BEYOND THE APPRENT
Conspiratorial moves the name of
the game: who will bell the cat?
All sorts of wild speculations, made in utter disregard to the constitution, are doing the rounds in total impunity and at times with the indulgence of the powers that be. Advancing formulas of power struggle -- be it even through staging parliamentary elections -- outside the purview of the constitution is tantamount to seizing power through
conspiratorial means… In this juncture, the key to politics lies with Hasina and Khaleda who have succeeded to retain, unquestionably, the leadership of their respective parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. They are apparently playing it cool: if they survive, they will win; but their
tormentors need to win to survive
NM Harun
An accomplished intellectual, Muhammad Habibur Rahman, had the rare opportunity to head the judiciary of the country as chief justice and also to adorn the position of the head of the government as chief adviser. He thus has, from his real-life experiences, a holistic view of the state of Bangladesh.
In the uncanny wisdom of a savant and sublime expression of a poet, in the poem titled Mamlar Jhamela (The hassle with lawsuits) he penned on December 6, 2007, the day the teachers formed a human chain on the Dhaka University campus demanding release of some detained teachers and students, Justice Habibur Rahman wrote Mamla thoka ar mamla pratyahar/ Edeshe to rewaj nityakar (Cases lodged and cases withdrawn/ has always been the order here).
This is a telling commentary on the abuse of the rule of law in the country –– a country which is practically run on the whims of the rulers and where the judiciary is but a fig leaf to hide the lawlessness practised by the powers that be.
Recalling a pledge: The present chief justice, Justice Mohammad Ruhul Amin, on the other hand, does not seem to be bothered by such intellectual curiosities. He made a solemn pledge to the nation on August 11 last year. Addressing a seminar on ‘Judicial Reform and Independence of Judiciary’, he said: ‘I want to assure the nation that we will come forward. The Supreme Court played a role in the past at the critical juncture of the nation. It is doing so at present and will do so in future to pull the nation out of mire.’
The Supreme Court is now called upon to redeem that pledge to some extent. A High Court bench is hearing a writ petition filed by the Awami League president Sheikh Hasina, challenging the legality of bringing an extortion case against her under the Emergency Power Rules.
A tool of political engineering: The ruling coterie has been using the EPR, since the January 11, 2007 emergency, as one of the main weapons in its arsenal to carry out political engineering under the cover of a moral movement of cleansing and reforming the nation.
Hasina’s writ has caught the ruling coterie in a legal ‘mire’ and the way the Supreme Court decides the matter will indicate the court’s position in the complex battle between the political parties and the powers that be –– that is, between the political process and political engineering.
To put it simply, the EPR has been so designed that the politicians, who have already been tried and sentenced or will be tried and sentenced under this draconian law, will be legally debarred from contesting in the election to the ninth parliament which the ruling coterie has promised to hold by the end of this year. This will make political engineering easy: the politicians will be condemned as ordinary criminals –– a smart use of civil recourse to law to demonise the politicians as a class.
High moral ground lost: It is hazardous to speculate on the behaviour of the court –– a court which seldom suffers from any qualms of conscience to uphold the notorious ‘doctrine of necessity’ in justification of authoritarianism and martial law.
[Some samplings of pronouncements of the judges of the High Court Division and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court:
*a, Under the (Martial law) proclamation…, the Constitution has lost its character as the supreme law of the country…
b,…No court including the Supreme Court has any power to call in question in any manner whatsoever or declare illegal or void the (Martial law) Proclamation or any Regulation or Order. –– Chief Justice Kemaluddin Hossain, Justice Syed AB Mahmud, Justice Fazle Munim in Mrs Halima Khatun vs. Bangladesh, 30 DLR (SC) (1978) p.207.
*a,…The Martial Law is the Supreme Law of the land and that though the Constitution has not been abrogated it has been made subordinate to the Martial Law and that the Constitution will continue in force subject to the Martial Law, that is to say, it will have effect so long it does not come in conflict with the Martial Law.
b,…(The) sovereign authority of the state now (during Martial law periods) lies in the hands of the Chief Martial law Administrator whose will is the Supreme Law of the land and is above the Constitution. –– Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed & Justice Abdul Matin Khan Chowdhury in Sultan Ahmed vs. Chief Election Commissioner, 30 DLR (1978) p.291.
*…(The) present Martial Law (martial law declared on 20 August, 1975) is completely different from that of 1958 or 1969. The Constitution has not been abrogated; only certain part of it has been circumscribed by the Martial Law Proclamation out of necessity. This Martial Law is a mere constitutional deviation. –– Justice Badrul Haider Chowdhury & Justice Abdul Malek in Haji Joynal Abedin vs. State, 30 DLR (1978) p.371.
*Martial Law comes into existence under certain conditions and it rules the country by Regulation and Orders and such Regulation and Orders if are desired to be continued are saved and preserved by a protective clause by a Constitution framed by a Parliament. –– Chief Justice Kemaluddin Hossain, Justice KM Sobhan & Justice Badrul Haider Chowdhury in Mallik Brothers vs. Income Tax officer, 31 DLR (AD) (1979) p.165.
*The Proclamation (Martial law), Regulations and Orders made thereunder will prevail over any existing law; the Constitution of Bangladesh stands suspended from the date of Proclamation; all Acts, Ordinances, President’s Orders, Proclamations, Rules, Regulations, By-laws, Notifications and other legal instruments in force on the 24th March, 1982 shall continue to remain in force as long as they are not repealed, revoked or amended; all proceedings arising out of and in connection with writ petitions under Article 102 of the suspended Constitution shall abate. –– Chief Justice FKMA Munim, Justice Ruhul Islam, Justice Badrul Haider Chowdhury, Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed, and Justice ATM Masud in Bangladesh vs. Salimullah, 35 DLR (AD) (1983) p.1.]
But whatever may be the outcome of Hasina’s writ, the ruling coterie has lost the case in the tribunal of the people –– they have lost their high moral ground of the nation’s saviours.
The symptoms of crisis: The ruling coterie is now in a crisis –– they are a failing government and they are pathetically indecisive about their future course of action.
The symptoms are the plethora of theories and formulas regarding dialogues between the government and the political parties, formation of a national government, constitution of a national security council, making the army chief president of the country, holding early general elections, creating scopes for detained Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia to contest in the next parliamentary election etc. Added to this monkey business of domestic pretenders to power is the nuisance of unsolicited prescriptions of panacea from the interested foreign quarters.
Wild speculations: Despite the emergency, the constitution is still in force in the country and all the power players, including the military, vow to adhere to and improve on the high principles of democracy, the rule of law and constitutionalism. Hence, any plan regarding running the government, formation of government, change of government or restructuring the state should have been suggested in conformity with or in reference to the constitution.
But on the ground, all sorts of wild speculations, made in utter disregard to the constitution, are doing the rounds in total impunity and at times with the indulgence of the powers that be. Even the army chief does not mind to field questions from media persons on the possibility of military take-over or he himself becoming president.
Advancing formulas of power struggle –– be it even through staging parliamentary elections –– outside the purview of the constitution is tantamount to seizing power through conspiratorial means.
An impending vacuum in the power structure: The political parties are not creating any problem for the ruling coterie; they have eschewed agitation or movement, uncharacteristically submitting themselves to the emergency rule. Pleas for dialogues with the government or advancing the deadline of elections within the framework of the so-called electoral roadmap or the release of Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, though couched in the language of demands, are not yet a call for political mobilisation or action.
The issue of power struggle has, nevertheless, come to the fore not because of any political development but because of what can be described as the mid-life crisis of the emergency rule. Who will fill up the vacuum that will be created in the present power structure by the prospective retirement of the army chief, General Moeen U Ahmed, who has come to symbolise the January 11, 2007 emergency dispensation?
The price of collaboration and the key to politics: At the present stage of tension at the seat of power, the political parties, politicians or civilians do not really matter. There may, though, be no dearth of disgruntled and ambitious politicians and persons eager to dance to the tune of the powers that be.
In the initial days of the emergency, many joined the reforms bandwagon in the hope of getting a deferred payment –– a share in power when elections would be held at the conclusion of the ‘minus-two’ formula, the political liquidation of Hasina and Khaleda. The collaborators did not get any share of power. Worse still, they have lost their clout or position in their respective parties. Wiser now, the possible collaborators in the emerging power play will possibly demand a share in power in advance.
Hence all the kite flying about the formation of a national government. This will involve a radical departure from the constitution –– the ditching of the caretaker government and improvisation of an extra-constitutional governing arrangement. Who will bell the cat?
Conspiratorial moves are the name of the game. In this juncture, the key to politics lies with Hasina and Khaleda who have succeeded to retain, unquestionably, the leadership of their respective parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. They are apparently playing it cool: if they survive, they will win; but their tormentors need to win to survive.
NM Harun is contributing editor of New Age. He can be reached at: badrun123@dhaka.net
Assassination of Gandhi and the
early signs of crisis of Muslim
nationalism in East Bengal
In the final instalment of the three-part series, Professor Ahmed Kamal analyses how, in reaction to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, many Muslim nationalist leaders in East Bengal engaged in a ‘fresh review of politics’ and ‘crossed the threshold of religious communalism by inaugurating a politics which would go beyond this narrow communal
boundaries and would usher in a politics that would promise to serve both the Hindus and Muslims’ of the land
THESE reactions were not only confined to the elite politicians and activists but also the people of Dhaka deeply mourned Gandhi’s death. On February 2 the Dawn reported, ‘Dacca mourned Mahatma Gandhi’s death by observing a complete hartal. Business was totally suspended, all Hindu and Muslim shops, bazaars, commercial houses, banks and educational institutions, offices and courts remaining closed. Pakistan flags were flown half mast on Government buildings and other institutions. There was no vehicular traffic and even Rickshaws and hackney carriages were not plying... In the afternoon, a mile long procession of the Hindus and the Muslims with a life size portrait of Gandhi silently paraded the six mile long route from Victoria Park to the Coronation Park, where a meeting was held and verses from the Bible, Qur’an and Gita were recited. The gathering of about 25,000 people observed two minutes silence for the peace of Mahatma Gandhi’s soul’. Indeed, while condoling on the death of Gandhi, the government of East Bengal announced through loudspeakers that the offices and courts including the University of Dacca would remain closed on Saturday (31 January). Tajuddin wrote the ‘whole city observed Hartal (general strike) – an unprecedented scene for Dacca city... Condolence procession went out... met in a condolence meeting ...silent prayer and no speech.’ Tajuddin did not fail to record the emotions of the people who were running around to get hold of newspapers. He wrote: ‘People were rushing for [news] paper in such a way as was not seen even in the third class booking office of the cinema halls of Dacca – man upon man, struggling the one, suffocating the other and trampling yet another was rushing forward to get at least a scrap of paper where in lay the news of [Gandhi’s death]...within 1 hour no paper was available.’
But why were there such outbursts of passion and why at this intensity? Though it is unbelievable that by January 1948 Muslims of East Bengal, even a large section of Muslim League activists, started loosing faith in the leadership of the Muslim League, a valuable document of this loss of faith survived. It was Purba Pakistaner Durbhaga Janashadharon (The Unfortunate People of East Pakistan) published by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Naimuddin Ahmed in the same month Gandhi died. This three-anna booklet for Muslim League activists of East Pakistan was the first record of disappointment and frustration about the Muslim League government of East Bengal. The excitement of achieving Pakistan started getting diminished among the activists of the Muslim League Workers’ Camp, the emerging dissident group in the Muslim League, to which Tajuddin, Kamruddin and other young nationalists belonged. Abul Mansur Ahmad shared the resentment of the workers’ camp while still living in Calcutta.
It will only be partially true if one argues that the reassessment of Gandhi became possible by the politically conscious section of the Muslim League because of their disillusionment with the League leadership which was tied especially to the Nawab family of Dhaka, the Azad editor Akram Khan and the business house of the Ispahanis – all suspected of serving the interest of the central government, neglecting that of East Bengal. In addition, the frustrations were exacerbated by the Punjabi and non-Bengali civil servants administering East Bengal. In fact, what was added to their grievance was the sense of collective insecurity of the Indian Muslims and the fear from the much too powerful neighbour pursuing the policy of Akhand Bharat after the British left India. In this context Gandhi was perceived to be the only shelter for the Muslims, especially in that riot-torn, hostile India where communal violence threatened the pursuance of any secular politics – the Congress’ declared objective of nation-building. This became very clear to those who participated in politics during the Raj claiming the rights of Indian Muslims. After the partition of India, Gandhi arranged to return Pakistan’s share of fifty-five crore rupees. Recognising Gandhi’s greatness, Abul Mansur Ahmad wrote ‘Gandhi saved lives of Muslims of Delhi and its outskirts by hunger strike only fifteen days before his death’ for which he was killed by Nathuram Godse who held him responsible for protecting and safeguarding the Muslim interests. The Azad, the only vernacular daily till then published from Dacca, in its editorial recognised the fact that his fast unto death in his frail health to save Muslim lives from the Hindu communalist attacks successfully turned the tide of communal tension in Delhi and made the Hindus, Sikhs and the Muslims embrace each other in harmony. Thus, Gandhi posed a huge question mark through his death to the nationalist Muslims of East Bengal. This extraordinarily tragic incident made the latter look small before Gandhi’s greatness; they were all absorbed in guilt feelings.
Tajuddin wrote self-critically, ‘In the past the same I spoke against this Great Soul for political achievement.’ He confessed that he believed, as other Muslim nationalists did, that the only way to make the Muslim League powerful was by making the Congress weaker; and to undermine the Congress the easiest way was to undermine Mahatma who was the soul of that organisation. In his reactions, Tajuddin thus exposed the inability of somebody trained in colonial liberal politics to make sense of Gandhi’s politics which derived its legitimacy from a particular reading of Hinduism – his experiment with truth, his politics of Ahimsa and finally his idea of Swaraj. Understandably, this reading was culturally and historically inaccessible to Tajuddin and others of his kind. Reviewing the past from the changed context of January 1948, they could realise Gandhi’s greatness considering the future safety of the Indian Muslims and the security of the Muslim homeland.
In less than a year of achieving a state for the Muslims, young nationalists like Tajuddin considered Gandhi as a ‘hitherto unfelt beloved friend.’ The perception of Gandhi’s political role by Muslim nationalists changed after India was partitioned on communal basis. Previously, in their struggle for a separate homeland, the Muslim nationalists perceived Gandhi as an obstacle to their political goal whereas the very homeland, when achieved, found in Gandhi the only friend who could not only save the land but also the Muslims abandoned to the mercy of the Hindu nationalists in independent India. At the core of his guilt-triggered grief in the pages of his diary, Tajuddin still remained a Muslim nationalist, but Gandhi’s martyrdom raised the question of the minority rights much more vigorously in both nation-states, at least for the rights of one minority group young Muslim nationalists struggled before the partition.
Tajuddin’s concern for the vulnerable members of his community in India, following Gandhi’s ‘foot prints’ and ‘guidance’, would, in future, enable him to look beyond the boundary of the same community and redefine it to include the others, the Hindus in East Bengal. In this, he would be guided by the magnanimity of a martyred Gandhi. But this would entail a redefining of the political community in East Pakistan: a shift from Muslims to a broader Bengali identity imagined in course of time by the linguistic resources of the community. First spark of this identity was visible on March 21, 1948, less than two months after Gandhi’s death, when the young Muslim nationalists of East Bengal shouted a loud ‘no’ to Jinnah’s emphatic declaration for Urdu as the future state language of Pakistan. The demand for Bengali as one of the state languages led the young Muslim nationalists to gradually embrace cultural nationalism. Thus the Tajuddins and Kamruddins of East Bengal crossed the threshold of religious communalism by inaugurating a politics which would go beyond this narrow communal boundaries and would usher in a politics that would promise to serve both the Hindus and Muslims of East Bengal – the beginning of ‘secular politics’ under the umbrella of the Awami League, the party that would years later lead to create a nation-state based on a constitution proclaiming secularism as one of its four fundamental principles. Thus Gandhi’s death that triggered a tension among the rank and file of the Muslim nationalists of East Bengal took more than two decades to resolve by imagining a different identity for the latter and realising it by giving a violent birth to a secular Bangladesh – a new nation-state.
Ahmed Kamal teaches history at the University of Dhaka
NATO winning battles, losing Afghanistan
by Ali Gharib
‘Make no mistake’, begins a new issue brief from non-partisan think-tank the Atlantic Council of the United States, ‘NATO is not winning in Afghanistan’.
That brief, called ‘Saving Afghanistan: An Appeal and Plan for Urgent Action’, was released on Wednesday at an event on Capitol Hill, along with two other reports that call on the international community and the US to ‘re-energise their faltering effort’ in Afghanistan.
The speakers at the release of the reports all showed equal concern that, despite overwhelming US and international military might, things are going badly awry in Afghanistan and that a comprehensive reworking of international strategy there was needed.
‘The fatal consequence, all too familiar to those of who lived through Vietnam, is that you can win every battle, but fail to win the war,’ said Senator John Kerry in his introductory remarks. ‘Absent a new focus and a transformed strategy, many of us fear that may be happening again.’
Though removed from power early in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan seven years ago, the Taliban resurged last year, leaving experts worried that a weak central government and misguided international efforts could lead to a failed state that would become a safe haven for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
‘Strategy relates to priorities and resources. And it relates to upsetting the opponents’ centre of gravity,’ said David Abshire, the head of the Centre for the Study of the Presidency and a former US ambassador to NATO. ‘The centre of gravity of all this started with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. And we’ve gotten our eye too much off that ball in terms of our finishing the job.’
The Centre for the Study of the Presidency established the Afghanistan Study Group to assess new ideas in a manner similar to the Iraq Study Group, whose 2006 findings fundamentally challenged the way that the George W Bush administration was waging the war there, and called for a greater push in Afghanistan to complement the Iraq war.
But the authors of the reports released on Wednesday all emphasised a separation of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite their coexistence under the banner of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’.
‘We ought to decouple –– up here [on Capitol Hill], and in the minds of the executive branch, and I hope in the minds of the American people and our European allies –– Iraq and Afghanistan,’ said ambassador Thomas Pickering, a co-chair of the Afghanistan Study Group.
‘Afghanistan has hovered too long under the shadow of Iraq. It has its own strategic importance,’ he said. ‘If things go bad there the region is affected. Beyond the region, Europe and the United States will be affected. A new homeland for the Taliban is the last thing in the world we want to see.’
The Afghanistan Study Group report said that the current separation was insufficient and that there was ‘an emerging view that Afghanistan and its long-term problems would be better addressed by decoupling funding and related programmes from those for Iraq’.
Both the Afghanistan Study Group and the Atlantic Council’s reports also called for an overhaul of the bureaucratic systems that run the military and civil society efforts in Afghanistan.
‘Narcotics, in my view, is the cancer that is eating Afghanistan inside and out,’ said retired General James L Jones, a former NATO commander who worked on both of the broader reports. ‘It criminalises the society. It provides the economic incentive for weapons purchases that come back and kill our soldiers. And it defies, so far, any strategic solution that we’ve seen.’
Several proposed solution were discussed at the meeting –– including buying up and destroying opium crops –– where a National Defence University paper called ‘Winning the Invisible War’ on a proposed comprehensive agricultural plan for Afghanistan was released.
— Inter Press Service
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