The videos, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zccKW5TnJa4&list=PLkpJGvzY11q4AwwRNPlpcQoUQvqrbnz9T&index=3, a song “Tui Razakar” (“তুই রাজাকার”
) by the band Chirkutt(চিরকুট) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4TvHsp_pPI&list=PLkpJGvzY11q4AwwRNPlpcQoUQvqrbnz9T,
a propaganda video by an Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, are examples of the
political polarization that gripped Bangladesh during and after the Shahbag
movement. The song “Tui Razakar” by Chirkutt and the Islamist propaganda video
can be taken as examples of ideological interpellation, the first one by the discourse
of secular, democratic, Western-styled, ethnically-oriented nationhood and the
latter by the discourse of global
Islamism, which has hyper-Islamicity and theocratic authoritarianism at its
core. The two videos are also suggestive of how a particular movement, largely
middle-class and urban in nature, is interpreted from competing ideological
interests to gain control of a nation space. While the song, demanding capital
punishment, is peaceful while being assertive, the Islamist propaganda uses
violent rhetoric aimed at discrediting the Shahbag protest. The out of context,
essentialized, and intentionally confused rhetoric of the Islamist video seeks
to catch the attention of the “Islamization”
project which target countries like Bangladesh as “these countries are not Islamic because their legal
structures, norms, the predominant educational systems, popular cultures, etc.,
are manifestly un-Islamic” (Ahmad 3). On the other hand, the song attempts to evoke
patriotic sentiment by emphasizing Bengaliness (বাঙালীয়ানা), a trait
associated with the Bengali people, an “‘imagined community’” created to
legitimize the existence of Bangladesh (Barker 253). At the time, the song, through
a kinesthetic presentation, rearticulates a legal demand for maximum punishment
of the war criminals who during the Liberation War of 1971 committed atrocities
in the name of religion against their own people.
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