Merry Christmas to all. It is a sign of the rising urgency of the necessary work that still needs to be done in order to foster tolerance in Bangladesh that the Awami League has taken security measures in order to ensure that peace prevails for the Christmas celebrations in Bangladesh. It were as if the voice of the government pronounced: “Let peace prosper by arming the police force.”
As the New Nation reports:
“Members of police and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) will remain on guard at the churches across the country today. In a press release, RAB said that stringent security measures have been taken up to ensure peaceful observation of the Holy Day.”
Moreover in a signal of solidarity the Hindu community has reached out to the Christian in Bangladesh to declare greetings of peace and prosperity.
Bangladesh is–or rather, should be–dogged by a long history of anti-Christian and anti-Hindu persecution. I insert the discomfiting phrase–“should be”– in order to emphasize that it is not clear whether successive governments in Bangladesh had done much to tamp down violence initiating from religious sentiment. Indeed, it is entirely possible that the previous sitting government led by the BNP stoked the fire of religious hatred because it included in its coalition the Jamaat-e-Islami, a rabidly intolerant political party, which dominates other Islamic social groups.
Bangladesh is now being looked upon with less disapprobation for adhering to some semblance of human rights protection, where NGO’s expect that the Awami League government will do more in the years to come. Considering this the government of Bangladesh must crack down on threats to evict Christians from their rightful property and other acts of violence against members of the Christian, Hindu and Ahmadiyya communities in Bangladesh.
Civilized nation-states should not seek to foster anti-religious fervor. As Bangladesh wishes to join the community of civilized and exemplary nation-states–it has already shown itself to be an exemplary moderate democracy of Muslims–so it must reify its promise of protection to its minority communities, the same promise whose unfulfilled specter unleashed the dogs of civil war and led to its sui-generis birth in 1971.
