Bangladesh – A Nation Suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder

Since its independence in 1971 from the then West Pakistan, Bangladesh – a Muslim majority country – has had its fair share of Multiple Personality Disorder when it comes to his cultural roots and basic traditions. It was a country under the Pakistan rule  (before 1977) where there were a mixture of both Hindu Indian Culture (mostly followed by Bengali Muslims) and the Arabic Muslim Culture (mostly followed by the Pakistani Muslims).

I grew up in Bangladesh so I have experienced “first hand” the truly astounding cultural shift which conflicts with the true Bangladeshi culture from the early 80’s to present day. Bangladesh consists of a population who speaks the language called Bangla which originated in the West Bengal province of India. But the population is also Muslim majority which means that they all read the Holy book Koran in Arabic but most do not understand the meaning of a single word of the Holy book. When it comes to traditions regarding women and their attires Bangladesh  has always followed the Indian culture of wearing Saree and Shalwar Kameez. As a boy I never saw my mother or my grandmother embrace the Hijab or Nikab or any other Arabic costumes for the female genre which allegedly are holy and pure to Muslims.

But as I grew older, specially after 9/11 back in 2001, things started to change dramatically. The Indian culture (deemed Hindu in appearance) came under attack and were slowly but surely declared “UnIslamic” as oppose to the original Arabic culture and costumes for women which is 100% Islamic. Men were as usual left alone and were allowed to wear any outfit they pleased, eastern, western or even Chinese.

But for the womankind it was different. In all the Abrahamic religion Eve is blamed and frowned upon for Adam’s downfall. Since then daughters of Eve have suppressed and oppressed due to her “sexual” prowess – and of course her enticing sexual power over any adult heterosexual men.

So woman are to be covered in a very unattractive garment with no color and are to be subjected to hijab’s and nikab’s so as to avoid sex hungry horny men attacking to rape them in broad daylight in front of the public.

Bangladesh being a Muslim majority country want and wanted just that – and the woman of the country obliged as they see it as the command of God & Prophet himself through the Holy books. But not all of the woman of Bangladesh likes the female oppressive Arabic culture and would rather stick to their rich original Indian culture. In order to do so some of the population of Bangladesh looks towards it’s neighboring country the BIG BROTHER Indian and tends to follows the trends of the Indian culture. Dollywood (Bangladesh Film Industry) imitating Bollywood (Indian Cinema) is no exception.

The following is such a movie clip trailer of a movie (soon to be released to the public of Bangladesh) that has a so-called “item song” or a “saucy number” where a female Bangladeshi actor is dancing half naked to some Indian mixed Arabic beat.

The problem is not that she is dancing half naked on the silver screen – as Bangladesh is quite use to watching half naked girls dancing their hips and bellies while their bosoms jump up and down – but the Big problem here is that she is doing so calling out the name of the Muslim God (Allah) in the most holiest of months called Ramadan (fasting from dawn to dusk month) where refraining from sexual thoughts is part of the holy ritual.

–
And as if the leader of the country Sheikh Hasina (Prime Minister) has not got enough handful of problems on her hands already – this song had to come out at the worst possible time, just when the Radical Islamic Groups of Bangladesh is demanding the removal of a statue of a Greek Goddess (clad in saree) from the premise of a public court in the capital city Dhaka. All this political and very sensitive religious sentiments had to take place in the very first week of the holiest month for Muslims.

Bangladesh is yet to decide whether the countries population’s Multiple Personality Disorder is here to stay, grow (into an untamed Monster) or will the country ultimately be able to crawl/reel out of it’s mental sickness and acclaim its true proper identity (Indian Bengali Heritage) to the entire world in the upcoming foreseeable future? Till then Bangladesh will always be at war within itself both culturally and religiously which will in turn keep spawning new problems which will become more difficult to control/illogical in nature with political complexity that will ultimately “destroy” the country entirely from inside out, from where Bangladesh can never truly ever find its way out – Ever.