Bangladesh a nation or a dynasty? Shabbir A. Bashar, USA Judging by some of the recent postings on NFB, it seems the age old spats between die hard Awami Leaguers and the rest of the Bangladeshi community have come to a head once again. This reminds me of a brief conversation I had with an old friend couple of days ago. Both of us were too young to remember the vivid details of the 1971 war of independence but old enough to recall the turmoil that plagued the country through most of the seventies. We are of a generation whose parents and family members had lived through the 1947 separation of India, the 1952 uprising against west Pakistani hegemony and the events leading up to the creation of what we now call Bangladesh. Our families, disenchanted with the slow but sure degeneration of the Bangladeshi institutions and the values of the society, ended up raising their families in other parts of the world. As first generation expatriate children, my friend and I grew up thinking of Bangladesh with great reverence: the very mention of the word made our heart skip a beat no matter where we were or whose mouth it came from. It was the land of an Utopian dream that generations before us always talked about – much likee the character Chanu Miah in Monica Ali's Brick Lane. The demographics of today's Bangladesh will show that majority of the population was not even born before the mid-seventies – as such thhis newer generation is naturally more concerned about what the future beholds for them than events that happened before their birth. Unlike my friend and I or the people from a generation or two before us, they have no first-hand knowledge of a war. When I talk with my post-seventies generation cousins born and brought up in sovereign Bangladesh, I start to understand something that baffled me for a very long time: the apparent nonchalance of my non-Bangladeshi friends (with whom I went to school and university in various parts of the world) about their country of origin. I simply could not understand why someone would not know the exact words and the tune of their national anthem, the exact exchange rate of their national currency to the US dollar on any given day, the history of their language or how many people spoke it, the names of all their famous scientists, writers, generals etc. Now I am starting to appreciate that the unique struggles and experiences one goes through when growing up make a difference to what is important to them. The laws of statistics and universality dictate the attributes of a good human being versus a bad or an unfortunate one regardless of their specific experiences. A person who cherishes positive values will always seek the truth through research and understanding whereas one who does not will be satisfied with all kinds of lies and continue to propagate them and live by them. It is not a crime not to know the exact words of the national anthem or the names of famous people of their nation. It is sheer ignorance – often giving way to bigotry and ulltimately degeneracy – not to value the meanings of collective aspirrations and personal achievements signified by these symbols of human identity. Bangladeshis love to discuss politics. Everyone starting from the bottom of the social ranks right up to the very top has an opinion on everything and they have their own theories and ideas about how to solve every problem that plagues the country, the world and the universe. Alas, most of them are shy of reading – wait – a great number of them can't read or wriwrite! So where does all their information and interest in politics come from? We all know the old saying, an empty vessel sounds much. I would rather society focused on empowering people with rights and being held responsible for civic duties as ordinary citizens; once these basic concepts are put in practice, people will naturally feel more confident about coming to their own decisions instead of being held hostage to the opinions of the few. The way things are now, it is as though most of the country is a huge cavity of a laser device that starts to resonate uncontrollably at the slightest stimulation. In a laser, when the cavity is pumped up sufficiently, it starts to emit radiation with enough energy to burn through anything and everything in its path. Without some kind of feedback to control the pumping, it eventually burns out causing irreparable damage to itself and all in its vicinity – it becomes unsttable and degenerate. Ignorant talk thus is the perfect ingredient for instability – and I believe at the core that is what Bangladesh suffers from. Until individuals start questioning their own knowledge and subsequent actions, the divide between opposing quarters will not heal – they will keep burning themselves through hook or crook. My hope against hope is that my younger cousins, the new generation of Bangladeshis, will be more self questioning and more self-guided. During the last elections, people chose to vote in a large number of corrupt deputies despite having the option for a no vote. Why? The parties themselves fielded candidates who turned out to be tax dodgers if not out-right convicted criminals. Again, why did this happen? After the elections, despite public directives against tender snatching from the Prime Minister herself, every day we read about Awami League activists continuing to commit these crimes; this is after a full term of corruption ridden rule of the BNP. Some Awami League ministers announced that their workers have a right to get government contracts for services rendered to the party when it was in opposition. Members of Parliament are too busy giving themselves one perk after another and grabbing more and more power and control over government. It is as though they were all (regardless of party affiliation) elected to get a license to loot the nation. Then there’s the obsession with family ties. This runs up and down every facet of Bangladeshi society. People are always seeking ways to bypass procedures and overturn rules through nepotism. Accustomed to this mode of cheating the system, most Bangladeshis will proudly voice their opinion against anyone who in their eyes challenges to their knowledge, actions or ideas. Their reaction more often than not is juvenile in nature and tends to be personal attacks and schemes to put down their opponent in any which way they can – forgetting all the while that the latter is an equal stakeholder and a fellow nation builder of the same country. The saddest thing is, they are mighty proud of this degenerative and intolerant behavior despite being part of a nation of 160 million people. There are blind Awami supporters and there are the blind BNP supporters and there are the turn coats – followers of people like Moudud Ahmmed for example – who go with the flow and have no vengeance of thheir own. Even though countries like the US and the UK have had ruling by essentially two parties, these parties are easier to distinguish in terms of their guiding principles – namely conservatism vs liberalism. In Bangladesh, both the Awami and the BNP claim to be distinctly different in their political ideology; in the latter day context it comes down to each of the leaders claiming their respective family relations with former presidents of the country. People of Bangladesh notionally hate one party rule yet they put up with the party in power with resignation – as though they accept it iis the turn of another family o rule the country. Unlike in the UK or the US, Bangladesh seems to have a winner takes all approach to politics: theres constant public acrimony over the slightest matter and the incumbent always blames its predecessor for all the woes; the incumbent always accuses the latter of corruption and unleashes all state machineries to sabotage their political existence and sometimes personal existence. The culture of partisan hegemony is so rampant that a change of government is swiftly followed by a change of all middle and senior managers in healthcare, administration, law enforcement and wherever possible the judiciary. When the government changes in the US or the UK, policies are seldom reversed overnight as there exist a well established chain of command which is deliberately and consciously protected from partisan influence; there are several independent tiers of government to ensure efficacy, distributed empowerment, accountability and right of choice. When the same happens in Bangladesh, a truth becomes a lie and a lie becomes a truth quite effortlessly. So is Bangladesh a nation or a dynasty? If it is a dynasty, then it is dishonest to claim it is a nation. On the other hand, if it is a nation, then it is inappropriate to use state machinery for glorifying a family. In a nation, the leaders are accountable to the citizens; in a dynasty, the rulers are there to simply rule their serfs. People in Bangladesh brag about national fathers and national announcers based on their chosen ruling family; people in the US refer to founding fathers and framers of constitution – note the plurals. Botth in the UK and the US, the slightest hint of corruption by people in power and authority leads to impartial investigation and resignation of the official; in a dynasty, it is difficult to punish one's own because personal ties and loyalties supersede the rules that would otherwise be applied to someone who not one's own. Territorially, Bangladesh is a very small country. It is more closed to criticism and mechanism for self-correction than would be otherwise expect in a nation of 160 million people. It is almost as though the physical boundaries of the state have bounded the creative emotions of the people; they are trapped in a mindset that has no capacity to expand to taking control over their destiny. Thus there is a parasitic relationship between the ruled and the latter day rulers. Sadly some of the reactions in NFB concerning the Supreme Court judgment on the violent events of 1975 reflect that too. I am disgusted by writers who are trying to put down the dissenters who’ve backed up their well-articulated thoughts with tangible references. I would have liked to see rebuttals based on historical documents rather than hearsay and emotion-laden arguments based on dynasty style loyalty. In a nation, there is room for difference of view - in a dynasty, there is not. A system that allows it-self to be truly challenged is far stronger and healthier than the one that shuts off any room for change through brute force. The latter always succumbs to pent-up natural forces due to its oppressiveness. It never prospers in the long run. Shabbir A. Bashar, PhD Vancouver, USA E Mail : shabbir_bashar@yahoo.com http://newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidRecord=294704 |
__._,_.___