘Illegal Bangladeshi’ or even just ‘Bangladeshi’ is a similar term. The biologist Theodore Donzhansky said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution”. One might as well say: many things in South Asian economic and political life make sense only in light of the communal Partition of 1947 and its aftermath.

In the context of oppressive media-corporate hegemony and a milieu of communalism, Zee Bangla and Star Jolsha - two West Bengal channels very popular in Bangladesh - become in that very private mind space of a significant number of individuals, where all politics and yearnings collide, what Ashis Nandy has called in a different context “the intimate enemy”. The hard nationalists of the Indian Union take a certain pride in its so-called soft power. This pride is unfounded since such dominance is highly unlikely to exist in the absence of a hugely asymmetric economic and political relationships. Ad all deep money-powered “cultural” exports are basically demolition machines for political autonomy and cultural identity. While the largely West Bengali TV channels - and also some Hindustani or Bollywood-centric channels - dominate a significant part of the Bangladeshi television viewership, Bangla channels from Bangladesh are not available in West Bengal, where about 40% of Bengalis of the world live. It is a sector that Bangladeshi channels would want to enter but due to certain Indian regulations and fee structures, that has not happened. It is West Bengal’s loss, if truth be told. Bengalis in India are deprived, for instance, of the amazing talent of Mosharraf Karim: arguably the most talented Bengali television actor of the present time.

Garga Chatterjee is a Kolkata-based commentator on South Asian politics and culture. He received his PhD from Harvard and is a member of faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He blogs at hajarduari.wordpress.com