Sunday, 22 December 2024
Sunday, 22 December 2024
Farhad Mazhar, a prominent Bangladeshi poet and rights activist, on Thursday asked Mohammad Yunus, the chief adviser to the country’s interim government, on what grounds the Hindu monk Chinmaya Krishna Das was arrested.
The arrest of Das has sparked protests in Bengal as well as elsewhere in India, including Indore, and led to India and Bangladesh exchanging terse words.
Mazhar posed the question on Das to Yunus during an all-faith meeting held in Dhaka. He said Yunus did not reply.
“Since I have not been arrested yet after raising the questions before the chief adviser, I would like to believe that he will make a sincere effort in ensuring the release of the monk and restoring peace in Bangladesh,” Mazhar told The Telegraph Online from Dhaka on Friday.
Mazhar is known as a radical, independent thinker. When he was imprisoned in the mid-1990s for criticism of the then Bangladeshi government, the likes of French philosopher Jacques Derrida and Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi had written letters demanding his release.
During Thursday’s all-fath meeting, videos and photographs of which were shared by Yunus’s press secretary Shafiqul Alam on social media, Mazhar said he spoke about the attacks on the homes and temples of Hindus and Sufi saints in Bangladesh since Sheikh Hasina was forced to abdicate as prime minister and flee to India in early August.
“He [Das] has been arrested under the sedition law, which is a colonial relic,” Mazhar said. “I asked him [Yunus] what was the basis of filing a case of sedition against him.
“The case was filed by a BNP leader. An individual cannot bring charges of sedition against another individual. Does the [Bangladeshi] home ministry have evidence to corroborate the charges against him? Why has the case against him not been dismissed yet? Why has the due process of law not been followed in this case? Why has he been denied the right to bail and will have to spend a month in jail?”
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), one of the two major political parties in Bangladesh with a history of bitter rivalry with the Awami League, had formed an alliance with the Islamist Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, which was banned by Hasina on August 1 this year, for its role in the uprising – one of the last decisions of the Hasina government.
The ban was overturned with the fall of the Hasina government
The poet-rights activist said he had interacted with the arrested monk earlier and did not consider him a traitor.
“There was no reason to arrest him,” said Mazhar.
The arrest of Das in connection with the murder of a lawyer in Chittagong by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s detective branch has sparked severe protests as well as increased atrocities on the Hindu community amid rising tension between India and Bangladesh.
On Tuesday, when Das’s bail plea was to come up before a Chittagong court, no lawyer turned up to represent him fearing for their lives.
“There is no reason to deny that attacks have taken place on Hindu temples. Islamists have also carried out attacks on the graves of Sufi saints,” Mazhar said.
Accused of graft, committing atrocities and not holding free and fair elections in the last 15 years, Hasina had to flee and take shelter in India following a mass uprising that started in July and ended on August 5, when statues of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the official residence of Hasina were vandalised.
Hasina’s stay in Delhi and several decisions of the interim government – of which Yunus is the chief adviser – like relaxation of visa norms for Pakistan residents have further complicated the situation.
“India should be ashamed for having given shelter to Hasina. Bangladesh will not go back to the old Bangladesh. Hasina will not be reinstated here. That is not going to happen,” said Mazhar, who was born five days before Partition in 1947.
“We have to tell the world that we are not going to be the colony of Delhi or Beijing or any European country, nor do we want Bangladesh to become another Iran. People of Bangladesh irrespective of their religious faiths and beliefs will protect Bangladesh,” he asserted.
“We participated in the mass uprising to get rid of these elements. Unfortunately, we did not succeed completely. The political parties are in a hurry to conduct early elections so that they can loot the country like the previous regime. A section of the administration is also working against Yunus.
“If we all support Yunus wholeheartedly I am confident a new Bangladesh will emerge,” he said. “The reason why Yunus was chosen to be the chief adviser was because of his qualities as a human being. What he lacks in political sense, we are there to advise him. But that process has not been smooth.”
Mazhar’s wife, Farida Akhter, is among the advisers to the interim government.
Soon after the fall of the Hasina government, Bangladesh plunged into chaos as those who opposed Hasina and her party the Awami League and its students’ wing Chhatra League accused of carrying out atrocities went on a rampage targeting homes of Awami League leaders and sympathisers, a section of teachers and the police, many of whom were killed brutally.
“If Jamaat has to be stopped then you must help us. But that will not be possible with the Hindutva forces operating in India,” said Mazhar. “There is a lot of propaganda, we have to be very cautious at this critical juncture.”
