The unholy killings of Avijit Roy and Govind Pansare

Bangladesh was born partly out of a struggle to protect the dignity of mother-tongue Bengali against assaults from Urdu, Pakistan’s state-sponsored ‘national unity’ language. Any multi-lingual nation-state that favours some languages over others is fundamentally insecure about diversity, hiding behind ‘national unity’. In independent Bangladesh, Bengali has emerged as the dominant language of online media. There is a popular, vibrant blog-centric cyber-activism culture in Bengali with many ideological shades — Liberation war idealists, Marxists, atheists, Islamists, feminists, secular and non-secular Bengali nationalists and so on. The Bengali blogosphere plays a role in shaping the political discourse of Bangladesh.

Avijit Roy, a famous blogger, founder of Bengali blog MuktoMona (Freethinker) and a prolific writer propagating rational and scientific spirit, was hacked to death by ‘unknown assailants’ in the university area of Dhaka on 26th February, in front of by-standers and security forces. His wife, Rafida Ahmed Bonna, was badly injured while trying to protect him. Ansar Bangla-7, an Islamist group has claimed responsibility. While there has been widespread condemnation in Bangladesh, many Bengali Islamists are openly jubilant in the social media on Avijit’s death. They rue the fact that Avijit Roy put their religion under the scanner of his rationalism. Avijit did this for other religions, including Hinduism that is falsely but automatically associated with him, given his family origins. He was personally an atheist. It must be supreme irony that atheist Avijit Roy died a Malaun (derogatory codeword for Hindu Bengalis used by Islamists in Bangladesh, Arabic word that meaning ‘one who is deprived of God’s mercy’). Those jubilant at his death remember just a blasphemous Malaun. Hindutva types trying to score points using Avijit’s corpse wouldnt be amused if they read Avijit’s take on Hinduism. There’s a difference between protector of gods and those believe that gods protect them. I am in the latter category.

Earlier in February, Govind Pansare, communist leader, rationalist, freethinker and social activist, was killed in Maharashtra. The attack happened in broad daylight. One can be almost sure that his killers won’t be found. You and I know typically in what situations the police can’t find the killers. These are unholy times in the subcontinent.

Some browns are very sensitive to mood-swings of Whites in Whiteland and take to protesting the horrible killings of French cartoonists on cue. They are ‘global’ citizens. The majority world of darker people appear ‘backward’ to them, not worthy of the same kind of sympathy and solidarity. Some Delhi people had turned up at the French embassy after the cartoonists’ killings. There was no such protest in Delhi for Avijit Roy. It was left to Kolkata to organize a street-protest in solidarity with another Bengali. That’s fine but let’s note that fashionable brown cosmopolitanism has never been colour-blind. Ask them the name of any Indonesian intellectual. Their faces will show 50 shades of incredulity — Indonesian intellectual?

Some mental worlds are colourless and rudderless without being appendages to White culture. Those who respond reflexively to #JeSuis symbolisms might do well to appreciate what a friend of mine from Dhaka says, “there is difference in terms of power between a ‘Hindu’ blogger, the weakest of weak in Bangladesh, and a satire magazine run by majority white French men in France." When you see pictures from the ‘good days’ of 1960s and '70s when Afghanistan was but a cool stopover in the white Hippie trail running across national borders from Turkey to Goa, hold back your identification with that ‘freedom’. Browns weren’t allowed to go from Goa to Turkey like that, ‘liberated’ or not. Let’s learn to respect our dead without imported tears.

The author comments on politics and culture @gargac