Imran Rahman :
Following a series of untoward and dramatic events, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina recently threw up the sponge failing to survive a turbulent student movement stained with huge blood. To be noted, Hasina is the first head of any government in the country’s history to have ever fled.
Thanks to the Army’s timely intervention, its offhand realization that once a government no longer had the people’s support, it was no morally obliged to defend that; its sensible appreciation that the entire state’s power, including all its pillars and institutions, whether civilian or military, is subservient to the masses and if any of these pillars loses the people’s support, it is sure to collapse.
Put to an acid test of preserving its own image simultaneously by averting further bloodshed, returning the state power to people from an autocratic rule, and ensuring the now- deposed PM’s safe exit, the prudence, foresight, promptness, restraint and professionalism the army chief showed not only deserve kudos, set also an example before the nation.
Though the record of successful student movements in pre and post Bangladesh is historical and recurrent, unfortunately, the subsequent governments of Bangladesh- both military and political in their respective tenures remained totally oblivious of the fact that those who brought them to power had the ability to bring them down too.
Hats off to the students whose indomitable spirit once more fetched the nation a new dawn of renewed hopes and expectations,a long felt necessity to redefine the country plunged into quagmire of prolonged one party despotic rule through injustice, corruption of all sorts, extreme human rights violations, acute economic disparity with thugs ruling the roost in our every financial sector and administrative post and partial role of judiciary.
However, while the nation is sanguine with new dreams, the question that haunts me as ever is if the sitting interim government and particularly the political government to come next will take any lesson from this epoch-making event. The pertinence of the question here cannot be ruled out herein the context of the failure of far bigger events earlier than quota issue to bring down the government.
Many may disagree with me in this regard. But if we pore through the entire issue, there is no denying that it was some rash and irresponsible statements from the most responsible echelon of the state. As people are well familiar with such unrestrained wording, there is no need to cite examples here anymore.
The plight in the country’s politics is that most of the members when they are in the ruling party don’t know what and what not to say where, and where to stop. And this irresponsibility has become one of the characteristics of leadership in a country’s populist politics. Nonsense! As such behaviour of politicians is linked to turn chaos from bad to worse, I could not help but mention it here.
Most ridiculously, this is not the leadership alone, their sycophant intellectuals, writers and poets contribute by further notch to harm with their spineless ‘Yes sir’ type penning. What can be more shameful and perilous than it for a nation? Ediot! But only criticism will help us little to get over this malicious practice. It is also imperative to search the reasons behind for such culture to have thrived in independent Bangladesh.
Firstly, the ruling class in Bangladesh was not born and developed in a normal process. Because, the country gained independence in 1971 with no one having any earlier knowledge and idea on modus-operandi regarding state governance. Since partition in 1947, our people had been repeatedly in movements. And the ideological middle class that rose through those movements had no pre experience of state governance.
With almost regular interval, through waging movement, this class had to confront a military government to reach our ultimate goal- the War of Liberation. Just immediately after the country became independent, all pervasive corruption, plundering, and theft began to engulf the country and under this chaotic process the characteristics of our ruling class was formed.
And because of this, not only Awami League, but also other political parties more or less inherited these characteristics. This trend also infected writers and intellectuals associated with ruling parties in an attempt to win them petty favour and civilian awards.
Finally, ruling parties all over the world have vested interests and purposes to keep the education system under their control in a bid to popularise their own views and ideologies. But what has been done in Bangladesh during the sixteen year despotic regime of Hasina in this regard is a total mess. In doing so, the way her government distorted information and history using her academics and writers reflecting a unilateral foreign policy puts our education system on the verge of ruin.
(The writer is a journalist
and poet. )
