Panel Organizers:
Prof. Gyasuddin Molla - Political Science, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Dr Jamshed  S.A. Choudhury - South Asia Institute (SAI), Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Abstract

South Asia represents a broad variety of western political systems as well as presents indigenous religious traditions. Religion appeared as key factor in the partition of British India ; subsequent communal conflicts, sectarian violence perpetrated by different religious communities in the countries of the region could not escape religious influence. Almost all political parties in South Asia, right, left or center, use or misuse religion for advancing political objectives. Politics gain at the cost of religion; excessive political use of religion has become common but a more recent phenomenon in South Asia.

The institutional provision of religion in the constitutions of almost all south Asian countries has made it a political force. India is technically a secular state; Pakistan and Bangladesh have Islam as state religion, Sri Lanka and Bhutan are Buddhist and Nepal a Hindu state. The political leaders as well as military rulers in South Asia have used religion for political legitimation and integration. Not only that, religious identity, slogans and symbols have often been used by political parties for political mobilization.

Political use of religion has heightened religious antagonism and acrimony; has made room for religious militancy and extremism. More importantly, recent years have witnessed a resurgence of religious militancy in South Asia ; militant fundamentalism has emerged under the garb of religious extremism.

The papers, in this panel, focusing on the influence of religion on politics will bring forth the issues like resurgence of religious militancy in South Asia; its effects on political stability, democracy and secularism; deteriorating state of human rights and the resultant threats on internal and external security situation.

Mohammad Mohabbat Khan, University of Dhaka, Department of Public Administration, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Religion and Democracy: Bangladesh Perspective
 
Rise of militancy and extremism in recent years has necessitated to look closesly at the nexus between politics and religion in Bangladesh. The apprehension is growing that democratic system in operation today with all its limitations , may not be able to sustain the increasing influence of religion-based parties in the governance system. The incidence of violence perpetrated by some religion-based parties and their various front organizations including student wings are not only making governance difficult but at the same time enabling the government to politically use Islam and adopting measures to curb human rights of citizens by forming paramilitary forces with wide array of powers. This situation has grave consequence for sustenance of the democratic system in terms of the rights of political opponents, human rights situation, political instability, and internal and external security.
The paper is an attempt to (i) review the literature on religion and democracy to constuct an analytical framework to interpret interelationship between religion and democracy in Bangladesh; and (ii) analyze policies of successive governments in Bangladesh from 1972 to the present to promote religion in politics.
It is believed that if democratic ethos are mixed with religion than the former will be adversely affected, undermined, and become non-functional in the long run.
 
Adnan Farooqui, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Centre for Political studies, School of Social Sciences, New Delhi, India
Indian Electoral System and the Under Representation of Muslims
 
Political systems have the capacity to exert an autonomous effect that may foster or prevent the consolidation of democracy. The objective of my paper is to look at the Indian Electoral System as a key to representation and hence to power sharing with emphasis on the role of electoral systems, the structure of the party competition, the impact of campaign communication, and how legislative candidates are nominated and selected, along with the effects of these rules and processes on voting behavior, the structure of political cleavages, and patterns of electoral participation with focus on the Indian Muslims. Is the Indian Electoral System exclusionary for Muslims that are distributed so as to be are a minority almost everywhere? Perhaps, because of the lower number and territorial dispersion Muslims are systematically outvoted in terms of their actual percentage of the population. Is this the reason that in the Indian Polity their voice in the world of political representati!
 on tends to be weak and presence invisible? If inclusion in the decision making is a core of the democratic ideal , then to what extent that political exclusion exist ,and democratic societies live up to their promise. These issues pose interesting challenge that I wish to pursue in my paper .I am dealing with the majoritaian tendencies of the Indian Electoral System (First Past the Post System), fragmentation of the party system, its increasing coincidence with social cleavages and under representation of Muslims. An attempt is made to explore if there is a possible rationale for considering the switch to an alternative electoral system more accommodative, which could forge consensus on major national policy issues and relatively empower minorities and reduce the magnification of pluralities to steamroller majorities.
 
My paper analyzes the Indian Electoral System from the viewpoint of Muslim empowerment and their representation in the legislature. With focus on the role of various political parties and spell out the problems associated with the current tends in the Indian Polity notably the rise of Hindutva.
 
Peter Custers, Leiden, The Netherlands
Bangladesh. Human Rights' Violations And Muslim Militancy
 
Bangladesh over the last few years has witnessed a serious deterioration in its human rights' conditions, closely related to the rise of Muslim militancy. For years ostensibly ignored by the country's ruling government, the rise in strength of extremist organisations was dramatically expressed on August 17th of last year, when hundreds of bombs were simultaneously exploded in numerous places throughout Bangladesh. And although the government has since been forced to take measures against the Ja'amatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, which claimed responsibility for the bomb blasts, as well as against other militant organisations, the problem of Muslim militancy has by no means been resolved.
 
This paper combines the discourse on human rights' violations with the method of political and historical analysis. It argues that the threat posed by Muslim militant organisations working in the sphere of illegality can only be fully understood, if analyzed in conjunction with the influence of Islamist parties on the present, BNP-led coalition government. The paper notably focuses on the Jamaat-Islam, which party had been discredited due to the role it played in support of the Pakistani army's occupation in 1971. An unlikely prospect in post-independence days, - the party nevertheless has been able to fully re-emerge in Bangladeshi politics, and appears to be well-entrenched in Bangladesh's civil society today.
 
In considering these trends and their long-term implications, account should be taken, it is argued, of the fact
* that Bangladesh possesses a long tradition of religious tolerance, and
* that the historical movement for national self-determination, and ultimately independence, to which diverse political currents contributed, was pervaded by a spirit of secularism. The paper argues that there is a definite need to review, to re-reflect, on  the significance of Bangladesh's secular heritage.
 
Sadik Hasan, University of Chittagong, Department of Public Administration
Chittagong, Bangladesh
State Power and Religion-Based Parties in Bangladesh Politics: A Study on Parliament Elections
 
Bangladesh emerged as a sovereign state through the supreme sacrifice of three million lives in the war of liberation in 1971. Experiencing the horrifying political abuse of religion as a tool to deny legitimate rights of Bangalees in the Pakistani years, the father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman incorporated secularism in the Constitution of Bangladesh as one of the fundamental principles of state policy and banned all political parties based on religion after the independence. The assassination of Sheikh Mujib in 1975 paved the way for deviating from that aroused principle and marked the introduction of military governments in Bangladesh politics. The military rulers changed the secular character of the Constitution and lifted the ban on the activities of religion-based political parties, which gave the religious forces the opportunity to resurface. As a result, the religious forces have become the direct partner of state power after the parliament election of 2001. This paper examines the transformation of the Constitution of Bangladesh and the emergence of religion-based parties. It discusses the political history of Bangladesh and analyzes the parliament elections results. The paper concludes with a detailed observation that there is a sharp distinction in the voting pattern-pro-secular and non-secular. At the end the paper opines that the growing support for secularist parties and the decline in Islamists' support would defuse the apprehension of Bangladesh becoming a theocratic state.
 
Shantanu Majumder, University of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICS)
London, UK
De-secularization of State, Growth of Religious Extremism, and Role of Urban Civil Society in a Post-colonial State: A Case Study of Bangladesh
 
The global resurgence of religious fundamentalism has made the assumption of living in a secularized society in many states questionable. In order to uphold the ideal of secularism, which is the cornerstone of any modern liberal state, and to tackle the politics of medieval religiosity in a post-colonial Muslim majority state like Bangladesh, a deliberate social engineering initiative is needed. Despite severe limitations in understanding, analyzing and defining modernity and secularism, the secular Urban Civil Society (UCS) in Bangladesh has the intellectual quality, organizational ability and experience of social activism and is the only visible social force that can fight the religious orthodoxy and could play the effective role in establishing a secular state. The Bengali UCS played the initial role of redefining and rejecting the religio-bureaucratic Pakistan state structure in favor of a Western type secular-liberal democratic state. Fr!
 om this point of view, this study will attempt to identify the reasons behind the failure of the modern elitist quasi-scientific approach of the Bangali UCS in resisting the de-secularization of state and growth of religious extremism. Effort will also be given to establish the importance of collaborative functioning of the Secular UCS organizations and the organizations run by the subaltern Sacred for whom religion is a faith not an ideology.  This is essential for two reasons; first, due to the gap between the Secular and the Sacred, anti-secular forces in Bangladesh has managed to infiltrate the subaltern organizations and to deliberately misinterpret the ideas of secularism. Second, in order to reconstruct the idea of secularism without oversimplification of the complexity of religion, it is essential to know the distinction between the religious orthodoxy that UCS needs to fight and the finer moral values of religion that needs to be assimilated.
 
Lenita Cunha e Silva, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paolo, Brasil
Bodies As Battlefield, Bodies In Battlefield: Violence, Victimhood And Communal Mobilization Of Women During The Gujarat Riots 2002.
 
Many studies had stated that the women's body had been the main battlefield of the Hindu-Muslim riots in India, since partition time (Menon and Bhasin, 1993; Butalia, 1993 and Das, 1995), what can define the nature of these events into a gender issue beyond its political and religious nature. But, apart from the violence against the minority Muslim women, a fact had become more prominent and called attention of media and scholars: the growing communalization of Hindu women, since the major riots in Mumbai in 1993. This fact produced a situation where women actively took part on mobilization and clearly revealed the fractures in the solidarity among women from different religious groups in India.
Turning my attention on the communal carnage in Gujarat 2002, I would be interested to explore whether this was significantly different from the nature of communal violence on women during Partition and also to a lesser extent the subsequent communal conflicts and victimization of women. Can this story of violence against women between nations/communities be transposed or not within the nation-state? Does it show specific characteristics or can we talk on similar terms as scholars had been describing in previous violent situations (specially partition violence and the gendered readings of it)?
Working with such concerns, my attempt would not be just to describe the history of women's victimhood (bodies as battlefields) but also to underline and illustrate the active participation of women in such conflictual and communalized situation (bodies in battlefields). This would bring into sharp focus that the communalization is not just a male preserve and the violence that is generated out of such antagonism between communities has the women as an important active element.
 
Mohammad Salehin, University of Tromso, Center for Peace Studies, Tromso, Norway
Rise of Islamic Militancy in Bangladesh: Examining the Connections Between Poor Governance and Islamic Militancy
 
Islamic militancy is in rise in Bangladesh. The Islamic militants came to the limelight after the countrywide simultaneous bombings on August 17, 2005, in which the militants exploded about 459 bombs in capital Dhaka as well as 63 out of total 64 districts. Subsequent suicide bombings also proved their existence. Several reasons can be identified for this. But one of the most important concerns in this area is the issue of governance. Bangladesh has shown a deteriorating trend in all of six dimensions of good governance as identified by the World Bank. These include Voice and Accountability; Political Instability and Violence; Government Effectiveness; Regulatory Quality; Rule of Law, and, Control of Corruption. In this study governance has been conceptualized in terms of corruption and political influence in police and Judiciary especially in lower court. It was also identified with the government's manner to deal with the issue of Islamic militancy.  Here police has become the most corrupted institution and so do judiciary specially the lower court and the magistrate court.  From the fieldwork in Bangladesh during June to September 2005 and secondary data and subsequent analysis both quantitative and qualitative, this study shows that terrorists were nurtured under the political influence. Since 1999 none of the cases of bomb attack yet solved in the court. In most of cases of violence investigation starts as usual and then they stopped in the early or mid way. It also shows that the corruption and political influence in the police and judiciary and government's unwillingness to deal with the issue enhanced Islamic militant's attack in Bangladesh.

Chris Verschooten, KU Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Conversion as politics. A Discourse Analysis of Reports on the Conversion Rally in New Delhi and the Anti-Conversion Law in Tamil Nadu

This paper shows how the press in India responds to conversion of Dalits. Conversion is a complex process with social, economic, cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions but there is a tendency in the press to reduce it to a uni-dimensional phenomenon. The English-language press, in its reports on the conversion rally organised by Udit Raj in New Delhi, saw conversion mainly as a political action against oppression in the caste system and an affirmation of the constitutional right to be treated as an equal citizen. The English-language press granted Dalits separation from Hinduism, but did not attribute to Dalits an identity other than that which complies with that of the modern nation. The English-language press hardly dealt with Buddhism as a cultural and religious alternative identity. Opinion articles in the Hindi press mainly focused on the religious aspect and tended to dismiss an alternative Buddhist identity with political and economic dimensions. Buddhism was only acceptable within the sphere of the contemplative and the transcendental and as long as it remained under the umbrella of Hinduism. In the reports on The Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion Ordinance, the debate concerning conversions was closely related to the discourse of the modern nation state and its three core concepts: equality, freedom, and fraternity. The Tamil press as well as the English-language press located the conversion ordinance within the political struggle between secular modernists and Hindu nationalists. The two cases from the period 2001-2002 suggest that the press discourse in that period, when India was ruled by the Hindu nationalist BJP, predominantly perceived Dalit identity in relation to the question of nationalism and the role of the state. The press offered Dalits two identity options: that of the modern secular Indian citizen or that of the loyal Hindu.