Abstract
Bangladesh’s struggle with religious fundamentalism is persistent. The liberal political force that spearheaded the country’s liberation war in 1971 tried to adopt a hard secularist policy by banning the religion-based political parties. However, the newly independent nation soon faced conservative and Islamist upsurge. Secularism was omitted, and Islam was officially endorsed as the State Religion. In 2011, the current secularist regime revived Secularism. It, however, failed to remove the State Religion clause. The ban on religion-based political parties also could not be revived to its original extent. Still, the Parliament tried to entrench and better protect the compromised version of Secularism. An ‘eternity clause’ inserted through the Fifteenth Amendment Act 2011 made a large part of the Bangladesh Constitution, including the principle of Secularism, totally unamendable by any future parliament. This paper examines whether the ‘eternity clause’ ultimately saves the future of Secularism in Bangladesh. It argues that textual entrenchment in the form of total unamendability may not prevent what the American constitutional experts call the ‘informal’, ‘off text’ or ‘stealth’ amendments to the Constitution. It also argues that the judicial doctrine of the implicit unamendability of ‘basic structures may not be adequate to safeguard against any future dismemberment of Secularism in Bangladesh.