Do you remember Rothi, the first wife of singer James? She was pageant winner, used to be a regular face in advertisements, theatre and television at one point. Rothi had to leave acting after marriage as per her husband’s orders. James had told her explicitly that she couldn’t continue her acting career. Finally, after having two children with her, James left her and got married to someone else. Rothi had to leave with her children in 2003 and since then she has been raising them on her own. The popular James made no efforts to contribute to the rearing of his own children, did not spend even a iota of his wealth on them. After marriage Rothi had to quit acting but it’s not as if James had to similarly quit his music career. Such things are prevalent in society even today. The men who we trust to be the most educated and aware end up being the biggest impediments to independent and self-reliant women.

The custom of marriage has continued to foment gender discrimination in the subcontinent even in the twenty-first century. Every organism evolves and so do their customs and beliefs. It’s only the institution of marriage that has steadfastly resisted evolution. Till date women have to move to the house of their in-laws, Hindu women have to wear the sindoor and adorn themselves with numerous symbols of superstitions like the shnakha, pola, noa (white conch-shell bangles, red coral bangles and iron bangles, all meant to be worn by married women) or the mangal sutra. The fight for equal rights for women has been going on for a long time and, inspired by the same, many educated and cognizant women have cast aside such things. One would expect progressive individuals to greet such assertions of independence from women with a warm welcome. Instead, just the other day for instance, the legal minds of the Guwahati High Court proved how the influential and powerful people of society continue to cling to discriminatory attitudes. In a divorce case that was filed in the Guwahati High Court the judge, while granting the divorce, cited the woman’s refusal to sport the sindoor and shnakha as proof that she no longer considered the man in question her husband. As per the judge her refusal amounted to her considering herself as still unmarried or tantamount to not accepting the marital vows. This can be the judgement of a superstitious and misogynous man but in no way can it be the judgement of a court. It’s the court’s job to safeguard against gender discrimination and protect human rights and women’s rights. Instead, when the court seeks to posit things like the sindoor and the shnakha as mandatory for married women then this is surely an unfortunate turn of events. As long as this patriarchal mindset exists women will continue to suffer. This is indeed unfortunate. How can we forget that the courts are not outside society and its judges too belong to this existing social order.

The problem is that even today men take their wives back to their parents’ houses after marriage. Men refuse to embrace adulthood, instead wanting to spend their entire lives as the apples of their parents’ eyes. So the parents, the siblings, everyone takes care of this apparently grown man and then a wife is added to this mix. Yet another slave for him. For most men it becomes impossible to take care of themselves like adults are supposed to and consequently the wife, finding herself in a completely different environment, struggles to make sense of things. She has to walk the tightrope of appeasing everybody or risk inviting their criticism. She has to completely relinquish her independence and self-reliance in order to make a space for herself at her in-laws’. I know as soon as they read this hordes of women will say how nice their in-laws are and how they never had to negotiate with their independence. But the thing is why must a woman live with the relatives of her husband? It’s not as if the husband has to live with the wife’s family or that he is meant to appease them. After marriage a women has to abandon everything she knows, her family, her friends, her home and her locality, her familiar environment and spaces, all in order to seek refuge at her husband’s house. But a man has to relinquish nothing for the sake of marriage. There must be limits to even discrimination but marriage glibly crosses them all the time.

The Assamese man who had filed the divorce case had complained that his wife did not wish to stay at the house of her in-laws. That’s why he wanted a divorce. If a wife doesn’t wish to co-habit with anyone other than her husband then an adult male can move elsewhere with his wife. But the ones who forever remain their parents’ children refuse to live apart, even if it means leaving their wives. Are our men only their parents’ children? By hook or by crook don’t they end up becoming their wives’ children as well? All they desire is for their wives to take care of everything for them, from their meals right down to their shoes and socks.
The idiot from Assam has no desire to be an adult, let alone be responsible. Hence the divorce. If two people don’t wish to live together anymore, if there’s no love left between them, then even if one person decides on a divorce then at least it can happen without any problems. And that’s what happened too. The problem was not with the divorce. It’s the judge’s comments on it that has invited a lot of criticism. The judge has declared that married women must wear the sindoor and the shnakha. On the other hand most married men continue to remain bachelors. Can you look at a man and tell if he’s married or not? They look the same. Married men don’t need to carry around signs validating their marital status, no sindoor, no bangles etc. There must be limits to even discriminatory attitudes, limits that we all know don’t exist. What happens if women, even the ones who love their husbands, don’t wish to carry around such signs of marriage? Don’t they have the freedom to make such a choice? Why can’t marriage be about freedom rather than captivity?
In Europe and America married Christians and Jews, be it men or women, wear wedding rings. That’s their marital symbol. If a couple doesn’t wish to wear rings then they don’t. People of all religions deserve this freedom. Not just Muslim men, even Muslim women don’t have to carry visible signs of marriage and that’s a good thing. However, just because they don’t have to display proof of marriage doesn’t mean Muslim women enjoy more freedom than women of other religions. Muslims women are as much victims of this patriarchal social setup as the rest of them.

Marriage is gradually becoming an irrelevant thing. The institution had been founded in order to provide legal legitimacy to essentially a master-slave relation. Women were thought to be weaker and always dependant on others, they were perceived of as nothing but a vagina and a uterus. Marriage was founded to give men rights over women’s bodies. And exactly for these reasons it’s now an obsolete and meaningless institution. A woman who is not weak, who is self-reliant, whose identity is not defined by her vagina or her uterus, a woman who believes in independence and rights, a woman who doesn’t accept the master-slave dynamic but instead subscribes to equality and equal rights, why would such a woman choose marriage? Marriage seems more necessary for the men who are languishing their days dreaming of remaining children forever.

If an ancient institution such as marriage is to be preserved then it urgently needs to undergo change and evolution. It must discard its misogynous early roots and undergo modernisation, premised on the principles of equal rights of men and women. Marriage cannot continue to treat the husband-wife relation as that of a master and a slave. It must be built upon foundations of love and trust and no one’s human rights should be compromised in the process. Marriage must not seek to enslave women. Instead it must become a way of freedom from captivity, it must become synonymous with independence.

Abhijit Bandyopadhyay has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Although he is an American citizen, he is primarily an Indian and was born in
India. He was a student of Presidency College in Kolkata, just like Amartya Sen
was. Since Abhijit Bandyopadhyay is Bengali we feel he is one of us, it makes
us feel pride as Bengalis. Not too many Bengalis have won Nobel prizes so far,
only four till date. We don’t have much else to be proud of.
Both Amartya Sen and Abhijit Bandyopadhyay have been critical of the present
Indian government. Just the other day Abhijit Bandyopadhyay had declared that
the Indian economy was in a terrible state. The rate of economic growth was
becoming sluggish at an alarming rate, something that the government too was
aware of. That the nation should follow the economic model established during
the Narsimha Rao-Manmohan Singh era is something that even an economist
like Parakala Prabhakar, the husband of the present finance minister Nirmala
Sitharaman, has written about in an essay. Amidst all this the BJP, at least to
some extent, is in a deep fix. Congress leaders have been continuously
clamouring that the government must listen to Abhijit Bandyopadhyay’s advice.
If a Nobel winner appears to be clearly opposed to the policies of a government
then obviously it’s quite discomfiting for the latter to show much enthusiasm
about the former winning an award. Abhijit was a student of the famed
Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. He must have also been an adherent of
leftist thought. In the 80s he had apparently been part of a gherao of the VC
protesting the expulsion of a leftist student leader and spent ten days in Tihar
jail as a result. That was during the Congress era. The same Abhijit is now a
Nobel laureate and the anti-left capitalist government can neither embrace him
nor ignore him.
Even the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus had to face a lot of opposition from
his own country’s government. Not that I believe all Nobel winners deserve
their prizes. Often many unworthy people too have been awarded the prize. I
fail to understand how a commercial bank that charges rates of interest becomes
eligible for a Nobel Peace prize. I also fail to comprehend what sacrifices, what
actions, committed over what length of time, justifies the Peace prizes won by
Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama and Malala Yousafzai.

In the subcontinent we have another instance of a Nobel laureate undergoing
harrowing treatment due to his religious beliefs. Nobel winning Pakistani
theoretical physicist Abdus Salam’s epitaph was defaced and the word ‘Muslim’
was removed from it by unknown people. Even the present government of
Pakistan does not consider Ahmadiyas as Muslims, the community Salam
belonged to. He won the Nobel prize in 1979. The year after he received an
invitation to attend a congratulatory dinner hosted by the Quaid-i-Azam
University in Islamabad. Soon, however, a huge public protest was launched
against him. After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had capitulated to the demands of Sunni
fundamentalists and declared the Ahmadiyas as non-Muslims in 1974, hatred
for the latter community among the Sunnis was also rapidly on the rise.
Opposed by a protest led by the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami party,
Abdus Salam could not enter Quaid-i-Azam University even after reaching
Islamabad. Thirty-seven years later the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif
christened the physics department of Quaid-i-Azam University as ‘Abdus Salam
Centre for Physics’. However, Imran Khan is virulently anti-Ahmadiya. Abdus
Salam was born in the Punjab province of Pakistan but he could never live out
his days in his country. In 1974 the persecution of the Ahmadiyas by the Sunnis
reached such an extreme that Salam had to leave Pakistan to save himself. Even
books in Pakistani schools don’t mention Abdus Salam as a Pakistani Nobel
laureate.
Abhijit Bandyopadhyay is an American citizen. Amartya Sen is British. Had
they been in India, I don’t know if they would have been able to do the kind of
research that enables one to win the Nobel. Even European researchers today
are migrating to the US because places in Europe can hardly afford to spend as
much as America does on research.
The Nobel prize has been awarded since 1901. Simply by demographic the
largest number of prizes have been won by Jews, while Muslims have won the
least number. Of course, the best thing to do is to categorise Nobel prizes
according to countries and not faith. Nonetheless, Muslims must be made aware
how backward they remain in the realms of science and knowledge. Nearly all
Muslim countries believe that their preoccupation with religion is of utmost
importance, they remain busy with building mosques and madrassas and
adhering to religious laws over and above modern jurisprudence. A healthy
literary environment, the need for advancements in the medical sciences, or the
work of physicists and the need for research facilities – none of these are

concerns. Rather most Muslims are preoccupied with using corruption to amass
as much wealth as possible. They believe that constructing one mosque or
undertaking one pilgrimage to Mecca is enough to absolve them of their sins,
thus paving the way to Paradise and leaving them with no responsibility to help
make the world a better place.
Who should the Bengali Muslim be proud of? If a Bengali wins a Nobel prize or
if a Muslim wins one? Among Bengali Muslims some consider their Bengali
identity as above everything else while others consider the Muslim identity as
paramount. If only we could consider the human identity as the most important
one then the work one is doing would justifiably become far more important
than one’s nationality, citizenship marker or faith. Identity in labour and not in
race or creed. Abhijit Bandyopadhyay is undoubtedly a talented economist. He
is a proponent of building a society premised on equality and doing away with
social inequalities. He is also a proponent of sterner taxes on the rich in order to
establish a welfare state. These are not new thoughts. After World War II many
European countries transformed into welfare states. Disgruntled and agitated
about having to pay too much tax, many rich and influential people are
threatening to emigrate from their own countries, relocating to countries with
low tax rates. This is one of the foremost side effects of globalisation. Profitable
business institutions have to be cajoled into doing business in a particular
country via the incentive of tax cuts. Perhaps Abhijit Bandyopadhyay has the
solution to these problems.
Human beings desire wealth and prosperity and there is no end to such desires.
The welfare state is premised upon taking from the ones who have more and
redistributing it among those who don’t. This was the reason behind the fall of
the Soviet Union – people had become dissatisfied that while they were working
hard and deserved the money, that money was being given to those who were
not working as hard as they. The same concern has been raised about the other
European welfare states as well. The US has always been capitalist, there the
drive has always been to benefit the affluent. So the rich are taxed as little as
possible. Across the world the popularity of right-wing capitalists is on the rise,
just as it is in India. And yet it is in India that two Nobel winning economists
have worked for the poor and not the rich, they have advocated the
establishment of an equal society. While there are many who do not believe in
social equality, it is still one of the most significant discoveries of human
civilisation – to live together in harmony and alleviate the burdens those who

are downtrodden. Is there anything more beautiful in the world than this
egalitarian principle? Nothing but benevolence, humanity, support and empathy
can trounce envy, greed and selfishness. Despite fine differences in opinions
among the members of the Nobel committee, in certain cases they are still
invested in celebrating this humanity.
In our subcontinent it is a choice few who hold the lion’s share of wealth and
privilege while most others struggle to make ends meet. It is the politicians who
determine the economy that the poor must endure. Millions of people want for
food, clothes and shelter. The poor will continue to suffer even if hundreds of
economists are there across the subcontinent, even if they keep winning one
Nobel after another. They will continue to suffer until politicians turn their
politics away from the rich and influential and focus on the poor and
disenfranchised sectors instead.

I heard someone say that a river of blood flowed in Sri Lanka last Sunday. When 359 people die and around 500 more are injured, the resultant blood surely does look like a flowing river. But why this carnage? Why so much hate? What terrible thing had those people done and to whom?
In the middle ages there used to be religious wars, the Crusades, where people of one religion would slaughter those of another. We would like to believe that we have become more civilised and that in our civilised societies all faiths and creeds coexist in excellent harmony. But it would be as good as denying the truth if we deny that the religious wars are still going on around us. Muslims are killing Christians, Christians are killing Muslims and Jews, Jews are killing Muslims and vice versa, Buddhists are slaughtering Muslims, Muslims are killing Hindus who in turn are killing Muslims – this is what is going on. No matter how much we would like to believe that we have risen above religion, that our identity as human beings is all that matters at present. No, it’s still one’s religious identity that is paramount. Even now one’s racial, caste and gender identities take precedence over everything else. In New Zealand, the racist, Christian terrorist was fully aware that he was killing Muslims. It has been said that the man was taking revenge for the disabled, Christian girl in Sweden who was crushed under a truck by a Muslim terrorist. In turn Muslim terrorists have deliberately targeted Christians in Sri Lanka by bombing the churches and the hotels where foreign tourists usually stay. This was their way of avenging the deaths of the fifty Muslims who died in the shooting in the New Zealand mosque.
Rumour has it that it is ISIS, in association with a Sri Lankan Islamic organisation named Tauheed Jamaat, that is behind the attack. It is not easy for a small minority organisation of a small country to train eight-nine people as suicide bombers and carry out a series of coordinated bombings to kill hundreds of people. ISIS has issued a statement accepting their role in the carnage. Although there have been previous instances where the ISIS has issued false claims, this time it might not be so. The Indian government had sent a missive to Sri Lanka warning them of an imminent attack on the churches, information that India had gleaned from an arrested ISIS agent. But despite the warning, the Sri Lankan government had not taken adequate measures. Had they taken heed they would have perhaps not let Easter celebrations take place in any of those churches and the hotels too would have been put under strict surveillance. The President of Sri Lanka has said that he had not been aware of the warning from India and that if he had known he would have taken the necessary steps. Perhaps India should have made more of an effort to explain to Sri Lanka the severity of the matter and ensured that they take adequate and urgent precautions to safeguard the security of their citizens.
People of one religion are slaughtering those of another. When will this war of religions end? The bomb blasts in Sri Lanka are presumably in retaliation of the mass shooting in the mosque in New Zealand. Again some Christian terrorist somewhere will avenge Sri Lanka by murdering more Muslims, who in turn will rise up to take revenge – this cycle of violence and murder has no end, it can go on for eternity. As it is religion is not the only thing over which wars are fought in this world. The war of genders, waged by men against women, is as relentless. Women are harassed, their movements are restricted, their rights are violated and their freedom is curbed, they are made into sexual objects, raped and murdered – all this goes on as before. The rich are waging a war against the poor – everywhere you look there is a war going on. Sometimes I fail to comprehend how a race so intelligent as ours, one that has built spaceships and nearly completed all necessary arrangements to travel to Mars some 54.6 million kilometres away, has still not been able to rise above the unnecessary, useless, irrational and immature contradictions that plague us.
I fear for Bangladesh. The way people have been brainwashed in the past one-two decades is incredible. Once there had been space for differences of opinion in the country. People could, very naturally and without any fear, perhaps even with a bit of pride, claim that they did not believe in religion, or the afterlife, or heaven and hell, or winged horses flying about in space. Today if one says they do not believe in such things the person will have to apologise and recant or risk being killed. One religion, all stories of said religion, all customs, rituals and superstitions, everyone has to believe in all of these things together or risk inviting disaster. Can you truly imagine a wonderous country such as this? A country that had been built upon the promise of secularism has now closely and fatally embraced religion. Religious leaders have spread like a virus and Islamic lectures and teachings can be heard echoing from every locality. In the name of religion the youth are being brainwashed and inexorably trained into hating women and non-Muslims. Those who do not believe in religion are being incarcerated by the government while the ones who are spreading hate, envy, misogyny and terrorism in the name of religion on a daily basis are revered. They cannot be touched, their actions cannot be critiqued. There was talk in the middle to control the teachings and public lectures of certain leaders, but who has the grit and determination to interfere in such matters! With their silent encouragement the government and the common people, both blinded by religion, have made these local religious teachers so very powerful that they now do whatever they want with impunity and expect the government to beat a hasty retreat every time. They know fully well that the government will bow down to them as it has done before. Thanks to them a large number of the youth are now religious, some doggedly so, future Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz or Mir Sami Mubaswir in the making. Any day now explosions will perhaps rock Bangladesh.
The factory producing terrorists no longer needs the cover of night to operate. In broad daylight scores of people, all blinded by religion, are being incited to hate and murder non-Muslims because it will bring them good fortune and pave the way for their ascent to heaven without awaiting Judgement. What if one day these people, like the terrorists of Sri Lanka, decide to attack churches, temples or the mosques and places of worship of the Shias, Bahais and Ahmadiyyas? What if these people one day cause another heinous incident like the one at Holey Artisan Café? What if they bomb the hotels? I’m sure they will; the way terrorists activities are on the rise it will be surprising if they don’t. Numerous agents of ISIS have been killed but its ideology lives on and it’s making the rounds of the entire globe.
Which race has managed to progress by simply building temples and mosques or by remaining immersed in religious dogma? There is not a single example. Rather, whatever we recognise as the ideals of a civilised and developed nation, the kind of places where people of all religions wish to move to and settle, all such countries have managed to separate religion from state, education and society, perhaps almost even from life. Despite not being blinded by religion how are they so kind, tolerant and humanist? Truth be told religion has very little, if anything at all, to do with kindness and humanism. If there is anything it has any business with then that is politics. Politicians, as well as the religious leaders, use religion solely for their own gains.
I will kill even if I have to die in the process – many Muslims don’t turn back from becoming suicide bombers. There is no dearth of such Muslims in Bangladesh. Many Bangladeshis have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join the ranks of ISIS, knowing fully well that they will perhaps die in the process. They consider such a death glorious and the fault lies in their beliefs. How these beliefs have come to be, what has helped in nurturing them, I doubt anyone has concerned themselves with finding the answers to these questions. Is the government doing anything to address the issue? Only killing terrorists in gunfights does not solve anything. The ones who had been beside themselves with grief at the shootings in the church in New Zealand are the same ones who are celebrating the terrorist attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka. Perhaps these people are the terrorists of tomorrow! It is the responsibility of the government to keep such potential threats under surveillance. This too is a sort of a warning. The way Sri Lanka had ignored the warnings it had received, if Bangladesh too makes the same mistake then the outcome of it will perhaps be as tragic as the former. Not once but time and time again.