A Baul artist, Abul Sarkar, sang at a fair in Ghior, Manikganj. Three weeks later, a case was suddenly filed against him under the charge of โhurting religious sentiments.โ He was arrested and sent straight to jail. No evidence was required. In todayโs Bangladesh, the accusation itself is evidence enough. A local mosque imam filed the case, the police picked him up, and the court remanded him. Job done.
This is not an isolated incident. It is the next calculated step in the bloody coup that toppled an elected government in July 2024. That coup had three pillars: massive foreign funding, street-level violence orchestrated by Islamist militant groups, and the silent consent of the military. Thousands of students were mobilised under the banner of quota reform; Jamaat-Shibir cadres then hijacked the movement and unleashed planned mayhemโattacks on police, arson on government buildings, and orchestrated chaos.
In the end, the military installed Muhammad Yunus as the public face of powerโa man whose only credentials are being a darling of the West and extracting compound interest from the poorest of the poor.
Yunus is the mask. The real power now rests with Jamaat-e-Islami and its Wahhabi ideological fellow travelers. Look at his advisory council: direct or indirect Jamaat supporters, Hefazat sympathisers, and people who want the war crimes trials scrapped. Expecting protection for Baul artists from this lot is delusional.
Why are Bauls the target? Because Baul philosophy is the polar opposite of Wahhabism. Bauls say God resides inside every human being. The human heart is bigger than any mosque or temple. Lalon Fakir asked: โIf a mosque is demolished, does Allah weep? But when a human being is broken, who cries?โ
This is poison to the Wahhabi mind. Wahhabism is built on rigid control, religious policing, and obsessive external ritual. Bauls preach liberation of the soul; Wahhabis preach discipline and submission. The two cannot coexist.
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To Jamaat and its allies, the entire folk culture of Bengal is shirk, bidโah, haram.
– Pohela Boishakh? Hindu festival.
– Baul songs? Distortion of Islam.
– Rabindranath? Kafir poet.
– Nazrul? Acceptable as a Muslim, but many of his writings are still objectionable.
These are the people now running the country. A thousand-year-old syncretic Bengali culture means nothing to them. They dream of a religious state where art, music, literature, and freedom of thought are all policed by their version of shariaโan Afghanistan where the Taliban has banned music, caged women, and turned education into madrasa indoctrination.
Islam reached Bengal through the Sufi saintsโKhwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Shahjalal, and Khan Jahan Aliโwho preached love, tolerance, and humanity. Bauls are the living heirs of that tradition: Lalon Shah, Hason Raja, Radharaman, and Pagla Kanai. They taught Bengalis to look beyond external rituals and see the divine in every human being.
But the Islam being forcibly imposed now is an alien desert importโWahhabi ideology funded by oil dollars and propped up by recent foreign conspiracies. What is happening in the name of โprotecting religious feelingsโ is nothing but an attempt to establish the monopoly of one narrow, harsh, imported ideology over the liberal, tolerant, homegrown Islam of the Sufis and dervishes.
Under Yunusโs rule, attacks on religious minorities have become routine: Hindu and Christian homes torched, temples and churches vandalised, businesses looted. Yet the same people who jail a Baul for โhurting religious sentimentsโ stay silent when the religious sentiments of Hindus and Christians are trampled. The hypocrisy is glaring. โReligious sentimentโ is merely a weapon to silence dissent and consolidate power.
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This regime has zero legitimacy. It was not elected. It was not formed under the Constitution. An eighty-year-old figurehead sits at the top, surrounded by advisors with no political base and no accountability to the people, all propped up by the militaryโs bayonets. It is a hybrid dictatorshipโan unholy marriage of military rule and religious fundamentalism.
Baul artists and folk singersโthe very soul of Bengalโare no longer safe. In a country that once danced on the streets on Pohela Boishakh and flocked to Baul melas, Bauls are now being dragged to jail. In a country that prides itself on cultural diversity, minorities are persecuted daily while the state looks away.
The people of Bangladesh are not fools. They see what is happening. But an atmosphere of terror has been created: raise a voice and you are branded an โIndian agentโ or โAwami League tout.โ Disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and the constant threat of mob lynching keep mouths shut.
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History, however, has a habit of turning. Tyranny built on fear never lasts. The people of this land have risen beforeโagainst Pakistani military rule in 1971 and against Ershadโs dictatorship in 1990. That day will come again.
Abul Sarkar may be behind bars today, but his songs are not. As long as Baul songs echo across the fields of Bengal, the soul of Bengal lives. No amount of Wahhabi terror can erase a culture that runs in the soil, the rivers, and the blood of this land.
Yunus and his Jamaat masters may believe they have won. History will judge themโand the verdict will be merciless.
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