Syed Waliullah’s ‘Tree Without Roots’ is the translated version of his promoting bangla novel ‘Lalsalu’. How corrupted people use the vague implication of religion to achieve power is a prominent theme of this novel.
‘Tree Without Roots’ is the story of Majeed and Mazar that he invented. Majeed plays a monopoly with the simple-minded villagers by implicating false fright of religion. With no land or skills to support him otherwise, Majeed preys upon the simple rural folk by exploiting religion, becoming the self-appointed guardian of a Mazar, which he claims is that of a saint. Majeed balances Waliullah’s portrait of the charlatan. Though critical of the exploitation of religion, Syed Waliullah looks sympathetically at Majeed for whom religion means food and shelter. Told in Syed Waliullah’s simple, idiomatic and occasionally lyrical English, Tree Without Roots is an imperative reading . The Mazar is the source of Majeed’s happiness, power and economic solvency.Majeed’s life is not only bounded by Majar , it has overcome all boundaries and has spread in the rural life of Mahabbatpur. To recapitulate his corruption Majeed makes amicable relation with the head of the village Khaleq. They both try to accumulate their greed of wealth by exploiting the villagers but in a different way. One has the power of Mazar and another has lands. Thus the scenery of feudalistic society has been portrayed in the novel.
Majeed is very skillful in suppressing people’s psychology. Through judging some rural feud, he practices his power. He judges the case of Tara Mia, Kulsum’s old father. He infects Tara Mia’s mind with doubt on the legitimacy of his children and has leaded him to commit suicide.
Majeed cannot tolerate any competitor in the way of his corruption. When he find that the villagers of Mabbatpur are so much afflicted by the arrival of pir in Nowabpur , he soon considers him as his rival in his prone to success. He plays a dirty game by assuring people that the pir is a fake person and raise mental and physical torment among villagers against pir. Though ironically enough, he and the pir as the embodiment of same person who do business with people’s religious belief.
From carrying very scanty things with him ; a kurta, a couple of old lungis , two thin towels and a Koran , Mahjeed becomes prosperous by doing religious business. He builds two home, the yard gets covered with crops during harvest and he takes a wife. In many times the sexual aggression in Majeed’s mind is expressed in different ways. He marries Rahima; his first wife by measuring her physical wideness and vastness, thinking she can provoke enough sexual pleasure. Since Rahima is totally opposite of her outer appearance, he marries second time. His unbounded sexual desire has been expressed seeing Amena Bibi ; a childless woman and Khaleq’s first wife. He takes revenge on innocent Amena as she expressed her desire to her husband to bring blessed water from the pir of Nowabpur. Amena has to pay for her guiltless desire by getting divorce from Khaleq which was actually advised by Majeed.
To fulfill his lurking sexual desire Majeed marries Jamila; his second wife . The girl at first seems to be hardly a ‘young kitten’ and Majeed was happy assuming she will be obedient. After somedays, Majeed finds her as uncontrollable, rebellious character. Jamila at frist struck attack on Majeed’s vague preaching of religion. With her arrival, Majeed life turns into misery . Destructive storm and flood in Mahabbatpur village shateers the dream of Majeed . Majeed’s existence finds problem . That is how the novel ends implicating the probability of Majeed’s departure from the village and the end of his religious business.
In the novel, Majeed represents the modern politician who does violence in the name of religion. When we do something it has means and ends. We always think in terms of cause and effect.Violence is used by Majeed as manifestation of power.By using religion as means for contant period of time, he justifies all his actions.Majeed’s violence has no end. He does this for his survival. For example terrorist attack on building has no end.Majeed uses religion to inject fear among people’s minds. Sometimes he uses his reasons or sometimes he quotes from Koran . In this way , we can see that Koran is a religious book , where there are set of beliefs . Koran is aguideline for a life . But people like Majeed twist the meaning of Koran. To make Jamila fearful of religion , Majeed make up a story that when he was not ritually clean , he hears sound from the mazar but when he does the proper ablution , he prays for a long time without any interruption . To make Tara Mia’s mind doughtful and to to occupy voluntary thoughts in his mind regarding his wife’s infidelity , Majeed uses allusion from Koran . Ayesha , beloved wife of Muhammad gets lost in the desert whom he later finds back . a warrior saves her life , but people surrounding him intervenes questions in his mind about the chastity of his wife . Being motivated by his thoughts Tara Mia remembers the incident when during young age his wife acted like a cuckold and used to laugh and play tricks to the strangers. According to Oliver Roy , there is still a debate on what Koran says that means , nobody has not understood Koran fully.Koran is unambiguous and clear cut. But accorling to Oliver , Muslims say and they has altered the menaing of Koran according to their own wish and purpose of use.
Majeed manipulates the mind of the people of Mahabbatpur and through this he secures his place. From powerless, he turns himself into a very prosperous man. Majeed enters in the Mahabbatpur village carrying hardly anything. He strikes his root deeper in the soil From a beholder of torn kurta and lungis , Majeed secures a very influential place in the life of the Mahabbatpur villagers. In the search of livelihood, he seeks help of the falsehood and with his wicked mind, he maps down the weakness of the people. He puts musk of devoted person and inserts fear of God among the people. Previously, the villagers of Mahabbatpur are quite satisfied with their lifestyle but soon, they have been occupied in the mockery and falsehood of the religion. When Majid encounters an official who has come from the south part of the country to visit the Garo hills of the north, Majeed comes to know about the well – off lifestyle of the people of official’s village. Poverty stricken Majeed looks up for a chance and when he comes to know that the people of the village are not very religious, he finds an opportunity ahead of him. He makes up the story of grave of Saint Shah Sadeque and builds up a mazar there .He plays game with the psychologfical side of the people’s mind. The great hunger, the relentless fight for life has made the people like Mjaid a little bit cunning and so, it has become easier for him to play with the simpleminded people of Mahabbatpur.
Majeed’s power play has been stricken up the surrounding people’s life too. It is not only confined within the four wall bounded Mazar .He builds up a mutual understandable relationship with the local landlord Khaleq to epitomize his power play. The incident of the circumcision of father and son has made them laughable which Majeed grants as the showing of his power. He flourishes his power over the landlord Khaleq. With fear of unknown Majeed interposes power. The grandeur of power of Majeed and Khaleq is the portrayal of feudalistic society. They are so much interdepended on each other. One has the power of the mazar , another has the power of lands. In the feudalistic society, their root manipulation is the same; the suppression and subdue of the common people. Majeed is making the instrumental use of religion. According to Benjamin, the thesis of natural law regards violence as natural datum. Majeed’s justification of his acts is similar to natural law. Natural law attempts to justify the means by the justness of the law. Natural law is blind to the contingency of the means. Means s justified if socially it has been sanctioned.Majid as sanctioned his violence as kind of law by perpetuating it for a longer period of time; Majid occupies violence through circumcision and through violence by breaking the family structure and bounding people to commit suicide. Majid uses the religion as instrument to secure his position which is actually baseless. His instrumental religious superstitions are in relation with the fearful people. Majeed has made a lineal change in the life of Kulsum’s parents. He falsifies the acts of Tara mian’s wife and manipulates his mind with suspicion that the children of his, are may not be his own. His mind is shattered and devastated and he commits suicide by starvation. Majeed has made this people to pay their life for the strong ground of his mazar business. Majeed’s power ground is stricken when pir arrives in the next village after the harvesting season. These pirs also use religion as a tool to earn their livelihood. Majeed’s power has certain ending, but these pir’s power has no ending. The appearance of pir in the village is like a tradition. The arrival of pir puts a threat to Majeed’s existence. He makes understand the villagers that they should not worship the man, they should worship the God, and otherwise they will be cursed. He gets furious when he hears the news that Amena , Khaleq’s wife is seeking pir’s blessed water rather than Majeed’s. Through her , he has wanted to strike fear in the mind of people Mahabbatpur and make them aware of his power. He has made Amena bound to abandon Khaleq’a house and live forever at his paternal house.
The fear of Majeed has been surged up in Majeed’s elder wife Rahima. Majeed controls her way of life and it has been depicted in the book ‘ Majeed’s way of making love to her is kind of winning her’ . Majeed’s power is relected upon Rahima too. From a poor, impoverished village woman she turns into woman of value. The other woman from the village come to her, sit surround her and pay her attention with respect.
Majeed’s economical need has pursued him to manipulate people’s mind by using instrumental use of religion. He appears to Mohabbatpur from the northern part of the country where people are religious. In his village, ‘there are more tupees than the head of cattle and more tupees than sheaves of rice’. The amount of muktab makes people thinking about the blessings of the heaven and after life but this glow of bliss does not stay for long time because they pass the days relentlessly to serve their hunger and starvation. The greed for power stirs up in Majeed’s mind when he visits the official and gets to know about the well-off lifestyle of the village. Majeed then appears to the Mohabbatpur village by saying that the people of the village are savage because they are not paying any homage to the saint Shah Sadeq( this name is also made up by him) thus creates a new order among the life of the people of Mohabbatpur . they used to sing and worship the land during the harvest season ,which is quite equivalent to Dionysian style ( according to Nietzche) . During harvest season, they sweat under the hot sun, but they are happy which Majeed considers as dangerous.
Majeed has come from the south –east of the country where the people are cunning, deceitful, shrewd and suspicious. The relentless fight for the life has made their nature in that way. On the other hand, the villagers of Mahabbatpur has happy with their livelihood, They grow their own crops, they are industrious, They sing during harvest time, their chattering voice can be heard from the distant places. They are ignorant of religion and are content with the living from hand to mouth.
There is a controversy between Majeed’s ideology and power. It is not only economic sense that has put Majeed in the heading of the power play. The practice of religion and being religious is a notion of his ideological sense too. At the beginning of the novel, Majeed uses religion as a tool for earning his livelihood. But then from a poverty stricken man he turns into quite prosperous, builds his owns house and gains two wives. Then he is supposedly to remain quiet and satisfied with his position. But he says prayers for the five times a day, arranges zikir at his house and inquires Jamila has she said her prayer or not. Even during the calamities, when Mahabbatpur is over flooded, Majeed goes to bed with the reciting from Surah . In heart, Majeed is a God-fearing man. He is found to constantly justifying his dishonest acts in the name of God. He also always questions himself. He always do the self-assessment. He justifies his acts ‘If I prevaricate slightly in order to implant the fear of God and His Holy name, I will surely be forgiven.’ During the disaster when his earning source mazar has been destroyed, he consoles himself, ‘I am a man of faith, indeed of deep faith. Shall I not get reward for my deeds?’
According to Asish Nandy, religion is divided into two trends. One is faith and another is ideology. To him, conceive of ideology is something which needs to be constantly protected. Faith always includes a theory of transcendence and ideology tends to fear theories and experience of transcendence. As ideology, religion is subnational, national or cross national identifier of nation. Ideology is something where the bearer who hold that belief which needs to be constantly protected. On the other hand, faith always use a theory of transcendence and ususally sanctions the theory of transcendence. Ideology tends to bypass or fear theories and experience of transcendence.
Jamila is the rebellious character against all social hypocrisy which is geared up by religion, fakeness and and frailty of the society. When she spats on Majeed’s face, she actually spats on the ridiculous society. And when Majeed finds her unconscious after the storm has been over; her feet touching the mazar , is the depiction of protest against fake preacher Majeed. The greatest irony of Majeed’s life is marrying Jamila. He has never dreamt that this young girl will root out all the faux activities of him. The base of Majeed’s livelihood is the faith of people . But after Jamila’s arrival, this foundation turns to be shattered.
Largely allegorical, with indefatigable exploring of the verbal and carnal, the language of Pak Sar Zameen Shad Bad is a phantasmagorical indictment of the national consciousness of Bangalees. Its portrait of power-cum-violence is unforgiving and merciless, and the language is charged with anger and abuse. It uses the rise of Muslim religiosity in Bangladesh society as a point of departure. It has interconnectivity authority with power, power with wealth, wealth with humiliation. In the horrible world of ‘Pak Sar Zameen Shad Bad’ there is no place for compassion. It creates victims in front of fascism, and the powerful - a group of cheats and conmen at the service of faith and belief gloriously feasting on success and optimism. Girls are raped and savored, as sacrifices for total-kill, as revenge, and to satisfy the carnal desires of Jihadists pledged to free Bangladesh from the hands of blasphemous Hindus and Jews.
‘Pak Sar Zameen Shad Bad’ does not, however, explore sexuality. It depicts repressed sexuality expressing itself in a violent way as rape by forcing the weak to submit to an authoritarian rule. This metaphor of rape is taken to new, stunning heights, and the use of explicit language could be difficult reading for most Bangalees. The middle-class, the so-called liberated mind, shrinks from it with embarrassment, while the religiously initiated are inflamed by its blasphemy and finds the language and the book impossible to tolerate. Humayun Azad evokes extreme language to talk about extremes in Bangladeshi society, where young males and females are unsafe and are a victim of, he laments, a society of licentious, power-hungry, ill-educated people bent on taking the country back to the Dark Ages. His intention was to shock the readers into facing harsh realities, and not to hide from them.
‘Pak Sar Zameen Shad Bad’ is provocative; it taunts readers with its outspokenness. The language of fornication is deliberately placed in opposition to tenderness, respect, humility and joy. Social prohibitions placed on women; their movements, expressiveness, undulations, above all, their drive to life make of rich sexuality a barren, dried-out river.
Acoording to Oliver Roy, neo fundamentalism has gained popularity among rootless muslim youth. They do not identify religion with any given nation state; they are more concerned about imposing Islamic norms on muslim society and minorities. This radical and militant new fundamentalism seeks places in madrasa, moktab (like the one in ‘Tree Without Roots’). Political precedence over religion has revolved the concept of deterritorialism. Post- Islamic vision explores relationship between religion and politics and religion and state rather than securing pure religious ideology.
In the ‘Tree Without Roots’ Majeed is figured out as secular person. Typically, secular means the man of reason oppose to rigidity. He is a modern man. Talal Asad has depicted in the formation of secular that concepts of the religious and secular are made and remade underneath the related discourses of myth, agency, pain, cruelty, and torture. Asad illuminates aspects of the “secular” that are hidden or lost in the seemingly simple notion of “the secular,” where the addition of the article the, after Asad’s analysis, becomes a sign not of the universality of “the secular,” but of its calcification. On the other hand, Khaleq is the representative of the elite. He is stripped into superstition. He is solely a capitalist person.
According to Oliver, post Islamism does not focus on secularism as much.The contemporary wave of re Islamisation is the autonomy of religion in an already build up secularized society. Consistent with it , Asish Nandy has stated that secularism is an import from 19th century Europe to South Asia.Secularism basically chalks out in public life where religion does not have that much access. One may a good Hindu or Good Muslim in private life but his religious faith should be fall behind in public life. George Jacob Holyoake who has coined the secularism advocates that secularism emphasizes coexistence diversities in the matter of faith. There re believers who believe in religion in private life not in public life like Jinnah , another believe in religion not in public or private life like Indira Gandhi .Majeed’s political use of religion is quite similar to Jinnah’s one who does not have that much piety for religion and use it as mere political tool.
We can see in the Pak Sar Zameen Saad Bad that they are doing violence like a formalized group and they have affiliations with other Ismalic nations. The western civilizations have merged the dictinction between Islam as a religion and Islamist activities as a terror and violence. Along with Oliver, Islamic group has certain ideology. Islamization is a contemporary phenomenon that expresses the globalization and westernization of the Muslim world. The deterritorrialization of Islam is also a result of the globalization. The relationship between western Muslims and Muslim countries are no longer distinct. The fundamentalists have altered the pristine message of Islam. Globalization has blurred the distinction between pristine culture within global and territory. It is a good opportunity to disassociate Islam from any pristine culture.
In the context of Bangladesh , Jama'at-i-Islami is the main Islamic political party in Bangladesh and has its parallels in India, Pakistan and in Kashmir. It originates from the Indian Jama'at-i-Islami, spearheaded by Maulana Abul Ada Maududi (1903–1979). Its main aim was to establish Islamic state. In Bangladesh, they are against NGOs and any culture of modern development (Rozario, 2006). Another Islamist group is JMB spearheaded by Maulana Saidur Rahman. JMB is reported to have caused seven bomb blasts in Dinajpur10. They also operate through their madrassas which are a source of recruits from poor sections of the society. This group call for Jihad . As stated in Devji, Jihad is not a collective movement of traditional kind , it does not seduces vulnerable young men but like other movements attracts divers volunteers for diverse movement. And there are two factors that has made Jihad a global project. One is the failure of local struggle and inability to control a global landscape of operation.
The birth of Bangladesh in the aftermath of economic, political and cultural confrontation, leading up to the bloody war of 1971.Following this in 1972constitution was written in secularism, along with socialism, nationalism and democracy as the four founding pillars of the nation. This political construct require certain action like the banning of religious political parties. Then the state’s neutrality appeared through several sectors. The cultural sphere that is language, literature, music etc was considered as repository of religion.
In November 1976, the Constitution was amended (Fifth amendment) by General Ziaur Rahman . Article 12 which emphasized on realising secularism through elimination of: communalism in all its forms, religious favouritism and/or discrimination and abuse of religion for political purposes, was removed. “Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim” (In the name of Almighty Allah) was added before the preamble. In May 1977, Article 38 was revoked allowing rights of political parties to be established on the basis of religion; a new clause was added in Article 25, stating “fraternal relationship with other Muslim states” based on “Islamic solidarity”. Later in the Eighth Amendment, on 7 June 1988, Islam was made the State religion, during the autocratic regime of Ershad. Recent amendments had made a ban on religious political parties at least on paper in 2010, but by July 2011 that has been restored8. Also, Islam was retained as the state religion, although secularism9 has been included again.
A recent example of the violation of thee secularism in Bangladesh is the destruction of the ancient Buddhist statues and temples in Ramu in eastern Bangladesh. The amendment in the constitution has made space for the extremists to do violence in the scope of this alternation.
However the Islamic fundamentalist’s activities throughout the world have created a negative vision of them after the explosion of twin tower in 9/11. Moreover, the recent Taliban attack on a school at Peshawar school by killing more than 150 students has made people especially western countries doubtful about Islam and most of their views on Islam as a terrorist religion. We can see communal violence in a minor sector in ‘Tree Without Roots’ where Majeed use religion for instrumental violence which has means without any end and in ‘Pak Sar Zameen Saad Bad’ , religion has been directly involved for committing brutal activities to establish a communal idea . Both of their activities are without any base and their foundation is not deep. For this reason, we can see a transformation in both the characters. In ‘Pak Sar Zameen Saad Bad’, the central character seeks redemption and Majeed majar business declines and his existence falls at stake.
