Vote-based Politics, Quandry for Minority Groups

Victimizing the minority communities in vote-based politics is not an uncommon phenomenon in national politics worldwide. In many countries of the world, the term "immigrant" and "minority" holds almost same meaning if not all the time.
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Victimizing the minority communities in vote-based politics is not an uncommon phenomenon in national politics worldwide. In many countries of the world, the term "immigrant" and "minority" holds almost same meaning if not all the time. Even in Europe, where political culture is grossly considered somewhat fairer than the other parts of the world, many of the European political parties intentionally place the issue of immigration policy ahead of other more important issues to create a temporary stir that helps them increase the support of swinging voter and sometimes to confuse and divide their opponent's support. So, it is no wonder that this tendency would be reproduced by other countries as well.

Tendency of this practice has increased throughout Europe since the last two decade, which results an emersion of the far-right political parties as a balancing factor to form the government and in the parliament as well. Aftermath of upsurge of the far-right political parties also compelled the progressive and liberal parties to change or accommodate their policies on immigration in favor of the far-rights, which set a bad example to the other countries of the world.

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Communalism of all form is nothing new to us. Though Hitlar's war against Jew or the conflict between the White and Blacks seems like primitive now-a-days, but something similar to those still exist in many societies today. Business was the main purpose of colonialism which relied upon communalism and racism. However this deep root of communalism extended through difference on religious opinion and customs. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the vacuum of super-power in world politics was filled-up by religious communalism, which was opaque in nature earlier. Since the early nineties, religious politics became deep-rooted in almost all of the modern societies. Since then, radicalism has become a particular dogma and annexed a good share of the world politics steadily. Now, given the contemporary world problems like Islamic State and crisis in Syria and failure of joint effort of world powers to solve the problems, it can be said that the world has become divided into two parts- "Democratic Capitalism" and "Radical fundamentalism".

It can be argued that the vote-scoring tendency of the world leaders produced such polarization throughout the world. Particularly in South-Asia, this tendency is so acute that the religious minorities are being victimized on a regular basis. Though presence of radicalism in politics is not new in Pakistan and Bangladesh, this phenomenon recently occupied the world's largest democratic country-India. Infamously known for their communal approach, BJP has managed to form the government there. Though the country's politics is visibly dominated by development issues, but deep within it is radicalism that really dominate. For this, many suspects that Congress may need to adopt with the radical parties like BJP or compromise with their secular stance which is seen regularly by the liberal parties in the western democratic societies. To survive, the left-leaning parties in India prefers an opportunistic approach. Al these factors and practice helps strengthen radicalism.

Being influenced by the politics of other countries is a common trend now-a-days in world politics. We have left behind the period of circumscription. So, as influential neighbor, the politics of Bangladesh is bound to be influenced by the politics of India and Pakistan. In the beginning, I argued that religion-based politics is actually the ill-practice of getting more vote and polarizing the society. After the killing of secular icon Sheikh Muzibur Rahman in 1975, a stiff decline was seen in the demography of the minority. (Some statistics). Since 2001-2011, one million Hindus simply vanished from the population census without any visible reason, despite having a secular party in the government. It is definitely a matter of regret and anxiety that, despite having a secular government, the percentage of minority people is decreasing without a valid reason and a large number of them are reported to be forcefully exiled to the neighboring India, which has a Hindu majority population.

So far, it has become clear that around the world, the liberal, democratic and socialist political parties are losing ground on politics on the issue of immigration to their radical and conservative political counterparts. Though there is an attempt by the progressive political parties to show this tendency as a trick to keep the far-rights distant from state power, but this fails to hinder them from gaining popularity.

In Bangladesh, the same tendency of a hidden conciliation in between the secularist government party- 'Bangladesh Awami League' and the other radical religious parties has become evident with the continuous declination of the minority. Already Bangladesh's the largest neighbor country in South Asia, India, declared that it will give shelter to the oppressed religious minority of Bangladesh and Pakistan- the Hindus, with an automatic citizenship according to the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955. Though it seems as a good move to stop the oppression of the religious minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan, but this step has been taken by a right-leaned religious political party- Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been taken as a political trick to strengthen the narrative of the religion based politics of BJP. It is worthy to mention that India is a Hindu-majority nation, whereas Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim majority. The BJP leaders already made it clear that the muslims-who want to take shelter in India will be opted out of this opportunity-which is a clear indication that this decision was taken from a religious point of view and not from the intention of serving the oppressed. This decision will indeed encourage the muslim radicals in Bangladesh and Pakistan and will also create a "cause" to evict and persecute the religious minority-the muslims in India, on which BJP and its leaders are already convicted.

It is a matter of regret that the same occurrence, in different camouflage, is taking place in Europe. For example, all the countries of Europe vowed to protect the Jews minority after the Second World War, but now-a-days, they are slightly shifting from their promise, which is same in the case of other minorities as well. If the political parties continues this practice, then everybody will suffer in the long run, particularly the upcoming generations. The politics of compromising with the "bad" achieve nothing apart from the moral erosion of the political parties and hence loosing popularity in the long run.

Every government and political parties need to keep in mind that radicalism and fundamentalism can never bring good to the society and can never be a friend of the civilization. To be befriended with radicalism for momentary benefit, is to fall in their trap. This deception of changing a country toward their vile political ideology through keeping secular and progressive parties in state power in nothing but a political trap. The early the South-Asian governments realize this, the better it will be for the people.

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