Another article review session took place on July 28, 2016, at the Faculty Room of BRACU Savar Campus. Md. Shamsuddoha, faculty member of Bangladesh Studies, discussed the article titled “Secularism and Anti-secularism” by Shantanu Majumder.
The article focused on different aspects of secularism and anti-secularism with a special reference to the socio-economic context of Bangladesh and attitude of its leading political parties about secularism. Mr. Doha began the discussion with the writer’s insights into historical overview of secularism. Moreover, he shared the author’s emphasis on the non-communal struggle of Bengali nationalists for the independence from pro-Islamist Pakistani rulers, which later influenced the new born country to take secularism as one of the state principles during the reign of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. However, the idea of secularism had to go through a lot of ups and downs on the subsequent ages. Over the course of discussion, Mr. Doha mentioned how secularism was accepted as one of the state policy during Mujib era, according to the author. The regime claimed that the Pakistani ruling elite’s practices of using religion as a shield to protect themselves and justify their misdeeds had encouraged it to adopt secularism as a state principle. However, it was soon dropped during the regime of Ziaur Rahman and finally Ershad declared Islam as the state religion. Thus, secularism was abandoned for a long time. Recently, Awami League reintroduced secularism as one of the state principles in 2011, although it has been re-launched with some modifications and compromises on the basics because Islam is still the state religion and there are some pro-Islamic policies in the constitution. Finally, Mr. Doha ended with some of the author’s arguments in favor of secularism and counter arguments against secularism.
After the discussion, some of the faculty members shared their views on the issue and also discussed how it could be incorporated into the Bangladesh Studies course.