Subaltern Hindus in Bangladesh are not invisible
Dr. Richard Benkin
2nd Barak Valley Annual Conference 2021 - Session VI
Northeast India Company
Silchar, Assam, India
Via Zoom 1 September 2021
Talk requested by Conference and by the Northeast India Company (NEIC), located in Silchar, Assam. NEIC and its head Dr. Arjun Choudhuri. sponsored my residency in Silchar, December 2019 to January 2020.
Good morning from the United States.
Whether applied to South Asian Hindus, which is our focus today, or to colonized populations anywhere, as it was originally formulated, the essence of the subaltern concept is:
1. Others determine who can speak for a people authoritatively.
2. It so demoralizes the subaltern population that many among them, knowingly or unknowingly, buy into it.
Classic sociological theory took note of a related phenomenon over a century ago: definition of the situation. It’s a great concept, referring to the fact that we all interact on the basis of rules, key understandings, and cultural definitions, apparent or not. We’re not born with these ideas but learn them, which makes it crucial to ask where we learn them and from whom. Because whoever gets to define which ones we use, controls the situation. Here’s an example of how it works. I’m one among many people trying to stop Bangladesh from moving closer to China, which it is doing, first through the Belt & Road Initiative and then expanding on that. Those who disagree with us define the situation one way:
‘China is an Asian brother who provides needed funds that less developed countries use for things like infrastructure, so we don’t have to wait for “permission” from western powers.’
Those who agree with me define it another way:
‘China is a predatory lender that uses these loans as a pretext to seize strategic assets (for example, ports in Sri Lanka and Pakistan). Its goal is not to help these countries but to dominate them.’
The same situation; two very different ways to understand it; and two very different sets of action based on those differential definitions.
Who controls the definitions of your situations? (I’ll just leave that out there for people to contemplate.)
It goes deeper than that. As many of you know, I’ve devoted much of my life to fighting the ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus, and saving lives must be our top priority; but if all I’m doing is re-defining the situation for them, ultimately, I’m no different than the British Raj or the Awami League. My goal is and must be for them to evaluate the evidence and define the situation as a dangerous one that they can change. I learned this years ago in makeshift camp in northern Bengal when I asked these Hindu refugees what they would like me to do. “We want you to give us our rights,” they said, but after thinking about that, I said, “I can’t do that. I can’t give you your rights because they are not mine to give. I want to help you claim what is yours. Besides, if I can give them to you, I can take them away, which is something neither of us want.”
They defined their situation as a powerless one, in which only others with power can do good things for them and defeat different others with power who were doing bad things. I was a bit naïve back then and brought my own cultural context and ideas about “inalienable rights.” I figured all I had to do was make the case and provide support. But I had not counted on how being subaltern beat these people down to where they did not even realize that they accepted their oppressors’ definition of the situation.
That is the essence of being subaltern: allowing others to define us, and accepting our invisibility and rightlessness as somehow being warranted. But if we understand this, we can overcome it; we’ll know what to fight and how to fight it. So, let’s get started.
From Colonial to Post-Colonial
The concept of subaltern populations grew out of a Marxist perspective; and while I do not usually find Marxist ideas useful, this one is—but not because of its “workers of the world unite” roots. Besides exposing a brutal process, it helps us see whose idea of truth begins and ends with a restricted number of elites; versus those who go to a variety of sources; who go to the people for their information; who understand the importance of life for the people from the perspective of the people instead of from some unelected other given the divine right to tell their story. What often passes for authoritative analysis suffers from this limited and limiting perspective; and we owe it to those populations to refrain from that error and expose its bias when others don’t. Nowhere has this been more destructive than in South Asia.
Cracking that has been one of the most important achievements of the Modi phenomenon. Previous Indian governments often bought into a sense of western superiority, overly concerned with what this or that western power or individual might think. The UPA coalition’s referent was Europe and its soft socialism. Modi said, ‘No, we are as good as anyone else and will be telling our own story, thank you very much.’
It was very common for me to be speaking in India, and my Indian colleague, speaking first, would say something and receive a mild or non-existent response from our South Asian audience. I then would say the same thing and get ooh’s and ah’s from the same people. The subaltern definition of the situation says that as a white westerner, I’m someone whose words have value; but as an Indian, my friend’s do not. This always was so embarrassing, partly because Americans have an ingrained dislike of that sort of prejudice. Moreover, my friend had insights that I did not—insights that have become very important for my work. Our South Asian audience missed that because of this legacy of colonialism. It didn’t matter if those South Asians liked what this particular white westerner said. The damage was done by their acceptance of this authority hierarchy. It happens less now. Whether you like Modi or not—and I really like him and what he’s done—you cannot deny this shift in perspective and power.
Recognize that most information we get is driven by ideology, political or religious alliances, self-interest, or even conspiracy theories. It’s not objective, often not even accurate; we must apply the same exacting standards to verify it as we would in any academic venture. If we listen only to the same elites and uncritically let them define the situation for us, we’re going to sign on to a lot of bad stuff, regardless of our intentions.
Recently, I was part of a seminar on forced conversion. The convener told me that there would be segments on Hindus in Bangladesh (mine), Coptic Christians in Egypt (another very serious matter), and “Muslims in India.” I asked him who was forcibly converting Muslims in India, and he replied that “some people from the International Religious Freedom Summit” said it was a bad situation that needed to be addressed. Things were supposed to end there with the seminar proceeding as planned—that is, “some people” had an a priori right to assert this without facts. Instead I asked—and this is the key—what data they sent to support their assertions, as we other two gave him mountains of data. He sent me three internet articles, the sum total that they sent him. After securing his consent, I analyzed those articles and showed their bias, poor data, misinformation, and so forth. To Mr. Yi’s credit, he dropped them and proceeded with Bangladeshi Hindus and Coptic Christians. More than that, his organization was working on a Congressional Resolution and dropped Indian Muslims from that, too.
There is powerful coterie of academics, diplomats, and others with a visceral hatred for India. They always have been bolstered by the left, who since Modi have been joined by an unlikely ally: right wing, Evangelical Christians. Their visceral hatred comes from the Modi Administration’s actions against coercive conversions that Christian missionaries never had to bother about before. It’s not easy fighting both left and right at the same time, but winning this two-front war is not impossible. You do it by challenging their data and by being as tough on yourself and others when you have data supporting your position. That’s what we did. It was not about Christians, Muslims, or any other social group. We focused on data and the scientific method.
And we refused to let others define the situation, which was important when that same group of India haters circulated an anti-India resolution. They got support because of who they are, not because of facts. But they thought facts didn’t matter; that political and ideological alliances were all they needed. And it looked like they might be right. The resolution passed easily in six other US cities and so was expected to sail through in Chicago, but something happened there.
Chicago’s NRI Hindu community decided to fight it and insisted that they should be telling that story. They fought the haters with facts, and asked Councilmembers why, with all the serious problems Chicago has, they were focused on India. (I don’t know how much it’s circulated globally, but at least within the United States, Chicago has become shorthand for a city with out of control crime and on the brink of financial ruin.) They also got the Jewish community involved. We supported them, worked with them; and raised our voices against those who co-opted the right to tell their story. Organizations, including the Hindu American Foundation, StandWithUs, and the Middle East Forum got involved, too. But—and this is also critical—our Jewish community and organizations only got involved because the Hindu community asked for our help. This is their story and fight; we will do everything we can; but as supporters, friends. The measure was defeated because Chicago’s Hindus made it happen! More than that, it has not been introduced it anywhere else, as it was expected to be. Our opponents were so used to winning with ideology alone, that when we fought them with facts, they had no effective response.
This is what happens when others tell our story, the essence of a subaltern mentality; and what happens when we prevent that and tell our own.
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramschi developed the subaltern concept to push back against Europe’s accepted “truth” that understood non-European peoples from the perspective of their European colonizers (e.g. India from the British, Indo-China from the French, Congo from the Belgians). Those stories were driven by the colonizers’ own self-interests, cultural assumptions of their superiority, and cultural and religious imperialism. Though the British Raj died close to 75 years ago, this legacy of colonialism remains strong and explains our ongoing struggle against the fact-free demonization of India and Hinduism, replete in things from school textbooks to anti-Hindu slurs in the media. Too many, both East and West, never let go of a view that looked to the West, primarily Europe, for information about non-Europeans. The Subaltern Hindus under Bangladesh rule might live in a post-colonial world, but they still look outside their community at hostile others telling their story. They are no less invisible than when the British defined their fathers.
Let’s look at another example of how this works. You’ll notice how I go back and forth between theory and action. That’s because you need both. Theory is sterile without connection to real life, and experience is chaotic without an overarching context. It also will take both of them to stop the ethnic cleansing of Bangladesh’s Hindus: we change assumptions about who is authorized to tell a people’s story; and use facts and fight for that change.
Several years ago, I was part of a government briefing about Bangladesh. Throughout the proceedings, people casually referred to Bangladesh as a Muslim nation—which is objectively correct. It’s over 90 percent Muslim, Islam is its official state religion; even the first word of its constitution is Bismillah. When the audience had a chance to speak, one Bangladeshi Hindu told us that every time people call Bangladesh a Muslim nation, he feels like a foreigner in his own country. Others there voiced their agreement. That young man will never know the impact he had, because it drove home to me that the only way I’d be of value is by going to South Asia, cities and the villages, and listen to what the people said. It would not get done with a Google search, with the second and third hand internet articles that our opponents try to pass off as fact, or by going to so-called experts. That young man told me that Bangladesh’s Subaltern Hindus are never allowed to tell their own story—the many centuries of Hinduism in Bengal; how Bengal’s division is a British contrivance that hurts their sense of who they are and threatens their physical survival. They are not even recognized as authorities about the atrocities they face.
Experts who rarely leave their offices in London or Washington are considered more credible. Bangladeshi governments and their hired guns put out the consecrated word about Hindus, refusing to move off the fiction of Bangladesh as—and I’m using their words—“a land of communal harmony.” We know better, but it’s tough to get others to see it, because when we challenge that, we’re not just fighting misinformation, we are blaspheming against their very world view, which helps explain their anger towards us. One Bangladeshi general recently told me that he and his colleagues see opposing us as a “patriotic duty,” even if the facts are on our side. That’s why people charged with blasphemy in Bangladesh often are charged with treason for the same actions.
When others—whether European colonizers or oppressive native regimes—have the monopoly on telling our story, truth becomes the victim, sublimated in favor of the self-interests of those others. Their racial and cultural domination lets them use unsubstantiated information, and reject vetted information from others who do not share the listeners’ subaltern understandings.
We must never suspend our critical faculties and blithely accept what they tell us. Even as a child, my daughter would say: “Question the man who tells you the sky is blue so you’ll be sure to challenge the man who tells you the sky is red.” In other words, we can’t go wrong by questioning what others tell us; but we can go wrong if we don’t. If anyone—and I mean anyone, me, your professors, politicians, or someone claiming to carry the mantle of human rights—makes accusations all backed up the same sources and categories of elites, with little or nothing from the people being victimized; question it. If they are not transparent about their methods for verifying allegations or their analytical methodologies; doubt it. Either they’re being devious or they don’t care about facts. Challenge them; make them care; reject their assumption of being entitled to speak for others.
That’s the first step in breaking the subaltern grip.
The Subaltern Hindus of Bangladesh
When we refer to Bangladeshi Hindus today as subaltern, what exactly do we mean? We mean first and foremost, that the end of European colonialism did not mean the end of colonialist mentalities, whereby Bangladesh’s subaltern Hindus accept their own subjugation to a government that denies them legal and social equality and equal access to the rule of law. In 2013, after Bangladeshi governments barred from the country for six years, I was allowed into Bangladesh where I got a crash course in that mentality. Several Hindu Members of the Jatiya Sangsad, Bangladesh’s parliament, had asked to meet with me, which we did on 18 February. I’ll read you my journal for part of that evening.
“Okay, tell me what you—as Hindu MPs—are doing about the ethnic cleansing of your people here.”
“We have done many things—“
“Many things? You know that’s bullshit. They’re being raped and killed, land being snatched, Mandirs destroyed; and no prosecutions. So, don’t tell me that you’re doing ‘many things.’ How many Hindu Members of Parliament are there?”
“70.”
“70, that’s a lot of people; and you mean to tell me that with that many in parliament, you still haven’t done anything.”
“Well, the party—“
“That’s your other mistake, and I tried to tell this to Hindus before the last election. Minorities need to form their own political party. Right now, the Awami League doesn’t have to do anything. They know you’ll vote for them anyway. And the BNP doesn’t have to do anything because they know you won’t vote for them….”
And I went on for some time, peppering them, demanding, egging on, etc. I told them that they should be ashamed that I come half way around the world while they do nothing here for their own people. I gave them at least a half dozen suggestions of things they can do. Pointing to Rabindra Ghosh, I said that “he has extensive evidence that there are Members of Parliament involved big time in grabbing Hindu land, even rapes and other atrocities. What do you think your enemies think of you as you can sit next to them smiling? ‘We can steal their land, rape their daughters and sisters, and just give them a few Taka.’”
Someone started to say something about there being problems. “Problems? Problems? I don’t want to hear about problems. You think I don’t have problems? Or that he [R Ghosh] has none. Do you think I give a shit about problems? Problems are just an excuse for not doing what’s right.”
I was on a roll, and did not let up. I kept telling them they should be ashamed….But I think my favorite part was when I stopped my rant, looked at them, and said: “So, are you happy you came here tonight?”
They were so embedded in the subaltern assumption of their inferiority to others that they ended up believing the excuses and even seemed puzzled at why I wasn’t thrilled merely to take pictures with them. Worse still, they did not use the power they had to stop the carnage, and could not understand why that was something they should consider. That’s how insidious this is.
What do we do with all that? How do we stop the atrocities?
For the time being, I want to lay aside that aspect of subaltern Hindus by which they accept others’ superiority. It is a real phenomenon, and it will be difficult to stop the carnage unless it changes; but too much focus on it smacks of blaming the victim. Neither can we blame Bangladeshi Hindus, especially those in the villages, from concluding that they are objectively powerless and are dependent on the largesse of others who are powerful. They are, and we need to change that, too.
As things stand right now, western elites give credence to others for what is said about Bangladeshi Hindus, and those others include the Bangladeshi government and its acolytes. There is nothing evil about that or specifically anti-Hindu. In fact, that’s how it should be. Regardless of our different faiths, origins, and other tribal characteristics, we cede that authority to the larger society in exchange for protection, equal access to the law, and other benefits that come from living together as one. This goes back to Rousseau and Hobbes, and despite disagreeing on so much, they agreed on this. That’s theory, and as theory it usually works. Bangladesh’s Hindu population, however, does not get protection, and the government blocks their access to the law. By so doing, it has forfeited its right to claim to speak for them, but Western authorities do not recognize that abrogation of the social contract.
To explain, I keep referring to “western” entities because the west controls Bangladesh’s pressure points, not because they have any inherent qualities that should make them our focus. The West either can join our struggle for justice or ignore reality and reinforce injustice by clinging to status quo. Indeed, would those same westerners recognize China’s authority to tell the Uighurs’ story or Myanmar’s version of the Rohingyas’? Of course, not. Getting them to see that the Bangladeshi government has ceded it rights no less is our job.
Saving Bangladesh’s Subaltern Hindus
It’s a lousy situation, but we have to do something. We cannot stand by idly while innocent people are systematically destroyed. As a Jew, I got into this fight precisely because that’s what most Europeans did when my people were being murdered, or in a message specifically for India, we cannot shutter our shades and hide while our neighbors are being dragged away to their deaths.
Many in the West who can do something about it refuse to re-consider their position. Most subaltern Hindus are not convinced that they have the right to take action against their own government. That’s changing, but not fast enough, according to the many Bangladeshi human rights activists who tell me that one of their greatest challenges is convincing young Hindus not to leave Bangladesh, but to stay and fight for it. Let’s also recall Dhaka University’s Professor Abul Barkat’s dire warning that if things don’t change, Hinduism will be dead in Bangladesh by mid-century.
To be effective, we must first understand that the Bangladeshi government will never do the right thing on this simply because it is the right thing to do. It will try to pacify you with mere words and no action, which you know they are trying to do. Demand action, because the government will do the right thing if we make it contrary to their interests to continue the carnage.
First, congratulations to India. Its 2019 NRC/CAA marked the first time that an Indian government formally recognized that Hindus face persecution in Bangladesh, and that it’s bad enough for India to provide the victims with a safe haven. Build on that with facts that oppose and defeat those who are trying to define it otherwise and use it for their own purposes. We do not yet know all that will come of this, but it provides a legal basis for India finally doing something about its oppressed neighbors. And when it does, India has several measures it can take from controlling water, to making its embassy in Dhaka a center for resisting anti-Hindu human rights abuses, to undercutting Bangladesh on the international readymade garment market and taking parts of this market that is central to the Bangladeshi economy. Get them to act by showing them what will happen if they don’t.
Second, US President Joe Biden has sent the Senate Foreign Relations Committee his nominee to be the new US ambassador to Bangladesh. Peter D, Hass is a qualified professional who should do well in that role. My only concern is his history of trade deals. Achieving a trade deal with the United States has been the Bangladeshi government’s Holy Grail for decades, which makes sense. The US is their largest customer for readymade garments—which are the key to the Bangladeshi economy. Any benefits they get in our trade relations tend to mean billions of dollars. While there is nothing wrong with that, we cannot make the deal a priority and conclude it without demanding specific actions that give Bangladeshi Hindus equal access to the law in reality, protection from the police and government in reality; and for the government to sack those government officials who participate in anti-Hindu violence, its non-prosecution, or its cover-up. Though not always consistent about it, my country frequently considers human rights in determining its relations with other countries. So we have a path to justice, but we cannot close it with a trade deal alone.
If we get this issue raised as part of Mr. Haas’s hearing, it will tell him that this is on the American peoples’ agenda. It also will put Bangladesh on notice that we’re no longer ignoring its atrocities against Hindus there. I’m currently working in three different channels to get this issue raised in Mr. Haas’s hearings, and any help I get could mean the difference between success and failure. Members of the Committee represent 40 percent of our 50 states and about the same percentage of the total US population. That means there are a lot of opportunities for people to make their concerns known to their senator on the Committee. If you have friends, relatives, or associates who are US citizens, you need to have them contact their senator on the Committee. I can help. I’ve put my email address, along with a link to the site with Committee members, in the Chat. Please join me in this. You could help end a horrible and horribly ignored human rights disaster.
Dhanyavaad.