Nationalism and national identity formation in Bangladesh: A colonial legacy behind the clash of language and religion

On identity

Identity, or at least national identity, is a relatively recent addition to the archives of human constructs. The birth of the nation, and as such a national identity, not only took place in Europe first, but was also a purely European construct wrought by the unique preceding history of the continent. Earnest Renan defined a nation above all as “a soul, a spiritual principle” (Pavri, 2008: 108). Hegel defined the nation as an ethno-cultural community, held together by ties of “kinship, language, and other means of union” (Nimni, 1991: 28). This is of course in stark contrast with developing nations like Bangladesh, because nations carved out of former colonies were done so by specific human design and did not happen due to any pre-existing cultural or social cohesion.

The point of identity politics is, “To persuade people that they are one; that they comprise a bounded, distinctive solidary group; that their internal differences do not matter, at least for the purpose at hand” (Brubaker, 2005: 88), making it a key component in the forging of post-colonial nations. So national identities were driven even in its very first formations by state-patronization and sponsorship (Fazal, 1999: 175; Oommen, 1994).

Ernest Gellner, an authority on our understanding of nationalism, defines it simply as “primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” (Gellner, 2006: 1), a definition with which famed historian Eric Hobsbawm (2005: 9) also agreed in his seminal work on the topic. It is also one that is congruent with both natural and manufactured types of national identity creation, because it defines the idea of nationalism through its effect and not its cause. Nonetheless, Gellner’s primary focus in his opus Nations and Nationalism is on the causal connection and the connective growth between industrialization and nationalism. He states: “nationalism is rooted in a certain kind of division of labor, one which is complex and persistently, cumulatively changing” (Gellner, 2006: 24).

Gellner posits that nationalism is rooted in power, education, and shared culture, and as such is dynamic just like its constituent parts and not a “permanent feature of the human condition” (Breuilly, 2006: xviii). In many ways adding to Gellner’s thesis, Benedict Anderson (1983) would later identify the production and dissemination of language, especially printed language, as a prerequisite for a nationalistic sentiment. While Gellner states that cultural homogeneity is a prerequisite for industrial society, and hence the manufacturing of nationalism, Anderson (1983: 46) focuses on the natural creation of nationalism through the print medium. Partha Chaterjee (1993: 18), an authority from among the previously colonized, harkens back to Horace Davis on the one hand and Herder and Fichte on the other, to establish the two typologies of nationalism, one born out of a rational need of the Enlightenment, and the other based on more emotional justifications of culture and tradition. These accumulations of theses thus assume that the perpetuation of a national identity can transpire without there being a fundamental basis of that identity of nothing more than mytho-historical construct. Other authors have also contended that language contributes significantly to the evolution of national consciousness because it works both as a medium of communication and as a basis for national thinking (Hossain and Khan, 2006: 328; Vaziri, 1993: 15).

At the heart of colonial identity creation, on the other hand, is the act of codifying difference (Chatterjee, 1993: 16). As the preeminent commentator on the topic, Edward Said, elaborates, identification of the “self” in colonies was created through multiple layers, and was forged initially among the upper echelons of the colonized territories, classes, and their intellectuals (Said, 1995: 40). In this regard, the first layer of identity came from the rhetoric of the colonizers in their deprecation of the colonized, and their specious justification of the process of colonization and its perpetuation. The spirit in which the colonizers viewed the colonies in the mid-19th century is evident in the words of John Stuart Mill, who made no bones about stating that his political ideas enshrined in On Liberty and Representative Government could not be applied to India because the natives were “civilizationally, if not racially, inferior” (Said, 1995: 14). It was in this milieu that identities in the Indian subcontinent were born in the 19th century.

Nineteenth-century India had no legitimate right to be considered as one united nation. Historian Joya Chatterji (2007: 4) suggests that even taking all of Bengal to be a “natural unity” or to assume it had some “intrinsic nationhood” would be a spurious assumption. However, that does not mean that there were not contiguous regions that did not share a language or culture. Bengal as one homogenous region was treated as such from the 17th century till the early 20th century when the vagaries of the Raj split the province in two. No less conceited was the Raj only 42 years later when they divided the acreage of India according to the Radcliffe Line, creating a whole new set of nations that matched no rational national criterion.

Again, then we see the clear demarcation between the national identities forged in the West and those of the colonies. The argument suggests a causal connection with the industrial revolution and the economic need of industrialized society or the needs of the colonial powers. It was through the expropriation of resources and the undermining of industrial production in the colonies that colonial powers created the vast imbalance in wealth (Acemoglu et al., 2001; Chaterjee, 1993; Piketty, 2017; Wiener, 2013). As such, a nationalism of the European sort would hardly be a natural fit for the newly independent nations.

Bangladesh, like most former-colonized nations, has had to muddle through a number of identities, due to the flux of the colonial system and the vagaries of its colonial overlords. It has been discussed ad nauseam that the country’s political elite have tried to create one form or another of nationalistic narrative and provide the people with a monolithic identity (Hossain, 2015; Huque and Akhter, 1987; Murshid, 1995, 1997; Osmany, 1992). In Bangladesh’s case, the first set of recognizable mytho-historical markers came with its identification not as it is now, but as a more significant Indian identity created in opposition to the colonial oppressor: the anti-Raj movement.

Post-colonial identity as a reflection of colonial policy

Political identity creation in Bangladesh went through two major phases: first, a language-based nationalism was peddled, treating itself as the vaunted and tortured ‘other’ in contrast to an AIML-led and religion-based Pakistani proto-colonial regime; and the second phase was an opposition to the first, in a new religious vein. The multiplicity of identities vouchsafed by the major political parties in Bangladesh in the early 21st century are as much reflections of post-colonial political realities as they are a product of colonial policies.

It was due to the newly changed political landscape of Bengal post 1793 and the Permanent Settlement that the nature of land ownership and the character of the traditional elites began a transformation (Guha, 1996; Islam, 2007), which led to the rise in the mid- to late 19th century of the Calcutta-based Hindu Bhodrolok (Chatterji, 2007). The Hindu Bhodrolok was a minority of Calcutta-based elites imbued with a Western education and economically empowered both by access to the Raj and by the nature of landholding after the Permanent Settlement of Bengal. Culture, in Bengal, or rather the culture as espoused by the Bengali language as such, also became the culture of this class of social and cultural elites. This tended to produce a dichotomy between the Bengal, especially Eastern Bengal, Muslim peasantry and their Western, Calcutta-based, Hindu land-holding counterparts (Hossain, 2015). The influence of the Hindu elite in the Raj government is also clearly illustrated by the fact that they “held over 80% of the covenanted services staffed by Indians in Bengal at the beginning of [the 20th] century” (Kabir, 1987: 477).

Peasant political movements like the Faraidi movement and the likes of Titu Meer were as much a revolt against the inequities of the Raj as they were against the new minions of the Raj, the Hindu landholders (Islam, 2007). In the realms of culture creation, and print literature, the Bengali vernacular became the bastion of the Hindu elite and the literary giants of the late 18th century. The likes of Bonkimcandra Chaterji and his revolutionary novel Anandamath depicted Muslims, especially, as interlopers in the Indian subcontinent (Chaterji, 2005). Bengal was a land not of the Muslims. So the narrative of a Bengaliness or a to-be-created Bengali nationalism was one where the Muslim was the oppressive ‘other’. This certainly was an unequivocal break from the past few centuries, during which Bengal was ruled by Muslim rulers and Eastern Bengal populated by a sizeable Muslim population.

One of the primary reasons for this break from the past was the Raj’s recognition of the Muslims as a specific entity post 1857, which in turn gave birth to the political realization of “Hinduness” (Ballantyne, 2006; Gottschalk, 2012). Both Hindus and Muslims by the mid-19th century had started identifying themselves in terms of their religious identity, especially in in-group versus out-group interactions (Prior, 1993: 183). Copland et al. (2012: 188) refer to five prominent reasons in their effort to explain this break from the past, among which was the way religion became homogenized and “insistent upon the loyalty of their members.” Part of this was also related directly to changes in technology and time, as transport systems, especially the railway, aided in connecting previously disparate communities, and matters other than geographical propinquity started becoming more prominent factors in forging group identity (Kerr, 2001). The increasing ease of overseas travel also saw new leaders arise within the Muslim communities who had experienced the Arab form of rituals and practices and returned with a reformist zeal (Islam, 2007). The perception of threat from Protestant Christianity and the colonialist’s views of reform also actuated more conservative religious movements like the Hindu Arya Samaj and the Muslim Faraidi movement (Copland et al., 2012; Tirmizi, 1979).

At the dawn of the 20th century, in an effort to find support among the East Bengal Muslim community, and more specifically the Dhaka-based land-holding elites, for the unpopular measure of the partition of Bengal in 1905, Raj policy spurred the birth of the AIML (Islam, 2007). The Muslim community had initially shown little enthusiasm either for or against the partition, but they were able to reap its benefits as the number of “educational institutions grew rapidly and the proportion of Muslim students rose from 3% in 1905 to 14% in 1908” (Kabir, 1987: 478). Notwithstanding the benefits to the East Bengal Muslim, the AIML then was a political party created not specifically on ideology, but rather with the singular purpose of providing support to Raj policy, and in consequence further divide the Bengali polity, at least at the elite level, based on religion. More policies related to cementing this divide followed. As Kabir enumerates:

Hindu opposition to the Bengal (Rural) Primary Education Bill of 1930, the Bengal Moneylenders Bill of 1932, and the Bengal Agricultural Debtors Bill of 1933, all of which aimed at ameliorating the conditions of the peasants, armed the Muslim political leaders with a powerful weapon of communal appeal to politicize and mobilize the peasantry. (Kabir, 1987: 479)

Few things, however, cemented the course of events in the sub-continent more than the debacle of a partition that the Raj wrought in their hasty retreat from their Indian colony. It was the contentious state of politics, fraught with anger, vituperative, and frustrations, that led to not just an unbridgeable political divide between the AIML and the INC, but a state of chaos and religion-based riots. Immediately after 15 August 1947, as soon as the two nations of India and Pakistan had parted, that they launched into their first war against each other. The manner of the parting of the two nations, and the immediate aftermath of the Kashmir War, ensured that the state of Pakistan’s political reality would be one based on a stark opposition to India and a search for a religious brand of nationalism (Fair, 2014). India, on the other hand, would be prompted to use its influence in manifold ways to strengthen its own borders and weaken Pakistan, which authors like Absar (2014) and Hossain (2015) argue would provide India with a strong foreign-policy based reason to abet a Bengali national identity in East Pakistan.

Formation of two divisive nationalisms in Bangladesh

Some have traced Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan in 1971 as the outcome of an elite conflict for political power and access to resources dating back to British rule and the struggle between Indian Muslims and the dominant Hindu community (Chatterji, 1994; Hossain, 2015: 367; Jalal, 1994).

One of the earliest precedents shaping Bangladesh’s future political identity came on 30 December 1906, with the creation of the AIML. Following in quick succession from the division of Bengal, it was spearheaded by Salimullah Khan, Nawab of Dhaka. The purpose of AIML’s creation and its relations with the Raj administration might be clearly observed from the pronouncement of its first president, Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk, when he said: “the political rights of a subject race thrive best in the soil of loyalty, and consequently the Mussalmans should prove themselves loyal to their Government before they can ask for any of their rights” (French, 1998: 43). As another author opines, “the Muslim League emerged as a political party with three objectives, namely: promotion of loyalty among Muslims to the rulers, protection and advancement of their political rights and interests, and prevention of the feeling of hostility to other communities” (Choudhury, 2008: 38). The AIML, however, was not organized or strong enough to counter the grief generated by the partition of Bengal, and in 1911 the partition was reversed in order to mollify a newly burgeoning form of Bengali nationalism (Tang and Kudaisya, 2000: 162–163).

The 1916 Lucknow Pact, then, only 10 years later, was not only a momentous affair but a monumental step forward for the AIML. Jointly the INC and the AIML agreed to share power in both the executive and the legislature, with the INC getting two thirds and the AIML getting a third, and recognized the need for a separate electorate for the Muslims (Ahmed, 1988: 148). However, up until the mid-1930s, the AIML remained a party of the landholding elites, and even movements that roused the passions of the Muslim population, like the Khilafat movement, worked with the INC leadership (Singh, 2009: 124). Furthermore, it was not until the Provincial Elections of 1937 that the AIML found even nominal electoral support from the Muslim electorate when they won 109 of the 482 reserved Muslim seats, but they found to their chagrin that even without winning any of the Muslim seats the INC could form a government entirely on their own (Kulke and Rothermund, 1998: 314).

It was mainly in response to this stark realization that Jinnah focused on making the AIML the “‘third’ focus of power in India and the ‘sole spokesman’ for Muslims” (Roy, 1990: 390). Three years later, on 23 March 1940, the Lahore Resolution was passed. It was in that resolution that the leadership of the AIML rejected the scheme of federation as contained in the Government of India Act of 1935. The Lahore Resolution, as it was constituted, demanded ‘independent states’ based on Muslim majority territories, even if the plural ‘states’ was a putative misprint (Roy, 1990: 392). It is this singular action of the AIML, or as some might argue Jinnah, that resulted in the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947 (French, 1998; Jalal, 1994; Roy, 1990). Moreover, while some have put the burden of responsibility wholly on the shoulders of Jinnah, former AIC President Abul Kalam Azad argued that the AIC itself might shoulder much of that blame (Azad, 1998), and revisionist historians have argued that the Lahore Resolution might have been a negotiation tactic by Jinnah that went awry (Jalal, 1994; Roy, 1990).

By the time the next provincial election came around, in December 1945 and January 1946, after the end of the Second World War, the political landscape was much changed, and in the Central Legislative Assembly, the AIML won all of the Muslim seats and around 90 percent of the vote (Singh, 2009: 354). The strength of this mandate might have led to further ossifying of the AIC’s stance, and their subsequent undercutting of Jinnah’s strategy (Jalal, 1994: 208).

History will reflect on the Indian partition as one of its most violent and macabre episodes. The first big burst of violence came with the Calcutta riots upon Jinnah’s call for ‘Direct Action’ to realize the state of Pakistan, in July 1946. It was the 16 August observation of Direct Action Day that spurred the riots in Calcutta, claiming according to some sources between 7000 and 10,000 lives (Sengupta, 2006: 293). The orgy of violence that started on that day carried on almost unabated for an entire year, till the final partition of India. Leaving lasting impressions and an unbridgeable gap between India and Pakistan and, as Christine Fair (2014) suggests, creating the ‘anti-India’ credo of the Pakistani military establishment henceforth.

On demarcating the Radcliffe Line that divided the Empire, Singh insightfully notes:

The fact that the border was never intended to be anything other than a “rough and ready improvisation” was impressed upon Radcliffe, and the result of the labors of his eponymous Commission bear all the marks of the rush job that they finally produced. (Singh, 2009: 443)

It was the deep grievances created in the process of the partition that reinforced post-1947 Muslim nationalism. However, the same idea of nationalism had not percolated equally to all parts of the newly formed state of Pakistan: the West and the East divided by 2500 km of India in between. It was not just a geographic divide, but a racial and cultural one as well. While the very first problem the new union of Pakistan faced was one related to language, as the years and the decades rolled on clashes over other forms of cultural and religious identities were also brought to the fore.

In the same vein that identities were forged during the Raj era, according to the political tides of the time, so it was as well after partition, which eventually led to the further separation of East and West Pakistan, and the creation of Bangladesh. Just as the arbitrariness of the Radcliffe line led to the necessary creation of a renewed Bengali nationalism, similarly, the fractured politics of a post-independent Bangladesh necessitated the creation of a whole new form of nationalism based on religious identity under the rubric of Bangladeshi nationalism. While parts of all of these new identities were faux constructs, they did take on lives of their own.

It was in opposition to this identification by the colonialist that colonial identities started to take root. French colonial writer and philosopher Frantz Fanon (1968) argued in his seminal work The Wretched of the Earth that colonialism had destroyed pre-colonial culture and history. While the original identities never really ossified, due to the continuous flux in political realities, it is worthwhile to note that the initial production of an identity of the colonized was not one that the colonized themselves had a hand in presenting, but rather a faux-romanticized shaping of it by a curious colonialist mind; an attempt by the colonialist to decipher the colonized as an alien beast, who had not the power to represent themselves in any viable category. Furthermore, it was the production of such literature that affixed the first stamp of an identity against which the colonized rebelled, but in their rebellion they also gave it sustenance.

With the slow emergence of these new identities-in-opposition also came new generations of political leadership. The late 19th- and early 20th-century leadership came mostly from the echelons of colonial society that was most imbued with the education and the values of the colonizers. Inadvertently imbued with the culture of the conqueror, this new elite leadership in response to the stark colonial reality of difference reacted by moving “to embrace and promote native culture [and] mark[ed] the beginning of anticolonialist identification” (Chrisman, 2004: 192). From the likes of Sir Aurobindo, to Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Bose, Nehru, and Jinnah, are all leaders of that ilk. Their movements too, barring maybe some of Gandhi’s eccentricities, were derived from the values they had acquired from the colonizers.

These new leaders, along with the polity’s consciousness of themselves in relation to the colonial government, created the need for a political identity. The problem with this new search for an identity resulted inadvertently in confused and static identities being created; static for the very reason that they were not organic. Culture, however, is never static, and over time a new culture was generated that, while much affected by all three conventions of ruler culture, original indigenous culture, and the romantic mix imagined by the founding elites, was too changed to be even considered a hybrid of the three. Said (1995) noted in Orientalism that, “the project of describing the colonized…had the effect of fixing local traditions which had historically been fluid and adaptable” (Smith, 2004: 243).

National character in Bangladesh

Famed 18th-century enlightenment philosopher David Hume believed that each nation has a natural character: “the Swiss are honest, the French are funny, and the English are smart” (Prinz, 2013: x). The scientific validity of the claim is undoubtedly suspect, but the idea of nationalism is premised on precisely such beliefs. The national character of Bangladesh has never been well defined. Bangladesh’s history also delineates that neither its “process of identity selection” nor the “cultural markers adopted” were constant or fixed (Murshid, 1997: 7).

The political struggle between Bangladesh’s two largest political parties, the AL and the BNP, is still being played out, and this fight is being fought on the meaning of Bangladeshi nationalism. However, the rhetorical definitions espoused by each party also give a pellucid image of the party’s own past. AL’s definition of nationalism can be identified as the idea of attempting to make culture and polity congruent (Gellner, 2006: 42). This is certainly in keeping with its own history and the history of Bangladesh’s independence because the AL’s most significant political accomplishments are embedded in the anti-Pakistan movement.

If Bengali nationalism is held true to its terminology, then it would mean the exclusion of all groups that are not historically Bengali, which ousts people of the hill tracks, biharis, and many others. A bill was proposed in 2016 in the Bangladesh parliament which if passed would nullify the status of nationals of some of these minorities, and which in principle was contrary to the nation’s existing constitution and to any democratic and constitutional spirit (Imam, 2016). Stiff resistance from all stakeholders saw the bill stalled, but the fear of it coming to the fore again in the near future is not unjustified. Another problem that Bengali nationalism has suffered from for a long time and which has been intensified recently is that of the cultural congruency between Bangladesh and the Indian province of Bengal. It has become an even more pertinent factor since August 2016, when West Bengal’s name was officially changed to Bengal.

The BNP’s version of Bangladeshi nationalism, not staying true to its name, has attempted to hark back to the original schema of the division of states post Raj and disinterred religion as the basis of a proto-nationalism. This application of religious identity might not have been a conscious attempt at a rekindling of the old AIML kind of identity; however, the alliance between the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami over the last two decades has given rise to potent arguments that this brand of nationalism is contrary to the very idea of nationalism itself.

The problem of the big regional hegemon has also played more than a minor role in this identity construction. It did not require a long trek back to the original dichotomy of 1947. Post-1971 perception of Indian domination was very much rooted in the nature of retreat of the Indian army from Bangladeshi soil post war and the “conclusion of the 25-year Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace in early 1972” (Kabir, 1987: 484).

How colonial policy pushed language-based nationalism

As with the Indian Muslim identity before it, which gave birth to the state of Pakistan in opposition to the majority Hindu identity of Congress, Bengali identity was born out of opposition to the Muslim identity of West Pakistan. It was a Muslim identity born directly from the AIC and AIML conflict created by Raj policies. And it was a Pakistani identity based almost exclusively on the religion of Islam, and this Islamic identity proffered Urdu as the language of sub-continental Islam, because it was the language of the Muslim elites. Bengali nationalism, notwithstanding geopolitical or other exogenous actuators, was the singular conflict of language that came to a head in the Language Movement of 1952. To better appreciate the emotive strength of language, we will briefly discuss the causes and nature of the language movement itself.

Bengali stood in stark opposition to Urdu, as the native language of then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The biggest problem, however, was that less than four percent of the population of Pakistan in 1948 could claim Urdu as their mother tongue, while Bengali was the mother tongue of over 54% of the population (Akanda, 2013: 23). Interest and pride in the Bengali language had also become an essential part of Bengali Muslims’ identity, as increasing numbers of them were attaining education and social positions (Kabir, 1987: 476). However, the non-Bengali upper classes who dominated politics and the economy, as well as sections of the “upwardly mobile Bengali population tended to look down upon the Bengali language as inferior” (Murshid, 1997: 8).

It was then an appeal to this newly forged Muslim nationalism, in a vain attempt to establish some form of kinship between the disparate populations of East and West Pakistan, when in 1948 Urdu was announced the sole national language of the country. Of course, insensate political whimsy and even elitist hubris cannot be discounted entirely from the toxic cocktail of ingredients that led to the rise of the Language Movement. On the Language Movement itself, one of its primary architects, Principal Abul Kashem, relates:

The attainment of Pakistan had captivated the whole nation. At this time, everyone used to try to make us understand how “dangerous” it would be to raise the issue of more than one state language…The local newspapers of that time did not give the issue any importance. (Kashem, 2016)

The impetus for the Language Movement came from a mix of causes which included provincial autonomy as much as the needs of the educated bourgeois whose knowledge of the elitist Urdu was perfunctory at best. As one noted initiator of the movement, Abdul Haque, commented, “As soon as Urdu will be made state language of Pakistan, every Urdu-educated person will be qualified for jobs, and every Bengali will be found unfit for employment” (Akanda, 2013: 31). Contrary to the argument that the language struggle started purely in the cultural plain, what actually transpired was much more complex and urgent. Culture was undoubtedly a key component, but not the only one and quite possibly not even the most pressing one.

Political motivation did not lag far behind either, as was articulated by the noted linguist, educationalist, and polymath Dr Mohammad Shahidullah when he noted “If Urdu or Hindi instead of Bengali is used in our law courts and universities that would be tantamount to political slavery” (Akanda, 2013: 32).

The relentless and staunch severity of the Language Movement left the West Pakistani government with no choice but to eventually back down. It was finally on 7 May 1954 that the Pakistan Constituent Assembly incorporated the resolution that the official language of the Republic would be Urdu, Bengali, and any other language recommended by the Provincial Legislatures. This was of course done to pacify not only Bengali nationalism but all other provincial nationalisms including the Pathans and the Sindhis. As much as it might have worked for the other regions, however, for Bengal it was two years too late.

It was this division over language and rights that planted the seeds of distrust in the people of East Bengal, and thus the shape of early East Bengal nationalism became one rooted in linguistic nationalism. As such, Bengali Nationalism became the opposition to the putative cause of a united Pakistan: Muslim nationalism. It was then the force of this Bengali nationalism that became the rallying call for Bangladesh’s independence and the war against the West Pakistani military junta in 1971. While Bengali nationalism’s history is rich with the contribution to actual nation formation, it also comes with some critical flaws. Notwithstanding the cultural homogeneity of Bangladesh, it still is home to citizens of other indigenous cultures and languages. To marginalized groups like the hill-tracks population could hardly be applied the oneness of language and culture.

Religion-based nationalism in opposition to language

Religious identity has been used as the go-to national identity on multiple occasions, first as the attempt to establish Muslim nationalism immediately after the birth of Pakistan, and then in its new guise of Bangladeshi nationalism that was the clarion call of the BNP.

Bangladesh has always been a culture of relatively high levels of religiosity, even if that has not automatically translated into the polity adopting a strong Islamic national identity. A study in 1988 by UAB Razia Akter Banu found that while most of the Bangladeshi electorate did not as a whole prescribe to including religious doctrines in politics, they did have a penchant for leaders who showed more religiosity. Maniruzzaman summarizes Banu’s findings thus:

while 53.5 percent of the rural respondents wanted to elect “English-educated but to some extent religious people” as their representatives, 39.3 percent of respondents wanted to vote for orthodox religious leaders as their representatives. In the case of an urban sample only 7 percent of the respondents indicated preference for religious leaders, while 78 percent reported their willingness to elect “English educated but to some extent religious people” as their representatives. (Maniruzzaman, 1992: 213)

Just like the first stint of religious identity that started in 1906 with the birth of the Muslim League, which started purely in opposition to the Hindu identity of Congress, similarly, the journey of Bangladeshi nationalism started in 1978 under the reign of President Ziaur Rahman and purely in opposition to the Bengali nationalism of the AL. Nonetheless, the nature of a religion-based identity, as discussed, takes on a force of its own, and even if the birth of Bangladesh’s religion-based identity was due to nothing more than political convenience, it has transformed into a strong basis for national identity.

The need for Zia’s new regime to establish a strong foothold in the Bangladeshi political landscape required the introduction of an identity in contrast to that of Bengali nationalism, due to both its propinquity with the AL and its non-Islamic undertones, which made it more akin to India. As a member of the military establishment, General Zia was wary of India, or as some have noted, of an “anti-Indian” orientation (Hossain and Khan, 2006: 332).