Elusive politics: Culture as activism

In Bangladesh, secularism has long been a prominent and highly contested theme. Upon gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, the new state defined itself as ‘secular’ in its constitution—a direct contrast to Pakistan, which emphasized Islam as a source of national identity. However, the socially and politically contested nature of this constitutional principle soon became visible and manifested itself in constitutional amendments that, in 1979 and 2011 respectively, first removed and then reintroduced secularism as a principle.Footnote ⁹

In recent history, the social tensions around secularism and atheism have resurged as an intense polarization due to the emergence of the Gonojagoron Moncho Movement (lit. Platform for People’s Awakening). When students, bloggers, cultural activists, and so-called leftist actors took to the streets in February 2013 to demand capital punishment for the 1971 war criminals in the then-ongoing war crimes tribunal, supporters of the movement widely celebrated it as an important step towards a secular society. Conversely, opponents argued that the tribunal was motivated by party political manoeuvring and denounced the activists as atheists. In reaction to the Gonojagoron Moncho Movement, the Hafazat-e-Islam, a madrasa-based pressure group, mobilized in unprecedented numbers and scope, demanding capital punishment for the ‘atheist bloggers’ and stricter blasphemy laws. The politicization was entangled with party politics and also created an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. According to Bert Suykens and Aynul Islam’s study, at least 3,870 violent party-political incidents were recorded in that year, with documented lethal consequences for at least 765 people with more than 30,000 injured.Footnote ¹⁰ The Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami was consequently banned from elections and became increasingly suppressed. The supposedly secular Awami League managed to entrench itself in power through increasingly autocratic rule. However, bloggers and activists became very cautious about voicing criticism of Islam or religion, not only because of the killings of so-called ‘atheist bloggers’ by Islamist extremists following the polarization (2013–2016) but also because they feared political repression and social condemnation. At a more general level, people have become much more hesitant to speak up and openly express controversial opinions because of increasingly repressive policies of the governments such as the Digital Security Act.Footnote ¹¹ Indeed, some of the cultural activists had been active bloggers during the Gonojagoron Moncho Movement but have become more reluctant to publish their writing in recent years. Thus, despite Bangladesh’s rich history of oppositional writing and debate, many intellectuals, including secularists, have become more cautious and indirect, thus making a very explicit struggle for a secular Bangladesh more difficult.

While secularism still remains an ideology of positive identification, the political climate following the sociopolitical polarizations in 2013 makes it a highly sensitive issue as people seek to avoid the risks that come with being perceived as atheists and religion sceptics. Secularism has also been strongly associated with Bangladesh’s factionalist and highly confrontational party-political system. While the currently ruling Awami League presents itself as secular, it is cautious not to be labelled atheist, which has a strong association with amorality, out of fear that it would lose voter support. Thus, many secular politicians are eager to display their ostensible piety and sympathies for religion. Consequently, the party and the centre-left coalition continue to be considered secular and liberal despite common complaints about policy decisions or political statements that contradict secular values and pander to Islamic leaders.Footnote ¹²

Because they view politics as corrupt, violent, self-serving, and ‘dirty’, committed Bangladeshi secularists tend to be disillusioned, doubting that they can achieve significant progress towards a secular society through formal politics. Throughout the time I spent with secularists in the city of Sylhet, I repeatedly encountered the view that theatre and other forms of Bengali culture offered a higher moral ground for transforming society amid widespread disappointment with politics and existing social conventions. While some activists remain involved in political parties (Oisharja Sharkar is a member of the Communist Party), most feel that cultural activities represent a better method of achieving secularist aims and transforming society. Oisharja Sharkar, like many of my secularist interlocutors, demarcates his cultural activism not only from party politics but also from merely being an ‘artist’ or ‘just singing songs’, activities that he argues are motivated not by ‘ethics’ but by a desire for fame. In contrast, he emphasizes that activists are ready to stand up for their ideals and engage with social problems.

However, while such an ethical project of transforming society through theatre and other cultural activities is at the core of cultural activists’ self-definition, the precise nature of this ethical-political project remains elusive, as this statement by Oisharja makes clear:

Despite his claim that they ‘won’t remain silent’, Oisharja’s description of culture as a sociopolitical project is surprisingly vague. Although alluding to secularism, he is silent about the kind of politics they are struggling to achieve. Instead, he illustrates their ethical striving and commitment with reference to established Bengali cultural tropes: Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, sculptures, and the Bengali New Year. As is often the case, the wider meanings of these persons and symbols remain unarticulated, seemingly self-evident. Yet, for Oisharja Sharkar and other cultural activists, they index an ideology in which secularism, Bengaliness, and a commitment to equality or universalist humanism are central. Arguably, they are some of the most prominent signifiers of what one might call the cultivated styleFootnote ¹³ of a Bengali secularist. The theatre activists with whom I interacted typically foregrounded these specific cultural tropes. Rather than ‘only’ performing on theatre stages, they often engaged with various forms of ‘Bengali’ music and dance and also organized music performances and cultural days such as Bengali New Year or Mother Language Day, Ekushe. They seek to cultivate songs and music genres that played a significant role in Bengal in mobilizing various non-communal and secular movements, such as those that fought against the partition of Bengal in 1905, or for the Language Movement in the early 1950s, or that were active during the Independence Movement.Footnote ¹⁴ Consequently, cultural activism in Bangladesh, and Bengal more widely,Footnote ¹⁵ remains strongly connected with progressive social activism, secularism, and even religion-scepticism, though activists only rarely explicitly articulate such a stance. Such indexing of secularity through a wide range of cultural tropes does not account for the differences of these signifiers, for instance between Rabindranath Tagore and Nazrul Islam,Footnote ¹⁶ and their complex histories. Thus, there is great scope to interpret and inhabit secularity in multiple ways.

Transforming self and society through Bengali cultural activism

While my interlocutors shared a commitment to humanism or secularism in the sense of equal treatment of all religious communities (non-communalism), the significance and meanings they attributed to secularism differed considerably. They avoided explicit discussions of religion and atheism, or limited their conversations to those whose views were already known and deemed acceptable. Instead, they often talked to me about their experiences of personal transformation in which their engagement in cultural activism was an inherently transformative ethical activity. I often heard the view that theatre and musical performances and concomitant activities, such as eating together, the intermingling of Muslims and Hindus, and the messages transmitted through various dramas or song texts, helped to cultivate secular sentiments among the members. Beyond this, however, it seems that certain cultural media forms are themselves considered to be inherently transformative and as having an inherently progressive and secular essence. Similarly, although some (street) theatre plays and songs explicitly address such themes as fundamentalism, non-communalism, or superstition, many cultural performances do not. Nevertheless, these cultural forms are generally, and as such considered to be, a form of secularist activism.

Shujon Anindyo, a journalist who was born into a Muslim family but now identifies as an atheist, told me how his convictions changed through his engagement with certain songs with which he came in contact through cultural activism:

This statement about the transformative power of the famous Baul Fakir Lalon Shah’s music was not unusual. Thus, Shujon did not consider a particular secularist message or any specific interaction as being central to his becoming an atheist and committed secularist activist. Rather, as in many other narratives of personal transformation towards a (more) secular self, he highlighted his exposure to a certain cultural form, namely the genre of Lalon songs. Yet, while Shujon believed Lalon songs and Baul music were key triggers of his personal change, he emphasized that such change does not happen automatically. Rather, it requires active cultivation in the form of intellectual engagement (e.g. through intellectual conversations or engagement with books and other writing), continuous practice, and a general willingness to question and actively expose oneself to such cultural activities.

Although Shujon Anindyo described himself as a cultural activist, his ethical striving for the secular resembled more forms of (non)religious conversion and other projects of self-cultivation than what is typically thought of as activism, namely vigorous campaigning and claims-making designed to bring about social change. In fact, despite the cultural activists’ aim to bring their cultural activism to the ‘mass people’ through street theatre and music events, many of their more radical performances are staged for like-minded, culturally oriented middle-class audiences.Footnote ¹⁷ The stories of self-transformation and engagement with Bengali culture as a turning point in one’s life have similarities with the narratives of ‘breaking with a past’ that Birgit Meyer described in the context of religious conversion.Footnote ¹⁸ For Meyer, ‘breaking with the past’ should not be understood literally because the past becomes a ‘negative identity, one from which one wished to escape’.Footnote ¹⁹ In this way, Ghanaian converts to Christianity are able to define themselves as ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’ in contradistinction to ‘backward’ African culture. Similarly, in Bangladesh, the meaning of what cultural activism is emerges as much from contradistinction to a person’s past as from visions for the national or societal future. Becoming a cultural activist is certainly not a literal conversion, not least because many activists view their activities as compatible with their religiosity or their identity as a Muslim or Hindu. But the self-transformation experienced by cultural activists is similar to Christian conversions in that it constitutes ‘a process of becoming’ and is ‘always an incomplete project’,Footnote ²⁰ that ‘involve[s] the crossing of conceptual, social and/or religious boundaries’.Footnote ²¹

Narratives of becoming a cultural activist also highlight some of the tensions of the implicit and elusive association between ‘secularism’ and what interlocutors conceptualize as ‘Bengali culture’. In Bangladesh, progressiveness is not associated with modernity but rather with performative arts that are thought of as traditionally Bengali. These include not only theatre but also Baul music, rabīndrasaṅgīt (songs in the tradition of Rabindranath Tagore), bratacārī nr̥tya (Bratchari dance), gaṇasaṅgīt (lit. ‘folksongs’, songs associated with left-wing and social activism), and jāgaraṇer gān (‘awakening songs’). These specific genres, rather than, for instance, Bengali rock music or Islamic song forms (e.g. gajal, murśidī gān, kāoẏāli), are associated with a sense of being progressive and a secular Bengali cultural identity (or ‘Bengaliness’). Thus, instead of seeking to break with ‘traditional culture’, notions of progressive political transformation are inherently linked with embracing tradition in the form of Bengaliness, cultivated through particular stylistic practices, with the goal of building a national future by reviving a(n imagined) non-communal past. This orientation is visible in the theatre group’s constitution:

Cultural activism and certain Bengali performative art forms have a transformative potential for the secularist activists, who thus cultivate them in order to bring about change for both society and the self. The understanding of certain cultural forms and aesthetics as having the power to foster secular sentiments was often taken for granted among the theatre activists. Notably, these secular sentiments are rather different to Hirschkind’s understanding of the secular as ‘a unique configuration of the human sensorium’.Footnote ²³ While Hirschkind argues, building on the work of Asad and Connolly, that secular practices are defined by their relationality to religion and not to an identity, the cultivation of secular sentiments among cultural activists is not necessarily opposed to religion. Instead, it is strongly related to cultivating a secular Bengali identity. Yet, such politics that centre on the cultivation of certain aesthetic genres leaves secularity and progressiveness only elusively defined. As we see in the next section, this results often in controversies about what counts as (secular) culture and what a commitment to the secular and progressiveness should imply.

Elusive politics, elusive secularity

Explicit, open, and upfront discussions about secularism and (non)religion beyond generalized condemnations of fundamentalism and communalism are surprisingly absent from a milieu that is so closely associated with secularity and which opponents denigrate as atheist. Going through my fieldnotes and recorded interviews, I was struck by how the association between Bengali culture and secularity among both cultural activists as well as the urban educated population more generally was both constant but elusive. However, this did not mean that tensions and controversies were absent. Take, for example, a conflict that occurred about three weeks after rehearsals began for the Dirty Hands adaptation, rājnaitik hatyā.

One afternoon, I met eight members of the theatre group after their daily session for tea at a small stall close to their rehearsal room. A heated debate soon ensued among the members. It became so tense and emotional that I could hardly understand what was going on. People were talking over the top of each other, some shouting, others quieter but equally emotional. Finally, Oisharja Sharkar intervened: ‘The issue can’t be resolved today! We will discuss it another time.’

At the centre of the debate was Aishi, a Hindu woman in her early twenties and a talented singer. She was a long-standing member of a musical section of the same umbrella organization of which the theatre group was a part, but had joined the latter only recently after marrying Rajosri Karmakar, a prominent theatre activist. Now Aishi was trembling and in tears, but she firmly declared that she would not discuss this issue any more and that others would have to accept her decision. ‘Otherwise, I won’t attend the rehearsals any more.’ This ended the conversation. We silently drained our cups and went our separate ways.

I left with Ismail and Chanda, two young but extremely active group members born into Muslim families. We squeezed onto a rickshaw, and they started to discuss the argument. At the most recent rehearsal, someone had suggested that Aisha should remove her śākhā palā, the red and white bangles worn by married Bengali Hindu women. Aishi strongly disagreed, especially as she had only recently married; even a temporary removal might be inauspicious. Others argued that it made little sense for her to join the group if she was unwilling to let go of her visible signs of Hindu womanhood—the śākhā palā and the sim̐dur, the red powder line typically worn by married women along the parting of their hair—not even for a theatre performance.Footnote ²⁴ The ensuing debate went well beyond Aishi’s specific role to encompass the broad question of what it means to be a (secular) cultural activist.

Not surprisingly, Ismail and Chanda had strong opinions about this. Their commitment to cultural activism meant committing to secularism, non-communalism, and the promotion of the spirit of Bangladesh’s Independence War. Theatre was not about being an artist, they emphasized, not just a matter of artistic and aesthetic quality; it was about the transformation of both society and self. For them, Aishi’s refusal to remove the śākhā palā indicated her ‘backwardness’ and the persistence of her superstitious beliefs. They were outraged that, even in their apparently progressive group, some people were so ‘dharmāndha’ (religiously fanatical, bigoted). Ismail’s outrage derived from the wider implications he saw in this conflict: ‘How can we work for a secular society when we have such kind of narrow-minded persons in our own group?’

Chanda and Ismail were emotionally invested in matters of religion and secularism, and tense interactions around these issues emerged frequently in informal interactions at rehearsals, after theatre shows, and in casual conversations. Other theatre members often viewed cultural activists’ opposition to the use of religious symbols as being too radical, impassioned, and unable to accommodate the diversity of stances among the cultural activists. Nevertheless, such controversies were premised on an underlying consensus that engaging in culture and theatre was inherently progressive, secular, and potentially transformative of both self and society.

In Bangladesh, culture is not only associated with engagement with politics and intellectual debate, as is the case elsewhere in South Asia,Footnote ²⁵ but certain forms of Bengali culture are considered inherently secular. Yet, while people like Ismail and Chanda understood a commitment to secularism also as a conscious departure from religious and communal symbols, others, such as Aishi, embraced religion while holding onto a commitment to secularism in the sense of the equal treatment of all groups. Arguably, the frequent tensions regarding religious practices and symbols among theatre activists were a result of the ill-defined relationship between certain cultural activities and secularism. Consequently, while the theatre group’s members were all striving towards an imagined secular society, they had different understandings of what this entailed.

Baul songs: An aesthetics of ‘the secular’

Why does Bengali culture in particular allow activists to express their secular aspirations, and how does this shape the possibilities, limits, and affective potentials of their political struggle? To answer this question, we first need to challenge popular and academic accounts that ‘equate the secular with its normative accounts of disembodied reason’Footnote ²⁶ and instead engage with recent anthropological literature, building on developments in religious studies,Footnote ²⁷ that highlight the embodied, material, and aesthetic dimensions of secularity.Footnote ²⁸ Thus, while the activities in which cultural activists express their secular ambitions—plays, musical performances, speeches, protests, and aesthetic preferences—could be analysed in light of existing discourses and debates on secularism and religion, they cannot be reduced to them. Like the cassette sermons described by Charles Hirschkind, such activities ‘create the sensory conditions of an emergent ethical and political lifeworld with its specific patterns of behaviour, sensibility, and practical reasoning’.Footnote ²⁹ Beyond this, certain performative art genres are perceived to be inherently secular, possessing an innate potential for transforming the self and society. One such genre was Baul songs, a case that illustrates how and why certain Bengali traditions have become associated with secularism but also why this association nevertheless remains both elusive and contested.

People in Sylhet frequently urged me to study Bauls to grasp their philosophy (ādarśa) and understand ‘what Bengali secularism is about’. Theatre activists consider Bauls to be the embodiment of secularity even though the academic literature portrays them as a ‘religious sect of mystical minstrels’Footnote ³⁰ and ‘wandering mendicants and singers’,Footnote ³¹ whose practices, rituals, and cosmological ideas are influenced by tantrism, Vaishnavism, and Sufism.Footnote ³² But even though they are considered religious, Bauls are widely seen in Bangladesh as ‘nonconformist, antisecterian, and highly anticlerical’,Footnote ³³ committed to equality and universal humanism, and willing to cross-communal boundaries between Hindus and Muslims.Footnote ³⁴ During interviews or conversations, my interlocutors would often state that the Bauls promoted humanism and strove to overcome divisions between Hindus and Muslims. Many cultural activists quoted Baul sayings or song lyrics to express their secular world view. Take, for example, the following song lyrics by the Sylheti Baul, Shah Abdul Karim (1916–2009):

The text nostalgically celebrates the allegedly bright past of inter-religious harmony in Bengal. Muslims and Hindus not only sang together, they sang Baul jātrā (associated with Hindus) and Bengali devotional songs associated with Islam, namely murśidī and jāri gān. This ‘communal harmony’ is not contrasted with religiosity, although the lyrics promote the ideal of crossing community boundaries and a certain mode of religiosity, one in which singing songs is considered not only acceptable but even desirable.

Certain Bauls, my interlocutors said, refused to identify as Hindu or Muslim (even if born into one of these groups), thus demonstrating a commitment to universal (or unitarian) humanism. Rather than belonging to one religious group (dharma), they would declare that they belonged to the Baul dharma or that they were simply ‘human beings’. My interlocutors would frequently recite the following famous lines to illustrate this point:

This theme of a united and single humankind that transcends and rejects all communal divisions illustrates a commitment to ‘human-ism’ that many of my interlocutors argued was essential for understanding ‘Bengali secularism’. It also influenced and became popular through Rabindranath Tagore’s writings, most explicitly in The Religion of Man.Footnote ³⁶ Yet, this ‘universal Man’ is not necessarily godless or anti-theistic; rather, such a commitment to humankind and human experience is associated with the search for the divine within humans, the human experience, and the body.Footnote ³⁷ Notwithstanding the heterogeneity of Baul conceptions of the divine,Footnote ³⁸ my interlocutors emphasized that this God is not partisan or, to use a phrase that appears in Tagore’s book, not a ‘tribal God, the God of a chosen people’.Footnote ³⁹

Furthermore, Bauls are closely associated with Bengaliness. For many cultural activists, they thus represent a specifically Bengali secularism. Like the organized atheists in South Asia who, according to Binder, engaged in ‘re-interpreting, and thus re-appropriating certain parts of Indian cultural history—like folklore, art forms, moral principles, or philosophical insights—as purloined achievements of original Atheism’,Footnote ⁴⁰ Bangladeshi cultural activists, through their nostalgia for Bauls, arguably performed a similar reappropriation. In this case, though, they were striving towards the ideal of an original Bengali secularism rather than atheism per se. Binder pertinently suggests that the focus on such revived traditions and their concomitant ‘aesthetics can offer a way forward beyond normative accounts and European conceptual history’ of secularity.Footnote ⁴¹ Beyond this, however, the reappropriation of the Baul figure indicates a different mode of secularist activism to those that come typically into view and are associated with ‘conceptual history’, namely a form in which secularity is gestured to through certain aesthetic forms. At the same time, that a ‘religious’ group came to be seen as the embodiment of secularity is related to complex and contested histories of revival movements, both nationalist and religious, during the colonial period.

While the term ‘Baul’ was first used in the fourteenth century to ‘refer to the divine “madness”’,Footnote ⁴² it was only in the nineteenth century that it came to refer to a distinct group with a coherent tradition. Yet, Bauls have been tremendously hard to define because they reject hierarchical structures and central authorities, draw on diverse traditions, situationally vary the meaning of ‘Baul’, and sometimes even outright reject the term as a self-descriptor.Footnote ⁴³ Hugh Urban argues that ‘Baul’ does not describe ‘any particular religious community, but rather an imaginary construction, employed by various social and political factions—scholars, reformers, missionaries, nationalists—for a wide range of different historical interests’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Urban shows that Bauls were—like other ‘heterodox’ groups such as fakirs, dervish, or kartabhaja—subject to criticism by Hindu and Muslim reformers. During British colonialism, these critiques emerged in conversation with Orientalizing discoursesFootnote ⁴⁵ through which Bauls were associated with backwardness and allegedly ‘immoral’ habits such as drinking, improper intermixing, or ritual practices involving sexual intercourse and the consumption of various bodily fluids.Footnote ⁴⁶

While radical reformist and Muslim fundamentalist movements, such as the Faraizi movement, viewed Baul traditions ‘as a dangerous perversion of traditional religious belief and a profound threat to the proper order of society’,Footnote ⁴⁷ a positive image of Bauls as an icon of ‘folk culture’ emerged due to Rabindranath Tagore’s influence. Combining the Brahmo movement’s reformist efforts with an idealistic imagination of the Bengali rural past, Tagore popularized the ‘Bauls’ as an embodiment of universalism and humanism. Through such refashioning, the figure of the Baul became popular among the educated, urban middle class. Some scholars have criticized such reappropriations and reinterpretations of Baul practices as a ‘grave distortion’Footnote ⁴⁸ by an ‘educated class’ seemingly detached from such a tradition,Footnote ⁴⁹ which thereby reduces the rich tradition to certain aspects while remaining silent on issues such as sexual and esoteric rituals,Footnote ⁵⁰ and concerns about ‘fake Bauls’ through commercialization.Footnote ⁵¹ However, one should not ignore how such refashioning has conversely influenced Baul practices and lyrics. Crucial to the revival of Bengali culture and language within Bengali and Indian nationalism and anti-colonial resistance, Bauls became a ‘quintessential image’ of Bengali popular culture, unity, and national identity.Footnote ⁵²

For my interlocutors, it is the aesthetics of the Baul as a figure and music genre that makes Baulism inherently secular, not a specific philosophy. Such reappropriation of Baulness is not a superficial engagement or simple use of an icon but an affective, albeit situated and selective, engagement with Baul traditions—traditions that my interlocutors view as possessing transformative potential, a secular practice in itself. During my fieldwork, various theatre groups performed Baul songs at their events, and such performances were occasionally accompanied by brief speeches that highlighted the significance of these songs for the project of building a secular, non-communal, and progressive society. Some group members were Baul musicians, and other artists had added ‘Baul’ to their name, although they performed a wide range of music genres. Posters of Abdul Karim, Lalon Shah, and Rabindranath Tagore often decorated the cultural activists’ rehearsal and private spaces.

Earlier, I cited the case of Shujon Anindyo, who told me that Baul songs—specifically those of Lalon Shah—had transformed his understanding of self and society, and had prompted him to embark on the journey to becoming an atheist and non-believer. This was not just a cognitive process; Shujon and many other cultural activists also attributed much significance to the transformative and affective power of listening to Baul songs and related music genres (such as songs by Rabindranath Tagore or Kazi Nazrul). Indeed, many traced their engagement with theatre to an initial exposure to such songs. As Hirschkind states, ‘the contribution of this aural media […] lies not simply in its capacity to disseminate ideas or instil religious ideologies but in its effect on the human sensorium, on the affects, sensibilities, and perceptual habits of its vast audience’.Footnote ⁵³ Yet, Shujon did not oppose the affective to the cognitive or intellectual. While listening to this music was seen to initiate a personal transformation through slow-moving change, it was also a person’s active cultivation of these genres, their openness to debate, and ethical striving that made it a desirable secular activity and delimited it from consuming mere art. For Shujon, Lalon songs were the initiator of a change that happened in his life and a process through which he came to renounce his belief in God—notwithstanding the fact that the lyrics are full of devotional and religious vocabulary. Listening to Lalon songs was not about becoming a Baul or adhering to a set of ideological principles, but about cultivating a sense of striving and a disposition that consequently transformed his own convictions and perspectives.

It was not only the music but also the lifestyle and practices of Bauls—imagined as lonely wanderers, equipped with only simple clothing and an ektārā (a one-stringed music instrument) and committed to the promotion of fundamental equality, renouncers free of social responsibilities and status considerations—that strongly resonated with the cultural activists’ ideal of a ‘pure’ commitment to secularism. That other social groups, especially pious reform-oriented Muslims, saw the Bauls’ many boundary-crossing practices as highly problematic, only served to reinforce the image that the idealistic Bauls possess an uncompromising commitment to their own convictions. However, activists were often ruefully aware of the disparity between their own lives and such ideals. For most of my interlocutors, such idealistic practices and lifestyles were unattainable, as they had to act appropriately as a wife, a father, a student, an employee, etc. Nevertheless, engaging with Bauls and their music allowed them to cultivate the ideals that they considered the tradition to embody.

Because it was rarely clearly defined who a Baul was and what a Baul stood for, unless one was not directly questioned by an anthropologist, the positionality of cultural activists towards different religious traditions or symbols was highly heterogeneous and contested. Actively engaging with and embracing the idea of the Baul figure and Baul songs were seen as a means to contribute to the cultivation of secularism in itself but, once again, the nature of this secularity remained elusive.

The communal logic of non-communalism

Despite its association with folk culture and the Bengali village, Baul music also has broad appeal in contemporary Bangladesh. The Bengal Cultural Festival 2017 in Sylhet, which targets a wider middle-class audience, staged performances of globally renowned Bauls, such as Parvathy Baul or Baul Shafi Mandal. At this festival, Ismail criticized one of the Baul performances for its overt use of Islamic vocabulary. He was particularly upset about the prominent use of the word ‘Allah’ in the text, arguing that this was against the very idea of Baul philosophy. In his view, Bauls should use a neutral word for the divine, such as ‘īśbar’ or ‘khadā’, rather than a partisan word like ‘Allah’, which appeared to refer exclusively to the god of Muslims. Few cultural activists, however, agreed with him. Instead, they thought he was overreacting, taking himself too seriously, and accused him of being anti-religious, arguing that devotional songs had always been a Baul song genre and the word ‘Allah’, if used by a Baul, does not need to be read in a communal sense. The tensions that emerged at the festival are not just about different tastes in Baul performances but reflect divergent understandings of how Bauls relate to secularity, or rather to what kind of secularity they symbolize. Such controversies emerged regularly as a result of the elusive politics that allow for a diversity of imaginations of the adequate role of religion and specific religious traditions in the envisioned secular society. Beyond this, the incident illustrates that Bengali culture is not a neutral ground upon which the fight for the secular takes place; rather, its properties and material histories shape the possibilities and dynamics of secularist politics.

Like his comment on the Baul performance, Ismail’s open criticism was often challenged as being anti-religious. Many people, even secularists, disapprove of open criticism of religion, which they see as indicating a lack of respect for other people’s religious sensibilities. This is why Ismail was widely considered to hold views that were too ‘radical’, to ‘speak too much’, and to be immaturely transgressive in his outspokenness. Ismail’s comments were not always welcomed, at times not even by outspoken secularists. Although some activists agreed with his points, they often were uneasy with his open anti-religiosity.

One of the most avowed atheists among my interlocutors, Shishir Baul, had even enshrined that motto as a slogan in his self-designed wallpaper (see Figure 1). He explained that although he was an atheist, it was important to him to respect religion and religiosity. This was not just lip-service. Indeed, many who self-identified as atheists or as non-practising, including Shishir Baul or Shujon Anindya, invited me to join them at religious festivals such as urs (death anniversaries of Sufi saints), Hindu or Buddhist events, and Muslim iftar parties. Enthusiastically attending such events enacted secularism as non-communalism, with emphatic respect for religious pluralism and trans-communal conviviality. At the same time, Shishir’s wallpaper counters common accusations that cultural activism is anti-religious and against Islam. The second part of the statement—‘Religion is anti-me’—indicates some of the complications that structure positioning towards secularism and religion. Although ‘religion’ is repeated in the slogan, it is used in two different senses: the first usage refers to religion as an abstraction, the second to specific religious traditions, namely those that are (seen as) contrary to cultural activism, communism, atheism, and other parts of his lifestyle. Thus, while many atheists emphasize their strong commitment to a secularism that is respectful of ‘religion’ as such, they also critically engage with specific religious traditions, especially reformist Sunni Islam. This tension, however, also complicates cultural activists’ non-communal and ethical striving and efforts to keep their hands clean. Ironically, many of the cultural genres that are seen as promoting non-communalism do not relate to Islamic and Hindu traditions in the same way, making them vulnerable to accusations of being anti-Islamic rather than secular. To explore this further, let us return to Ismail, looking at his reflections on his criticism of religion and the usage of religious signifiers among cultural activists.

Figure 1. A self-designed wallpaper that decorates the room of atheist and cultural activist Shishir Baul in Sylhet and summarizes his secularist stance through the slogan ‘I am not against religion—Religion is anti-me’. Source: The author.

In the beginning, Ismail explained to me, he felt that writing about other people’s religions was wrong, and that is why he originally limited his criticism to Islam. Yet, he gradually became convinced that religion itself was problematic. Furthermore, he emphasized that it was important to address the biases of cultural activists. He made his point by discussing the case of a well-known gaṇasaṅgīt (leftish activist songs) singer in Sylhet. ‘He says that he is not believing but suddenly he wears a tāgā [a coloured wrist band worn by Hindus] … I think it is quite frightening to see this … suppose if I went to the auditorium wearing a ṭupi [prayer cap],Footnote ⁵⁴ then everyone will look at me strangely. They will ask, what is happening? […] Even I am involved in the conflict between Muslims and Hindus.’

With this example, Ismail points to the issue that, although there is not much difference in terms of his and the folk singer’s non-religious convictions, their affiliation by birth nevertheless differentiates them today. The bodily markers of such affiliation have different degrees of affinity and (in)commensurability with cultural activities and aesthetics. Namely, Muslim markers are less suitable for cultural activists’ attire than Hindu ones. Indeed, even cultural genres and aesthetics are not neutral with regard to different religious traditions. Most prominently, using musical instruments to accompany songs has a different relationship in Hindu traditions and Sufism than some other Islamic traditions. Thus, while Hindu children are encouraged to engage in ‘cultural’ activities, such as taking classes in classical music and the harmonium, Muslims risk criticism and questions regarding their religious commitment if they do so. Consequently, some Muslims do not pursue cultural activities or hide them from their parents. Sadat Hossain’s experience is a striking example. He became involved in theatre as a youth while still attending an Alia madrasa and living with his landowning extended Muslim family in rural Sri Mongol. Expecting that his parents would not allow him to engage in ‘such activities’, he kept them secret from both his family and other madrasa students. On rehearsal days he pretended to go to bed early, only to slip out through his window, cycle the long route to the city, and return secretly late at night. Even now, roughly 15 years later, having attained his master’s degree at one of Sylhet’s private universities and become a businessman, he still hides his theatre activities from his parents.

Even if their immediate family is sympathetic, people perceived to be Muslim are nevertheless subjected to other people’s criticism and comments. For example, one theatre activist was unable to extend his lease on two different flats: the owners deemed him an inappropriate tenant because he was a Muslim who also engaged in gān-bājnā (lit. song and instrumental music).

Due to these configurations, people born into Muslim and Hindu families have diverging experiences of becoming involved in theatre and understandings of what cultural activism and ‘breaking with the past’ entail. Communal belonging is highly significant in South Asia, and it has been argued that this is the case because Muslims and Hindus are conceptualized as being ‘essentially different’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Yet, even those who are committed to non-communalism—who reject such essential difference—cannot escape the effects of their communal belonging. The manner in which activists engage in secular struggle have different relationships to religious dogmas, aesthetic practices, or rituals that have become hegemonic in their respective communal groups. Practising cultural genres associated with cultural activism was arguably a more radical, transgressive, and secular act for those who have to constantly defend themselves against criticisms that their activities are immoral and against Islam. The practice of non-communalism thus followed a communalized logic.

Obviously, and as various interlocutors told me, there is no incompatibility between Islam and cultural activities as such. Rather, this relationship is, as it is elsewhere,Footnote ⁵⁶ complicated, contested, and continuously renegotiated. Certain Islamic melodic genres, such as nāt (na’at; praise of the Prophet) and hāmd (praise of Allah), are integral to pious and ritual practices widely practised in Bangladesh and among the Bengali diaspora, especially during the South Asian sermon congregations milād māhfils.Footnote ⁵⁷ Furthermore, some Bengali genres such as jāri gān Footnote ⁵⁸ or murśidī gān Footnote ⁵⁹ focus explicitly on Islamic themes. Moreover, devotional practices related to shrines and Sufism are commonly associated with practices such as zikr (commemoration of God), sāmā (Sufi auditions), qawwali (Bg.: kāoẏāli, Islamic Sufi devotional music), ghazal (Bg.: gajal, devotional and love songs) as well as with Baul or other kinds of songs (gān).Footnote ⁶⁰ More reformist (Salafist, Wahhabi) Islamic traditions often contest such Sufi practices, especially their use of music,Footnote ⁶¹ as well as Baul traditions. However, despite such rhetorical contrasting, these traditions should not be too hastily opposed. Max Stille has shown that the Islamic sermon congregation waz’ mahfil, specifically their patterns of melodic narration and musical-affective mobilization, share many similarities with Bengali and South Asian forms of storytelling.Footnote ⁶² Accordingly, waz’ mahfils, including those of ‘conservative’ groups such as the Hefazat-e-Islam, might even draw on the melodies of ‘secular music’ such as a jāgaraṇer gān (‘awakening song’ standing in a politically left tradition) and utilize their affective potential.Footnote ⁶³

Moreover, in Bangladesh it is not unusual for middle-class Sunni Muslim families to enrol their children in extra-curricular classes on both the Quran, in a maktab (Islamic school) or with a private tutor, and on Bengali traditional music such as rabīndrasaṅgīt (the songs of Rabindranath Tagore), in an art school, or with a private tutor. Indeed, Samia Huq describes how women in the Dhaka-based Quran reading groups struggled in their pious pursuit to ‘unlearn’ the songs (gān, saṅgīt) they had learnt as children because they considered this to be a ‘requisite to becoming a good Muslim’.Footnote ⁶⁴ They ‘conceptualize music as an unnecessary evil due to its ability to arouse sexual, romantic emotions,Footnote ⁶⁵ which is seen to contradict their aim to cultivate ‘an Islamic disposition’.Footnote ⁶⁶ Notably, Huq highlights that her pious interlocutors actively disengaged from specific song genres, namely those of Rabindranath Tagore and Nazrul Islam, precisely because they were considered progressive and secular. Similarly, Islamist leaders and groups such as the Islami Shashontantra Andolon (Islamic Constitutional Movement) condemn cultural activism not only as dharmahīn (religionless, blasphemous) but also, ironically, as responsible for Hinduizing society.

Ismail complained vocally about the relative marginalization of Islamic symbols in contrast to Hindu signifiers among the cultural activists. For instance, cultural activists commonly use elements associated with Hindu ritual practices, such as ālpanā (floor paintings) or maṅgal pradīp (lamps), at their events because they consider them to be part of Bengali culture. By contrast, Sunni Islamic symbols are rare. Here, the term ‘non-Islamious’ is useful for understanding why staunch non-communalists have such differentiated reactions towards religious signifiers. Reza Gholami defines non-Islamiosity as a mode of the secular that directs ‘its eradicative impetus (its secular power) not at “religion” but at “Islam”—and Islam alone’.Footnote ⁶⁷ However, cultural activists in Sylhet repeatedly emphasize that they are not against Islam per se but only certain forms and interpretations of Islam. Thus, although they emphasize that they are not anti-religious, their aesthetic practices treat certain forms of religiosity, namely Baul and shrine-based Sufi practices as well as ‘moderate’ Hinduism, as compatible with secularism, thereby creating Sunni Islam as a significant Other. Thus, although my interlocutors are not anti-Islamic in their rhetoric, their secular activism has an implicit non-Islamious aesthetic that makes them vulnerable to accusations of being anti-Islamic or even of promoting Hinduism and to conflicts among themselves about the appropriate role of religious signifiers.

Discussing Dirty Hands (not) at home

A few days after the conflict around the śākhā, I visited Rajosri and Aisha Karmakar at their home. Rajosri is known for his strong commitment to secularism and has long been active in protests and on social media on these issues. During the contentious period after 2013, he went into extended periods of hiding to avoid being attacked by Islamists. He has become more careful about what he posts and writes but sent me several pages of his so far un-posted texts and poems, believing that ‘society is not yet ready for them’. Here is one:

His texts explicitly communicate his stance as a non-practising sceptic, his rejection of superstitious beliefs, and opposition to the political misuse of religion. Many are radical, even aggressive, in tone. During the conflict after the rehearsal, however, he took a moderate position. While he seemed to partially agree with Ismail and Chanda, he also tried to protect his wife, Aishi.

During my visit, Aishi told me about her preparations for the Hindu ritual, Teej. When I expressed my interest in this ritual, she vividly explained how it was intended to ensure the husband’s well-being and happiness in their conjugal life. Listening to his wife’s enthusiastic explanations, however, Rajosri seemed uneasy. Later, when he walked me to the CNG (vehicle) I was taking home, he emphasized that he had a different perspective on such rituals than his wife. He said that he did not subscribe to any of the ‘superstitious beliefs’ surrounding the ritual, but that he nevertheless understands its significance for Aishi, especially given her status as a new bride. Similarly, when I asked him about the incident with the bangles, he told me that he agreed with Ismail and Chanda in principle but thought that they were using the wrong strategy. In his view, the incident was an issue of age and gender. Aishi had just started with theatre, he said, seemingly in defence of his wife’s ‘backward’ perspective. ‘She is still young. With time, she will learn and understand things. This needs time.’ He further explained that being from a musical family and thus talented in singing, she had learnt to be an artist (śilpī) but had never seriously engaged in cultural activism. Thus, she still lacked the adequate mindset.

One of the most common complaints I heard from cultural activists concerned the ‘hypocrisy’ of those theatre group members who fight for secular principles but ‘are not secular themselves’. This critique reflects the view that the cultural domain and theatre are purer and more idealistic, and are thus distinctive endeavours in a society compromised by pragmatic and often selfish considerations. Such complaints thus feed into contested moral discourses about how one should position oneself, and how this position affects the possibilities for changing society. The strong commitment to the ideals of innocence embodied in Sartre’s protagonist Hugo was thereby accompanied by widespread disillusionment about the impossibility of realizing them. Even activists who were wholeheartedly committed to cultural activism could face criticism for not being able to live up to their own standards in other realms, especially at home.

Rajosri’s actions revealed crucial aspects of the structures that shape such ambiguities and partial positionings towards secularism and religion. First, conceptualizing secularism and non-religiosity as progressive allowed Rajosri to reconcile his strong commitment to critiquing religion and pursuing his secular project with engaging in religious rituals with his wife, whose lack of an ‘adequate mindset’ he sees as temporary. Second, he rationalized that participating in religious rituals avoided hurting his wife’s religious sensibilities. This was a common strategy among my secular interlocutors, allowing them to avoid conflicts with close relatives while also remaining consistent with their secular or atheist conviction not to disrespect the religious practices of others, at least those who are not fanatical or ultra-conservative. Third, the way that Rajosri talked about his wife, and also his mother, revealed that commitment to secularism and atheism in Bangladesh is strongly entangled with gendered regimes that, as elsewhere,Footnote ⁶⁸ ‘distribute the burden of embodying the ex-centricity of secular difference unequally between men and women’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Most significantly for this discussion, Rajosri, despite his strong commitment to secularism and critical engagement with religion, felt that an overtly confrontational stance was not conducive to bringing about societal change.

The committed ethical self and tiptoeing around secularism

In his ethnography of the atheist movement in South India, Stefan Binder argues that his interlocutors’ understandings of atheism as a mental revolution are based on a moral ideal and conceptual grammar of ‘practical sincerity’.Footnote ⁷⁰ He calls this form of activism ‘total atheism’ because it can be characterized by a ‘moral ideal of matching words with deeds, of putting ideological commitments into practice by totalizing them’,Footnote ⁷¹ an ethical project which is doomed to failure but is nevertheless continuously reconstructed. Similarly, my interlocutors subject their ethical struggles to a ‘continuous hermeneutics of insincerity’.Footnote ⁷² They consider ‘cultural activism’ to be an ethical endeavour that they contrast with dirtier or more corrupting fields such as (party) politics, economics, religion, or the search for personal gain. However, in contrast to Binder’s interlocutors, mine define their activism and ethical striving at least partially through its media and aesthetic forms, not through explicit sociopolitical aims or a coherent ideology. While this is partially the result of the sensitivity surrounding secularism in Bangladesh, this kind of elusive politics produces its own tensions. The ‘culture’ of cultural activism is simultaneously a leisure activity and aesthetic preference for some, and a political tool used to fight for a more secular society for others. Moreover, this culture does not provide a neutral or detached stance for secular engagement because the specific aesthetic forms and cultural genres are themselves part of the wider social contestations around the secular in Bangladesh. Due to the aesthetic practices in which they engage, cultural activists are accused of being anti-religious and anti-Islam.

Thus, despite their passionate, idealistic commitment to striving for the secular with ‘pure hands’ and ‘practical sincerity’, activists like Ismail, Chanda, Rajosri, or Shujon often feel unable to openly state the object of their struggle. Instead, they index secularism indirectly through allusion to and engagement with certain aesthetic forms that allow for a wide range of interpretations, affects, and imaginations. Due to such a ‘tiptoeing’ around secularism, the goal of struggle remains elusive, leading not only to intense controversies about what cultural activism means, how it should be enacted, and what its relation to non-religion or atheism should be, but also constant ethical tensions among cultural activists themselves. Nevertheless, cultural activism and its aesthetics provide the possibilities for a highly affective engagement in the project of social change, a constant striving for the secular, and a strong sense of shared sociality resulting in a continued association of the secular and Bengali culture.