Haq Katha: Islamic Socialism in South Asian Print Culture

In 1972, the front-page headline of second issue of Haq Katha (True Word) read: “Whose freedom – the have-nots or the courtiers and bureaucrats?” The headline caused outrage, condemnation and censorship as well as a murmuring amongst Bangladeshis. Between 1972-5, the weekly Haq Katha, published by Maulana Bhashani, was clandestinely distributed by religious disciples, Maoists and Marxists across small towns, village and chars (sandback islands) in Bangladesh between 1972- 5. The paper was a central plank in the opposition to Sheikh Mujibur and the Awami League government over this period. Editors were sent to jail, issues were confiscated and destroyed and publications often took place under difficult and dangerous conditions.​

Why did the government feel so threatened? The emergence of Bangladesh in December 1971 after a brutal and traumatic nine-month long war was greeted with jubilation. There was a popular feeling amongst many Bangladeshis that they were finally free, and could now undertake the task of decolonisation. In this paper, I will translate some of the rare issues of Haq Katha, Satya Patra and Bishwo Shanti between 1972-5 from Bengali to English, and demonstrate how Haq Katha was critical to the formation of Islamic Socialist consciousness, offering an alternative radical postcolonial future for the nation-state in South Asia and beyond. Newspaper sections titled ‘Murid’s Darbar’ (disciple’s court), ‘Weekly Thoughts’, and ‘Bhashani’s Sayings’ provide rich examples of vernacular socialism and Islamic heterodoxy, where concepts such as land, labour, property, rule, sovereignty, and God were interrogated, reformulated or transformed. Building on ideas of ‘new man’ in Fanon, Che, and Biko, my paper will show how Haq Katha tried to build an ‘Islamic Socialist’ man. This was an identity connected to radical anti-colonial pasts and socialist legacies; subaltern internationalism; progressive Islamic ontologies and Afro-Asian futures. The Islamic Socialist ‘man’ challenged the rise and power of nationalism. Finally, I examine the importance of recovering Islamic Socialist print cultures and legacies in the Global South at a time of global right-wing populism and Islamophobia.