The Autonomy of Literature: Waliullah and Shahidul Zahir

A profound transformation is taking place in Bengali intellectual thought and literary history—one that is not confined to aesthetic debates alone. Behind it operates a new configuration of political, religious, and social power. From Syed Waliullah's Lalsalu (1948) to the recent controversies surrounding contemporary writer Shahidul Zahir's works, there is an opportunity to examine them together. The tendency to read literature not in its own aesthetic and philosophical space, but to subordinate it to one's own political and ideological 'projects,' is shrinking our intellectual landscape, and this deserves serious reflection. To me, these two writers from different eras are fundamentally revealing a singular, historical, and deep-seated intellectual crisis.

The Trap of the Tripartite Project

Syed Waliullah's Lalsalu does not merely expose the hollowness of a fraudulent shrine; rather, it is a masterful unmasking of the fear rooted in feudal and colonial psychology, existential crises, and the politics of power waged in the name of spirituality. But over time, religious and progressive discourses in literary criticism have turned this great novel into a tool for their respective agendas, a weapon for implementing their own projects.

Herein lies a strange convergence, where opposing poles are, in fact, threaded together by the same logic.

The Salafi/Wahhabi Project (The Narrative of Pure Creed): The primary agenda of Salafi and Wahhabi-leaning Islamists is to rid society of shrines, the pir-saint tradition, and the 'bid'aat' (innovations) of folk Islam. When they read Lalsalu, their goal is not to understand Waliullah's literary merit or the psychology of exploitation. They use Majid's hypocrisy to prove that shrine culture is nothing but shirk (polytheism) and deception. In other words, they treat the novel as a negative documentary evidence for establishing their own 'pure creed.'

The Project of a Faction of Sunnis (The Narrative of Blasphemy): The segment of Sunnis that upholds shrines, pirs, and the folk Sufi tradition takes the exact opposite position. They see in Majid's character a major assault on shrine culture and believe that the novel, overall, denigrates pirs, saints (mashaayekh), and their religious sentiments. Consequently, in their project, Lalsalu becomes a 'progressive conspiracy' to attack 'religious feelings.' Another faction of Sunnis wants to keep the shrines, but in a manner they deem Sharia-compliant—where Milad, Ziyarat, and votive offerings (manat) are deemed incorrect. They seek to strip the shrine's rights from its bards, devotees, disciples, and the marginalized, and establish their own creed in the name of Sharia. They begin discussions on shrines with sympathy, but end with narratives of anti-social activities and so-called anti-drug comments. They essentially seek to take over shrines in the name of reform, according to their own creed.

The Project of the Progressives (The Weapon of General Anti-Religion): On the other hand, a large segment of secular or progressive intellectuals have, while obscuring Waliullah's existentialist philosophy, fit it into their own agenda. Their project is to use Majid to establish that religion is merely deception, lust for power, and backwardness. They set aside the novel's spiritual emptiness and the psychological complexities of its characters, wanting to read it merely as a 'progressive manifesto against religious exploitation.'

All these factions effectively divert literature from its metaphorical richness, multiplicity, and the existential crises of human beings, treating the text merely as an 'ideological manifesto' or 'ideological propaganda.' As a result, the reading of Waliullah has long remained confined to an elite circle, making it irrelevant to the larger part of society.

Shahidul Zahir and the Magic of Reality

Following Waliullah, today, as Shahidul Zahir increasingly becomes synonymous with Chandmari, it is necessary to grasp the roots of this crisis in our own way. Shahidul Zahir is a writer in Bengali literature who has brought forth the repressed psychology of Bengalis, the alleyways of Dhaka city, and above all, the trauma and wounds of the 1971 Liberation War within a magical yet ruthless reality.

In recent times, the objection raised over the presence of beards and turbans on Razakars in his novels is essentially an effort to subordinate literary aesthetics to political censorship. In the reality of 1971, the use of beards, turbans, or religious symbols by a large portion of the Pakistani forces and their local collaborators was an undeniable historical truth. Zahir incorporated that truth into his own narrative. To view this as an attempt to belittle any specific community amounts to denying literature's historical consciousness and its capacity for metaphorical creation.

Two Eras, One Crisis

The greatest commonality between Waliullah and Shahidul Zahir lies not in their subject matter or character portrayal, but in their steadfast faith in the autonomy of literature. Waliullah wrote at the dawn of the Pakistani state, when a new nationalist state structure was being forged under the cloak of religion; Shahidul Zahir wrote about the experience of an independent Bangladesh and its subsequent trauma. The times are different, yet in both cases, literature has unveiled the uncomfortable territories of power. Neither of them wrote the official narratives of religion, nation, or history; they wrote about human complexity. Yet, due to the profound impact of their literary merit, their works have repeatedly been hauled before the tribunal of ideology.

At the root of this crisis lie several fundamental and systematic disorders in the reading of literature:

The tendency to read literature not as a text, but as evidence: Instead of viewing a novel as an independent aesthetic creation, it is being used as a 'document' to prove religious, political, or moral stances.

The tendency to conflate the character with the author: The statements, behaviors, or symbols of a fictional character are being directly assumed to be the author's personal ideology—which is the most elementary error in literary reading. Just as Majid's deceitfulness is not Waliullah's anti-Islam sentiment, the Razakar's beard and turban in Zahir's novel are not an expression of the author's animosity toward any group.

My concern is that Shahidul Zahir, too, may fall prey to the politics of the Liberation War narrative, becoming irrelevant in the public sphere and confined to that same elite literary coterie.

The Subordination of Literature under Identity Politics: Literature is being detached from its multi-dimensionality and put to the strict test of religious, nationalist, or ideological identity. As a result, the complexities and grey areas within the text are disappearing. The connection is no longer being made around 'Majid' or the 'Razakar' as literary figures; rather, the question of how literature is being read is becoming the central issue. Just as Lalsalu is constricted if Majid is made solely a 'representative of religion', the same constriction occurs if Shahidul Zahir's characters are made merely 'representatives of an identity group.' In both cases, literature loses its character and turns into a dry document of identity politics.

The Proliferation of Social and Moral Censorship: Alongside the state's institutional censorship, social media, public opinion, and organized identity-based pressure have now been added. This new type of 'mob censorship' is becoming a new and dangerous tool for controlling writers and literature.

The Crisis of Literary Autonomy: If literature is judged solely by the frameworks of political loyalty, religious purity, or moral acceptability, it will gradually lose its own imagination, metaphor, ambiguity, and critical power. These two writers from different eras ultimately face the same fundamental and ingenuous question—will literature speak its truth, or will it appease power's curated narrative?

Identity Politics, Petro-Dollars, and the Philosophy of Shrine-Breaking

Operating behind this entire psychological shift is a far-reaching geopolitical and social transformation:

Islamization and the Influence of Petro-Dollars: Over the past few decades, the social and cultural influence of remittances and petro-dollars from the Middle East has been displacing Bengal's classical Sufi and mystical traditions, seeking to establish a rigid, textual, and ritual-centric theology.