| The Bangladesh governments position is a betrayal to all these people Eminent intellectual Farhad Mazhar talks to Mubin S Khan about the Tipaimukh Dam and the role Bangladesh could have played
The Indian government's plans to build the Tipaimukh Dam which will affect the north-eastern districts of Bangladesh, has now become a major issue of concern in our country. How would you assess Bangladesh government's response to the issue so far? The current government, not surprisingly for some of us, does not have the 'national interest' of the people of Bangladesh in mind. The term national interest' begs explanation to demark my distance from national chauvinism or parochial decadence. India's systematic appropriation of river and river flows, a form of 'privatisation' or 'Indianisation' of the rivers in the subcontinent, being the upper riparian country, is the worst crime that could be committed against an agrarian civilisation situated downstream that still thrives on biodiversity-based agro-ecological systems that have profound global significance. The pity here is that this 'dalali' of the Indian ruling class by our government will also not improve relations with India and will hardly provide any guarantee for them to remain in power. This is simply because it is not merely an issue between India and Bangladesh, but a major issue of the people of the subcontinent against big dams, which is the destroyer of the environment, ecology, biodiversity and the livelihood of millions of people. The movement against Tipaimukh is not only going on in Bangladesh, but it is also taking place in India – in Manipur, Mizoram, Assam etc. Our friends in India, who have been facing repression in the hands of their own government, will also be disappointed by our attitude, by the blatant apathy of our government to environment, ecology, life and livelihood of the common people that are integrally linked to and dependent on the availability of water through transnational river flows in both sides of the border. Bangladesh as a country must remain at the apex of the moral and ethical ground opposing such destructive activity by India representing the people of South Asia. The Bangladesh government's position is a betrayal to all these people. The government could have instead taken a leadership role and represented all these people. It would have been a rational position of even a pro-India government. Our government's response has not only been against national interest, but it is also a very cheap form of pandering to the Indian government.. I think this is also insulting for India. I am sure the Indian policymakers are embarrassed by all of this. On the other hand, I must point out, people who are trying to use the anti-India sentiment in this issue, are also making a grave mistake. Any tint of communal position in all of this will not serve the interest of Bangladesh. My personal assessment is that this regime that we now have in power, post-BDR incident, is a clinically dead government with hardly any capacity to take policy position on national questions. They are surviving on various alliances, an alliance with the upper-middle-class whose interests converge with the corporate world. And they came to power through another alliance with the Moin Uddin-Fakhruddin government. They must now serve the interests of those who put them in power. They must deliver some goods to India simply as a means to survive. The apparent taking over of the Bangladeshi geo-political and strategic interest by the Indian ruling class will not be liked by the other global powers including USA, UK, EU, Japan and certainly not, China. Their interest is not being served in a competitive world by simply 'Indianising' Bangladesh.. The government must make India realise that India's national interest cannot be served without serving Bangladesh's national interest. Colonising the weak nations by Indian's ruling class could only breed instability and violence in the region. You mention, USA and UK will not take well India's meddling in Bangladesh's affairs. But are these countries not strong allies in global politics? You see, imperialism is not a homogenous power. Monopoly capitalism does not imply absence of competition for the market and the raw materials between imperialist countries. Bangladesh is strategically an important country. In a country like ours, only one superpower will reap all the fruits while others watch on – I don't think that is how imperialism functions. It is also strategically dangerous for countries like China and will not always serve US interest since there is convergence and contradiction between the two. For ordinary people in Bangladesh we are simply a poor country and they wonder what interest global powers would have in our country. You mention we are strategically, economically and geopolitically very important. How is that? Firstly, I think you are talking about the perception of the urban middle class, and they are certainly poor. They are apolitical, morally weak, intellectually poor and have no idea about the potentiality of Bangladesh and ignorant about the potentiality of her human resources. They are also poor, because the only resource they can identify is money. Ordinary hard working people think otherwise, they are explorers and busy in defining survival strategies in the real life in a highly competitive global scenario. Bangladesh, as a whole, is not poor at all. From the agricultural point of view, we have one of the most highly developed ecological systems one can have. This system can sustain people easily. Secondly, in the last fifteen years, even from a neo-liberal point of view, a strong economy has developed through the remittance, export earning and development of entrepreneurship. Bangladesh does not need the support of lending agencies to sustain itself. Third, this is a homogenous society. One of our biggest strengths, however, is human resources. You cannot work if you do not have people. We have tremendous possibility in agriculture and industry. We have an enormous resource of sweet water. If we can plan to harvest and store and organise our urban lifestyles and industrial activities to remain pollution-free then by just selling sweet water our economy, theoretically, we can grow in leaps and bounds. In that manner, we do have a lot of resources. I will not indulge in the clichés of oil, gas etc. But just a point that we hardly mention, we are also rich in our use of renewable energy from biomass. Our biggest problem in development is the parasitic middle-class, or to be polite, a parasitic mentality that dominates because of the domination of this class. We must find ways of how we could contribute to production, and not be petty traders in the global bazar. We must learn to think and plan based on the available resources to develop a lifestyle that is ecological, ethically and morally joyful and ecstatic by the sheer brilliance of the idea. Now strategically, our stability and capacity as a political state matter to the security of India, China, United States as well as other global powers. It is a sight of struggle for the various powers, which is why we hear about deep sea ports and oil blocks etc. all the time. This is also the reason why we were recently ruled by a military with the façade of civilian government Finally, secularism, and by secularism I do not mean, anti-Islamic communal and racial politics that feed the predatory interventions of the 'war against terror'. The 'spirit' of secular tradition I have in mind is not an instrument of imperial expansion, war and violence. Since I reject conventional secularism nor is it theological, or based on any politics of identity that demean human beings or justify oppression. I celebrate the divinity of the human kind, a cherished legacy from the sufi-bhakti tradition of Bengal, a resource that we should defend for the emergence of new global politics from our soil. This politics has tremendous possibility. Bangladesh can become an example for East and West, North and South, to believers and non-believers, if we do not cast our heart in stone we are definitely moving to an interesting direction. Bangladesh has rejected the idea of 'Islam' that was interpreted only in theological terms and communal sense in 1971, without rejecting egalitarian and spiritual implication. We are radical but authentic thinkers and because of our homogenous character, culturally-rich state strong in wielding people's power, which I think is a huge threat for anti-democratic war mongering global powers. Do you think India, as a global power bordering us almost on all sides, will allow this potential to flourish? India is a very divided, caste-ridden and a very repressive state. If India becomes another capitalist country what else could India contribute to the humanity? We have seen Europe, USA, Japan and now China. But if Bangladeshis keep on struggling through their strengths, in time it will turn into a sub-continental struggle, Bangladesh can transform India. All the oppressed classes of the subcontinent will unite in this struggle. We all have a stake in this new global order. I honestly think, we can do it. |
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