It was early afternoon of Friday (April 11, 2008), the weekly prayer day for the Muslim community; few hundreds of musullis (persons came to pray in mosques) were engaged in clash with the police for 4 hours around the Bitul Mokarram Mosjid, the national mosque of Bangladesh. After Juma prayer (weekly collective prayer) a portion of musullis came down in to street with sticks, stones and brick and engaged in a severe clash with police, they were protesting a Women Policy recently endorsed by the advisors council of the government. In this clash several hundred police, journalist and picketers were injured. At the time of clash police was in patience of highest order, picketers rushed to them and there was an incident of looting fire arms from a police member on duty. Any way, after the clash, police was manage to recover the arms as abandoned.
News reports and observers said, some of the musullis were in the clash just to protect a provision of newly endorsed Women Policy and some are the members of organised fundamentalist groups. These fundamentalists are presently, especially after the declaration of state of emergency at January 2008, out of political issues and agenda. Even they do not have any chance to come in to political talks running through the political arena. They took the Women Policy as an issue of agitation and violence. A particular provision of the Women Policy says that sons and daughters will inherent the parents property equally but present Muslim Family Code does not comply with the Women Policy provision. The conservatives and the fundamentalists of Bangladesh are protesting it as saying that this provision does not comply with the way of Al-Quran, the holy book.
This incident is not only a simple issue of women policy, it is an issue relating with the women empowering process of Bangladesh. In 1971, Bangladesh had got independence with the spirit of secularism, equality and justices. The constitution of Bangladesh also does not allow any discrimination in terms of gender, cast, creed, and colour or by any other means. But the law of the land has separate family code for the members of each religion. According to Muslim family code a daughter inherent 50 percent less than a son from father’s property. It is the present issue of agitation for the fundamentalist.
If we look through the society of Bangladesh, it is a mixture of people of flexible and conservative types in terms of women involvement in work, empowerment of women and enjoyment of social power. It does not mean that the educated are progressive and less educated or unlettered are conservative. It is a social out look to the women and as a patriarch society majority has a little conservative attitude towards women empowerment, participation, and involvement in social decision making process and obviously about the accessibility and ownership pattern of property and wealth.
To change the patriarch out look, many women organisations, citizen forums, rights organisations, NGOs and social groups are active in Bangladesh since the Independence. These organisations are mainly working to create a social consciousness on women issues through social mobilisation and motivation. The out come of this social movement is hundreds of thousands of women are working now out side the home. The garments sector of Bangladesh has created employment for 2.2 million workers, where almost 90 percent are women. Near about 30 percent of hard core poor of rural Bangladesh are headed by women economically.
It should be stated that NGOs are the pioneer of employing educated women in office desk as well as in field. The continuous social mobilisation makes the government to comply Beijing declaration. The initiatives and movement of progressives make the society to change the thought process that women are to work in home, at best in a school or bank. Even now the business houses are convinced that 30 percent of total employee should be appointed from women, though it is yet not in total practice. But again the fundamentalists of Bangladesh are not happy with the empowerment of women, involvement of women in social decision making process. As of my memory, the fundamentalists were gone in a violent program against NGOs in last decade of last century.
As a pressure group, the fundamentalists are not negligible in social and political life of Bangladesh. As an example, it could be cited that from 1991 to 2006 two women was the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, but they were not able to enact an effective women policy. Rather one of the largest parties in Bangladesh, BNP was in power with the direct cooperation of fundamentalist forces. Other, the largest political party AL was involved in an election agreement with a section of fundamentalist force. It is mentionable that the left political groups, large section of labour organisations, women organisation, maximum of civil society organisations, progressive intellectuals of the nation are always against the fundamentalism which is the ideological enemy for democracy, social progress, justice and equality. And the fight between the progressive and the reactionary fundamentalist is an on going process of the society. This very ideological fight is the strength of women empowerment, victory of progressives in this fight would be the win over of human emancipation.
Present activity of the fundamentalist force has also another indication. In the process of change to democracy the government and the main stream political forces and the social, trade and professional bodies have their own role. But the fundamentalists have no official room in this process. They are strong in the society but not that much of strong that they could influence the total political scenario. In this state of situation, this very reactionary force is giving pressure on the government, political parties and other social forces to grip a minimum stack in political change process.
E-Mail author: The author of this article, Kazi Mohoshin Al Abbas , is a Bangladesh based senior journalist writes on issues related to socio-political developments in Bangladesh.
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