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Renegotiating the language of authority and power
Since forever, lessons on legal authority (within jurisprudence) seemed rather futile to me as they stood in dissonance with my lived socio-political reality in Bangladesh. One such instance is the “service conception” of authority I had to learn, meaning simply that legal authority exercises its power over us because it serves us. In fact, authority derives its authority from the service it delivers. It serves us with meaningful options that we would choose from anyway. The lessons made me wonder why we are not conditioned to really conceptualise authority as service. More importantly, why do those in power never see themselves in our service—the governed?
The ground reality of politics in Bangladesh has historically been quite complicated with opposing geopolitical interests at play and various factions awaiting to capitalise on political leverage. Perhaps, in both catering to and exploiting such complexities, the language of authority in Bangladesh has been of compulsion, uncritical submission, and exertion of force. Invariably, binaries have been produced to perpetuate cycles of oppression against the “others.”
The identities of “political others” have changed over time, as the political fields shifted, and schisms widened more and more. Their rise and fall have been marked by suppression, reprisals, and dominance. The “apolitical others” however, remained unchanged over time, across regimes. Such “others” are the fringe-dwellers—the Indigenous and religious minorities, the disabled, the gender-diverse, and invariably, the women. Different academic circles have been critical of how minority voices got subsumed by the majoritarian nation-building politics since independence.
In particular, in negotiating with the “Indigenous question,” ethnic nationalism in Bangladesh has proved to be a major failure no matter who got hold of power. Similarly, the marginalisation of “women question” and “religious minority question” within the politico-legal imaginary too has been a disconcerting reality. More curiously, politics in Bangladesh produced a third category of “critical others”—shunned as “others” for not uncritically sympathising with everything the ruling elites stood for. Unappreciative of the nuance, such “others” have by and large been wrongly labelled as “political others.”
Any transition makes for a fertile ground to further marginalise the various categories of “others.” Transitions make us aware that power is not concentrated only within those formally at the helm of statecraft in Bangladesh, rather it is decentralised. Power pervades across spheres—from court corridors to the narrow alleys, from schools to universities, from tea-stalls to our walls, it grows and breeds even within our domesticity. As we stand at a crossroads, the government needs to rethink and renegotiate what power and authority should imply for the “others” at any given point—should they serve or dominate or should they harm or protect?
Instead of “serving” us, those in power have exploited their authorities and trod abysmally intolerant paths in the past. However, while redressing the wrongs perpetrated in the past, time is now ripe to also free our politics from the clutches of whataboutism and tropes of circular narratives of dominance and hegemony. This would potentially humanise the liminal space that the “political others” inhabit. Furthermore, it is important to replace and reform the state-centric paternalistic or assimilationist language for defining and treating the “apolitical others” (eg, the minorities). To this end, some begin by seeking reform around the label “minority,” while others outrightly denounce the tag. In this context, we ought to ask if getting rid of the epithet of “minority” would mask the obvious fissures and the systemic imbalance of power. Indeed, being “minority” is not numeric, but is about marginalisation within an often-majoritarian power domain. Therefore, to me, the epithet “minority” is but a fact, with no judgment attached— it can mean anything from resistance against assimilation to even pride of belonging.
Time is now ripe to acknowledge the positionality of “minorities” within the power hierarchy while also being mindful to their agency and subjectivity as different identarian groups. Now is the time to work towards dissecting and understanding the varied voices that make up different identities—both those that are dominant and more so those that are peripheral. There is no singularity or duality to any identity, and we ought to appreciate the plurality (and intersectionality) that defines Bangladesh as a collectivity.
It is certainly not an easy task to break free from our deep-seated social as well as political culture which is as old as the state itself. However, with appropriate language, changes, although minimal, could certainly occur. As we speak of reform, the interim government needs to address the language of power above all—both the language that defines the authority and language that the authority uses to speak to (or define even) the “others.”
One of the ways to do so is strengthening the academia and the mass media. I put academia and media together essentially because these two produce language. Indeed, responsible academic and journalistic practices can potentially influence the power behind language and similarly shape the language behind power. The role of these two should never change, rather remain steadfast across regimes—unapologetically critical, unfettered, and powerful. There should also be institutional guarantees and safeguards to ensure that they are not viewed (or worse, hounded) as political or critical “others” for challenging the status quo, critiquing the establishment, or questioning the taken-for-granted assumptions that those in power usually try to feed us. Necessary reforms should therefore be brought to empower academia and media in such a way that can create meaningful democratic (and yet not majoritarian) spaces for reconciliation and responsible statecraft.
Hannah Arendt once said, “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.” Standing at a crossroads, it is important for the media and academia to help sustain the liberal fervour of the July uprising for as long as possible, and to become voices for ones who are forcefully silenced and ones who are conventionally (and conveniently) not heard. We need to be vigilant so that the political transition does not make room for shrinking spaces for dissents or for unjustly quelling those considered as “others” at any given point. Indeed, now is the time to create conditions so we may dare to conceptualise the governed as the “served” and the ruling elites in our service—for as long as the demarcation exists.
Psymhe Wadud
teaches law at the University of Dhaka and is in charge of Law & Our Rights, The Daily Star.
The identities of “political others” have changed over time, as the political fields shifted, and schisms widened more and more. Their rise and fall have been marked by suppression, reprisals, and dominance. The “apolitical others” however, remained unchanged over time, across regimes. Such “others” are the fringe-dwellers—the Indigenous and religious minorities, the disabled, the gender-diverse, and invariably, the women.