On The Murders of Avijit Roy,Washiqur Rahman And Ananta Bijoy Das

“Thinking must never submit itself, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, if not to facts themselves, because, for it, to submit would be to cease to be.” 
- Jules Henri 
Poincaré, Oeuvres 

All of them stood right there on the road and watched.Nope.This was not another case of honour killing,where the brother proudly beheads his own sister and goes off with much pride about his deeds.
This was not an African American girl being physically assaulted by thugs with skin much lighter in colour.This was not the burning body of an Indian woman who had been subjected to domestic violence for the last three years.
This was a terrible expression of how frightened the people of Bangladesh are! And of whom?Those bastards who are engulfing much of the truth that contributed to the building of the nation one day.When his entire body was soaked in blood,when the psychopaths kept hitting him from head to toe with sharp machetes,where were you,freedom?Where were you,democracy? Where were you,secularism?Where were you,human rights?Where were you,bravery,humanism?


Avijit Roy

The amazingly passionate and courageous blogger was most famous for his blog Mukto-Mona (Literally Meaning 'From A Free Mind') was an engineer by profession and an ardent atheist and humanist and perhaps when best defined,a freethinker.
He was hacked to death by 'unknown' assailants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 26 February 2015.
However,Al-Qaeda subsequently claimed their 'credits' for murdering him from a controversial Twitter Account.
Interestingly,people are arrested in Bangladesh on charges of 'blasphemy'.I wonder if (or how) the government can define things such as spiritualism or an individual's faith in God.No institution on this planet has the right to enter the minds of human beings and convince them to think in the way they want them to,without being a threat to their administration and as such to the existent,blind beliefs.If people in the 21st century are being arrested on charges of thinking,it is too big a shame more than anything else.
Remember the Persian Sufi poet Mansur Al-Hallaj,who was publicly executed after 11 years of imprisonment on March 27,922 on charges of blasphemy?It would be quite relevant to mention one of his beautiful verses - 

" I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart
I asked, ‘Who are You?’
He replied, ‘You’. "




Even the very famous Muhammad Rumi has laid foundation to thoughts as progressive as Feminism -

"The Prophet said that women
totally dominate men of intellect and possessors of hearts,
But ignorant men dominate women,
for they are shackled by the ferocity of animals."
-Rumi

Roy's works are written in a very crisp,intelligent style aided with witty remarks and satirical approaches towards religious extremists.The articles written by him often consisted of a lot of Astrophysics and related explanation as to how this universe was born,when this thought was aroused within progressive philosophers and freethinkers of bygone ages and how the clergy has been taking advantage by using 'fear to God' as a weapon to hypnotise generations after generations on blind faith and baseless beliefs.
The blend of logic and the compact form of writing that held out the juxtaposition and 
inter-relations between Sciences and Social-Sciences is indeed one of the most fresh styles of writing in this era.His courage,online activism and martyrdom deserves a lot of reverence from humanists of this century.


Washiqur Rahman

The second victim was Washiqur Rahman,who wrote under pseudo name 'Babu' for 
Mukto-Mona.By profession,he worked for a travel agency and was an ardent atheist,too.His writings often involved strong satire against Muslim fundamentalists.
Washiqur had more than hundred stab wounds in his body and it was impossible to identify his features the way his body was hacked,which at the same time specifies that they stabbed him numerous times even after he had died.This really exhibits the extent of perversion that has been instigated in them.No doubt this arouses the already existent 'Islamophobia' even deeper within people's conscious and sub-conscious and not to mention that such people are neither human beings,nor animals - they are certainly of a much inferior quality than both.


Ananta Bijoy Das

The third victim,Ananta Bijoy Das was a lawyer by profession at the same time being an atheist and a freethinker and a contributor at Mukto-Mona.
All the three bloggers were hacked to death by masked men within localities with active settlements present.This shows how much people are frightened and how much they have been brainwashed that no one even cared to help. Isn't it strange that a crowd of 100 people would not be able to save a man from four attackers,considering the fact that they had machetes with them.
The three deaths from February-May only proves the incapability (who knows if the incapability is just a step to prevent the administrative/civil services from providing any kind of help to freethinkers in a largely fundamentalist based country in the current times) of the government of Bangladesh.

Little do the fundamentalists know that words are immortal.May be they face evolution,may be they head for the better or worse but words cannot be killed.They are killing only communicators who spread these words to the generation.Of course this does not kill freethinking,of course this does not end the struggle.Of course,we will certainly see a lot more bloodshed but of course,we will speak until the day comes when truth touches minds,when there would be light in the darkest of nooks in the narrow limits of the human minds.


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2 Comments

  1. Good and befitting tributes to some outstanding persons.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Outstanding and courageous they were,indeed.

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