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We are outraged that a screening of two films at Chittagong University was prevented by activists of the Jamaat-backed Islami Chhatra Shibir. Worse is the knowledge that the authorities of the university proved themselves absolutely helpless in preventing such hooliganism, especially on as auspicious a day in the history of the country as Independence Day. It should have been the responsibility of the university authorities to step in and take action against the Shibir activists involved in an act that clearly upsets the political sensibilities of the people of the country, all of whom remain conscious of the glory the nation attained through waging a spirited War of Liberation in 1971.
   The stopping of the screening of Lal Salu and Matir Moyna sends out a very strong message to the people of the country that the time has finally arrived for all of us to check the growing nefarious activities of people who have not quite reconciled themselves to the concept of a free, secular Bangladesh. At a time when we are busy naming roads in such places as the nation’s capital after some of our greatest soldiers in the 1971 war, it is absolutely unacceptable that a handful of elements will be audacious enough to challenge the morality and ideals of a people who remember the tremendous degree of sacrifice the nation made in the course of the nine-month long war. We cannot also forget that at this point we as a people are raising our collective voice to demand that such a courageous Bengali as Bir Sreshtha Matiur Rahman be properly and fully honoured through his remains being brought from Pakistan and interred in the soil for whose freedom he so boldly gave his life all those years ago. All of these political and moral compulsions lead us into expressing our very justified anger at the act of the Chhatra Shibir. Furthermore, we are inclined to think that unless such activities are swiftly dealt with and their perpetrators called to account, there will be elements elsewhere who might be tempted to emulate the Chittagong episode. It is thus for all political people, be they in the Awami League or Bangladesh Nationalist Party or other organisations, to unite around the principle that any act which goes against the spirit and reality of the War of Liberation is fundamentally a move against the ethos of this country. All citizens, across the political spectrum, owe it to themselves to raise their voices in protest against those who are ready to do anything to undermine our collective national spirit.
   Ours is a nation which has historically set great store by democracy, though democracy in actuality has more often been an ideal than a reality. Despite the ordeals we have regularly faced, we have never wavered from the notion that we are a people ready and willing to accommodate diverse points of view. But we also have made it clear, in the years since the liberation of the country, that we draw the line where the choice is between upholding our history and ignoring the elements stealthily doing all they can to have the course of history reversed.

The case against Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet is a lucky man or he is not. It all depends on how you judge the career of the ailing soldier who toppled Chile’s socialist government in September 1973. But let us be fair. And our fairness stems from the general feeling that beginning with his seizure of power and ending with his withdrawal from presidential office in 1990, Pinochet did a great many things that were plainly wrong and indeed morally upsetting. His hand in the assassination of his predecessor as army chief, Carlos Prats, has always been suspected greatly. It was his country’s High Court which not long ago lifted his immunity over the affair, making it possible for the old dictator to be prosecuted. As a matter of fact, there are as many as 300 cases, all human rights-related, that the ageing, ailing Pinochet is these days contending with. Just how many will actually be solved, if at all, remains a big question. It is quite probable that the laws of mortality will catch up with the former dictator sooner rather than later.
   For now, however, a chink of luck appears to have come Pinochet’s way. The Chilean Supreme Court has just restored his immunity in the Carlos Prats case, which means he is off the hook, at least one of the many tormenting him these days. But that surely does not stop the humiliation from piling on. Pinochet’s arrest in the United Kingdom a few years ago remains an indelible blackening of his already bad reputation. There are the stories of the thousands who disappeared during the long period of his brutal regime. But his luck? It is merely in the fact that he has managed so far to avoid going to prison, that indeed he has not been convicted of any of the crimes he has been charged with. The manner in which Pinochet’s lawyers have over the years put it about that he is too ill or mentally too weak to appear in court has quite often claimed much of the time that could have been expended in dealing with him. It has become clear, or it has been clear all along, that Pinochet and his lawyers have been lying their way through everything. And they have thus managed to put up stumbling blocks in the way of justice.
   The latest move by the Supreme Court to restore Pinochet’s immunity in the Carlos Prats case will cheer the old man’s supporters. But that should be no reason not to keep alive the case against him. Letting him go free or unpunished will be a blot on the conscience of people everywhere.

The need for a socialist order in Bangladesh has never been greater. That kind of thought will of course create quite a few ripples, maybe even derision, among people who tend to think that socialism died when Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union collapsed. While there is simply no argument about the death of the Soviet Union, there is much that remains to be said about the future of socialism. And given Bangladesh’s particularly extreme circumstances of poverty and political exploitation, it is quite in the fitness of things to argue that a socialist order remains the only way out of the bind the country is in.
   Now, there will certainly be all the questions raised about how this country can make its way back to socialist principles when there is hardly any spot in the world where socialism thrives. Cuba under Fidel Castro is not a promising sight, especially in light of the fear that once the veteran leader passes from the scene there is a distinct possibility the country might collapse. And do not forget that all the ageing anti-Castro men who have fled to the comfortable shores of Miami are out there waiting to take over, in the company of their children and their American benefactors. The sort of socialism you have in North Korea is a misnomer because it rests on dynastic factors. More to the point, Kim Jong Il surely is a poor symbol of socialism, if at all he can be considered a socialist. That leaves us with China, where a good degree of controversy about the future will likely arise in the times ahead as Beijing’s leaders cope with the demands being made on the economy as well as democracy. Move on, to watch Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez at work. The difficulty about him is that he remains more a populist than a socialist. Moreover, his understanding of socialism is essentially a response to recent crude maneouvres on the part of the Americans to remove him from office.
   All of this is quite dispiriting where the future of socialism is concerned. Even so, the social circumstances which today define life in Bangladesh are those which speak of politics which has quite removed itself from the life of the common man. The liberalisation of the economy which truly and insidiously began under General Ershad has successfully resulted in the emergence of a system where national wealth has increasingly come to be controlled by a few. You might say a particular brand of Bengali oligarchy has been taking form, with the result that increasingly greater numbers of people —- and they are generally middle class and the poor —- have been pushed into the sidelines. In reality, a very large chunk of the population has in the past two decades been forced into a state of the marginal. And all this development we as a people have seen taking place has been little short of a lop-sided affair. Reflect on the conditions under which capitalism has been on the rise in Bangladesh. There are literally hundreds of people who have risen to economic affluence through means clearly unprincipled. All around us there are the clutches of the rich whose social and economic prominence owes itself to the loans they procured from the nationalised banks and never paid back. You might ask why these people are not in prison where they properly belong. The answer to that ought to have been obvious: governments in the country, except for the first post-liberation administration, have been allies of the corrupt, have in fact happily found themselves in a convenient cohabitational set-up with the robber barons who, in turn, have known how to keep all sides of the political spectrum happy. The industrialist who once came forth with expensive gifts for one political administration found it profitable to do the same for its successor one only a few years later.
   And there have been the non-government organisations. It would be a deviation from the truth to suggest that they have not helped. They have, and in a considerable way too. Where government has been unable to create opportunities for employment, the NGOs have pitched in through providing not only jobs but also avenues for social engineering. And yet a rather dangerous trend, on the part of a few NGOs, has become perceptible in recent years. They have expanded into ever widening areas —- in business, education, et al —- to the extent that a powerful whiff of monopoly has seemed to waft out of them. The problem at this point of time is therefore a clear one of the NGOs, or some of them, having finely meshed in with the standard principles of capitalism, to a point where the profit motive in them often militates against thoughts of an exploitation-free society. And that is where —- and we speak of exploitation —- we as a society have been wounded pretty grievously. The tentacles of corruption which trickle all the way from the political summit down to the lowest tier of administration have only made things harder for the general masses. It is an image which comes alive in the villages. The young and the early middle-aged have all gone off to the towns and cities in search of employment. Those who remain are dependent on prayers and the pity of the well-to-do to survive. The old handloom industry is gone for good. The degree to which the idealism behind the creation of an exploitation-free society has been pulverised becomes clear from the general decline in educational standards in the country. The poor cannot afford to send their children to school; and good teachers are unwilling to serve in the schools which dot much of the countryside.
   There has effectively been the growth of a society where the concept of social service has been getting progressively erased over the years. The refusal of doctors to be transferred out of the capital and into the district towns (and they get away with that) is a sign of how manifest corruption defines the quality of social service. The thana health complexes operate in a state of bad health. Women in the government’s administrative set-up often do all they can, including ensuring lobbying by their husbands (who may be powerful themselves or friends of the powerful), not to be posted out of the capital. Some years ago, a senior officer at Radio Bangladesh, having gone through a period of training in Germany, refused to accept her new posting in Khulna because, in her opinion, a woman like her could not be on her own in a new place. Reminded of her training, without any assistance, in Germany, she curtly told her colleagues that if they could turn Khulna into something like Germany, she was ready to accept her posting orders. The malaise is everywhere. Often the worst of people in the diplomatic service are sent to the best and most influential missions abroad. Where accomplished, suave diplomats ought to be appointed to man some of the more important of Bangladesh missions, mediocre men in the shape of retired military officers and superannuated civil servants have been entrusted with the responsibility. They have generally come back home with little to show for achievement.
   Briefly, politics and social conditions in Bangladesh have rapidly been turning into something of neo-feudalism. With politics stymied, thanks to the growing cult of personality and the brazen efforts towards ensuring dynasties, it is but natural that the country will pay a price. Men who have risen to prominence through coming by black money have found it easy, thanks to their friends in government, to turn it all into white money. Men who have had disreputable careers have, in middle age, tried turning into patrons of the arts. Good teachers at the nation’s public universities, unwilling to pursue careers in scholarship and lured by offers of big money, have without much of shame walked over to the private universities. They have thus made their own contributions to promoting an elitist system born of this culture of social deprivation. Journalists have cheerfully accepted favours —- in the form of plots of land and the like —- from General Ershad and have then, after his fall, berated him on the issue of corruption in their newspaper comments. Politicians have been excited chameleons in their bid to stay in the limelight. They have served military regimes and then wiggled their way into civilian administrations. Academics have in outrageous manner asked that the national anthem be changed, to suit the more communal nature of the politics of their mentors.
   Men and women in the two major political parties have come by undisguised wealth. Men who were ministers twenty years ago and who have not had any employment since continue with a lifestyle that could be the envy of people abroad. Individuals, in politics and administration, deeply involved in ensuring the welfare of the nation have carefully packed their children off to college campuses abroad. If you were to go around compiling a list of how many of these individuals have bought homes abroad, you would be ashamed.
   Long years ago, as the nation marched towards liberation, Tajuddin Ahmed said to no one in particular: ‘The country will be free in weeks or months or years. But will it be a land truly habitable for us?’ Remember, Tajuddin Ahmed was the man who led us to victory on the battlefield. He was a socialist. And he died in the way good socialists generally die. He was murdered by the country he had caused to be born to life and liberty.
   Think, think on the socialist philosophy again. And wonder if it is not possible to revive the old dream yet one more time.
   E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk