Culture binds Russia and Bangladesh
Anna Belikova is an orientalist working with the RT TV channel, Russia as its Chief Public Communication Specialist. She has lectured on international broadcasting and modern oriental studies at universities in Regensburg (Germany), Hong Kong, Virginia, Yorkshire, Damascus and Moscow universities. She recently joined a media-related international conference at Rome. Belikova responds to a video interview with Prothom Alo taken from Dhaka.
Prothom Alo: How do you see cultural ties between Bangladesh and Russia?
Anna Belikova: I am finding a lot of similarities between our cultures and even between our languages. In Rome I was once confused in the shop, and the shop actually belonged to a Bengali family. I wanted ask how to buy honey, and couldn’t ask in other languages. In Russian we call honey ‘Myod’ and in Bengali, if I’m not mistaken, it’s ‘Modhu’. Even this simple example shows that we have a lot of similarities due to our common Indo-European origin linguistically, and also due to historical ties.
There a lot of people from Bangladesh who were studying in Russia and the Soviet republics during the Soviet times. At the moment we also have a lot of students from Bangladesh, and a lot of them are my friends, including people who are participating in many events and helping in establishing and developing relations between our countries. I have a very good friend who works for the RT TV Channel who is originally from Bangladesh, but she was born in London. She is a very special friend of mine and a person who represents the beauty of different cultures together. That’s why my friend Nadira Tudor is an example of how absolutely amazing eastern culture can be integrated in the other cultures and how both cultures can benefit from this.
Prothom Alo: Gerassim Stepanovich Lebedev (1749-1817) was expelled by the British in 1797 from India. Later he founded the first printing press with Bengali type in St Petersburg. Do Russians have an aptitude for Bengali?
Many Russians have a special interest in Bengali history, culture and literature. There is Rabindranath Tagore, who is famous in Russia not only as a philosopher, not only as a writer, but also as poet. Even as a child, I remember listening to his song translated into Russian. It was performed by a group “Yalla”. They were singing “The last poem” of Rabindranath Tagore. It is actually the poem which is taken from Tagore’s book “The last poem” where the heroine, who is separated from her beloved, is writing a poem, the last poem, as tells the man she loved. This last poem was translated into Russian and for me it was the first impression of the beauty of the poetry in Bengali even though I’ve heard it first in Russian language.
Prothom Alo: You have also specialised in the Middle East. How do you see recent developments there?
Anna Belikova: My area of specialisation is Arab countries and Turkey. Unfortunately Arab countries are now much more connected to the painful topic of wars. I hope that someday we will speak mostly about the culture and beauty of this region because for me, the most important topic is culture. Political or economic ties can be developed only when we understand each other’s culture well.
Prothom Alo: President Putin always stressed greater consensus to fight against radical Islam. How do you see the Russian engagement with Islam?
Anna Belikova: I also want to point to the special relations that Russia has with the Islamic world, because Islam is not something foreign for Russia. First of all we should speak about Islam as an internal issue, For Russia, about 10% percent of the population is originally Muslim, and Islam is not something foreign for our country. Islam is a part of our history, it is a part of our culture, and it is a part of our mentality.
Russian Islam is such a specific and such a beautiful part of our culture. For us, Islam is associated with hospitality with special tradition of respect to the elderly people and in general, to humanity and human beings.
Russian Islam is not something foreign. Those ideas and also stereotypes, which are widely spread all over the world, that Islam is associated with extremism and terrorism, are coming also, unfortunately, into the space of our country. But thanks to our Muslims, who are really promoting high level of tolerance and high level of respect to other religions, we manage to live in peace, ‘Masha Allah’.
Russia has very special ties with Muslims living not only inside Russia. For this purpose a special group of strategic vision was created, called “Russia Islamic World”’. This group is focused on collaboration of Russia with Muslim countries. Every year there is a special meeting dedicated to this collaboration.
Prothom Alo: Stalin did not like India’s partition on religious lines and saw the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a British ploy aimed at keeping Russia at bay, some modern research suggests. How do you see this?
Anna Belikova: Russia takes Islam as a part of our history and as a part of our mentality, it is a part of our modern reality, but also Russia respects the historical relations that were built with many countries in the Middle East and also with the countries in also the Great India. There were a lot of historical and political discussions about idea of the British colonial government dividing India into religious parts. But the example of Russia shows that when people of different religions and different mentalities and cultures live together, they really benefit much more from this coexistence than from being separated.
Unfortunately we can see now very painful issues between India and Pakistan. Also Bangladesh in the 70’s Bangladesh was involved in a very big conflict so I think that those problems are coming from this separation which was actually made for geopolitical reasons.
Anyway, we now have to face reality and what Russia says that we respect national identity and sovereignty of all the countries in the world.