Editorial
Dead students and destruction
of the future
The gory outcome of a clash between the students of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) and Ragib-Rabeya Medical College in Sylhet over a minor incident, that eventually led to a Shahjalal student being killed by trigger-happy policemen, raises serious concerns about a public university authority’s criminal indifference to the security of the lives of the students.
The vice-chancellor, or the SUST authority for that matter, not only failed to solve a trivial dispute decently, but they also failed miserably to control the trigger-happy policemen who opened fire on the agitated students, injuring 15 students, one of whom died on Sunday. Though it was the university authority that called the police into the campus, one can hardly find any justification for the so-called law enforcers to open fire on the students in this particular case.
We condemn the criminal neglect of duty by the SUST authority who failed to protect the lives of the students and also condemn the atrocity of the trigger-happy policemen who fired on the students without any genuine grounds. We also demand punishment of those responsible for this tragedy in both the SUST authority and the police after thorough investigation.
Student’s agitation in the private sector Stamford University also raises serious questions about the government’s seriousness in ensuring the quality of higher education in general and meeting the students’ legitimate demands for proper services in particular.
Stamford students in Dhaka went for demonstrations against the authorities concerned to press home their 24-point charter of demands, which include adequate number of competent teachers, steps to have the university’s pharmacy programme recognised by the University Grants Commission, setting up of more laboratories for pharmacy students and putting an end to exacting random ‘exam fees’. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the illegal and immoral practices rampant in a number of so-called universities in the private sector.
While the private university authorities find education a mere commodity, and are bent on reaping the most profits out of the lucrative business, a large number of entrepreneurs refuse to provide the students quality services. But the government seems least bothered to see whether or not the private entities fulfil the legal pre-requisites, particularly in terms of creating campuses, appointing qualified teachers, setting up standard laboratories and rendering quality services to students. The recommendations of the University Grants Commission, the regulator in this matter, have hardly been taken seriously by the successive governments over the years. The casualty of this callous attitude is education, which means that the nation is destroying its own future.
Who will blink first?
The secretary-general of the ruling BNP, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, and the general secretary of the opposition Awami League, Abdul Jalil, have possibly set a record in exchanging letters on a non-substantive matter –– an excruciating exercise in agreeing on the modus operandi of holding the over-publicised dialogue between the government/ruling coalition and the 14-party opposition alliance. This non-drama of politics has pushed, at least for the time being, the substantive issue of reforms of the Caretaker Government system and the Election Commission into the background insofar as public discourse on politics is concerned.
The proposal for holding the dialogue was made on the floor of the parliament by the leader of the opposition, Sheikh Hasina, and was accepted, again in the parliament, by prime minister Khaleda Zia, two months ago in February. Meanwhile, another session of the parliament has also been concluded. The vaunted dialogue still remains a mirage.
The onus to hold the dialogue is obviously on prime minister Khaleda. Had she dismissed the proposal put forward by the leader of the opposition in parliament either as something out of order or as unacceptable in the February session of the parliament, as she has since been doing in public meetings, the dialogue bug would not have infested the body politic. Inviting the opposition to dialogue in parliamentary speech but ridiculing as well as negating the merit of the opposition’s proposals for reforms in public meetings may be clever party politics but it is not responsible politics.
On the other hand, while it is Hasina and her allies in the 14-party alliance who had demanded that the government hold a dialogue on their reforms proposals, they have all along been questioning the sincerity of the government and threatening to oust it through a mass upsurge. It appears that Hasina and her cohort, while proposing the dialogue, were more eager to satisfy the democratic sensibilities of the people than to pursue a political agenda. This is a cynical approach to politics.
We recorded our misgivings on the apparently desired dialogue in an editorial on April 18 (‘A delicate stage’) and wondered ‘whether or not they are going through the motion of negotiations’.
When Mannan Bhuiyan and Jalil have willy-nilly been participating in the merry-go-round of exchanges of letters, their bosses, Khaleda and Hasina, are apparently working overtime in consolidating their respective positions for the next round of the power game. And their public postures are also the same –– there is practically no prospect of a negotiated settlement of the reforms issue.
Still, Mannan Bhuiyan and Jalil may have to do the donkey work of completing the course of negotiations for the sake of appearances. After all, both Khaleda and Hasina are leaders of ‘democratic’ parties and are wedded to ‘constitutional’ politics. Their power constituencies, at home and abroad, may require, at the minimum, the staging of some sort of negotiations.
But time is passing by very fast. The political temperature is perceptively rising. The question is: who will blink first? During this extended prelude to negotiations? Or, at the negotiating table itself?
Henrik Ibsen and acknowledging
social incoherence
Even in his poems the dramatist has not minimised the dark facets of existence and so, when he writes about the Suez Canal his lines reflect on imperialistic ambitions. In that light, if we look closer to modern society we may see a resurrection of colonialism driven by military force, Towheed Feroze
They say that he was one of the greatest dramatists that ever lived and as the world observes the Ibsen centenary, the Norwegian playwright and his works find a very powerful place within modern society which, if one says correctly, is often dictated by inexplicable emotions and not by logic. In fact, can life ever be governed by rational thought? Perhaps we, in our vain satisfaction think that life can be put into a template but in reality living is but a set of impulses, some of which fortuitously fit into a rational infrastructure and some which don’t. And, this is what Ibsen realised only too well in the latter half of the 19th century. And for that, society has unambiguously termed him ‘way ahead of his time.’ Somehow, in that observation one often sees a hint of disapproval. Perhaps, in a time when only glory and human achievement were emphasised the focus on human follies at a very basic level was taken with ambivalence. And, Ibsen made it a point to make his characters bizarre, odd and very confused. But, Ibsen was not making up his characters, these people that he gave us were not fictitious; on the contrary, they were copies of people seen in society.
So many years later as the world celebrates the works of this Norwegian prodigy, one has no difficulty in finding Ibsen’s characters in modern society.
But how would one define most of the protagonists of his plays? Well, on one side the person is principled and then, on the other, he/she is burdened by emotions which from a moral point of view appear vile; and like real people, these characters with an unshakeable belief in their views only discover their follies in the end.
Take Brand for instance. In search of pure religion, in his quest to satisfy God to the extreme he takes up the ‘no compromise’ stance and hence, undertakes a rigorous journey. His wife and child dies and finally, when he realises his folly is killed in an avalanche. Try finding a Brand among religious extremists and Ibsen will become all the more relevant. In a time when the world is being threatened and imperilled by people motivated by misinterpretation of religion, Brand serves as a glaring example of religious excess gone horribly awry.
But, in the Bangladeshi context, it’s Dolls House which is of utmost significance because this play looks at Nora, a woman who walks out of her apparently perfect marriage in search of independence. Now, Doll’s House does not ask all suppressed women to take such a drastic step but it exhorts women to come forward and take the step necessary for her emancipation. In the Ibsen play Hedda Gabler, we get a woman who is deep in fight with her inner demons. She is locked in a tedious marriage, carries an unwanted baby and cannot forget her past lover. In rage, she decides to take revenge on the lover as a result of which he becomes the victim of an accidental suicide. The judge finds this out and wants Hedda but she decides to end her life. Though gloomy it may seem the undertone of Hedda is impregnated by the present day social malaise that haunts a lot of us: existential ennui. Hedda could have led an unceremonious life but she wanted variety and in her search for that, she ruined herself. Ibsen’s works time and time again alludes to man’s love affair with the forbidden and the risqué. He himself was a lover of the unusual too: an illegitimate child, a joyless marriage that sparked a series of affairs clearly portrays Ibsen himself as disturbed and somewhat disoriented.
Ibsen has talked about hereditary venereal diseases in Ghosts and at that time his treatment of a taboo subject shocked puritans desperate to keep social evils wrapped under a blanket of hypocrisy. London Telegraph commenting on Ghosts said, ‘it is an open drain, a loathsome sore unbandaged.’ Using symbolism, Ibsen strikes on a social issue and says, ‘what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers is not all that ‘walks in us.’ There are all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no tangibility, but they haunt us all the same and we can not get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. Ghosts must be all over the country, as thick as the sands of the sea.’
Yes, it is our inability to let go of the past that is reflected here. Let bygones be bygones is simple to say but hard to follow because we humans love to be nostalgic. And, no matter how much we want to forget the past with its failures, on a quiet day, old memories glide in unchecked.
Even in his poems the dramatist has not minimised the dark facets of existence and so, when he writes about the Suez Canal his lines reflect on imperialistic ambitions. In that light, if we look closer to modern society we may see a resurrection of colonialism driven by military force.
But, despite life’s obscure twists and turns, we still like to hope and when aspiration is cherished it is generously smeared with fantasy. In many of Ibsen’s poems we see the usage of fantasy; which in the end leads inexorably to reality. This is reminiscent of Edward Munch’s pieces where the artist used colours to create fantasy but eventually killed it with human figures in shatteringly mundane poses.
To many Ibsen might seem abstruse but that is his style. Think of French film maker Jean Luc Goddard: how much sense does he make? Yet, Goddard is regarded as the film-maker who has captured the unpredictable and grey canvas of modern western society. In the same manner, some of Ibsen’s works lack the cohesion that we are used to. But again, we are tempted to ask the question, is life coherent?
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