THE controversy over who must have been the first president of the country exposes an underside of our contentious politics hidebound to what psychologists call the Birth Order Effect. BNP started it when its senior vice-president, domiciled in London, claimed that his party's founder was the rightful claimant to that title. Other BNP leaders chorused to embellish that claim as if it was some kind of rote learn-
ing. The prime minister personally returned the volley, calling the BNP founder a freedom fighter in name only. Her party leaders soon rallied around her as if a group of singers was accompanying the soloist. Our politicians are playing buzkashi with history.
Buzkashi is a Central Asian sport in which horsemounted players attempt to drag a goat carcass toward goalpost. For couple of weeks the two political parties have been dragging history, each side trying to run with its verdict. It's a pity that so many years after independence they're still busy sorting out the basics.
Going back to the birth order, Australian psychologist Alfred Adler was the first to propound it. FI is competent disciple Michael Grose authored Why First-borns Rule the World and Last-borns Want to Change It. The book suggests how birth order, through human evolution, determined that the first-born inherits power and the last-born is sent to war.
Our own history also started out with some kind of a twist. The leader, who mobilised the people, didn't go to war. The leader, who mobilised the war, had no popular background. Had both leaders been the same person, we would have been spared the turbulence making us so sick!
We've stumbled on the controversy over the primogeniture among our two patriarchs. So, who should come first between them? One was a political leader who had roused the nation to fight for independence. Another was a military leader who had stepped in at a critical juncture of our history. Why must the highway of our national sensibility be so narrow that it can't handle the traffic of our admiration for both?
History has been neatly arrayed in other countries. Gopal Krishna Gokhale was famously the political mentor of Mahatma Gandhi, and he is credited for being amongst the early dreamers of Indian independence. Even though the two of them eventually fell apart over the means, Gandhi never denied Gokhale's influence on him in his pursuit of their common end. Gokhale was a middle child, who died in 1915 at the age of 48. Last-born Gandhi led the freedom struggle, while his first-born disciple Jawaharlal Nehru inherited power.
The Americans have given the rightful place to their leaders. They have duty recognised their founding fathersfor their contributions, dividing them into two key' subsets: the Signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Framers of the Constitution. How a country accommodates its great leaders tells a lot about its own greatness.
The independence struggle has never been the work of any single leader in any country7. Sparked by Father Miguel Hidalgo, Jose Mana Morelos saved the Mexican independence struggle from failing after Hidalgo's execution in 1811. Francisco de Miranda's first attempt to liberate Venezuela with British help failed, but he returned in 1810 to head up the First Venezuelan Republic with Simon Bolivar and others. Jose de San Martin led the fight for Argentine independence, but victory did not come until he joined hands with Chilean Bernardo O'Higgins and his rebel army to defeat the Spanish in 1818.
Why are we so obsessed with the pecking order of history? Why are our politicians bickering over who's who in their wishful thinking? This time they're behaving like land grabbers, going after the last vacant lot of our history stretching from the proclamation of independence on March 26, 1971 to the formation of the Mujibnagar Government on April 17, 1971. These 23 days, once the no-man's land, has been turned into a battleground.
True, the BNP founder wasn't running the country during that time but he was technically running the show. But how could that make him the first president since the republic hadn't come into existence yet! At the same time, it would be grossly7 unfair to say7 that he wasn't a freedom fighter just because his successors have embarked on their fancy.
The first-born-last-born hypothesis doesn't work for our two great leaders, because one was the third child in a family of four daughters and two sons. Another was the second son of his parents. According to Darwin, the middle children learn to be more flexible and sociable. They compromise and build coalitions.
It's an irony that these two leaders being middle children, their legacies are captive to their first-borns. Birth Order Effect says the first-borns are more interested in ruling the world instead of changing it. Enough to explain why the controversy exists! The writer is Editor, First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star.
Email: badrull51@yahoo.com