| EKUSHEY SPECIAL |
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The implications of a playground brawl
by Mahtab Haider
 Instead another popular theory that supplements and rationalises the ‘football incident’ interpretation also suggests that Dhaka University students are inherently violent, residing in the realm of the absurd, where they are willing to brave bullets, tear gas, batons, beatings, torture, and every other violent excess that the state can perpetrate, just to prove a frivolous point. This dovetails neatly with the traditional perception of our universities as hotbeds of unrest where students seem to latch on to the most trivial of provocations to stir trouble, boycott classes, damage and set fire to vehicles, creating unmitigated chaos. It is important to understand that while the now famous ‘football incident’ may perhaps be anecdotally to blame, that fact is incidental, and to ignore the context of those protests and see them in isolation of what came before, and what has threatened to come after, would be wilful naïveté. This demands a re-examination of the events that transpired on August 20 at the Dhaka University gymnasium, if only to look for clues as to why this brawl may have been a proxy for a larger ongoing struggle which took the opposing sides by surprise. January 11, 2007 will remain one of those significant events that will go a long way in shaping the future of the country’s politics in years to come, although the outcome and hence the reasons for this could vary greatly in the end. There is perhaps a strong case to be made for ‘the doctrine of necessity’ which propelled Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed and his civil society colleagues to the seat of power, with indispensable backing from the armed forces, and endorsement from key embassies. There is no doubt that the nation was indeed headed for what promised to be one of the most violent and non-credible elections since democracy was restored in 1990, and the public were, and still are unanimous in their rejection of the crude and violent power politics that had become the lifeblood of the two major political parties. On January 21, 2007, the newly sworn-in head of the interim government, Fakhruddin Ahmed made a public address to the nation in which he invoked these very reasons for his cabinet’s assumption of power, and promised more decency, accountability and transparency in his governance, intended to steer the nation towards a credible voter list that would lead to credible polls. By August, however, much of that well-intentioned fantasy had crumbled. The new regime had launched a repressive demolition drive against slums and street hawkers, kitchen market prices were soaring with traders cowed by increased policing of their businesses, even the once-enthusiastic sections of the media had been chastised (dissenting media more heavily so) for the slightest criticism, over 60,000 people had been arrested, and members of the armed forces were now disquietingly omnipresent in almost every facet of public life. All this was carried out under the legal cover of a state of emergency that had adequately demonstrated that it had resolved to deal with dissenting views with an iron fist. The optimism of January had been greatly corroded, but the stifling state of emergency denied the public a voice to convey this frustration and economic misery to the rulers. One of the most potent symbols of the total-authority that the incumbents desired to rule with was the long-term presence of an armed forces camp inside the Dhaka University campus. In fact, such camps had been set up in a large number of educational institutions across the country, despite the historically sensitive implications of this action, and despite the fact that universities and the armed forces belong in entirely different worlds which must, by virtue of necessity, be kept separate. It was an injustice to pit these two constituents of society against each other, since the camp’s situation inside the campus could not have had any other purpose but to act as a pre-emptive show of strength against possible protests. On August 20, when an argument broke out at the university gymnasium between students and soldiers in plainclothes, eyewitnesses say the soldiers manhandled several students and teachers, which gave way to a full-fledged brawl. It is irrelevant whether it was the soldiers or the students who reacted first. The only relevant fact here is how the government responded to the students’ demand that the army pull out of the campus. It was with a dose of police teargas and rubber bullets that the state sent a message that it was not going to tolerate a defiance of its symbol of authority inside the campus. This violent reaction to the act of defiance could be singularly responsible for the protests that followed in the days to come, spreading to higher education institutions across the country. When the students chanted slogans against the emergency, demanding an apology from the army chief, they were protesting the fact that their collective dignity had been stripped and violated, that too inside the campus. It was the action of an insecure and defensive regime that saw every act of dissent as a threat to its already crumbling legitimacy. In the days that followed, the Fakhruddin regime repeatedly violated this dignity, by allowing a slew of security forces to raid hostels with the purpose of perpetrating violence, reacting arrogantly with the full show of force at its disposal when it should have ceded a student’s legitimate right to refuse degrading treatment, that too in a space which has historically been a bastion for some of the fundamental social and economic dignity we enjoy as a nation. It is a fact of great pride for the country that students of Dhaka University – and for that matter higher education institutions across the country – have, at various times midwifed some of the greatest moments in our political and social history. The pro-democracy movement to topple the dictatorial regime of President Ershad found momentum and willing cannon fodder at our universities. And shall we forget, that it was this month, this week, this day, 56 years ago, that the ordinary students of Dhaka University decided to violate a Section 144 imposed by the erstwhile regime in Islamabad, to protest the right of the Bengali nation to speak its mother-tongue, and in so doing fell to bullets fired by the states security forces? This history still brings to bear a tremendous influence on the fabric of social values that characterise the Dhaka University campus, where students defend the space for dissenting views fiercely. In his 1992 book Shah of Shahs, Polish journalist Ryzsard Kapuschinski writes: It is authority that provokes revolution. Certainly it does not do so consciously. Yet its style of life and way of ruling become a provocation. This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent, patient, wary. They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up. The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle known to history. Why did it happen on that day, and not on another? Why did this event, and not some other, bring it about? After all, the government was indulging in even worse excesses only yesterday, and there was no reaction at all. “What have I done?” asks the ruler, at a loss. “What has possessed them all of a sudden?” This is what he has done. He has abused the patience of the people. But where is the limit of that patience? How can it be defined? If the answer can be determined at all, it will be different in each case. The only certain thing is that rulers who know that such a limit exists and know how to respect it can count on holding power for a long time. But there are few such rulers. Today, at a juncture where the political future of the country is on the anvil, what we desperately need more of is debate and discussion, not silence and submission that borders on sycophancy. Historically, and ideally, universities are some of the finest platforms where such debate can occur, where the space for such thinking exists by dint of its academic merit, regardless of how radically it may shake up existing power balances. Some of our greatest achievements as a people have found germination and nurture at our centres of higher education. Universities are the enemy of the state to the extent that the rulers want to impose their thinking, however narrow or broadminded, on the citizens. Today, the state has a choice. It can allow free thinking in our academic spaces to befriend the process through which we will overcome the political crisis we are immersed in, or it can stifle thought and hand-pick members of the academia who echo its own thoughts (as it has done). The final outcome will vary greatly based on the choice the incumbents make. Mahtab Haider is senior assistant editor, New Age |
Ekushey and the state of undemocracy
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