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Our puzzle times and Niccolo Machiavelli

Mizanur Rahman Shelley
OUR nation is confronted with a great puzzle. It is not alone in this situation. In many ways --political, social and economic - the entire world seems to be in a frightening stir as noted political scientist Samuel P. Huntington summed up in his controversial book Clash of Civilizations, the emerging global conflict centres round the arrogance of the West, resurgence of Islam and the rise of China. These powerful forces and trends along with military and economic growth of India make our world a place of evolving uncertainty.
The case of Bangladesh is somewhat different. Months after the controversial parliamentary elections of January 5, 2014, things appear to be calm and staid. The government of the day bravely faces all adverse criticisms at home and abroad. Its confidence seems to be underscored by a sense of gilt-edged securities. The macro-economic indicators seem stout and healthy. The opposition, though placed outside the parliament following the largely non-participatory elections (which it resisted and boycotted), has been carrying on peaceful rallies and meetings denouncing the ruling party. It is also demanding, as before, the reinstitution of the caretaker government system to oversee mid-term or regular elections. The leaders of the ruling party forcefully reject any possibility of a mid-term election. They also refuse to sit with 'extra parliamentary opposition.' Meanwhile, investment is at low ebb. Banks and financial institutions are overflowing with idle money, some say it has reached nearly Tk. 178 thousand crores. Enterprise appears to be stalled by an indefinable sense of uncertainty and mistrust. The unemployment scenario holds out little hope for improvement. How can confidence return in such a puzzling situation?
One travels back in time. The year is 1962. The pre-1971 undivided Pakistan was in the process of democratic move-
ment and agitation that had just begun against the military dictatorial system of President Ayub Khan. We were students of BA (Hons.) in the Political Science Department of the Dhaka University.
Our major test was round the corner. Classmates were tense and sullen. Only Jahangir Mohammad Jashim with heavy powered glasses, a crumpled Capstan cigarette between his fingers, moving with the ease of a seasoned athlete seemed confidently undaunted. He joined us. He surveyed the stoic silence and then burst out with a quote from J. W. Allen ...“in the porch of the sixteenth century stood the enigmatic figure of Niccolo Machiavelli."
Immediately the tension subsided. The entire group broke pleasantly in hearty laughter. Kaiser, Ataur Rahman Khan, the tall man from Chittagong, (who later became an ambassador and also member of the Presidium of Bangladesh Awami League and now departed from this world) said without malice: "Here is the man who has memorised his lessons." The tension of unstable times would continue to appear again and again.
Mankind is caught in an inescapable net: incertitude created by the infidelity, arrogance and disloyalty of human beings themselves. In uncertain times men break the rules that they themselves — in the pooled wisdom of centuries of socialised existence - created and swore to obey.
At such times social life is in turmoil and politics becomes bereft of the sense of values which makes it something superior to a dog-fight for power. At such times the principles that make economic processes socially relevant, meaningful and profitable are cast to the four winds. Business and trade, commerce and industry become transparently veiled instruments of the selfcentered and greedy minority. They thrive at the cost of the mute majority.
Niccolo Machiavelli (AD 1469-1527), the much abused and cruelly condemned Florentine political thinker, flourished in a
time and place marked by painful politicosocial instability. Italy in Machiavelli's time was divided into numerous city-states, which were dominated by five powers: Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples and the Papacy. By the time Machiavelli was twenty-five King Charles VIII invaded Italy to conquer Naples. Louis XII who succeeded him led the Spanish army into Italy and within a few years mastered the southern part of Italy. “During the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the Italian states tried to play off one invader against another but never succeeded in maintaining a compact alliance among themselves." A weak Italy finally lay prostrate under foreign domination.
In Europe a new breed of men had come to the forefront. The 'Renaissance' men, the product of changing times, children of incertitude. They played the game of life according to a new set of 'principles' which were esteemed if and only when they 'succeeded' in achieving the desired goal -whatever, it might have been. It was pragmatism run amok So Machiavelli, imbibing the spirit of his bewildering times, wrote the The Prince. It was a prescription for troubled times.
Machiavelli advised the prince to be feared rather than loved. "Since some men love as they please but fear when the prince pleases, a wise prince should rely on what he can control, not on what he cannot control."
He counseled that the prince should act both like a fox and a lion ..."One must be a fox in order to recognise traps and a lion to frighten off wolves. Those who simply act like lions are stupid."
"So it follows that a prudent ruler cannot and should not honour his word when it places him at a disadvantage and when the reason for which he made his promise no longer exists. If all men were good, this precept would be good: but because men are wretched creatures who would not keep their word to you. You need not keep your word to them. And a prince will never lack good excuses to colour his
bad faith."
The prince, asserted Machiavelli, "should...determine to avoid anything which will make him hated and despised...He will be hated above all if he is rapacious and aggressive with regard to the property and women of his subjects. He should refrain from these. As long as he does not rob the great majority of their property or their honour they remain content."
The essence of the Machiavellian philosophy as articulated in The Prince is summed up in the phrase: "The end justifies the means."
In times of trouble when survival becomes a technology and success a subtle art, Machiavelli's advice seems to be the need of the hour. Aptly has it been said: "No political philosophy is intelligible save in the context of its time.”
Machiavelli has been condemned by those who divorced him from his times. It became "as acceptable to call the 'Devil Machiavellian' as it was to call Machiavelli Diabolical." But to give the Devil his due, one would do well to remember Machiavelli's worries about "the instability of a government not based on the goodwill of the people." As he himself wrote: “A man who has become prince against the will of the people...should, before anything else, try to win the people over, this too is easy if he takes them under protection. When men receive favours from someone they expect to do them ill, they are under a great obligation to their benefactor; just so the people can in an instant become more amicably disposed toward the prince, then if he had seized power by their favour."
Can and will our society take any lessons from Machiavelli's teachings, amoral as they may be?The author, founder Chairman of Centre for Development Research, Bangladesh (CDRB) and Editor quarterly "Aslan Affairs," was a former teacher of political science in Dhaka Universlty(1964-1967) and former member of the erstwhile Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) (1967-1980) and former non-partisan technocrat cabinet minister of Bangladesh (1990).