Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Murderers of the atheist bloggers of Bangladesh-will the nation of Bengal fall in the hand of the Islamic extremists ?

I knew religion breeds hatred  and specially religion of Islam is nothing but another deadly virus of faith, but stark reality of merciless killing of atheist bloggers of Mukto-mona rattled me to the core. Avijit brought me to Mukto-mona platform in 2004 and since then, I have been in touch with most of the Mukto-mona writers either through email or facebook.  Therefore, each death is so personal to me, I can barely express my anger and frustration on inaction of Bangladesh Govt to bring justice and ensure security of the atheist bloggers. I have not only lost faith in whatever I believed in but for sure, I am leaning towards more extremist ideology which I myself categorized and denounced in several writing.

   Death does not frustrate me that much as death is the final destiny and supreme reality. Almost a decade back, when Mukto-mona founder Avijit Roy wrote to me for being vigilant and being careful as writing against extremist elements will ire many, I wrote him back stating,  I would consider myself fortunate if I have to die for a cause than for no cause. After all in Mahabharata, Duryodhana wanted to fight against Kaurava all because he thought death with glory is much better than living with a defeated soul. I firmly believe all of my dearest friends of Mukto-mona who have given their lives to safeguard the supreme principle of humanity and reason over darkness of religion, have attained that glory in their lifetime.  This does not make me sad at all. After all we are all soldiers fighting against dark and evil forces of religion. 

  What is frustrating is the politics of South Asia. I am a firm believer of democracy and I was delighted when democracy was established in Bangladesh in 1991. It is difficult to describe the system of politics in West Bengal and Bangladesh as ruling party makes sure victory by every possible vile means. People's choice is reflected sometimes but most of the time voting and therefore selection is rigged. All the parties are involved in rigging the election. So I would prefer to call it a "semi-democratic system". Yes, change does happen sometimes when anger of the people can no longer be managed. 

 My frustration starts with our evolution. We the Bengalis are peace loving, fish eating, music loving race from land of river-translated as Bang+aal-meaning land of river. Thousand years back, we had our own religion-commonly known as Sahajiya or easy path. Which is a relaxed form of paganism where poetry and music from deep understanding of life formed the core of our spiritual practice. That religion knew no king, no superiority, no killing.