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Bismillah and Rabindranath

Mahfuzur Rahman
I believe I was not the only one startled by the education minister of the country beginning his address at a celebration of Rabindranath's hundred and forty-eighth birth anniversary with a solemn Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. What startled me was a question of propriety. We have often to grapple with the question because what might be perfectly all right in a particular context could be singularly inappropriate in another.
There is the well-known story of a peripatetic village preacher in Bengal whose prepared sermon designed for delivery to
the simple country folk in the sizzling summer month of jaistha was delivered on a bitterly cold magh evening, with dire consequences for the preacher. The story is often told frivolously. If only the present context were so frivolous.
The incongruity of saying Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim to commemorate Rabindranath's birthday should be obvious enough. In case it is not so apparent to some, let us look it the matter a little more closely. Bismillah is quintessentially Islamic. Its solemnity is attested by the fact that all one hundred and fourteen suras in the Koran, excepting one, begin with it. The
fact that many human acts among Muslims begin with it seems to obscure the possibility that it might be singularly inappropriate on some occasions.
The Rabindra birthday celebration was one such occasion. Bismillah translates into "in the name of Allah." It is sometimes easy to be blinded by the obvious, but it is not right to use "in the name of Allah" to begin an encomium for someone who was not a believer in Allah. Rabindranath — for God's sake!-- was certainly not a believer in Allah, a truth the education minister seemingly forgot. Invoking the name of Allah for someone who did not believe in Allah at all seems utterly out of place.
For his part, the great poet would probably not have liked it either. A Hindu, albeit of a reformed type, he might have resented it. Whether he turned in whatever abode he might be in, we will of course never know. It seems certain, however, that he would much rather not have heard any reference to God at all. In his public speeches he never invoked any.
The constitution! Might the education minister have been driven by the latest BNP onslaught against the government on the proposed nullification of the fifth amendment of the constitution? The allegation, precisely, is that the present government would do away with Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. Was the education minister perhaps bending backward to say to the people, as the. latyjpi^iffer.has said explicit that the government had no such plan, and make the point by saying Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim at the Rabindra birth celebrations? It is hard to say.
Not so hard to see, however, is the long list of politicians of all shades straining to demonstrate at every opportunity how truly religious they are. It is indeed sad to see a political party that once fought a war to create a secular state, and now in power, pandering to the religious right and the uninformed public.
Mahfuzur Rahman, former United Nations econonvst, is an occasional contributor to The Daily Star.