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A Politico-Religious Nexus in Bangladesh: Secularism vs Religion

October 2022

In book: World Religions and Culture: Interfaith Education in Bangladesh (pp.201-220)
Publisher: University of Dhaka

Authors:

University of Dhaka

Bangladesh is the third largest Muslim country in the world, which at times becomes headlines of international media due to the escalation of religious extremist groups and attacks on foreigners and minorities. Bangladesh emerged as a secular nation-state in 1971 with the assurance of providing equal rights to all faiths. After the murder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, the Bangladeshi state and its constitution have been spotted with a constant oscillation between secularism and Islam due to its majoritarian political culture and elite influences in Bangladeshi politics. In the process of oscillation, both secularism and Islam have influenced the overall political culture in Bangladesh. Therefore, this chapter argues that both secular and religion-based parties are, to some extent, influenced by both secular and religious ideals, which has heralded a new era of political syncretism in Bangladesh at the cost of political ideology.

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The Department of World Religions and

Culture has already passed two decades since

its foundation at the University of Dhaka in

1999. One of the unique features of religious

study in the Department is that all the students

accept the differences of other religions. At the

same time, the Department has been a unique

place for both students and teachers to explore

the points of agreements to establish harmoni-

ous relationships among the world religions. It

also dictates equal rights of religious practices

to the people of different faiths. Thus, the

Department was not created solely for award-

ing degrees rather it has a particular motto. The

motto, therefore, is to promote peace and

harmony through interfaith education. The

dominant works in the fields of religious peace

building and interfaith dialogue since 2000 to

2022 must be seen to some extent as having a

socio-historical efficacy of their own; and

therefore they can entirely be understood as

reflections of underlying social and cultural

relationships towards promoting interfaith

harmony and peace. Thus, the Department

represents a charismatic ‘breakthrough’—inter

religious and intercultural harmony through

interfaith education and dialogue. This may be

considered as a quite new force in the history

of Bangladesh higher education system. In this

context, the Department’s concept of peace

process is identical with SDGs (Goal 16) that

can aid the challenges of peace and harmony in

places of crisis in Bangladesh. The department

provides a nationally agreed template that can

aid this process, yet there remain gaps in sever-

al areas, with regard to their implementation at

grassroots level. But the Department, with

multi-disciplinary efforts, may play the effec-

tive role of the SDGs in creating a new normal,

built on the pillars of tolerance towards peace

and national harmony. It is true that Bangla-

desh made outstanding progress during the era

of the Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs). But from the standpoint of the

Department, without maintenance of tolerance,

harmony and peace, it cannot be possible to

achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development

Goals (SDGs) in Bangladesh. As tolerance is

both a moral and political need to transform a

hostile or hateful society into one of harmony

and peace, the Department is committed to

create and strengthen religious tolerance

through interfaith education.

This book marks the celebration of DU Centen-

nial in 2021 which is a collection of chapters

based on the motto of the Department and its

approaches to interfaith education that is

primarily concerned with spreading the idea of

interfaith harmony and religious pluralism

throughout the country in a systematic manner.

The book brings together various pertinent

subjects and valuable ideas on interfaith educa-

tion to understand the value of peace and

harmony from social, political, religious,

spiritual and personal aspects. Therefore, the

book is important not only for the academics but

also for the interfaith activists who may respond

to an emerging need of the academic study of

interfaith education.

WORLD RELIGIONS

AND CULTURE

Inteaith Education in Bangladesh

Department of World Religions and Culture

University of Dhaka