when criminals prosecute

So, we have something else to look forward to after the recent hangings: a trial for crimes against humanity on the part of 'collaborators' in the 1971 civil war. Never mind that those who rape and murder these days are seldom brought to justice: what were crimes in 1971 have become mere peccadilloes today.

We have the moral high ground: we were the victims in 1971; all we wanted was recognition of our nationalist aspirations and fair play, but we got a bloody nose instead. Heinous indeed!

Then, after we achieved our nationalist aspiration, we were immediately and rudely confronted with the nationalist aspirations of the Chakma people: how dare they?

Of course theirs was a bogus nationalism, just like ours: Bengali nationalism was a super-duper elite phenomenon having nothing to do with the people. The Chakmas speak Bengali just like we do ('Chakma', Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition). So what was their beef? They weren't being persecuted, just as we weren't persecuted during our ersatz nationalist longings. When one bogus nationalism meets another, what happens?

"What the Pakistanis did to us," observed my late uncle, Major General M. Khalilur Rahman to me, "we did to them". Indeed. And western donors were content to let us do so during the cold war.

But it will be retorted by Bengali nationalists that we were merely trying to preserve our territorial integrity: well, so was West Pakistan. Besides, the Chakmas didn't want to secede, like we did: they 'merely' wanted autonomy, albeit on grounds of fictive ethnicity, closely resembling our fictive nationalism (indeed, the nation-state has failed throughout South Asia, according to Stanley J. Tambiah).

One wonders why the Chakmas have raised no demands for a tribunal to try crimes against humanity committed in the hill tracts. One fears that their leaders have sold out just like ours.

So, we do not have the moral high ground anymore. We are as guilty as any nation trying to preserve its territory, from Abraham Lincoln to Indira Gandhi....

Let's just stop pretending otherwise.

reverse circumcision

Sheikh Hasina has trumpeted the banning of jihad – Islam's sixth pillar. She has boasted that she'll never permit anybody to wage jihad from Bangladeshi soil, thereby violating one of the six major precepts of Islam.

But there's more.

And it has been recently leaked to the press (who are shy of publishing the information) that she plans gradually to prohibit – circumcision.

But there's more.

She'll not only prohibit circumcision, she'll even reverse it in the next few years.

Since the doctors all belong to her party, she'll have no trouble making sure no circumcisions are carried out in hospitals.

That leaves the informal sector: how to snip the snipping there? Cabinet ministers have been discussing the subject with bureaucrats and the police. So far, no solution has been reached, but a model inspired by Indira Gandhi is emerging.

The plan is this: men will be picked up at random and then REVERSE circumcision will be performed on them.

What is reverse circumcision? It's a technique perfected in Zimbabwe for those men who regret losing their foreskin. Quite simply, a surgeon takes a foreskin from a donor and grafts it on the dick of the recipient. Drugs are then administered to prevent organ-rejection (but this is only for rich patients; poor patients simply have to tolerate rejection and kick the bucket).

A few married women murmured disapproval, saying that it would reduce sexual pleasure; since Sheikh Hasina is a widow, the dissentients were quietly ignored. Besides, it is believed that many staunch party members have had foreskin-implantation as a symbol of rejection of Islam.

At one such high-level meeting, it was queried where so many foreskins would come from if circumcision is banned in the country.

Pat came the answer.

From Israel.

changing the diapers

Politicians, like diapers, need to be changed, and for the same reason.

Our politicians stink to high heaven – they've been around for smelly decades. Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia are walking stink-bombs, yet we don't even hold our noses.

It took a suicidal attack to remove the awful pong of Benazir Bhutto. But her husband is still there, mal-odoriferous.

Then there's Nawaz Sharif, twice flushed down the commode, run into the sewer, and back, all soiled and dirty and covered in faeces.

India twice removed the diapers – and very violently too. The first time they got rid of Indira, and the second time they unbundled her son.

In Bangladesh we nearly removed the nappies on one occasion, but Sheikh Hasina survived.

Why don't we change the diapers? It seems we love ordure and odour, the messier and smellier, the better. That, or our olfactory nerve (and cerebral cortex) is severely damaged.

Guns or Bombs: The Assasin's Dilemma

The botched attempt to kill Sheikh Hasina holds valuable lessons. It shows that the Harkatul Jihad (Huji) don't do their homework, for one thing. Killing a leader with a bomb has a success rate of only 7% and killed bystanders. Of course, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was remarkably successful, but then the bomber got sufficiently close tot he target to blow her up (as well as himself). Ditto the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

Huji would have done better to use firearms, which have a kill rate of 30%. The killing of Sheih Mujib and sundry other public figures (Bandaranaike, Kennedy, Bhrindranwale, Indira Gandhi....) was accomplished with guns.

Killing leaders (especially if they are in power) is not easy: between 1875 and 2004, there were 298 attempts made on the lives of leaders – of which only 59 hit the bull's eye, and killed the bull.

In the 1910s, a leader had a 1% chance of being done in; today, a measly 0.3%, according to research by Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken.