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The bloody events of August 15, 1975 — when the then president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated en famile along with numerous of his political allies — will stand in history books as probably the most significant constituent factor in the way the nation has been politically divided through the middle ever since.
   The nation is divided, to say the least, in the way it interprets, as a tragedy or otherwise, the actions of the disgruntled military men, most of them young freedom fighters, on that day — some seeing it as the moment that democracy went into demise for years to follow, others seeing it as a necessary end to an authoritarian regime that practised democracy only in its exceptions, if at all. The nation is divided in the way it holds on to the legacy of the day — some mourning the brutal murder of their father figure and turning that grief into the strength needed to regroup and revitalise their political creed, while others drawing power, quite literally, from the legacy that the young soldiers who went errant in the eyes of the law that day left behind. And not insignificant to the iconoclasm that dictates the fractious polity that is Bangladesh, the nation is divided on how it chooses to remember the man himself, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — recalled either for the supreme leadership he provided in the final stages of the struggle for independence from Pakistan, the nine-month-long War of Independence inclusive, or for the largely despotic, undemocratic rule that he presided over in the years that immediately followed, but rarely for both.
   As much of a political minefield that the return of August 15 every year portends, a few facts can be, and perhaps need to be, admitted to by both sides of the current political divide. First, that it was Sheikh Mujib’s leadership that thrust the nation to the verge of independence. Many great political leaders — Maulana Bhasani among them — had guided and fuelled the movement for independence, but it was Mujib who ultimately came to the fore with the six-point movement and the subsequent 1970 polls, pushing the nation to the brink of independence that was eventually won, albeit in his absence.
   Be that as it may, the second fact remains that it was Sheikh Mujib himself who during his rule went contrary to one of the basic tenets of the movement for independence — multi-party democracy. As if the establishment of the para-military Rakhhi Bahini — undermining the army — was not enough to arouse disgruntlement within the organs of the state and fear of extra-judicial exertions of power among the people, in decreeing one-party rule on January 25, 1975, Mujib hammered in the final nail in the coffin of democracy — going squarely against the aspirations of the millions he had himself led in their struggle for an egalitarian polity.
   The fate of the actors of the violent political change has ever since been subject to power play — first in the indemnity provided to them, then the setting aside of the indemnity to try them, then the announcement of a verdict that is yet to run the full course of the law, hence remaining unenforceable. The shenanigans that have surrounded the Sheikh Mujib murder case, perhaps, exemplify the need for the third admission: that indeed a line needs to be drawn under the events of August 15, 1975 — if not politically then at least legally. Any extra-judicial action, murderous or not, is not only reproachable but also must be subjected to a serious scrutiny of the law and to the run of the course of justice. This becomes even more of an imperative when forceful usurpation of state power and the assassination of the country’s president, however popular or unpopular, is concerned.
   One claim that the exterminators of Sheikh Mujib frequently hide behind is that they brought an end to one-party rule. But one of the most significant legacies of their actions was the nation reverting to military and pseudo-democratic rule for years to follow — from one party to one man. The pitfalls of that regression are being felt in democratic Bangladesh even today.

Kicking a child, insulting a nation

Abuse of children in a Third World country like Bangladesh, where dire economic conditions often compel the young to work, is not a new finding. But if the violation of child rights is perpetrated by a member of the law then we have to raise eyebrows and a few questions. A Bangla newspaper informs us that when a child stole a piece of bread from the bag of a railway police constable, he was kicked out of the moving train by that member of the law enforcing agency. Of course we are not overlooking the misdeed of the child, but as we look at his deed impartially, we are faced with a situation where thousands of young children spend their days struggling not only against abuse, both physical and mental, but also with perpetual hunger.
   Many young children who sell lozenges or books on the road may provide the picture of working people earning their living but the grotesque picture behind this is that these children cannot spend the money they earn because if they do, they will not have any money to take back home. Coming back to the incident on the train, the said constable was attacked by outraged passengers who beat him up but that hardly balances the sheet because the child at the moment is in hospital fighting desperately for his life. Ordinary compassion aside, this child, physically incapacitated, is now unable to earn and hence the ultimate effect of this inability will fall on a whole family. One wonders how many people think of such repercussions before maltreating child workers.
   Obviously, we condemn child labour. But we have to accept it, though rather unwillingly, in the perspective of the socio-economic conditions that leave millions grappling with debilitating poverty.
   Often we have seen that educated people end up beating young people working in their homes. The images of frightened and intimidated children with burn marks or long scars appear on paper and for sometime we tend to commiserate with these children. Then, after a few days, all is forgotten. Be that as it may, if we really wish to call ourselves civilised then let us stop being cruel to child workers and let us treat their misdemeanors with a little compassion.

Bangladesh, let us not forget, is not a nation state nor can it be; although the state came into being through a nationalist struggle for liberation of the Bengalis. Overwhelmingly, the population of this new state are Bengalis; but that does not, and should not, negate the fact that there are other nationalities, small though they are, who are not Bengalis and who have been living in this land for ages. Bangladesh was visualised as a secular democratic state, guaranteeing equality of rights and opportunities to all its citizens, security in respect of basic human rights and governance through elected representatives at all tiers. It was both wrong and unjust, therefore, to ask every citizen of Bangladesh to be a Bengali, as was done by the Awami League leadership in 1972. Ironically, the directive was reminiscent of the Pakistani rulers' asking the people of East Bengal to become Pakistanis. There was of course an element of aggressive nationalism in both cases.
   To say this, however, is not to justify the Bangladesh Nationalist Party's (BNP) position on the question of nationalism, inasmuch as the BNP's propagation of Bangladeshi nationalism is really a subterfuge to thwart the desire of the Bengalis to achieve a secular and linguistic identity. That the BNP did not care much ofor democracy and secularism is borne out by its removal of secularism from the state Constitution and its calling the war of liberation of 1971 the war of independence. The correct position is that linguistically the Bengalis are a nation, but they live in many different states including Bangladesh, and that in Bangladesh they have set up a sovereign state which they would like to be of democratic dispensation. The political state in Bangladesh, its citizens hoped, would eventually create a democratic society. The state question was more important at that moment than the society question for the simple reason that the state is more powerful and influential than the society.
   But political democracy, like everything else, has its enemies; and two of them have been at work almost ever since the establishment of this new state. These two are inequality among the citizens and their lack of trust in the politico-socio-economic system. The inequality is rising and the trust declining, almost proportionately.
   Pakistan fell apart not so much because of geographical separation as owing to regional economic disparity, with separation contributing to the growth of that inequality. There was, of course, the horizontal inequality of class in that state, but the vertical inequality between the two regions was more subversive of unity than anything else. East Bengal demanded autonomy first; and failing to get it. rightly thought that nothing short of independence would do. The stopgap arrangement of parity in representation between the two wings was itself a move to perpetuate disparity, if possible; because 56 percent of the citizens of that state lived in East Bengal. Chittaranjan's Party in 1923 was not given a chance; Suhrawardy's parity in 1956 did not work.
   The real strength of the freedom fighters of 1971 lay not in the arms they carried, not even in their personal courage and determination, but in the unity among the classes against a very fearful common enemy. And yet that unity proved to be temporary. Indeed, it had to be. Because each class had its own agenda to pursue; and it was impossible for the rich to get richer without exploiting the poor. And that is what began to happen after independence. In fact, the history of the last 30 years of Bangladesh has been one of astonishing enrichment of the few at the cost of many, The middle class itself has split, with the minority rising and the majority declining. The growth in the economy has been unashamedly on the capitalist line. During the war the villages had given both food and shelter to the town, but after independence the town came back to its original position with a vengeance, drawing in the agricultural workers to its inhospitable skirts relentlessly for employing them as cheap labour. -Disparity in income continued to grow.
   Democracy, after all, is a form of governance based on mutual trust among the citizens. When the country was at war, suffering and misery was inhuman; even then the people did not weep for they had the faith that darkness was sure to end and a better future bound to emerge. But as soon as the new government took over, trust in the state began to decline. The factors contributing to this unexpected phenomenon were several. There was, to begin with, the bewildering growth in the greed of the ruling class. Everyone belonging to the government party seemed impatient to grab everything they could lay their hands on, abandoned property and factories, wet land, trees, rivers, and even women. When the Pakistani hordes, 93 thousand of them belonging to the regular army, laid down their arms in Dhaka, the expectation naturally was that the surrender would be to the joint command, if not to the Mukti Bahini alone. But what happened was grievously disappointing, because not only were the freedom-fighters underrepresented in the ceremony, an impression was created that the role of the fighters was not of much value. After the war, it was only rational to expect that the war criminals, at least the most heinous among them, would be tried in the land of Bangladesh. But the contrary happened. The Pakistani war criminals were allowed to leave the country as prisoners of war to find their way back to Pakistan. The collective psyche suffered and the notion went deep down into the consciousness that justice in the new state would be difficult, if not impossible, to get. The mistrust gained further confirmation by the gruesome political killings that happened later, with seeming impunity; the most tragic of which was the murder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, along with the members of his family. The first political murder, however, was that of Siraj Sikdar, leader of an underground leftist party, which believed in independent Bangladesh and had fought for it even before 1971. He was killed in 1975 by a government agency while in custody.
   The listing of freedom fighters was a harmful mistake on several counts. First, it was humanly impossible to prepare even a reasonably foolproof list for the simple fact that most of the people, with the exception of a few, were involved in the war in one form or another. To make a list of the collaborators would have been much easier and more rewarding. The list would have identified the local criminals and stigmatised them both socially and politically, and confirmed the important fact that except for them all others were involved in the liberation struggle, and also that the victory was not won by any particular section of the community, but by the entire people working together. This would have denied the collaborators the opportunity to fake themselves as freedom fighters, adding an element of ridicule to the triumph of the people. What is more, the idea of entitling the freedom fighters to material benefits through enlistment was treacherous to the very spirit of the war. No genuine fighter had joined the war for personal gain; the basic motive was one of sacrifice rather than self-aggrandisement. The atmosphere after independence was demoralising. To add to the process of demoralisation, while the collaborators were granted general amnesty in many cases genuine freedom fighters were put to harassment, particularly by the ruthless operations of the paramilitary Rakshi Bahini.
   The cumulative effect of all these was a continual erosion of confidence in the ruling class and, what has been much more harmful, in the liberation itself. The vast majority felt alienated from the political system, and began to develop an almost cynical indifference to what was happening around them. Misery they would not have minded, indeed they were prepared to make further sacrifices; but they did most certainly find it painful and shocking that the equality in sacrifice during the war should be replaced by inequality in enjoyment, and that riches should be concentrated in the hands of a few despicable plunderers. People felt betrayed. What had happened after 1947 seemed to be repeated, on a greater scale, after 1971.
   For these shameful developments the political leadership, and not the people, is to blame. Many of the leaders were absentees during the war, and many others ineffective. This isolation from the people had made the leadership suffer from a lack of confidence which, in its turn, made them unnecessarily rhetorical and aggressive. Trust in leadership continued to diminish. And in 1975 an almost unbelievable occurrence took place. A group of army officers attempted a putsch, and did not fail, mainly because of public indifference to political happenings. After that take-over, the country remained under military rule, of one hue or another, till 1990. Since then we have had two successive parliamentary governments, but without any substantial change in the character of governance. To put it bluntly, usurping autocracy has been replaced by elective autocracy, Inequality has continued to grow and public trust continued to go down, undermining the very foundations of democracy from within. Mistrust has discouraged investment, moral as well as
   financial.
   The state created in 1947 had promised democracy. What it gave its people was, by and large, a capitalist economy looked after by a bureaucracy enjoying the twin advantages of invisibility and unaccountability. In fact, independence in Pakistan was nothing more than transfer of power. The new state that emerged out of the enormous sacrifice made by the people in 1971 was expected to be fundamentally different. But when the chips were down, positively speaking, the leadership betrayed the people. And the state remained what it was like before, namely, capitalist in economy and ideology and bureaucratic in structure. Except for the few, most people had reasons to feel frustrated. Their sacrifices were great, so were their dreams.
   Although hopes were high, people would have felt relieved and looked ahead even if a workable bourgeois system of democracy was set up. But that was not to be. One of the first prerequisites of democracy is secularism, which calls for a separation between the state and religion. People in this land are, of course, known for their religiosity. But in political matters their outlook has always been worldly-wise, because of economic compulsions. It looks odd, but should be understandable, if the question of vested interests is taken into account, that the people should be in advance of the leaders in this important respect. By and large, the leadership, we must not forget, came from the former Muslim League, the politics of which was non-secular, indeed communal. And it is not unlikely for those who had been reared in that tradition to find the acceptance of secularism uncomfortable. Then there was the fear, not one but two fears, really. The one was the mistaken notion that the bulk of the population, being religious in temperament, would disapprove of moves towards secularism, particularly because of incitement by the supporters of so-called Muslim Bengal. Then there was the other apprehension that secularism would encourage people to be aware of their deprivations, which awareness would tempt them to fall an 'easy prey' to the invitations of the leftists. It is not certainly without significance that whereas the anti-liberation forces had been granted general amnesty, the supreme leadership of the country had spoken publicly of its intention of shooting the left-extremist Naxalites on sight.
   It was typical of the anxiety-neurosis of the ruling classes to proclaim, time and again, that secularism as enunciated in the state constitution was not anti-religion at all and that it only meant that all religious communities in the country would have the freedom of practising their own religion. The underlying message was clear; there would be more, rather than less, of religion in Bangladesh. Over the years governments have made political use of religion, each successive government outdoing its predecessor.
   Democratic institutions have not been encouraged to grow. In Bangladesh, democracy is not practised in the family, where relationships are more or less feudal. Democracy is not available in public institutions where relationships are bureaucratic. Political parties themselves refuse to be democratic, internally. Leaders are not elected by the members, they are nominated by the leadership. That the leaders of the two major political parties should have inherited their position, one from her father and the other from her husband, is illustrative of the nature and structure of the political parties themselves. It is in no way less significant that the parties are unlikely to function properly, should the two leaders decide to retire or resign from their position. The top is heavier than the bottom, which is precisely what democratic institutions should not be.
   Both parties lack bourgeois tolerance and decency. Mutual respect is non-existent. And these surely are qualities without which parliamentary democracy cannot work. There is hardly any difference in their economic policy, or for that matter, in their foreign policy, which is characterised, more than anything else, by subservience to the interests of the rich countries and the multinational companies.
   The question that remains is: what is the way out? Despair is easy, but must we submit to despair, or stand up and try to achieve the objectives of democracy for -which we have fought, collectively for decades? The answer is obvious. Surrender is impossible, for to do so would mean nothing short of committing suicide, collectively speaking. And yet the truth is that scattered reforms will not do, and that what must be achieved is substantial change in the entire political and economic system. Democracy is not a matter of votes, any more than of whitewash.
   The train of the state is moving in a direction contrary to what was defined as the goal of Bangladesh. The war was not fought for establishing another bureaucratic capitalist state replacing the larger one. There is an irony as well in this movement in the capitalist direction. We recall that capitalism was indeed the ideology of economic development in which the political leadership believed even in the British period. The British rulers themselves were, of course, firm believers in capitalism. Although the Indian Congress leaders did not see eye to eye with the Muslim League leaders on most political issues, the two sides were one on the economic question of development in the capitalist line. The British and the Indians were thus standing on the same platform in respect of economic ideology. The bone of contention really lay in the right they claimed in the matter of appropriation of the results of economic development. What the British claimed as their monopoly was demanded by the local bourgeoisie as rightfully theirs. Then there was the irreconcilable fight between the Congress and the League on the same question of apportionment.
   Capitalism generally produces as its concomitant an attitude of secularism. But the Indian leaders were involved in communal politics, which involvement made it impossible for them, despite personal inclinations of some of them, to be secular in the political sphere. Some of them, including Gandhi, were basically non-secular. The leadership sought democracy, but did not promote secularism, which is one of the first premises to build a democratic society and polity upon.
   Secularism is the very raison d'etre of Bangladesh as a state. It was not at all accidental that secularism was adapted as one of the state principles in the original constitution of the state (1972). It is no longer there. More significant than the removal of secularism from the list of state principles is the lack of determined effort for its restoration. Regret for its absence has been limited to the liberal intellectuals of the country. What is even more disappointing is the rise of fundamentalism. This, however, is not difficult to account for. In society there is so much of insecurity and injustice that the bewildered individual feels tempted to turn to religion for protection and redress. Even those who have amassed enormous fortune do not feel, perhaps because of the suddenness in their rise, sure of their fortune, and feeling that the ground underneath is slippery seek support from religion. These persons work as role models for those who have been without fortune.
   It is not only the Jamaat-e-Islami, whose members openly profess their faith in a theocratic state, that makes political use of religion. The two leading political parties, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Awami League, opposed though they are to each other, have also not been averse to the employment of religion in the very secular matter of politics. In this area the difference between the two political contenders has been of degree rather than of kind.
   What needs to be done is the democratisation of the state, so that it can, and be obliged to, look after the interests of the people as a whole, and not of a particular class, as it is doing now. The constitutional way to bring about change in the character of the state is the election. But elections as of now are handicapped by two besetting evils-first, the very limited range of choice offered to the voters-and, second, the commodification of the vote itself. Although several candidates contest, the choice remains virtually limited to those representing the two main parties. The voter wants his vote to be effective, and fears that to plump for a candidate other than one of the two would be wasteful, since the privilege of forming the next government is surely to be limited to the Awami League and BNP. Both candidates spend money, hopefully and competitively. They are fully aware that votes have to be bought as commodity; even the party tickets are not won without the spending of money. True, no one wins an election on the strength of money alone, but it is equally true that no one can even think of winning without cash payment. The voter has free knowledge of what is happening and feels inclined to consider the candidate of his choice more as an investor than as a public representative.
   What people are waiting for is an alternative leadership committed to the ideology of democracy. That leadership will develop only when there is a political party working for establishing the authority of the people on the state, changing the state's character and curbing, if not completely eliminating, the other enemies of democracy. Decentralisation of political power should be among the objectives of that party of the people. And the ultimate goal would be to accelerate the much-needed social revolution, liberating the creative energies of the nation and bringing into being a culture in which the development of each would be made possible by that of all others. The political party needed will emerge only when there is a creative union between the intellectuals who believe in social change and the masses at large. The intellectuals would come mostly from the middle class, but the interests they would promote would be of the entire people and not of any particular class.
   Democracy may look like a middle class preoccupation because the rich do not care for it and the poor are unaware of what it means; but democracy cannot be established and function without bringing all the classes within its folds in a relationship of equity. And in the quest for this democracy it is the middle class that must lead, but not as a class-in-itself or class-for-itself, but as provider of individuals who would go beyond their class interests and promote those of the entire people, particularly of the working classes. Bangladesh needs visionaries who have courage and conviction.
   The writer, a respected academic formerly at Dhaka University's English Department and social commentator, currently edits Notun Diganta, a quarterly journal
   (Woodland Wanderings will appear next week)