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Need for soul-searching

While at one level, it is problem of so-called law and order at another and deeper level it is a problem of the erosion of pluralism in Bangladesh.

Habibul Haque Khondker
BANGLADESH needs to regain its sanity and decency. This is the challenge for the new government however tenuous its tenure may be. May be Bangladesh needs a Sadharon Janata Party after the Aam Aadmi Party of Mr. Arvind Kejriwal in India. The entrenched political class is too busy fighting their own internal and factional battles to take notice of the plight of the ordinary citizens of Bangladesh. The behavior, language and actions of the politics of Bangladesh must change to help Bangladesh attain her desired goal to be a Middle income country by 2021. More than that, Bangladesh needs to return to its rightful civilised existence that it always has been. The derailment of civility calls for a national soul searching.
The twin problems of corruption and violence need immediate attention. Some sections of the print media have been forthcoming condemning the twin evils but the civil society has not done enough. The silence of the civil society on corruption is deafening, and their whimper on violence is regrettable. Both the leading parties have knowingly patronised the corrupt politicians. The attacks on the lives of ordinary people that included attacks on the passenger buses with petrol bombs, cutting of trees and setting fire on a truck loaded with animals were met with mild criticisms, not abhorrence. Talk show pundits, the representatives of urban middle classes with decent jobs were too busy analysing the elections, which party gained, which party or who lost, future implications and so on to the utter difference of the horror in which many of their rural and poor compatriots are living their days and nights. Very few can be seen in the chat shows expressing their revulsion at the attack of the Hindu neighbourhoods in the districts of Jessore, Dinajpur and elsewhere in Bangladesh, far from the capital city. The urban bias and class bias in identifying national issues is glaringly blatant in Bangladesh. Imagine, if a high-class residential area
such as Baridhara or Gulshan was attacked what would have been the response?
The rural communities that bore the brunt of the attacks were populated by the poor people who belong to the Hindu religion. They are the others for the urban elite. The Hindu women in one instance have been subjected to gang-rape. Only few women have come out in public, given the culture of shame in Bangladesh. It is quite probable that many women victims have chosen to suffer their agonies in silence out of the media glare. They did not want to face another journalist asking them about their "feelings" after the trauma.
The fact that people choose to suffer rather than come forward reporting crimes is a reflection of their mistrust with the system. They accept such sufferings as a routine of life. After elections, the aggrieved parties and their loyalist or paid goons would ransack houses of the supporters of their opponents, set fire to their shops and properties and rape some of their women have become normalised.
Official inquiries followed by identification and arrest of the culprits and their trial and punishment would have
deterred such heinous and cowardly acts. This exposes the systemic misgovernance of Bangladesh. In extreme cases, uniform forces would be deployed to take actions which often put the innocent villagers at risk. There is no substitute for the full implementation of the due process of law.
While at one level, it is problem of so-called law and order at another and deeper level it is a problem of the erosion of pluralism in Bangladesh. For centuries, Bangladesh, or the territory that constituted the present nation-state, has been a model of pluralism. It is only since the beginning of the Pakistan movement the seeds of communal discord was shown and nurtured which reached its peak in wanton violence at the climax of the movement for a so-called "home land of the Muslims" in the 1940s.
Pakistan, the way it was envisioned by its founders, is dead. Yet thegdst (German word for spirit or ghost) of Pakistan is still alive thanks to the religious turn in politics since the mid-1970s in Bangladesh. Some party leaders from overseas are busy rubbishing the 1972 constitution of Bangladesh which, at least, incorporated the provision of secularism in the sense of religious tolerance. The American-style secularism that the framers of constitution incorporated is appropriate for Bangladesh, yet the usurpers of high political office in Bangladesh were blinded by their short-term gain thus deliberately jettisoned the principle of secularism which dented the spirit of pluralism and inclusiveness in Bangladesh.
In fact, religious turn in politics is a global phenomenon which is being dealt with in other parts of the world. Bangladesh is yet to develop a modality of dealing with this phenomenon.
A conversation on pluralism, nonviolence and democracy is the need of the hour. Are the big two political parties up to it?
The writer is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association and a political commentator.