Parvez Alam

DISAPPEARING PUBLIC SPHERES

Censorship in Bangladesh

Eva Tas Foundation | Amsterdam

Introduction

Het doel van de staat is de vrijheid – I only managed to read the sentence engraved at the bottom of the Baruch Spinoza monument that stands at Zwanenburgwal, just in front of the City Hall of Amsterdam. I did not understand what it means; it was just my second day in Amsterdam and I had zero knowledge of the Dutch Language. It means “The purpose of the State is freedom”, my Dutch friend translated. Now, that was familiar. It’s a famous quotation from Spinoza’s once infamous and highly controversial book Theologico-Political Treatise (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus). It was also more than familiar; words like ‘State’ and ‘Freedom’ made me wonder. They made me nostalgic, reminded me of lots of things. Reminded me of things that happened in the past, in my own lifetime and in the past when I was not even born. I remembered that Spinoza was expelled by the Amsterdam Municipal Authority after he was censured by the Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1656. And now his statue stands in front of the municipal building of the same city from which he was expelled. Theologico-Political Treatise, the book that contained this famous proclamation “The purpose of the State is freedom”, was also banned by the Dutch government in 1674 along with Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan.¹ The state in which Spinoza lived could not provide much freedom for his thought and expression. Things have changed in Europe since then, especially when it comes to freedom of expression. Although many fear the world including Europe is moving in a different direction these days, where I come from freedom has really become scarce recently. For the state that was born in 1971 with the name of ‘People’s Republic of Bangladesh’, freedom was certainly its highest purpose at birth. That’s why we call the war that gave birth to it the ‘Liberation War’. And it was not just liberation from a foreign country or economy, but also from its military rule and sectarian policy that rarely upheld freedom of any kind as a value.

I wrote a book called ‘Shahbager Rashtroprokolpo’ (State Project of Shahbag) few years ago, in which I tried to analyze the purpose of founding of our state, where was it supposed to head, and where it is heading now. It was supposed to be a secular state that upholds values like freedom of religion and opinion. Democracy was another goal, which was non-existent when the country was called East Pakistan. Both secularism and democracy became two of the four basic principles of the constitution of the new-born country. The poverty-ridden country has struggled to uphold such values since its birth. But recently values like ‘secularism’ and ‘democracy’ have become vulnerable to an extent quite unprecedented in the history of the country. These values now remain mostly on paper, not in reality. Freedom of religion and expression came under threat from both the ruling regime and Islamist terrorists. The tragic drama that unfolded in the last few years made the life of writers and activists such as me vulnerable, and that is why I was now standing in front of the statue of Spinoza. Otherwise I would have been in Bangladesh right now doing my thing, writing something else rather than this book. As I said, the statue of Spinoza reminded me of so many things, things that also happened in the past when I was not even born. My mind pondered the history of the Spanish inquisition, something that forced Spinoza’s ancestors from their home in Spain to seek refuge in Amsterdam.² Yes, Spinoza was the descendant of the refugees. Europe should remember such past history while it faces the current refugee crisis born out of the ongoing war in the Middle East.

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past”, is another famous quotation from Spinoza. Well, this is not the only reason I find it important to study the past. I have written a couple of books about the history of Islam because it was a burden that as a Bangladeshi human being I had to take up. Both the West and Islam hold inescapable discursive hegemony over our lives, and we have to make them a matter of knowledge in our own language if we want to stand any chance in the crisis that is unfolding all over the world. I love reading about the past; I am passionate about the history of ideas. That made it easier for me to take up this burden. That is why I wrote my first book on the history of the Islamic golden age, the rise and demise of the great philosophical and scientific culture in the medieval Muslim world. So, standing in front of the Spinoza monument also reminded me of Ibn Rushd, who is known as ‘Averroes’ in the West. Ibn Rushd lived in the 12th century, in ‘Muslim Spain’ which was called Al-Andalus back then, the land where Spinoza’s ancestors lived. He was a polymath, a great Aristotelian philosopher, an Islamic law expert and probably the first Muslim feminist. He also held the position of chief judge in Cordoba. But Rushd was banished to an island in his old age on a charge of blasphemy, although the real reason behind his banishment was political. Many of his books were burned, only a few of his original Arabic works survive in our time. Fortunately for us, many books written by Ibn Rushd were translated during his lifetime. Michael Scot, a 12th century Scottish scholar, translated his work from Arabic to Latin. During the 13th century Jacob Anatoli translated many books by Ibn Rushd into Hebrew, and was later invited to Naples by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. These Hebrew books were later translated into Latin and acquired immense popularity. These Latin translations of Averroes’ work led the way to the popularization of Aristotle. ³ Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle were the foundation for the Aristotelian revival in the 12th and 13th centuries in Europe. Moses Maimonides and Samuel Ben Tibbon were younger contemporaries of Ibn Rushd. Maimonides was also born in Cordoba, Ibn Rushd’s home town. Both of them were immensely influenced by Ibn Rushd⁴. The Cordoban Caliphate was one of the most multi-cultural and pluralistic societies of its time. The fall of Ibn Rushd also marks the end of the golden age of Islam to some degree.

Some similarities between Ibn Rushd and Spinoza’s thought are remarkable. Spinoza was probably familiar with Ibn Rushd’s philosophical claims through the Jewish Renaissance Averroist (follower of Ibn Rushd) Elijah Delmedigo, whose book “The Examination of Religion’’ can be found in Spinoza’s library⁵. Maimonides is probably another source through whom Spinoza could be familiar with Ibn Rushd’s ideas. However, when it comes to Spinoza’s view on philosophy and religion, his thoughts are closer to Ibn Rushd than Elijah Delmedigo or Moses Maimonides. According to Carlos Fraenkel, Spinoza’s approach to the relationship between philosophy and religion in the writings preceding the critique of religion in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in a sense radicalizes the stance on philosophy and religion advocated by Ibn Rushd in his chief philosophical-theological work, the Fas.l al-maqâl (Decisive Treatise). We should bear in mind such complex and multicultural history of the development of the ideas of enlightenment, in a world that is now considered by many to be a battlefield for the clash of civilizations. But I do not intend to write the history of such distant past in this book. I would rather write the history of a recent past, which I had to live through. Standing in front of the Spinoza monument reminded me mostly of the people who were my friends and colleagues, people with whom I agreed, disagreed and agreed to disagree on certain points, those who were killed, jailed or had to flee from Bangladesh. This is when I decided to write a book that would contain their history, and the history of the growth and demise of new public spheres in Bangladesh.

Chapter 1

New Public Spheres

Rise of Bangla Blogosphere

The rise of a new form of public sphere in Bangladesh in the internet age cannot be talked about without mentioning the birth and rise of the Bangla Blogosphere. It is also one of the main forms of public sphere described in this book. Public spheres are forums where public opinions are shaped.⁶ Internet-based communities and forums have been considered new public spheres in the early phase of development of such virtual spaces of communication as the internet, and have revolutionized the way people communicate, access information and distribute it. The internet has made it possible for its user to be both the consumer and producer of communication content⁷. The term ‘Bangla Blogosphere’ to denote the network of Bangla community blogs, which appeared after 2005 when the technology of writing Bangla on the internet came to maturity, is used by several Bangladesh social media experts and researchers. Bangladeshi poet and social media researcher Moiyen Zalal Chowdhury sought to theorize and understand the emergence and future of the Bangla blogging culture around the Habermasian idea of public sphere (Öffentlichkeit).

The history of Bangla Blogosphere can be traced back to the emergence of a community blog named Somewhereinblog. The blog came into existence in 2005 and quickly became popular among middle class youth who had internet connection and had the ambition to become writers, and the urge to express themselves and to get into debate about social, religious and political issues. This is the blog where I also started my blogging career. I had been writing in little magazines before I started writing blogs. But I truly became a serious writer when I was in Somewhereinblog, when I had a loyal readership and some serious critics. I also loved to get into debates, another thing that drew me to the Bangla blogging culture. I knew about blogs long before Bangla Blogosphere emerged, but personal blogging culture in blogspot or wordpress did not attract me much. However, Somewhereinblog was something else. It was a community blog where many young Bangladeshis came together and it was a place where I could easily write in the Bangla language. It soon became a thriving community where bloggers could comment on each other’s posts, could debate with each other, and become friends or competitors. It was a place where I could be part of a community and a place where I hoped to create new activist groups and communities. Many community blogs emerged in Bangladesh after Somewhereinblog. Although blogging is mainly known as personal blogging worldwide, community blogging is the dominating trend in the Bangla blogosphere.⁸ This community characteristic of Bangla Blogs brings them closer to an ideal form of public sphere, where people can express themselves, debate each other and form public opinion. And when the public opinion formed in blogs took to the streets, when blog-based activists started successfully mobilizing people for causes and started to influence state policy, the Bangla Blogosphere looked very similar to a Utopia of Habermasian public sphere.

According to Jürgen Habermas, many features of our ‘Information Age’ are similar to the primitive social and political forms of the hunting and gathering society, a society which was also the most egalitarian society in human history. Habermas states that there are many striking parallels in the lack of boundaries in hunting-gathering society and modern electronic society. ⁹ Some experts suggest that social media creates space for political communication and increases democratic capacities for political discussion within a virtual public sphere. According to them, social media can empower citizens to challenge the political and economic power of governments and the corporations.¹⁰ Proponents of cyberspace suggested that the decline of the public sphere will be halted by the democratizing effects of the internet which will pave the way for a democratic utopia.¹¹ However, sceptics are less optimistic, even somewhat critical of such wishful thinking. I myself was certainly one among those who hoped for the best. Many internet age young revolutionaries thought that the internet would bring positive change, would pave the way for a more direct form of democracy than the faulty democracy or autocracy that we see in what we call the ‘Third World’, and I was one among them. Regardless of what the experts said, many like us who wanted immediate change in the political environment and the status quo hoped for an internet era revolution powered by mass participation.

Most early bloggers in Bangladesh were serious writers, poets and public intellectuals. The Bangla Blogosphere remained mostly a liberal space with a small community of bloggers for its first few years. Some of the most interesting debate on religion and politics occurred during this period. However, debates turning into confrontation between secularists and Islamists was something that happened quite often too, and intensified as years went by. Debate between theism and atheism was another form of common debate that could be seen in Bangla Blogosphere from its very beginning. This kind of debate would often turn ugly. The war crime of 1971 and the involvement of Jamaat-e-Islami in genocide was another central issue. Such debates pushed the limits of freedom of speech and regularly resulted in temporary or permanent bans of certain bloggers. Somewherein and other blogs had their own censorship regulations. Although in the earlier period these community blog admins and moderators were reluctant to enforce regulations and the bloggers had more inclination to maintain a liberal and tolerant atmosphere, things changed pretty soon. As years went by and more members registered in Somewhereinblog, things got more and more complex. Objections to certain blogs, online harassment and trolling emerged to be the dominant culture. Now the blogosphere was becoming a less liberal place with every passing day. Now with hundreds of thousands of registered members, the Bangla Blogosphere was becoming more and more a mirror of reality. Distinction between the virtual and real was rapidly dissolving. The ‘Virtual Reality’ was no less real anymore, and when the virtual debates and confrontation crossed the limitation of virtual sphere and took to the streets, reaching the most rural areas of Bangladesh, it felt more real than anything I have ever experienced.

_ Jamaat-e-Islami and the War Crimes debate

Debate regarding the Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islam and its involvement in the war crimes against humanity during 1971 was one of the most central issues since the emergence of Bangla Blogosphere. In fact, it can be said that it was the most prominent issue of a discursive nature in Bangla Blogosphere. A survey conducted by Fahmidul Haque, a New Media researcher and Dhaka University Assistant Professor of Journalism, concluded that 73.3% of bloggers find this debate to be the most prominent issue. With a highly discursive nature this issue concerned nationalism, activism and identity with long term interactivity and participation. ¹²

To understand the background of this issue, we have to look back to the history of Bangladesh. Bangladesh was born in 1971 after a nine month long liberation war against Pakistan. The liberation war of Bangladesh is one of the bloodiest wars since the Second World War. According to one estimate, 1.5 million people were killed during the war.¹³ Between two and four hundred thousand women were raped by the Pakistani military and their collaborators. ¹⁴ ¹⁵ Most victims were of Hindu religion and political supporters of the independence movement. During the liberation war, Jamaat-e-Islami took a pro-Pakistani political position, with their leaders not only collaborating with the Pakistani military regime but also forming several paramilitary forces that took part in genocide and other war crimes.¹⁶ The best known of the paramilitary forces that collaborated with the Pakistani military was called Razakar, a name that has become a pejorative in independent Bangladesh. Another of these paramilitary forces was Al-Badr, largely controlled by Islami Chatra Shangha (Islamic Student Organization) leaders. This organization played a central role in the kidnapping and murder of many Bangladeshi intellectuals during the final period of the liberation war. Some have suggested that as many as 2,000 such murders were carried out from 11th to 14th December 1971.¹⁷ Some of the top Jamaat leaders, such as Motiur Rahman Nijami and Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid, were Al-Badr commanders. They also took part in the arrest and killing of several young freedom fighters from a group famously known as the ‘Urban Guerrillas’. ¹⁸ Some of these Freedom fighters such as Rumi, Bodi, Jewel and others became cultural heroes to the post-liberation Bangladeshi youth.

After the liberation war ended, the newly established Bangladeshi government failed to bring the war criminals to trial due to economic and diplomatic limitations. Bangladesh was born as a war-torn country in dire need of economic support and international recognition. India returned the POWs to Pakistan according to the Shimla accord signed by both countries.¹⁹ The new Bangladeshi government had to release 193 Pakistani war criminals in return for recognition by Pakistan and economic aid promised by the Middle Eastern countries, mainly Saudi Arabia. Most Jamaat leaders involved in war crimes were either in hiding or were out of the country in this period. After the massive political change in 1975, Islamists returned to the mainstream politics of Bangladesh, as did the war criminals along with them. Some of them had central positions in General Zia’s regime. Ghulam Azam, the chief of Jamaat, returned to Bangladesh in 1980. After 1990, Jamaat emerged as one of the important players in the Bangladeshi mainstream political arena. Although Bangladesh as a state failed to bring the war criminals of 1971 to trial, a movement asking for their trial was born just after independence. This movement was lead by predominantly secularist civil society members who kept the demand alive for years to come. Jahanara Imam, a writer and activist, played the most important role in maintaining the demand for justice for war crimes during the early 90s. Jahanara Imam was the mother of Rumi, the most famous member of ‘Urban Guerrillas’. She was known popularly as the ‘Shahid Janani’(Mother of the Martyr). Under her leadership the movement achieved a new dimension. Her book ‘Ekattorer Dinguli’ (Days of seventy one) became a cult classic to many Bangladeshi youths who grew up during the 90s. I myself was one of those youths and kept the demand for a trial of war criminals close to my heart after reading the book. Like many others of our generation, I also took part in protests and events asking for trials for the war criminals. It became a tradition for many of us to commemorate 14th December as the intellectual martyrs’ day, and also to ask for the trials of the war criminals. The movement demanding trials intensified in the post-2000 era, when some of the war criminals came to hold parliamentary and ministerial positions. The fact that JI never tried to re-evaluate their position in the liberation war, and their leaders continuously remarked that they had not made any mistake in 1971, only infuriated their opponents. In the name of Islam they continued to preach Pakistani-era discourses that disregarded the sovereignty of an independent Bangladesh. Anti-Jamaat agitation among the secularists and progressive youth increased after they came to power as an ally of BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party). Large numbers of the Hindu minority were attacked all over the country by JI activists as soon as they came to power,²⁰ which only intensified anti-Jamaat agitation. Within a few years, such agitation only grew. This was a period when students of Jahangir Nagar University would lie on the ground to prevent a government minister from entering their campus. This minister was none other than the then Agriculture Minister Motiur Rahman Nizami who was the president of Islami Chatra Shangha during the liberation war and one of the commanders of Al-Badr. This was also the period when Bangla Blog came into existence. This is when our generation emerged with social and political consciousness. I must give some detailed information about this period as background before we go any further.

_ Political background of the debates

Since 2001, democracy in Bangladesh shifted towards coalition politics. BNP made an electoral coalition before the election of 2001 to ensure its return to power, defeating a well organized Awami League. This coalition included Jamaat-e-Islami, Islami Oikko Jote and Bangladesh Jatio Party, and stood as the ultimate right wing political formation in the country. The coalition won the election, but soon became a very controversial regime. The controversies during the rule of this coalition government still haunt not only the victims of the regime but also the leaders of the coalition themselves. The coalition was tainted with accusations of supporting terrorism, communalism, attacks on religious minorities, assassination and attempted assassination of Awami League leaders and for hosting leaders accused of war crimes in 1971. BNP had a history of ending their term in an unruly manner. Before ending their term in 2006, the coalition government made a road map for returning to power by any means possible. This road map included putting loyal people in important positions. The Awami League, at that time the main opposition party, claimed that the last retired Chief Justice who would head the subsequent caretaker government was a BNP loyalist and would serve the cause of BNP in the upcoming election. They started a movement against it, and it turned violent. ²¹

It should be noted that both these parties actually lost their legitimacy as people’s parties and their protests and movements against the ruling regime rarely gathered any mass support in the new millennium as they had in the 80s and 90s. As a result, AL’s movement did not gather much momentum as long as the BNP-led coalition was in power. However, the ruling regime was weakened by several successive movements initiated by general people in different localities. Mass movements in Kansat, Phulbari and Shanirakhra made the regime crumble in its final days. Although AL was unsuccessful in creating a popular movement against the BNP-Jamaat led government, they were successful enough to expose its electoral road map. They are the largest party in Bangladesh in terms of activist numbers, and as soon as BNP-Jamaat ended their term in government, AL activists took to the street in large numbers. They refused to recognize the appointed head of the caretaker government. The protest they started was an aggressive one. Several parts of Bangladesh, including the capital Dhaka, were effectively under the occupation of AL activists wielding bamboo sticks and oars. Fights broke out between Awami League and BNP-Jamaat activists around the country and many lost their lives. The country was in anarchy for several days, after which the military intervened. A state of emergency was declared and a new caretaker government headed by Fakhruddin Ahmed was installed and actively supported by the military. The Awami League supported this new government, but things did not go as they were hoping. A caretaker government was supposed to rule for 3 months and its main objective was to hold the general election impartially. But this military-backed caretaker government had something different in mind: they ruled for two straight years. As soon as they established themselves in power, large numbers of leaders and activists from almost all major parties were arrested and put into jail on charges of corruption, arson and even murder. Many of these arrested leaders were heavyweights, including Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, both ex-prime ministers. Sheikh Hasina was later released but had to leave the country. Tarique Rahman, the son of Khaleda Zia, who was arguably the most powerful person behind the BNP-Jamaat coalition, was also arrested, allegedly tortured and later released and forced to leave the country. He is still living in exile.

Most people were initially happy to see some of the notoriously powerful and corrupt leaders behind bars. They also gave passive moral support to the military-backed government since they were tired of the continuous squabbling between the two major political entities. But they also soon realized that they cannot live under a state of emergency ruled by a military-backed government for too long. Some popular protests led by university students in 2008 marked the end of public support for the regime. It was under this regime that I discovered myself as an activist. Although I participated in activism for the first time in the Shanir Akhra (which is my own neighbourhood) movement in 2006, back then it was a one-time thing. Later that year, I and some of my high school friends established a community library where we tried to understand and form opinions on social, political and religious issues. The birth of our library movement almost coincided with the military government coming to power. We were trying to understand what had caused our democracy to fail and bring a ‘state of emergency’ upon us. As young people, we did not have a happy experience with the military. Bangladesh was under military government from 1975 to 1990. Our generation did not have to taste the bitterness of that direct military rule. When Ershad fell in the early 90s, I was just a kid without any understanding of politics, but I remember the rejoicing. I even remember one day creating a tiny grave for Ershad just in front of my house. It was a time when there was no internet or even satellite TV in Bangladesh. The one and only TV Channel, Bangladesh Television was a government-run channel and nothing more than a government media front (it still is). The movement against Ershad’s military regime was a very popular one, the second most popular after the liberation movement. People had to wait for the morning newspaper to get updated about the movement, but it was not enough for them. So news and updates spread from person to person in the shape of gossip and even mythologies. It was not just a decade before 2000, it was a different century and different millennium, both literally and figuratively. As a young boy, my knowledge of that movement was based on such gossip and mythologies. I did not truly understand the nature of the movement, but I knew that Ershad was the bad guy. I used to see him and his first lady on television every day, I felt like I was watching a King and Queen. But I knew that he was the bad guy and I do remember the terrifying moments rushing from school to home with my aunt when curfews were announced. We were not supposed to leave home, go to school or play outside during those curfews. I did not understand what curfew was, but I could feel how it took away my freedom. So one day when I heard that a grave (symbolic) was being dug for Ershad by the protesters in the Gulistan region of Dhaka, I dug a fresh one too just in front of my house.

So when the curfew was once again upon us in 2007, that memory of my childhood came back. So did some other bad memories involving the military. It was not just me; almost everyone of my generation had such memories. Bangladesh went through a democratic period from 1990 to 2006, but it was not easy going. The Awami League and BNP, the two major parties, rarely find any political compromise between them and were often in conflict. The BNP brought the military out of their barracks in 1996 in an attempt to preserve their faltering regime. Both the Awami League and the BNP had used the military for temporary periods, and these were difficult periods for young people like us. We would be stopped in the street, harassed or even physically assaulted by military personnel just for having long hair or for something that they found immodest. But in 2007, we were old enough to have some idea of civil rights and we fought back. Like many other young people, I would also often find myself breaking emergency law by arranging or participating in protests and rallies. Especially after 2008, several university campuses became virtually free of restrictions imposed under the state of emergency. Such popular uprisings were seen as a message to the military and the caretaker government that they should not make things more difficult. They were already losing popularity and support; they could not risk a safe exit. However, the government did try to change the political scenario in Bangladesh. AL and BNP were sidelined, especially most of their top leaders. The government also backed reformist tendencies and promoted those leaders who wanted reform and would also try to get their respective parties out of the grasp of the two most powerful political families in the country, the Sheikh and the Zia families. This step taken by the caretaker government and some political leaders from AL and BNP are infamously known as the ‘minus two formula’. This ‘minus two formula’ did not work, on the contrary the reformist leaders were sidelined when the caretaker government resigned.

All these social and political backgrounds were current when Bangla Blog emerged. It should be noted that Bangla Blogosphere emerged as a popular alternative medium during a period when the country was under a state of emergency. Our generation had to go through the historical experiences that led to the ‘State of Emergency’, and everything that was going under the emergency had affected what was also going on inside the Blogosphere.

_ From Debate to Confrontation

During the two year rule of the caretaker government, the demand for a war crimes tribunal gained popularity as the government also resumed the Bangabandhu murder trial. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the leader of AL (Awami League) during 1971 and was seen as the Father of the Nation in Bangladesh. He was murdered with many of his family members in a military coup in 1975. The reign of the caretaker government (January 2007-December 2008) was highly controversial, but also had the support of many people since the two main parties had brought the whole nation to a stalemate. Many politicians, including the top leaders from both parties were arrested for corruption and other charges. The Bangabndhu murder trial had begun when AL ruled from 1996-2001. The trial had popular support, and an initial verdict was handed down just before the end of the government’s term, but as the new BNP-Jamaat alliance came to power in 2001, the trial went cold. Despite popular support AL had managed to put the trial in jeopardy by using it for their political purposes. It was central to their major electoral agenda in 2001 that the people give them the chance to return to government so that they could continue to finish what they had started, and that the BNP-JI coalition would not let this trial go on due to their historical connection with those responsible for the murder. When BNP-JI came to power in 2000, they did not abandon the trial, but did make it go cold. So, when the caretaker government resumed the trial there was a sense of hope, since it was considered to be a neutral government. A hope for the trial of war criminals also became high in this period, and the Bangla Blogosphere played a vital role.

I started writing blogs in Somewhereinblog when the caretaker government was in power and found myself in the middle of a huge debate looming in the whole Bangla Blogosphere between the pro-trial and anti-trial bloggers, with the pro-trial bloggers being more popular and in the majority. There had been pro-Jamaat bloggers since the inception of the Bangla Blogosphere who would promote pro-Jamaat discourses and downplay the criminal activities of the party in the liberation war. Such propaganda only intensified the pro-war-crimes trial stance of the majority of bloggers. I took a pro-trial position in this debate, and this virtual position was nothing different from my position in real life. I had been regularly participating in pro-trial movements since 2006. These debates had a positive effect on Bangladeshi youth in developing a consciousness of the liberation war and its secular ideals. However, these debates did not take the path of constructive solutions, but rather provided more fuel for exclusion, bans and polarization. It was a common thing for such debates to become ugly and for bloggers from both sides to be banned by the blog authority as a result. A certain socially exclusionary policy regarding Jamaat activists and anti-trial supporters in the blogosphere was developed by more radical anti-Jamaat and nationalist bloggers. Bengali nationalism became the dominating political ideology in the Bangla Blogosphere.²² But that does not mean there was no real discussion or attempt at reconciliation. Bangla Blogosphere also had been a place where many healthy and productive discussions and debates took place that did not promote exclusion or alienation, but rather promoted understanding and exchange of different opinions. My first book was the result of one such debate. An ex-Shibir (JI’s current student wing) member who used to be a blogger in Somewhereinblog once started writing a series blog about Muslim philosophers and scientists and their achievements during the golden age of Islam. It was a common trend among the Islamist activists to promote ideas such as Islam and science not being contradictory, and how there was a time when the world’s greatest scientists and philosophers were Muslim. Writing about the great philosophers and scientists of the golden age of Islam serves two Islamist arguments. First, they want to answer the modern polemic against Islam that this religion is anti-science, which, although a simplistic argument, is not problematic. But their second argument has nothing to do with science, but only with faith. They claim the Muslims are not succeeding in the fields of science and philosophy anymore because they have moved away from their religion. They have a preconceived idea that all the greatest philosophers and scientists in the Muslim world were faithful and pious Muslims according to their idea of piety and what they consider to be faith. They think or at least want to promote the idea that there is no difference between their version of Islam and the Islam practiced by these thinkers of antiquity. They completely negate the diversity of religious and philosophical views of medieval Muslim scholars, or their bitter competition and opposition to orthodox fideism. This trend was common among the JI and Shibir activists and many blogs with similar claims were posted since the emergence of Bangla Blogosphere. So when this ex-Shibir blogger went on to write a series blog about the Muslim scientists and philosophers, I immediately sensed that it was going to be a new product of the aforementioned trend. The first few parts of the series also proved my suspicion. It was all about the names of the scholars and their achievements in different fields of science and technology. He was a popular blogger, so I felt obliged to intervene and start a debate. The debate started in the comment section, then I went on writing my own series on the topic where I investigated the historical background of the Islamic golden age, the reasons behind the rise and fall of the rationali t culture of that age, and where I gave a brief history of the battle that the most famous Muslim philosophers and scientists had to go through with the scholars and jurists who supported a more orthodox version of Islam and opposed rationalism in theological inspection. An interesting debate between him and me continued for months in which many others also joined. It was one of those healthy debates that enriched all of us. My fellow blogger stopped writing his series half way through, but I went on to finish my project. These series blogs became my first book, which is entitled ‘Epistemological Battle of The Muslim World’. It was a time when I lacked patience and focus to write a book. But I loved debate, and if not for this debate, I might not have been able to write a book that gave me the confidence to write more books. This kind of debate and environment for discussion in the Bangla Blogosphere encouraged many young writers like me to continue writing.

However, as time went by, confrontation rather than debate became the norm. JI and Shibir activists as well as other Islamists were alienated by radical nationalists and secularists. The pejorative ‘Razakar’ became highly popular against them along with a new term called Chagu (literally “Goat”). AL supporters also started to use such pejoratives against everyone who did not agree with them. On the other hand, JI supporters and their allies played in a way they knew best, by using the terms ‘atheist’ or ‘anti-Islamic’ as a pejorative for anyone who opposed them or demanded a war crimes trial.

When AL and its allies came to power in Bangladesh on 29th December 2008, the Bangla Blogosphere was already being influenced by and was also influencing public opinion. Although corruption charges were laid against leaders of all major parties by the caretaker government, BNP suffered the most since they were the party ruling just before the emergence of the caretaker government. So, when the caretaker government went for a general election, the Awami League recovered faster than the BNP. The result was a landslide victory for the Awami League. The Awami League was also intelligent enough to understand what the emerging youth wanted and this was reflected in their election manifesto. The establishment of a war crimes tribunal was in their manifesto, which also helped them to secure support from the younger generation who wanted justice for the war crimes committed in 1971.

Shahbag: Public Square to Public Sphere

One of the main reasons I became a blogger was to use the Bangla Blogosphere for social and political activism. I knew how blogs have played a part in internet era activism and realized that the community-based nature of Bangla Blogs had great potential for activist networking. Since blogs and forums served as alternative media and Bangla Blogosphere had little or no control over it by any dominant mainstream political or corporate interest, I thought it was a great place for alternative voices which do not have much access to the mainstream media. Since I was already an activist before I became a blogger, using blogs for my activism was one of the main focuses of my blogging activity.

Bangla Blogosphere did not discourage me when I tried to use my new-found popularity as a blogger to mobilize supporters for social and political activism, since there were many like me who wanted to take part in activism. It was just a matter of time to find likeminded bloggers who wanted to fight for common causes. There were many bloggers in the Bangla Blogosphere who thrived on activism but lacked platforms. These politically conscious young people had great enthusiasm for taking part in social and political change but lacked platforms. Most of them were non-partisan people with no affiliation with any particular political groups. That was good for me as I was also non-partisan. However, I had experience in activism, and I used that to mobilize others. It was certainly not a one man job; I was fortunate to have help from some other likeminded and experienced activists who also joined. However, for activism, the virtual space is not enough. You have to be in the street with banners and effigies in your hand and slogans in your mouth to truly fight for your cause. Fortunately for us, we had just the place to gather outside of the blog and take our cause to the street. It was the Shahbag Square, an old and busy intersection of Dhaka, close to the campus of the University of Dhaka. Shahbag became the physical public sphere we needed outside of our virtual existence. Soon it became the internet era centre of activism in Dhaka, the Tahrir Square of Bangladesh.

_ Bangla Blog and activism

Since 2010 the Bangla Blogosphere gradually turned in to a place from where many social and political movements were mobilized. This was part of the global trend of young people using blogs and social networks to mobilize for different social and political issues. The distinction between online and real life activism decreased in this period and both became interdependent. New activists and a new way of activism emerged. Social and political movements that emerged from Bangla Blogosphere mobilized people through blogs and social networking and dealt with diverse issues such as violence against women, the right to education, military land grabbing, border killings, and energy and environment policy before 2013. Since 2013, almost all forms of social and political activism in Bangladesh are now more or less dependent on people’s mobilization in the online sphere.

The year 2011 can be recognized as a year of activism in Bangla Blogosphere, as Moin Zalal Chowudhury puts it. Political issues such as Indian border killings and environmental issues like saving the Titas River and Ariol Beel (billabong) gathered popular support. It is also the year when the platform ‘Blogger-Online activist on national interest’ emerged.²³ As an activist platform that organizes them and mobilizes people through social networking, it was the first of its kind in Bangladesh. The platform emerged out of a movement against a production sharing contract between the Bangladesh Government and the US energy giant Conoco Phillips. It was a contract that did not protect Bangladesh’s interests. According to this deal, Bangladesh would own only 20 percent of the gas to be found and would have to buy the other 80 percent from Conoco Philips at a high price. If Bangladesh failed to buy, they could export the gas elsewhere.²⁴ Such unequal energy deals with giant multinational corporations are common in our part of the world. It is the neo-colonial relationship that exists between third world countries and the multinational corporations. Not only do countries like Bangladesh lack the power and resources to secure deals that serve its interest to the utmost, but its political leaders and government officials often work for such deals for their personal benefit. Disregarding national interest for personal favour or bribe is also common. One famous example was when the Canadian company Niko Resources bribed a BNP-Jamaat era Energy Minister A.K.M. Mosharraf Hossain with a Toyota Land Cruiser to minimize the compensation they were supposed to provide to the villagers whose water and agriculture was impacted by the explosions at the company’s drilling site.²⁵ News and information of such contracts and dealings were largely unknown to the general populace of Bangladesh in the past. But after an organization called “The National Committee on Protection of Oil, Gas and Mineral Resources, Power and Ports” (NCBD) emerged, finally there was growing consciousness of such issues. The organization had led several successful movements in the past. The most famous of these was the Phulbari movement, in which several protesters were shot dead while protesting an open coal mine project that would have devastated the life of the people and the environment of North Bengal. Phulbari since then has become a rallying cry for any such energy and environment related issue. Although NCBD was originally a platform for several left wing organizations, it soon gathered mass support, especially among the youth. The platform has a large support base among non-partisan activists concerned with energy, environment and national interest. I was one of these non-partisan activists who supported such movements, and there were many like me. When NCBD called for a nationwide half day strike on 3rd July 2011 against the contract with Conoco Philips, we were blogging in support of it, and as the campaign gained mass support among the bloggers we decided it was time to organize ourselves to take to the streets. We called a demonstration in Shahbag Square in Dhaka to protest against the contract and to take part in the strike. Although the first day of our street protest was quite hopeful as many showed up, on the day of the strike it was disastrous for us. It was a day when the government and police were on high alert; they arrested hundreds of protesters as soon as they took to the streets and beat others mercilessly.²⁶ I remember running and climbing walls so as not to get caught or beaten on that day. It was the day when for the first time a blogger in Bangladesh got arrested for activism. Blogger Dinmojur, a very popular blogger in energy and environment related issues, was arrested that day while protesting.

After the strike, we decided to form a platform for blog and social network based activists under which we could continue doing activism for the national interest and social justice in the future. This is how the platform ‘Blogger Online Activists on National Interest’ was formed. It initially had four coordinators. One of them was Asif Mohiuddin, who was attacked by some extremists from the banned terrorist organization Ansarullah Bangla Team in 2013. Asif survived, was later arrested and is now living in exile. Two other coordinators also had resigned earlier. The only coordinator left after 2013 was me. I continued to serve till early 2015. After that, I had to withdraw from activism due to a life-threatening situation. When we started the platform, we had no idea that we would have to face such situations. It was a very hopeful period in 2011 when we started. The platform enjoyed wide support from the blogging community. It gathered momentum in September 2011 after we took to the street supporting a movement started by the students of Jagannath University. They demanded equal rights to education like other public university students in Bangladesh, and protested the move to increase tuition and other fees. The movement was not solely for JNU students though, since there were other public universities facing a similar crisis. The event that we organized supporting them was under attack, with mass arrests of protesters from Shahbag by the police in an attempt to disperse us. Twenty-seven Jagannath University students were arrested on the spot,²⁷ but we managed to organize a successful event with a large number of students joining us. After this event, Asif Mohiuddin was taken into custody by the Detective Branch as his blog post promoting the event was shared by thousands of JNU students and others on Facebook. However, all this only made the movement more popular and gathered support for the cause. The movement was ultimately successful, as the government agreed to meet our demands.²⁸ However, after this our lives had changed forever. We were happy to be able to influence state policy, but the state was not happy with us.

In 2011, the gap between online and offline activism in Bangladesh was narrowed. We continued organizing events, protests and awareness raising on diverse issues regarding social and political rights. We organized and mobilized via blogs and Facebook, and we had a physical space in which to gather. It was Shahbag, the public square that turned into a political space for internet era young activists. Soon it was to become the most dominant political space in Bangladesh for some period, before eventually going into decline. Will it rise again? I can only hope for the best.

_ Shahbag: The political public sphere

Bangla Blogosphere and social networking platforms had become what Jurgen Habermas has called Literary Public Spheres (or public spheres in the world of letters), and also something more than that powered by interactive technologies. What is a public sphere? Habermas describes the public sphere as a society engaged in critical public debate²⁹. In his famous book ‘The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere’, Habermas gave an historical-sociological account of the emergence of public spheres in Europe. Early bourgeois public spheres provided space for rational debates and discussions. It was the result of the emergence of a new civil society in the eighteenth century. The bourgeois public sphere was the sphere of private people coming together as the public who claimed and turned the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves. ³⁰ It was a sphere between the civil society and the state in which critical public discussion of general interest was guaranteed. Now the ruler’s power was represented before the people with a sphere in which state authority was publicly monitored through informed and critical discourse of the people.³¹ Literary public spheres had been in existence in Europe before the 18th century, and at the turn of the 18th century the political public sphere arose first in Great Britain.³² Early examples of such public spheres were coffee houses, salons, and table societies (Tischgesellschaften). However, over time this sphere was destroyed by the same forces that established it. With citizens becoming less concerned about politics and more concerned about consumption, with uneven distribution of wealth in the capitalist economy, the emergent media became a tool for manipulation by the economic and political powers.

Literary Public Sphere is a precondition for the emergence of Political Public Sphere (Or Public Sphere in the realm of Politics). The Bangla Blogosphere and social networking sites were where young Bangladeshi writers and activists met, discussed and debated on social and political issues, formed groups and mobilized others for their activism. But they had to meet somewhere outside of the online sphere to bring their activism outside its virtual limit. They needed a political public sphere to support the growth of these new literary public spheres. Shahbag provided the space. Shahbag had been one of the central areas of Dhaka’s cultural and progressive political life long before the arrival of the internet. Besides being an area adjacent to Dhaka university campus and a historic centre for many movements, several places surrounding Shahbag had also been a destination for writers, poets, artists, cultural and political activists even before the birth of Bangladesh. Temporary and limited forms of public sphere were in existence in different book shops, tea stalls, and study circles in different places around Shahbag. The Aziz Super Market in Shahbag, which was once predominantly a book market, had been the most famous destination for artists, writers and poets in the 80s and 90s. Over time, this place became a centre of pop culture thanks to the soap opera promotion of the market after the emergence of satellite TV culture. The book market became predominantly a fashion market. And the internet era young intelligentsia looked for a place elsewhere.