Shame: A Novel

by Taslima Nasrin

  Madol slowly made a move to leave. Her soft hand, like Maya's, slid away from his.

  Hyder had not turned up today either. He must have gotten cold feet, although his excuse was that he did not want to get involved. He didn't want to get entangled in fresh trouble. Suranjan, too, realized the futility of searching for Maya. If Maya came back at all, she would do so as she had at the age of six. He felt emptiness enveloping him.

  When Maya was at Parul's, the house appeared to be empty, but he did not have the feeling of such dire distress. He knew that Maya was safe and she would return. Now the house had the eerie stillness of the graveyard. As if someone had died. As Suranjan looked at the empty whisky bottle, overturned glasses near his feet, and scattered books, the tears that should have been in his eyes remained bottled up in his heart.

  This time his Muslim friends like Kamal or Rabiul had not cared to inquire about his state. They were perhaps thinking, let everyone to whom it matters save his own skin. Belal, when he came the previous night, also echoed in the same vein: "Why did you smash our Babri mosque?" Suranjan mused, the Babri mosque was a structure located in India. Why should Belal feel any sense of belonging to it? And how could the Hindus like Suranjan be held responsible for its demolition? Suranjan, for that matter, had never been to India. Then how could he be involved in its destruction? Was Belal equating the Hindus in this country with their counterparts in India? Did they mean Suranjan was also a party to the destruction of the mosque by the Hindus in that country? Could Suranjan be placed on the same scale with the Hindu fundamentalists at Ayodhya? Was he not a citizen of this country as were Belal, Kamal and Hyder? Was he basically a Hindu alone? Did the onus of mosque demolition in India rest on Suranjan? Could country and nationality be deemed less important than religion? Well, that might be the line of thinking of uneducated, weak-minded persons who sought to survive on the plank of religion alone. But why should Belal figure among them? Belal was highly educated, a freedom fighter. Why should he get bogged down in the shit of religion? He found no answers to these questions. Kiranmayee had silently placed two bananas and some biscuits on the table. He felt like drinking the rest of the whisky bottle instead of touching those bananas and biscuits. He had been repeatedly visited by Maya while he lay in a drunken stupor last night. When he came to his senses, her face came in a flash again. If he closed his eyes the scene of her being torn apart by a pack of dogs loomed large.

  Hyder didn't even care to inform him if Maya had been located or not. Suranjan had sought his help for his greater familiarity with the underworld. Otherwise, he could have plunged himself in the maze of alleys in search of her. Of course, the rapists didn't need the cover of alleys to pounce upon the Hindu girls anymore; they could easily go about their way openly. So was the looting perpetrated in the same unabashed way. One didn't require any particular protection to persecute the Hindus, because all such acts had the tacit support of the government. Sheikh Hasina said just the other day that communal harmony in the country would have to be maintained for the sake of protecting the lives and property of one hundred forty million Muslims in India. Why would Sheikh Hasina have to bother about the safety of the Muslims in India, first of all? Wasn't it imperative that communal amity be secured for defending the basic rights of the people in this country? Why should he have to show more compassion for the lives and property of the Indian Muslims than for those of the citizens of his own country? Was it to be concluded that the Awami League, too, was using the same spices of "antiIndia stand" and "cause of Islam" with which a rabidly communal organization like Jamat-i-Islami was cooking for the consumption of the people? Was it then a stratagem to cover the communalists with an Islamic mask? Communal harmony should not be preserved in the interest of Indian Muslims; the most basic and fundamental reason behind the move should have been the preservation of the fundamental constitutional rights of Bangladesh's own citizens. The Hindus in this country, as free citizens, were equally entitled to enjoy the acknowledged right to practice their own religion and conviction and the protection of their life and property. The Hindus would live just like any other person not because of the kindness of any religion or political party, but because of the enshrining of their basic rights in the constitutional tenets. Why, then, should Suranjan have to seek shelter from Belal or Hyder and depend on their sympathy for his survival?

  When the house of a student union leader, Kamal Bhow- mik, at Mirsarai in Chittagong was set on fire, his aunt was burned alive. Three children were also roasted alive when the Hindu areas at Kutubdia were attacked by arsonists. In the same way ended the life of Surya Mohan of Nathpara in Satkania. When a resident of Mirsarai, Basudev, was asked about the identity of the attackers, he said, "Those who kill us during the night return to offer their sympathy during the day, saying'Our heart bleeds in agony for you.' " To the same question, Jatra Mohan Nag of Khajuria said, "Better shoot me to put an end to my suffering, that will be best." On the other hand, after six days of unrestrained communal violence, all the noncommunal political parties in Bangladesh, in conjunction with the national coordination committee and combined cultural alliance, had formed an allparty platform to preach communal harmony. The organization was set up only when the flames of the communal flare-up were dying down. Even this outfit, barring the holding of a rally and a peace procession, had failed to launch any concrete program. A demand would be made from a mass rally to impose a ban on the Jamat Shibir Freedom party. It was, however, not known what importance this demand would gain from the new communal harmony committee. Its leaders were totally silent about what their programs would be in the event this demand to ban Jamat was turned down by the government. Some of the committee members had suggested initiating criminal cases against the looters. But one of the victims, a devotee of the ravaged Shanir akhra, had made it clear that he was not in favor of suing the attackers whom he knew. This was because he believed that the opposition parties, which had failed to give them protection at the time of attack, couldn't be expected to give the required security after the filing of the case. Suranjan was sure that other victims of violence would react to the proposal in an identical manner. Hence, this call for starting cases against the offenders was nothing but a political gimmick.

  The democratic forces had failed miserably to work out a speedy program to counter communal violence. Communal forces, on the other hand, were far better consoli dated and they went ahead with their destructive program quite fast. The republican political parties, after forming the all-party harmony committee after dragging their feet for a week, had no reason to be complacent. Many members of the intelligentsia felt quite satisfied at the thought that there had been far fewer incidents of communal disturbances in Bangladesh than India. But Suranjan failed to understand why these people could not realize that the riots in Bangladesh were always one-sided. The Hindus here never launched retaliatory counterattacks like the Indian Muslims. That was why the attacks here never evoked counterstrikes. In all three countries in this subcontinent the ruling parties had joined hands with the fundamentalist-fascist axis powers to gain political mileage. Fundamentalists were gaining strength in the bargain as they were in India, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iran and Serbia. Their single aim was to strike at the root of the democratic forces. The German government had banned two fascist organizations for burning alive three Turkish women. In India, too, all the fundamentalist parties had been banned, although it was not certain how long this restriction would persist. They had been banned in Algeria also. Egypt's government had dealt firmly with them. A war was raging in Tajikistan between the communists and fundamentalists. But never once, even in an unguarded moment, had the Bangladesh government pondered the issue. It might have been possible elsewhere, but in this country religion-based politics would continue to rule the roost, or so thought Suranjan.

  Thanks to the fanatically communal parties in India, the ruling BNP government had been able to divert the people's attention from the rising tide of the
movement against Golam Azam and canalize it along communal channels. In this matter, the Jamat Sibir Freedom party and other communal parties helped the government with their activities. Jamat-i-Islami was now feeling very relieved to be able to deflect the people's attention from the movement demanding trial for the Pakistani collaborator Golam Azam. The combined cultural alliance-led procession had raised slogans like "Bangladesh will now resist the communal hoodlums." Oh, Bangladesh. Smoking a cigarette, Suranjan fumed, "You swine of a nation." He repeated this abusive epithet. He felt happy. He suddenly laughed out loud, although his own laughter sound fiendish to his ears.

  Madol kept herself glued to Kiranmayee. She said, "Auntie, we are going away to Mirpur. There the ruffians won't be able to reach us."

  "Why won't they?"

  "Mirpur is far away."

  Madol was under the impression that the hooligans were concentrated in Tikatuli alone; they didn't go to faraway places like Mirpur. Kiranmayee wondered whether those who looted the Hindu houses, or destroyed and burned them, or abducted girls like Maya could be called ruffians? Those ruffians were not supposed to discriminate between Hindus and Muslims; they would attack all the houses rather indiscriminately. The ruffians would feel insulted by being compared to those who looted or abducted for religious purposes.

  Sudhamay was in bed. He couldn't do anything else but he there. What was the use of staying alive in this immobile, disabled condition? Making hell out of Kiranmayee's life for nothing. She absorbed all sufferings silently, never showing any sign of fatigue. After shedding tears throughout the night, could she feel like lighting up the stove? Still, she had to do it. The starving stomach caused pains. Suranjan had virtually given up taking baths or meals. Kiranmayee, too, was going almost the same way. Sudhamay hardly felt any desire for eating. Maya still had not returned. Would she not come back again? If only he could bring back Maya, even at the cost of his life. What if he could proclaim while standing at an intersection: "I want Maya back, I have a right to demand her return."

  The word "right" now seemed spooky to Sudhamay. In 1946, when Sudhamay was very young, after taking sweets at a shop, he asked for a glass of water. He said paani, which is a Muslim expression, and not jal, which the Hindus use. Some Muslims looked at him sharply. Was it fear that compelled him to say paani instead of jal? Possibly. Relations between the Hindus and Muslims were quite tense in the town at that time.

  The British realized that unless they could disrupt Hindu-Muslim unity and friendly relations, they wouldn't be able to keep India under colonial rule and their exploitation. From their cunning was born the divide-andrule policy. Sudhamay thought that it could be that just because 90 percent of Muslims were landless peasants while an equal percentage of Hindus were landowners, this craving for land possession bred the Hindu-Muslim clash as conflict over land had led to revolution in Russia and China. Under the patronage of the British, the Muslim League was born in Bengal in 1906 on the basis of communal principle. This party was responsible for poisoning the social and political life in India with the venom of communalism. Of course, the Congress party, too, could not be absolved from blame. After 1947, for twenty-four long years, the Pakistani rulers, acting as collaborators with imperialism, had usurped the democratic rights of the country's citizens by raising the bogeys of anti-India feeling, Islam, and communalism. Sudhamay heaved a sigh of relief after getting back those democratic rights in 1971. But he now felt suffocated every now and then.

  After the liberation of Bangladesh, secularism was given the status of one of the four founding principles of the country's constitution. It was an invincible armor against the revival of communalism. But communalism staged a comeback after August 15, 1995. Other evil forces, like violence, fundamentalism, religious fanaticism and autocracy, became allied with communalism. To give communal thoughts a patina of acceptability, an ideological basis was needed. Before the emergence of Pakistan, this basis was called the theory of two nations. After 1975, it assumed the garb of Bangladeshi nationalism. The people, erasing their thousand-year-old tradition of being Bengalis, would have to identify themselves as Bangladeshi. Just like Bangladeshi cows, asses, paddy and jute, the people, too, now came to be known as Bangladeshi. In 1988, after the eighth amendment to the constitution of Bangladesh, it was written: "The state religion of the Republic is now Islam, but other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony in the Republic." Why this "may be" here? Why not "shall be"? Regarding fundamental rights, it was stated, of course, that "the state will show no discrimination to any citizen on the grounds of religion, community, caste, sex or place of birth." Although there was a guarantee against the practice of discrimination, discrimination was very much evident; otherwise, why was Maya allowed to be abducted? Why did they use abusive expressions like "son of a malaun"? Did only the goondas use this abusive language? No. Then all that had happened was not sheer rowdyism, it was something else. The situation was worsening every day with Islamic educational institutions like madrasa on the rise in place of the usual secular educational institutions, along with a spate in the number of mosques, Islamic religious rallies, and the blaring of the ajan over the loudspeakers. In a single locality, there was a mosque for every three houses along with its array of loudspeakers all around. The use of loudspeakers, however, was restricted during the Hindu puja festivals. But if these facilities were to be used, why should the Muslims be given the exclusive right to them? In section 28 of the United Nations' universal charter of human rights, it has been stated that every person has the right to express his thoughts, follow the dictates of conscience and practice religion freely. These rights entitle any person to change his religion or conviction and teach, preach, pray, and observe his or her own religion individually or collectively, in the open or secretly.

  If that was true, then why should the Hindu temples be destroyed? Although Sudhamay personally didn't have any faith in the temples, he was still opposed to their exclusive and wanton demolition. Wasn't there any penal provision for punishing the people involved in these acts of sack and burning? The penal code had provisions of one, two or, at most, three years' imprisonment for these offenses.

  The sickness around him overshadowed Sudhamay's personal illness. The country was gradually becoming sick. After many years' struggle the Bengalis were freed from the grasp of Pakistani rule. The free country had its own constitution that declared: "We, the people of Bangladesh, having proclaimed our independence on the 26th day of March 1971 and through a historic struggle for national liberation, established the independent, sovereign People's Republic of Bangladesh.

  "Pledging that the high ideals of nationalism, socialism, democracy and secularism, which inspired our heroic people to dedicate themselves to, and our brave martyrs to sacrifice their lives in, the national liberation struggle, shall be the fundamental principles of the constitution."

  "Struggle for national liberation" was changed in 1978 to "a historic war for national independence." Not only that, there were more changes: ". . . high ideals of absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah, nationalism, democracy, and socialism, meaning economic and social justice." Moreover, "liberation war" became "independence."

  In a change from the constitution of 1972, at the beginning of the 1978 constitution Bismillahir Rahamanir Rahim (in the name of benevolent, great, merciful Allah) was inserted. Article 12 of the constitution was completely deleted. The article was entitled Secularism and Freedom of Religion:

  The principle of secularism shall be realized by the elimination of

  a. communalism in all its forms

  b. the granting by the State of political status in favor of any religion

  c. the abuses of religion for political purposes

  d. any discrimination against, or persecution of, persons practicing a particular religion.

  After the total elimination of the article on secularism Artide 25(2) added that the "State, on the basis of Islamic cohesion, will be active in consolidating, preserving,
and strengthening the brotherhood among different Muslim countries."

  Article 6 of the 1972 constitution said: "The citizenship of Bangladesh shall be determined by law; citizens of Bangladesh shall be known as Bengals."

  Ziaur Rahaman made it, "The citizens of Bangladesh shall be known as Bangladeshis."

  Darkness descended on Sudhamay's eyes. Why should the room seem so dark even before noon had advanced? Was it that his eyesight was failing? Or he hadn't changed his spectacles for quite a long time? Or was a cataract developing in his eyes or were tears welling up in his eyes to blur his vision?

  Suranjan, too, was strangely changing. He never cared to sit even once by Sudhamay's bedside. Ever since Maya was hustled out, he had never bothered to step inside this room even unwittingly. From this room, Sudhamay could hear the noise of drinking bouts taking place in the other room. Was the boy getting spoiled? He had never seen Suranjan drinking at home. Perhaps he no longer cared for anyone. Had he then forgotten about Maya in just a few days? Sudhamay couldn't persuade himself to believe this. The sudden silence of his son heightened his anxiety. Was the boy going downhill?