A personal essay in defence of an egalitarian liberal democracy

by Nurul Kabir

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
   I took the one less travelled by,
   And that has made all the difference.
   – Robert Frost
   
   Journalists working in our part of the world, particularly those dealing with rights issues, often receive hate calls from unknown ‘readers’ — sometimes threatening to take their lives, though the idea of maiming a journalist remains the favourite method of intimidation. Journalists also receive readers’ calls, seldom though, appreciating a news item or a feature or an article, even an editorial at times. Like many of my colleagues, at New Age and elsewhere, I have had the experience of receiving phone calls of both these categories, mostly hate calls though, since the beginning of my career in the early 1990s.
   However, a recent call that I received from an unknown caller falls in neither of the usual categories. It was really unique: the caller, a female who refused to disclose her identity, claimed categorically that she is a regular reader of my articles since long before I entered the career of professional journalism, that she has followed me through the changes of jobs with quite a good number of media establishments, and that she had read my last article analysing the reasons behind the rise of Islamist fundamentalism in the country and the ways of getting rid of the menace called political Islam, etcetera. She even referred to an article, to my utter surprise, that I wrote in the late 1980s, styled the ‘political economy of two beggars processions’.
   Yes, she reminded me of an article that I wrote on two processions — one comprising a couple of suited ministers, a few top ranking bureaucrats and some rich businessmen which was bound for Paris to seek financial aid from the West, and the other, brought out in a small northern town of the country by the poverty-stricken half-naked conventional beggars, demanding that the amount of alms to be given to them should not be less than one taka. I argued in the article that one thing common with the participants of the apparently different processions was that they were beggars — rich beggars and poor beggars. The difference was that the rich beggars who were bound for the West had behind them the backing of the state apparatus to secure the alms, while their poor counterparts stranded in a small town did not have the support of the state. After so many years, the situation remains the same, unfortunately.
   However, the caller’s reference to the article left me with hardly any reason to question her credibility. But her reason for calling, as said earlier, was anything but usual.
   ‘I value your passion for the unprivileged majority, I like your distaste for the half-educated illiberal elite presiding over our society and state for decades, I appreciate your courage to take on powerful quarters, and I find your liberal democratic arguments articulate,’ said the passionate voice from the other side of the phone. ‘But enough is enough…it’s time for you to stop all these…we are already undergoing bad days…Islamist fundamentalists hate dissenting views…and we are only awaiting the worst. I am afraid, you will be killed if you continue the way you have been doing for years now, against every political establishments.’
   The anonymous caller disconnected the phone ‘requesting’ me to consider her ‘appeal’ in mixed languages — English and Bangla. The mysterious woman did not even grant me the opportunity to thank her for taking the trouble to read my write-ups for so many years, let alone reply to her pleas.
   I enjoyed the woman’s telephonic monologue, but, let me admit, I was left confused, naturally: was it a genuine personal concern of a politically conscious reader for a journalist whom she finds pro-people, courageous and articulate? Or, was it an impersonal warning, a sugar-coated threat to life, issued in the guise of friendly appreciation by those intolerant of dissenting views?
   The mysterious caller could be a friend or a foe, while her message could signify anything — beyond my comprehension at the moment. But an ‘incurable optimist’ that I am, as my known friends find me, I have decided to take the caller for a friend, until it becomes obvious, if ever, that she is not one. So, I find it a friendly responsibility to make an attempt to remove her current concerns about my future.
   To begin with, my unknown friend is wrong in inventing in her favourite writer the ‘passion for the unprivileged majority’, in the first place. I am rather very passionate about my own ‘self’ — both my ‘animal-self’ and my ‘human-self’, and therefore, I am quite ‘selfish’ about my own interests — political, cultural and intellectual in particular. To be precise, I am not a philanthropist by any consideration.
   Then why do I frequently write about the interests of the unprivileged majority and argue for the democracy of the multitude? The answer is very simple: The finer realisation of my own ‘self’, privileged though, depends — as my understanding of history of the civilizations forces me to believe, unfortunately — on the overall political, economic and cultural emancipation of the unprivileged multitude.
   Let me explain, further.
   I said that I love most my own ‘self’. My own ‘self’ consists of two entities: My ‘animal-self’, or the ‘being’ inside me which is identical to any animal that eats, rests, sleeps, and reproduces, etc. The other one is my ‘human-self’ — the ‘being’ which is, unlike an instinctive animal, capable of creativity, rational thinking, dreaming of a better future for one’s own society and the whole world habituated by similar human beings.
   Now, my ‘animal-self’, although privileged at the social level, cannot fulfil many of his sensual desires because of the numerous problems that the unprivileged multitude around me has been suffering — thanks to an un-egalitarian socio-political and economic system imposed on the entire people by an undemocratic elite.
   To give an example, my biological eyes are fond of soothing objects, and therefore always loves to see, say, healthy and smiling human beings in beautiful attire with vast greeneries around. But practically, my eyes are forced to see innumerable malnourished, and therefore gloomy, men, women and children in faded dresses whenever I am outside my home or the office in the capital. When my eyes are in need of taking a look at, say, the lovely face of a beautiful woman, or the serene smile of a healthy baby, the society forces them to see the acid-burnt distorted face of a beautiful girl fallen victim to the twisted mind of a lecherous man, or the pale face of a malnourished youngster lying in a roadside slum.
   Can my eyes be rid of such troubling scenes in the near future? My, ‘human self’, which is capable of rational thinking and assessing the future on the basis of the interpretation of the present, does not promise a rosy picture.
   Some 28.4 lakh homeless poor with no regular jobs are forced, under socio-political and economic compulsions, to live in a total of some 43,000 slums in Dhaka at the moment. (New Age, October 4, 2005)
   With no means of subsistence and no place to put up, as many as 27,000 beggars, of whom 5,717 are physically challenged, go begging at traffic signals, as well as in the vicinity of mosques, temples, graveyards, railway stations, bus terminals and at other places of public gathering such as shopping malls, educational institutions and kitchen markets of the city every day. (New Age, August 3, 2005)
   A media report, based on compiled data provided by government officials and health experts in 2003, says ‘disease and maladies in Bangladesh have reached such an extent that the cumulative number of the affected has exceeded the total number of the population’.
   ‘Over 80 million people are at risk of arsenic poisoning, over 70 million infected with tuberculosis, while nearly 300,000 new individuals contract the disease every year, over 10 million carry the thalassaemia gene, 10 million have kidney diseases, seven million suffer from asthma and an equal number from chronic obstructive lung diseases, four million suffer from diabetes with about 40 per cent of them at the risk of developing kidney failure. Besides, five to six thousand children develop cancer.
   ‘An estimated 37 per cent of the population suffer from heart diseases and 10 per cent from some sort of hearing impairment. Diarrhoea is responsible for 21 per cent of child deaths and pneumonia and other infectious diseases claim the rest.’ (New Age, October 9, 2004)
   Half of the country’s population, 49.8 per cent, who live below the national poverty line, live on less than the minimum requirement of 2,200 kilo-calorie of food intake per day, while 19.98 per cent, the hardcore poor, live on less than 1,800 kilo-calorie per day.
   This is where the health of the multitude, or lack thereof, stands. If I broaden the horizon, a similar situation is prevalent at the regional and global levels. Understandably, however privileged as an individual I may be, there is no scope for my biological eyes to be rid of the unpleasant scenes consisting of thousands of men, women and children with poor health and dirty clothes.
   Name any other sensual organ of my biological self, say my ears, and there is hardly any scope to provide comfort. Fond of the sweet melody of a classical symphony that touches the chord of my heart, my ears are forced to hear the slang of, say, the culturally impoverished poor rickshaw-pullers day in and day out. When my ears are eager to hear decent exchanges of pleasantries between persons, they are forced, again under the given socio-political and cultural circumstances, to take in the nasty screams of crudely altercating homo-sapiens on a regular basis.
   Dozens of such examples could be provided to substantiate the proposition that I have practically no scope, at the moment, to satisfy a few of the simple aspirations of my animal-self, about which, as I unambiguously admitted earlier, I am selfishly passionate about. Nothing — my post-graduate degree earned from the country’s most prestigious university, my reading of dozens of books on classical literature, history and philosophy, my acquaintances with many a famous men and women at home and abroad, my friendship with quite a few of the finer minds, my caring wife and loving children at home, my social status as a privileged professional — nothing is capable of making my animal-self happy, because a society at large which is unhappy itself cannot provide happiness in its entirety to individuals.
   Still, I cannot help but long for happiness for my eyes and ears, and other sensual organs belonging to my own ‘self’, which, as explained, is dependent on material and cultural developments of other individuals — the multitude around me. Is there, now, any possibility to make things better for my ‘self’? Or, to pose the same question in a different way, is there any possibility of the unprivileged majority of the day to get wealthy tomorrow, which would enable them to have access to quality food, hygienic shelters, modern education and subsequent cultural accomplishments, etc., and that too automatically?
   Here appears, again, the need of calling the ability of one’s ‘human self’ to analyse the political and economic policies pursued by the rulers over a standard period, to understand whether there is any bright future growing in the dark womb of the dark present.
   Many a report, prepared even by government agencies, reveals that the economic discrimination against, and political injustice on, the majority of the people has now become a phenomenon.
   The ‘preliminary report on the Poverty Monitoring Survey – 2004’, conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, a government outfit, reveals that the income differential between the poorest 10 per cent of the people and the richest 10 per cent increased to 24.5 times in 2004 from 20 times in 1999.
   In 1999, only 1.7 percent of the national income went to the poorest 10 per cent of the population, while 33.9 per cent of the national income went to the richest 10 per cent of the population.
   The income is self-explanatory in terms of the inequitable distribution of wealth among citizens. But the gap further widened in the next five years. In 2004, only 1.5 percent of the national income went to the poorest 10 per cent of the population, while 36.5 per cent of the national income went to the richest 10 per cent of the population.
   Such irrational income gap between the rich and the poor has not been created in a day. It has been rather created out of discriminatory economic policies pursued by successive governments over the years.
   The irrational level of income disparity between the poor and the rich could also be judged by another indicator, again revealed in a survey conducted by the government-run BBS in 2004. The findings of the survey reveal that the per capita income of the poor increased between 1999 and 2004 by 4.8 per cent, while the per capita income of the rich increased over the same period by 19.4 per cent.
   Clearly, decades of vulgar patronisation of the rich — against the interests of the poor — by the statecraft controlled by an undemocratic elite has created such a sharp economic divide among the citizens, shamelessly violating the democratic principles of providing equal opportunities to all its citizens. If the trend continues uninterrupted, understandably, the gulf between the rich minority and the poor majority will widen further, producing and reproducing a situation in which the overall political, economic and cultural emancipation of the unprivileged multitude will continue to remain elusive, and with that will remain elusive the possibility of comforting my eyes and ears.
   I am ‘selfish’, I love my own ‘self’ the most, so I ‘interrupt’, in my humble way as a writer, by way of exposing the socio-economic formation that stands in the way of my eyes and ears to see beautiful objects and hear sweet exchanges between human beings around. I am, therefore, left with no option, albeit on ‘selfish’ grounds, but to regularly write against the undemocratic political establishments that help perpetuate the irrational social and economic conditions standing in the way of the release of the immense creative human abilities inherent in the poor multitude.
   I cannot help but ‘interrupt’, again for my own sake, to protect my rights like, say, the freedom of freethinking as well as uninterrupted freedom of expression of thoughts — the freedoms that I hold so dear. I cannot protect such rights if rising Islamist fundamentalism, which is primarily the product of the discriminatory socio-economic system that denies the poor any upward mobility, inevitably takes over the country’s mainstream polity some day, and snatch away my right to the freedom of thought and expression. Islamist fundamentalism, like any other religious fundamentalism, is intolerant of dissenting views.
   Notably, subsequent governments of the country’s irrational elite have used religion, Islam in the present case, as what Karl Marx once identified as ‘opium of the people’, having sedative effect on the poor masses. While the members of the elite have sent their children to the most modern educational institutions at home and abroad, they have carefully arranged for obscurantist curriculum to be followed in hundreds of medieval madrassahs for thousands of poor boys and girls. The hollow religious assurances of a rosy afterlife usually provides a ‘halo’ over the ‘vale of tears’ of the poor on earth, and thus religion really appears, according to Marx, as a ‘sigh of the oppressed creature’.
   But, ‘religion as the “halo” over this “vale of tears” can become,’ as Gilbert Achcar observes, ‘a powerful stimulant, and “sigh of the oppressed creature” can turn into a scream of rage.’ This is exactly what is now happening in Bangladesh: thousands of obscurantist mullahs, in other words a large number of oppressed poor trained in madrassahs, are now out to set up a theocratic state in the country, which, they believe sincerely, would put an end to decades of exploitation of the masses by way of bring in an egalitarian social order.
   I am in agreement with the mullahs’ stance that the present socio-economic formation under an undemocratic elite has failed to serve the huge majority of the people, and I am even sympathetic to the mullahs’ crude material cause, but I am dead opposed to the idea of a theocratic state, again as I said earlier, on selfish grounds: I cannot forgo my right to the freedom of thought and expression, a right that keeps my ‘human self’ kicking. The mullahs, or their proposed theocratic state for that matter, are not going to welcome any dissenting views.
   I am, therefore, left with no option but to write against the undemocratic elite running the affairs of the state since the country’s independence on the one hand, and the Islamist fundamentalists now out to impose a theocratic state in the country on the other.
   In this regard, I have no reason to disagree with my anonymous caller in question that my present journalistic activism might expose my own ‘self’ to dangers in the future. But a very important question remains: Which part of my ‘self’ could be exposed to danger — the ‘animal-self’ or the ‘human-self’?
   The obvious answer would be the ‘animal-self’, my physical ‘being’ that is, which is identical to the physical being of any other animal. But I have no reason to take any ‘livestock approach’ towards any human being, let alone my own self.
   What does this mean?
   The human being is so far the only life-form in the world which is capable of consciously sacrificing its ‘animal-self’ to uphold the dignity and meet the aspirations of its ‘human-self’ — the creative rational being inside. It was the aspiration for freedom — political, cultural and economic — of the ‘human-self’ of thousands of young people of the country that dictated them to sacrifice their ‘animal-self’ during the nation’s War of Independence. And they responded to the diktat, consciously, to uphold the sense of dignity of a growing nationhood.
   This ability to sacrifice the animal-self, as and when need arises, for upholding the aspirations of the human-self, ideological or otherwise, upgrades one to the state of a human being from its mundane animal existence.
   I hope my unidentified caller, presumably a friend, will no longer have any tension about the future of her favourite writer, who loves to live the life of a ‘human being’, indeed, for pure ‘selfish’ reasons. It is time, I believe, all the liberal democrats of the country become a little ‘selfish’ too.