Permanent News (poetry)

Permanent News

(click above for poems)

A great poet described poetry as news that stays news. I hope these 8 poems on political violence in post-democratic Bangladesh - especially the murder of young politicians by themselves - remain permanent memorials.

Last year, around 38 student politicians killed each other. They have been hailed as the champions of democracy when, in fact, they are mere foot-soldiers of the political parties involved in criminal activity. This is the reality of Bangladeshi democracy that's never revealed.

Horace In the Hills

Horace In The Hills

(click above)

dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: These words of Horace were drilled into European children so that they would die by the millions on the killing fields of France and Germany. One English poet, who had seen action, called it "the old lie". But the lie is alive and well (if that's the word). As reaction to Bengali nationalism, Chakma nationalism reared its head…. But the Franco-German export never travelled well here.

An Elegy For The News

An Elegy For The News

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The murder of 1.7 million Iraqi children through sanctions between 1991 and 2001 has been quietly overlooked by the media. This shows in the glorifying of its author, Bill Clinton. Other examples of media silence are also given.

Excerpt:

As far as I know, only one man has pointed out the holocaust—for that is what it surely is—and he is Norman Finkelstein. “As in the Nazi holocaust, a million children have likely perished,” he observes in his book ‘The Holocaust Industry, (London : Verso, 2000, p 148): “ . . . the United States and Britain forced murderous UN sanction on that hapless country [Iraq] in an attempt to depose him [Saddam Hussein]. As in the Holocaust, a million children have likely perished. [more than a million, as The Economist tells us].” Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s lackey, went on television to say that the ‘price is worth it.’ And his partner in murder, Al Gore, has been rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize, a rapidly devaluing currency. Mass killers are anointed and beatified.

urban shalish

While the press and others decry the actions of the rural shalish, nothing is being done to give voice to the victims of the urban shalish.

I refer here to the 'committees' formed in the new apartment buildings: give a person a gram of power, and they will exert a kilogram of force. They will usurp the legislative as well as the judicial function of the republic of Bangladesh, just like the rural shalish.

I refer to an ongoing battle of wills between a harmless provider of education to ten-to-eleven-year-old tykes in an apartment in Dhanmandi. It is a time-honoured practice to provide education to children. The poor man has neither used a signboard nor ever used the address of his residence for advertisement purposes. Needless to add, he and his wife do nothing illegal or immoral: they have been peacefully, and with the tacit consent of the community, been carrying on this activity for eight years.

It is to be observed that almost every other building in Dhanmandi has a transponder on its roof: a contract is signed between the all-powerful committee and the phone company and the commercial activity goes on unnoticed. Teaching (and health-care) are not commercial activities: neither a student nor a teacher is 'customer'. The entire ethics and economics of the sectors are different.

The omnipotent committee have, after eight years, suddenly decided that this harmless gentleman, who abides by all the rules, must leave the building, or refrain from the legitimate pursuit of earning his livelihood: this is a contravention of his fundamental rights as a citizen of Bangladesh - the rights to domicile and earning a legal livelihood.

Yet, alas, no NGO will come to his aid: they are focused on the villages. But I prophecy that the day will come when these committees will have to be dragged before the courts and forced to abide by the laws and the constitution of Bangladesh.

These committees will be poking their nose into whether you are married or not or merely 'cohabiting', whether you drink on the premisses, who your girlfriends are, whether you are mentally ill, and so on into your most intimate life.

John Stuart Mill observed that the tyranny of public opinion is as much tyrannical as the tyranny of a despot, and John Locke maintained that it matters little to the individual if he is tyrannized by a king or by the majority. I urge my compatriots to resist this new tyranny that threatens to stifle our liberty as surely as any action by any despotic power.

purpose in social science

Richard S. Rudner, in his book 'Philosophy of Social Science' takes as an example of a false teleology the statement 'Smith's goal, e.g., graduating with honours, explains or causes his present behaviour, e.g., studying hard' (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966, p 85).

Here, apparently, the cause (graduating with honours) comes after the effect (studying hard). This, he says, is clearly absurd; yet social explanations seem to rest on such statements.

He dissipates the problem by restating the statement: 'Smith's present hard work is explained or caused by his (present) desire to achieve the goal of graduating with honours (italics original)'.

He claims that this solves the problem: the cause no longer lies ahead of the effect.

But the cause and the effect are simultaneous: how can a cause be simultaneous with its effect? He has solved one problem by creating another.

Surely purpose or teleology plays an all-important role in the social science, and this role requires a separate methodology: suppose his mother comes to visit and tells him he shouldn't work so hard to graduate with honours.

Suppose he says: "But, Ma, I'm not working hard to graduate with honours; I'm working hard to learn the subject. I don't care whether I graduate with honours or not."

We won't know his motivation just by looking at his behaviour: we have to show empathy, put ourselves in his place (easily done by interviewing him) and then get the reason for his behaviour. We can't impose an hypothesis on his behaviour.

contempt for intellectuals is healthy

When Hitler strove for power and legitimacy, no group - neither business nor the military - wanted the jumped-up pantry boy.

However, there was one class of Germans who greeted him with open arms: the intellectuals. One must remember the prestige of the German intelligentsia back in those days. German universities were the best in the world. Their research was world-class and Nobel prizes were showered on them. After the war, the American universities displaced the Germans.

And once this clique embraced Hitler, the rest of Germany fell into line, according to Niall Ferguson. German society is characterized by hierarchy and obedience. Stanley Milgram's experiment on obedience and power, when replicated in Germany, showed a compliance rate of 80%, as opposed to a compliance rate of 65% in the United States.

Bangladesh probably has a higher level of compliance to authority. Obedience is part of our culture. It has been suggested that the Rwandan genocide was possible because of a culture of obedience. A genocide in Bangladesh is easy to imagine.

In fact, we came close in January 2007, when the two political parties unleashed murder on the streets. Fortunately, the army stepped in and, thanks to the UN and Kofi Annan, the army remained neutral.

However, on August 23, the intelectuals tried to discredit the army by alleging that a soldier had slapped a young whippersnapper on a campus. One fictitious slap spiralled into nationwide arson and unrest. The reason, of course, for the mythical justification was that both the evil leaders of Bangladesh were in jail. Obedience to them entailed a rebellion against the forces of good.

Obedience to evil, then, was the prospect of the period. Eyewitness account informed me how the thugs gathered on Satmasjid Road in Dhaka. Some yanked a driver out of his car and set it alight near road 8A. The next morning, the denizens of Dhanmandi and Rayerbazaar found that every restaurant on Satmasjid Road had been burnt to cinders.

A healthy contempt for intellectuals is essential for civilised existence. Civilisation, observed G.K.Chesterton, is based on truisms, or it is not based at all. And intellectuals, ever since Socrates, have been making out the worse to be the better cause. It is a truism that murdering people on or off the streets is evil, and those who do so should be shunned. It is a truism that murderers should go to jail. It is a truism that one must not burn vehicles and restaurants.

Our obedience to intellectuals has resulted in our obedience to evil. Where will this take us? To what bestial depths shall we descend? Around 80 people are lynched every year because of the lawlessness encouraged by our intellectuals; around 50 student politicians murder themselves in the service of the two women who claim to be our leaders.

Besides, our intellectuals probably receive cash or other benefits from the Israel lobby - which would explain their strange silence on the Palestinian issue - making them minions of Israel as well as America. They are not on the side of the good, but on the side of the evil.

Democracy Shall Not Win

Democracy is a self-supporting system that delegitimizes all criticisms of the system. In Bangladesh, we never had lynchings under military rule: now, around 80 occur every year.

We have hartals where people are burnt to death: we live in terror of the government, the opposition and the mob that might lynch me on a mere suspicion.

But none of this gets blamed on democracy, where two rival parties, headed by two queens their flunkies obey unconditionally, create anarchy and violence.

Anarchy and violence are themselves seen as legitimate aspects of democracy.

For a well-argued case against democracy, read these lines by a Greek 'terror' group.