Secularism is not an overwhelming reality in Bangladesh.
Scholarly dissection of Islam in Bangladesh has forever posed the interaction of an outside religion with a native culture. The introduction of ´Arabic Islam´ changed the psyche of the Muslim masses of Bengal, but their links with local culture could not be disturbed so easily and this great tension in Bengali Muslim society lasts to this day.
More recently, the focus of discussion has been on the ability of Islam to modernise. From modernisation to secularisation is a feasible and smooth step, but it is doubtful if Bangladesh can take that step or whether it even wants to. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was roundly upbraided by his dictator-successors for putting Secularism into his four State Principles (the others being Nationalism, Democracy and Socialism). It is often said, even by modern-minded scholars, that the absence of an organised priesthood makes secularism impossible in the country and that Islam is, by definition, averse to it.
Gathered around for adda and tea and snacks with "our own" kind of people, staying with them in their homes, eating at their tables, reminiscing about shared student days, chatting with their grown-up children, dipping into the abundance of prose and poetry published, however, the impossibility of secularism seems a very unlikely proposition. And friends are emphatic in asserting that fundamentalism can never be dominant in Bangladesh. But this is probably self-delusory to an extent, overlooking the orthodox layer of the population, largely in the upper and lower middle class. And also the thickest, popular layer made up of -as the driver who always takes me around in Dhaka says – ´hearsay´ Muslims. He says, "We only hear preachers, we cannot read any texts."