Our Real National Shame

For those who need more confirmation that our political parties do not care about our religious minorities, here is Professor Abul Barkat’s study on the Vested Property Act.

Following the 1965 war with India, the Ayub government in its infinite wisdom decided to constitute something called the "Enemy Property Act". It allowed them to declare any citizen an "enemy" and confiscate their property. How, when and why Hindus became enemies after living in Pakistan as citizens for 17 years was never really clarified. But then again, this was our thick-headed, Sandhurst educated friend (not master!) Ayub, so logic took a backseat as was usual.

Following Bangladesh’s independence, Mujib’s Awami League government- the Epitome of "Dhormoniropekhkhota", the Protector of the "Minorities" - reconstituted the act in 1974 calling it the Vested Property Act. Bravo! Needless to say political-economists would have had a lot to say about the reasons behind such a move. But also needless to mention, not many political economists among the Dhaka intelligentsia have bothered to investigate these reasons.

So the epithet (good to some, bad to others) of being "minority-friendly" stuck. Everything was fine and dandy till our villainous friend and master Zia came along, rehabilitated Jamaat and inserted "Bismillah" into the constitution. After that the REAL persecution of Hindus started. Or so goes the tale.

Yet, as Barkat shows, who the beneficiaries of such confiscations ("legal" till 2001) were depended solely on who was in power. During 2001-2006:

45% of the land grabbers were affiliated with the BNP,
31 % with the Awami League,
8% with Jamaat-e-Islami
6% with the Jatiya Party and other political organisations.

His ‘97 study showed the opposite trend:

44% with the Awami League
32 % with the BNP

(figures for Jamaat and JP not given)

And did I mention that the Awami League government repealed the act in 2001? Yeah, even New Age calls it an "act of tokenism". And rightly so! After all, they had 5 years to do so but chose to do it only right before elections, after five years of allowing supporters to plunder the property of the citizens of Bangladesh by labelling them "the enemy".

And before you BNP-supporters get too excited, let me point out that the study also finds that the violence faced by minority religious communities increased under the BNP-Jamaat government. After all, if the law was repealed but the confiscation still went on, it had to be done somehow right? Who’s on for a good old-fashioned pogrom to seize their property?

This brings me to the point I’ve been trying to make over and over again on these pages: that religious identity politics are driven more by the political-economy of control over scarce resources than by religion. But hey, who’s listening? Certainly not "secularists" who think that taking "Bismillah" out of the constitution is going to magically empower our Hindu citizens. And since most of our intelligentsia falls into this category, that should answer our question as to why they haven’t really looked into the reasons behind the Vested Property Act being instituted in the first place in 1974 in a Bangladesh supposedly built on a secular Bangali nationalism.

In conclusion, both parties stink. Jamaat would stink if it had more power as would JP. And because of them, we as a nation should hang our heads in shame. Because we stink too.

Oh and while we do that, the Indian media covers the story with its usual neutrality and balance, quoting only the 2001-2006 figures and not the 1997 figures. Kudos gentlemen, kudos! And you wonder why we don’t get along…