Bangladesh has an old problem with statues. Islamists find it to be an eyesore

In 2017, there was a controversy over the statue of the Lady Justice placed in Bangladesh's Supreme Court. It was removed after religious hardliners objected to it.

People celebrate the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 5, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

The disturbing visuals of Bangladesh’s ‘Father of the Nation’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s statues being pulled down, garlanded with shoes, and desecrated have shocked the world. But these acts signalled not merely a new Bangladesh attempting to wipe out its 1971 origin story and start afresh on the back of a student revolution. It also pointed to an Islamic Bangladesh displaying its distaste for statues of living beings, whether iconic or ordinary.

Also called ‘Bangabandhu’, Mujib fell once more after his daughter and former PM Sheikh Hasina, fled Bangladesh unceremoniously in a military helicopter last week. Bangabandhu, who wanted Bangladesh to be modelled on his dreams, was killed by his own military on 15 August 1975.

In a country where the slogan “Joy Bangla, Joy Bangabandhu” was a mandatory greeting in most official spaces, especially under Hasina’s reign, Mujib’s public statues became such an eyesore to some that they did not want to waste a minute before bringing them down. The fragments of his broken statues became a collective sigh for others who were aghast at the chaos and violence that unfolded after Hasina’s hasty exit. 

Many Bangladesh watchers interpreted these attacks on Mujib’s statues as an attempt by angry protestors to scratch out a part of their history they are no longer associated with or as an angry reaction to his daughter’s rule, which they had termed autocratic. What many missed is Islamic Bangladesh’s unease and troubled history with statues of any living beings, be it Bangabandhu or others.

A long history 

This was not the first time that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s statues were attacked. Nor was he the only one whose statues faced religious ire. Four years ago, in 2020, two madrasa teachers and two students were arrested when an under-construction statue of Mujib was vandalised in Kushtia. This came on the back of an agitation by Islamists who said all statues and sculptural exhibits were un-Islamic. 

In 2017, there was a big controversy over the statue of the Lady Justice – clad in a sari, blindfolded, and holding scales – that was placed in the Supreme Court premises in Dhaka. After religious hardliners objected to the statue, saying it resembled the Roman goddess Justitia and the Greek goddess Themis, officials had it removed. As a damage control measure, Hasina called some top Islamist leaders to her official residence and gave a statement saying the statue of the Lady Justice looked ridiculous. 

This led to a counterprotest from Bangladesh’s liberals who blamed Hasina for mollycoddling Islamists and demanded that the statue be reinstated. “I was asked to relocate the statue to the new site… in front of the Annex Building of the Supreme Court,” Mrinal Haque, the sculptor, said, adding that the new location was at the back of the top court’s building, “away from people’s sight”. 

Former Indian ambassador to Bangladesh Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty blamed this on the Hasina government’s move to prop up “moderate Islamists” that not only angered secular forces in the country but diluted the support of the pro-government Islamists. “The latter comprise a bunch of backward-looking clerics who oppose the secular constitution, demand the implementation of Sharia law and a ban on female education, and oppose any display of statues or sculptures that pollute the Islamic ambience,” Chakravarty wrote. 

Bangladeshi academic and political observer Sharin Shajahan said that unlike Muslim-majority Indonesia, Bangladesh has a long history of unease with human sculptures in public spaces. “There have been many instances of attacks on public statues across Bangladesh on the pretext of hurt religious sentiments,” she told ThePrint. 

In a 2017 report, Dhaka Tribune published a list of past attacks on public statues in Bangladesh. According to the report, on 28 November 2008, a mob of hundreds of people, led reportedly by an Islamist organisation called Anjuman Al Bayyinat, vandalised the 41-feet sculpture of ‘Balaka’ that was installed at the Motijheel area of Dhaka in 1989. 

“The vandals – all clad in Punjabi and caps – were also seen leafleting the area, asking people to join them in their move to remove all such sculptures from the country,” the report said.

A month before the incident, on 15 October, the Bangladesh administration had to pull down five statues of Baul (folk) singers, including that of legendary singer Lalon Shah, at the Dhaka airport intersection after pressure from fundamentalists. 

When the foundation stone for a Liberation War memorial sculpture titled ‘Prajanma’ was laid at the Carmichael College in Rangpur district on 15 August 1991, the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student front, Islami Chhatra Shibir, protested. In September that year, members of the Jamaat-Shibir destroyed the sculpture. It was, however, rebuilt in 2010.

“Every time a public statue is pulled, the idea of secular Bangladesh is pushed back. There were two agendas at play behind the pulling down of Sheikh Mujib’s statues this week. One was a political agenda to attack any symbol of the Awami League, and what better than the statues of Mujib? The other was a religious one — to free Bangladesh of all statues of living forms,” said Shajahan. 

Fate of statues 

Dhaka-based artiste Ayreen Khan said that Bangladesh has just had a rebirth after a people’s revolution and a young generation will rid the country of old baggage. “There should not be any one person’s statues across the country. There have been many great women and men whose statues should adorn this land. Why just one person?” she told ThePrint. 

Khan, too, had gotten into trouble after she painted Hasina as the Hindu deity Chandi. “It did not go down well with some people whose religious beliefs seemed to have been hurt by the way I interpreted the former prime minister during the students’ protests that led to Hasina’s exit,” she said. “But there was so much wall art and posters with human forms during the protests.”

There is apprehension among Bangladesh watchers that with Sheikh Hasina gone, fundamentalist forces will try to remodel Bangladesh according to their own religious beliefs. Acting Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer professor Mujibur Rahman had said in October last year that no man-made laws would be allowed to be in force and Bangladesh should be governed by sharia. Which direction the revolution to oust Hasina takes Bangladesh in the coming days will determine the fate of public statues in the country. And of much else.

(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)