How Religion Became A Powerful Weapon For The Ruling Class?

Introduction

Religion is an integral part of a person’s identity. There are a lot of incidences in the history where religion played a vital role to come to significant decisions. The relation between politics and religion is deeply ingrained. This relationship works both ways, one is religion based politics and the other is political use of religion . If we take a close look on the emergence of Bangladesh we can see that both played important roles in the birth of the present day Bangladesh. Religion and its political use was an intrinsic element for the past rulers who ruled the land of Indian subcontinent. We all more or less know about the 200 years long British rule in the Indian subcontinent. They came to the subcontinent to do business but continued to stay and started to rule . They were oppressive rulers . The people of the subcontinent slowly started to revolt against the British Raj. Analyzing the prevalent situation the British rulers took certain steps specially in Bengal. In 1905 they divided the Bengal region saying that Bengal was a huge region as a result all the parts couldn't get the required attention from the rulers.

They also said that it was getting inconvenient for them to rule such a huge province .So for administrative convenience and for ruling purposes the British rulers divided Bengal on the basis of religion that is Eastern province and Western province. The Eastern region constituted of Muslim majority and the Western region constituted of Hindu majority. Though the British rulers went on saying that they divided Bengal to ensure proper ruling of the region but in reality the main reason was to uproot the Bengali nationalism on the basis of religion. Again after the partition of Bengal was annulled in 1911 after a series of events Pakistan came into being consisted of East and West Pakistan and West Pakistan also tried to use their full power to control the East Pakistanis using religion. My research will follow on how religion was used politically for the personal gains of the ruling class and how it became a powerful weapon for the ruling class through out the time period .I want to know how this happened and how religion became a powerful weapon for the ruling class?.

Methodology

The research has been based on the secondary data from various articles and books. Detailed analyzation of many information from regulations has also been used to conduct this research. As there is a pandemic going on it was impossible to visit the public resources and archives physically as a result I had to rely on the sources from the internet and different textbooks.

The partition of Bengal on the basis of religion

On 16th october,1905 Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India enacted the partition of Bengal.Though the reason behind the partition was to ensure administrative convenience for the British rulers.The main reason was to demolish the Bengali nationalism feeling so that nobody would ever raise a voice against them.The partition was mainly made focusing on majority following a certain religion.This partition is also known as “divide and rule” policy in the history.This very act of partition of Bengal with a population of nearly 80 million people was welcomed by a few but opposed by the educated middle class Hindus. They saw this partition as a mere trick done by the rulers to ensure their rule on the land to be more deep rooted.The people of Bengal used to live in harmony despite their diverse preferences in religion,language,facial features etc.The Eastern and western Bengal was interdependent. While the Eastern Bengals provided with food and agricultural flourishment the West Bengalis focused on the industrialized revolution.But after this partition this interdependency faced risks as per the educated middle class. They thought with Bengal being divided Chittagong port will now gain more importance and the economic importance of west Bengal will go down.But their main concern was Bengal and its people being divided.

The After Effect of the partition of Bengal

After Bengal was divided there were a lot of sudden occurrence of events which had drastic results. As there was political unrest everywhere and the people in their own land were started to get treated as foreigners people started to protest and revolt against the partition of Bengal.Many people in the West Bengal were saddened by this decision. On the otherhand Muslims of the East Bengal supported this partition. They were finally getting the attention to their problems from the colonial rulers.Living standards and education were also developed .The

Muslims were quite satisfied if not more by the decision of partition of Bengal.It was the Bhodrolok class situated in the West Bengal who saw this as a dark moment in history and totally against the partion. Swadeshi movement lead by the upper cast Hindus started to take place. Swadeshi movement was the result of the broken hearts of the Bengalis.The main agenda of the swadeshi movement was to boycott foreign products and encourage the use of their own products.The aim of this movement was to make the Bengalis self-reliant and promote the usage of their own goods . Political parties also joined the protests . The main leaders of the Swadeshi movement wereDadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mahadev Govind Ranade, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, G. V. Joshi, and Bhaswat K. Nigoni .People joined the movement in huge number ,women also took part in this movement extensively.Protests were also made using literature. The anthem of the Swadeshi movement was “Vande Mataram” written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.Many muslims from East Bengal also joined the protest. The protest made a massive impact on the then ongoing situation and the future decisions made by the British rulers.The British tried everything they could to stop the movement but the movement was so massive that situation got worse day by day

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The Effect of Swadeshi and boycott movement

Although the Swadeshi movement did mark the presence of unity between Muslims and Hindus but the seeds of communalism was so deeply sowed into the Indians that soon the unity that they continued to work with started to fade.Since Congress and other political parties were strongly contributing in the movements they symbolised bengal with their goddess and started connecting and involving many Hindu customs in the movement . They would offer pujas and call the land of Bengal their mother. This made the Muslims participating in the swadeshi movement very uncomfortable. They didn’t feel accepted amidst all this Hindu customs and it was not a fight

with the feeling of Bengali nationalism anymore rather the Hindus inorder to make their emotions stronger added religious values to this movement. As a result a huge difference of opinions started to arrive between the Muslims and the Hindus. Anarchy started to arise everywhere . It even reached in other parts of India though in tiny form.The unity that was much talked about was now vanished .There was unrest everywhere.The Muslims even created a separate political party called Muslim League. People who were one united irrespective of who they were suddenly made everything about religion and a rift between the Hindus and Muslims started to get created . But all the movements against the partition of Bengal did show results.

The Annulment of the partition of Bengal

After a series of movements when the British rulers found out that situation was slowly going out of hand they decided to annul the partition of parts of Bengal who spoke Bangla. This annulment was exercised by King George in 1911 .Bengal was united again after the annulment of the partition.Though majority especially people from West Bengal were happy from this decision the Muslims were shocked after this step taken by the then ruling Government.After the partition the Muslims were getting the much needed attention from the rulers but now that there were no separate province for the Muslims it marked that their happy days had now come to an end.The capital of Bengal was now moved to New Delhi after the reunification of Bengal.Though this unification was achieved after the protests made by the dual effort of Hindus and a small portion of Muslims , due to the extremists present in the congress party and other factors a rift was created between both the communities. They were now the enemy of eachother.This marked the emergence of separatist Muslim politics and a new Muslim political party called the Muslim League was formed.A new series of politics now started in the Bengal and the basis of this religion was religion.

Creation of Pakistan and aftermath

When the British rulers saw that their rule was about to end and there was absolutely no way to regain power they thought of one final move before going back . They divided the Indian subcontinent into two countries ,India and Pakistan in the year 1947. Again Pakistan had two parts East Pakistan West Pakistan.After Pakistan came into being things started to change drastically. Partition on the basis of religion took place for the second time.The West Pakistanis started to behave as the ruling class from the very beginning.Mohammad Ali Jinnah who was in power at that time made it clear that all he wanted was a country with Muslims and he was not a enemy to the congress. New rule started the East Pakistanis were glad about the newly formed country. They felt as if this formation of a new country was a ticket to their dreams, that their lives will improve and finally they will have an identity of their own. But these dreams got shattered within a few days of the formation of the country. It was very clear that the newly formed Pakistan and its policies were designed to benefit the West Pakistanis.The ruling class used religion as their pawn and created disparities that could be seen in broad daylight. There was dicrimination in economy,education,defence,society etc. The West Pakistanis inorder to gain a better grip on the people of East Pakistan.The West Pakistanis termed the cultures and tradition of Bengalis as anti-Islamic and forced the people to refrain from practicing them.This made the people of East Pakistan agitated .They started to protest. But the West Pakistanis went on to use religion for their own gain.They started oppressing the East Pakistanis who were already facing existing discrimination.

Positive Effects because of the political usage of religion

Political use of religion did not only create anarchy but also had its own positive effects. Many minority groups gained new life after religion was used in politics. If we take the partition of 1905 for example we can see that Muslims got more attention from the British rulers after the partition also the university of Dhaka came into being after the partition of Bengal was exercised. Muslims got new identity and got the respect they wanted. Infact the partition that took place in 1947 was also supported by the Muslims of east Pakistan because they thought this division would ensure all the facilities to them and they would live a well flourished life.

Conclusion

Religion seems to be one of the most important driving factors in the political discourse of Bangladesh. The political culture of Bengal has been dominated by the religious propaganda and it still continues to be so even after the birth of Bangladesh.

Religion is an integral part of one’s identity after all but to use this identity for politics might not be the most beneficial move because religion is a persons faith and a lot of emotions is attached with it. One wrong statement or step might bring down the most powerful ruling party. The people throughout the ages have witnessed many atrocities caused due to the political usage of religion by the ruling class. They do such activities so that anarchy may arise and they can get benefitted from it. If we take the example of India and its present situation then we can see that they are using religion to point who are the citizens of India and who are not although India is known to be a secular country. So we can say that religion has become a powerful weapon for the ruling class because it includes the sentiments of the people and it becomes easy to manipulate general people in the name of religion.

Reference

1. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current affairs/story/partition-of-bengal-1905-divide-and-rule protests-1368958-2018-10-16
2. https://mygoldenbengal.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/partit ion-of-bengal-1905-and-its-annulment-in 1911/#:~:text=Bengal%2C%20Bihar%20and%20Orissa%20had, direct%20control%20of%20the%20province.
3. Jalal,A.(2014). The struggle for Pakistan-A Muslim homeland and Global Politics.
4. Banerjee-Dube, A history of modern India.