THE HORROR! THE HORROR! An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Horrors of Bangladesh

THE HORROR! THE HORROR! An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Horrors of Bangladesh  

 

(click above for article) 

 

The article is dedicated to the memory of two-year-old Meem, who was burnt alive in a hartal, along with 

four passengers on a bus. 

 

Private armies - student thugs and the Rapid Action Battalion - have been responsible for the violence: The state with its monopoly of legitimate violence has ceased to exist. Behind the violence and erosion of rights lie the two ideologies of democracy and “it’s poisonous fruit”, nationalism, that excuse and encourage every iniquity. 

 

Words from a tortured activist follow: 

On September 7 1989, thirty-three-year-old AS (his initials) was picked up from in front of the High Court at 10 am. He belonged to the Chatra Shibir, the student wing of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami. His captors were from the Jatiyatabadi Chatra Dal (JCD), the student wing of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The current leader of the opposition, Khaleda Zia, played Bandit Queen to the armed ruffians. 

They took him to Science Bhavan (Science Building) where he was tortured till 1:45. Additional thugs joined the sport. 

 

Golam Farouk Ovi, a student of International Relations and Central Committee Member of JCD, acted as emcee at the Mohsin Hall guest room, scanting on traditional Islamic hospitality.

A monsoon of GI pipes and hockey sticks rained: But the coup de grace was the dismemberment of the nerves on his right ankle, and on his left knee. He would be paralysed seven years later. 

A torrent of chapatti, bricks, blades, blood, broken fingers, amputated earlobe, mouth stoppered with sand, head covered with his Punjabi….testified to the modus operandi of this, and, as we shall see, twenty-eight years later in Hafez’s case, to the secular Inquisition. 10,000 hours of practice have predictably produced prodigies. 

From Mohsin Hall, the cortège proceeded to the venerable TSC (the hallowed Teacher-Student Centre). Suitably enough - with X marks the spot, no doubt - an overgrown vegetable structure prepared him for his quietus. Leaving him for dead, they celebrated their gladiatorial barbarity at Aparajeyo Bangla.

 
 

 

 

Bleeding heavily, consciousness came and left. A police car moseyed down to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) - the fuzz knew he had  been beaten, dilly dallying to allow the great escape. At DMCH, he wasn’t treated until a journalist gave 50 takas for the first bandages; he was at DMCH for two to three hours; from there he was taken to Ibn Sina in Dhanmandi.

He was there for two months; for nine months he had no bowel movement; he had to be operated on. Catheter was removed after nine months; doctors celebrated when he was able to sit after sixty days; then they celebrated his first urination…

According to a psychiatrist interviewed for this article, human cruelty surfaces when it is permitted and encouraged. The violence depicted throughout the piece constitutes an indictment, not of the perpetrators alone, but of our society. 

Philosophically disinclined leaders may skip the more abstruse sections of the article. A philosophical analysis was felt essential for what a nation considers good and evil  is a philosophical question.  Nationalism, for instance, is a nineteenth century philosophical idea. Today, here, it assumes the guise of Bengalism. 

Nationalism - right-wing totalitarianism - has employed the personality cult, from Hitler to Mussolini to Franco and Hirohito;  left-wing totalitarianism employed Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. The Kims of North Korea are in their third generation. 

Patriotism - “My country, right or wrong” - requires enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial as well as judicial murders. 

Every institution has been politicised: Thus it is in a totalitarian society, both of the left and the right. When the Chief Justice of Bangladesh did a runner, what was appalling was not so much his dash for life, but the utter indifference of the chatterati. 

Nationalism, with its emphasis on emotion at the expense of reason, requires music and song and dance. Artistic people have become part of the government: this is most in evidence in the case of Chayyanaut. The Padma Bridge opening saw an outpouring of musical endorsement from eminent singers. Plays are performed to recall the events of 1971, but none on the famine of 1974 when 1.5 million people starved to death even though there was food in the country and it was hoarded and smuggled to India. The faculty at the Oxford of the Eas backed the government to the hilt when two human rights activists were imprisoned to universal condemnation. Totalitarian tyranny requires the active participation of the intelligentsia, of civil society. 

The susceptible foot soldiers of democracy and nationalism have paid for their enthusiasm with their lives - exploited teens unmourned and unnoticed by our society. 

2000)
YEAR	STUDENT KILLED	POLITICAL AFFILIATION	MURDERED AT	AGE
2000	Zahid	Leader, Bangladesh Chatra League (BCL)	Hostel	Students  graduate  at the age of  18
1999	Sohel	Elected general secretary of students’ union in 1997	Near hostel
1998	Sajal	President, BCL unit	Campus
1996	Riyad	Convener, BCL unit of institute	In front of hostel
1995	Mizanur Rahman	Convener, Jatiyabadi Chatra Dal (JCD)	Within 200 yards of hostel
1992	Shakil Ahmed	General Secretary, JCD unit	Dormitory
1992	Rab	JCD leader	Campus
1992	Shahabuddin	JCD leader	Campus
1987	Sharif Hossain	General secretary, student union	In front of hostel
1985	Miniruzzaman Munir and 5 other activists	Leader and members of Jatiya Chatra Samaj	Campus
Figure 7

Arabs and the Freedom Industry

Now we come to North Africa, or the Arab Spring. Here we will pause to note what T.E.Lawrence had to say in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom about the Arab: "Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom body and spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed." The idea – or wave, as Lawrence called it – was nationalism, a revolt against the Ottomans, and it was backed up heavily by British cash. "One such wave (and not the least) I raised and rolled before the breath of an idea, till it reached its crest, and toppled over and fell at Damascus. The wash of that wave, thrown back by the resistance of vested things, will provide the matter of the following wave, when in fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more."

And the sea has been raised once more – this time again with western cash and training. According to the Washington Post:" It's estimated more than 10,000 Egyptians since 2005 have participated in USAID-financed democracy and governance programs, carried out by NDI, IRI and 28 other international and Egyptian organizations - not only political training, but also projects to prepare judges, build PTA-style school associations and otherwise deepen civic involvement." Again, the Washington Post says: "…the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) has funneled up to $6 million to Syrian opposition groups such as Barada TV since 2006. MEPI is supervised by Tamara Wittes, a longtime pro-Israel advocate of democratic reform in the Middle East….:"

Again, we see that the Arabs, like those following T.E.Lawrence, had little to do with their revolution. Like Bangladeshis, Africans and other Asian countries, freedom as cash has appeared as liberty.

Ideas And The Arabs

"Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea...."

Thus T.E.Lawrence in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And the idea he used to get the Arabs to revolt against the Turks was nationalism - which indeed lay in ruins.

Today the same Arab has risen in revolt, mouth hooked on another western idea - democracy. The result will be what Lawrence had foretold - ruin.

3,000 nations

There are around three thousand languages in the world, so there should be three thousand nations.

Some may be quite small - the size of a park, say. Some may be just a bedsit, with the residents offering visas at the door to curious tourists. There would be recordings of the language inside and a few trinkets. When the inmates die, the bedsit will become a museum. Or the heirs may wish to inherit it if it pays well. Otherwise patriotism might be squeezed out of such a small accomodation. The children may decide to emigrate en masse. That is, the nation might move out.

As for the parks, they may offer green credentials, a bit of boating and picknicking....Indeed, it is hard to see how these nations can make money. They'll have to be subsidised, of course. This is not as outlandish as it seems: take Bangladesh. It is a highly subsidised nation. Indeed, even today many nations do not earn their keep. Since they don't have the pennies, they don't have the pride, just a lot of hot air.

So I personally see no objections to a UN of 3,000 members. It's perfectly feasible. In fact, it's already happening.

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.

The Last Virus

The first western virus to penetrate the Muslim world was nationalism Imagine! Seven hundred years of Ottoman civilisation was permeated by nationalism. Where once, different nationals coexisted cheek by jowl under one government - the Sultan's - now Turkish nationalism reared its ugly head. Today, we have Muslims fighting Muslims, Turks fighting Kurds....What could be sadder?

Then came the second virus, Marxism. Leaders like Nasser ousted their kings and proclaimed Arab nationalism....This didn't work. They married nationalism with another western ideology, Marxism, and even that didn't work. The Arab-Israeli war of 1967 discredited both ideologies, paving the road for Islamic fundamentalism.

Today, the third virus has been taken up by the Arabs: the virus of democracy. How will this end? No doubt in some terrible upheaval.

Why does the Muslim world have to borrow from the west? We have our own political philosophy: the zel Allah, the shadow of Allah. The ruler is the shadow of Allah, but, thanks to western ideology, we demand democracy. That is not our heritage. The khutbah of the mosque prayer prohibits us from criticizing our rulers. How dare we do that?

Surely the Middle East is destined to wickedness...it has sold out to the west, the Great Satan. In a year's time, we shall see chaos in the Maghreb, for these people have disobeyed.

The new constitution of Bangladesh

The revised, complete and unexpurgated edition of the constitution is forthcoming. I see that we draw our inspiration from Islam as well as the Franco-German religion called nationalism (which the Franco-Germans have been trying to inter for the last sixty years).

At any rate. I shall no doubt sleep better knowing that the next morning I might find that my assets have been nationalised. There will be an equally soporiferous effect on foreign investors.

Now that the document has been revised, we are surely about to take off like a rocket. After all, the only obstacle between Bangladesh and development has been a few sheets of paper.

The Father Figure

Sheikh Hasina, the current prime minister of Bangladesh, was charged with murder under the caretaker government (2007 - 2008). The charge was entirely justified: the workers of her party killed several opposition activists in broad daylight during a riot witnessed by the entire nation. Of course, she never killed anyone with her own hands: neither, presumably, did Al Capone. But the authorities couldn't get her even for tax evasion, although several cases of extortion were lodged against here. The dirty nature of politics in Bangladesh was underscored by the release of Sheikh Hasina from a makeshift jail - to become the prime minister once again. And this wasn't the first time that her henchmen had committed murder. Yet the loyalty of her supporters - which included my parents and my wider family - never diminished, never wavered.

Why?

Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first member of the dynasty, was a murderer on an even greater scale. He is also known as the father of the nation, and it is true that his demagoguery created the conditions for a civil war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. A detailed record of the murders and the deliberate famine that led to his killing by the army appears here.

The paradox that needs to be explained is the continuing loyalty towards the dead monster on the part of a section of the educated of Bangladesh (the uneducated never count in this country: as a writer put it, Bangladesh never represents Bangladeshis). That immoral loyalty has been transferred to his living daughter, as we saw above.

How do we explain this phenomenon?

I was baffled by this question for years until I began to study anthropological psychology, especially the role of anxiety in national culture.

What is the biggest anxiety of middle class persons? That they would cease to be middle class, and fall below their station - or, more accurately, that their children will. For the parents have struggled towards a certain elevation, and can see their way clear for some distance in time. Still, even they might slip....But they don't want their children to struggle...and slip.

Now, the working classes have their ability to labour, as Marx astutely pointed out, so their dread is of a different calibre - the dread of illness, and injury. In fact, anthropological studies have revealed that in Bangladesh, the working class define health in terms of the ability to work. This has unnerving implications: infections like HYV would not be regarded as a threat so long as full-blown AIDS did not occur. Also, doctors know that the poor suffer from chronic depression and ulcers through worry.

But the middle class is a class-unto-itself. They are highly articulate, clubby and ambitious. They can make and break nations. When Bangladesh was East Pakistan, the eastern wing of Pakistan, with the western king a thousand miles away, known as West Pakistan, the middle classes had just emerged from two hundred years of British rule. They had seen what the Indian middle class achieved - independence for India, and the devil take the poor. Today, 800 million Indians labour for a minority of 200 million of the middle class. This was to be their paradigm for Bangladesh.

A full-blown mythology was created - that the West Pakistanis spoke Urdu, and the East Pakistanis Bengali, when in fact Urdu was the language of a minuscule minority of the polyglot West Pakistanis. But the trick worked: the Urdu-speakers were exploiting the Bengali-speakers.

And the man who delivered the message on behalf of the middle class was Sheikh Mujib, rabble-rouser extraordinaire. His speeches remind one a great deal of the speeches of Hitler, the leader who led a ruined middle-class to horror.


Thus, the Bengali-speaking intelligentsia identified completely with Sheikh Mujib, who was to relieve them of their anxiety. Psychiatrists have long known that patients tend to identify them as father figures: indeed, Freud spoke of the need to transfer feeling to the pseudo-father figure to cure neurosis.

Freud observed: "It is clearly not easy for men to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel comfortable without it. The advantage which a comparatively small cultural group offers of allowing this instinct an outlet in the form of hostility against outsiders is not to be despised. It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestation of their aggressiveness (Civilisation and Its Discontents,tr. James Strachey, W.W.Norton & Co: New York, p 61). Recent research has confirmed this to be true of chimpanzees as well.


What Freud has to say about the father in the same book is most illuminating: "In my Future of an Illusion" I was concerned much less with the deepest sources of the religious feeling than with what the common man understands by his religion - with the systems of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here. The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father." One doesn't have to agree with Freud here: current research has shown that identification with a father figure is important for a child's emotional well-being. Infantile powerlessness clearly has a great deal to do with it.

However, Freud is completely wrong in his definition of religion: there are religions which have no transcendent father figure, such as Confucianism (Confucius was an earthly father figure). And that modern religion - nationalism - needs no father figure at all. Nevertheless, Sheikh Mujib was a father figure of the Mosaic type: he led the chosen people - the Bengalis - against the West Pakistanis, the Canaanite equivalent, promising the former a land of milk and honey. Sheikh Mujib was the prophet of Bengali Nationalism - perhaps even the God. There are many young kids among the foot-soldiers of the Awami League, the party he led, who reject their own fathers for Sheikh Mujib: I have done a systematic study of the subject.


Hence, Sheikh Mujib's infallibility: he assuaged a terrible anxiety, delivered the land of milk and honey for narrow, corrupt elite, and drove out the Canaanites. His lineage must equally be infallible: hence the idolatry of the Mujib family against Islam, the religion of Pakistan. Awami Leaguers favourite - intramural - pastime is ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed

Naturally, the middle class are a bookish people, like all scribes: their only source of success was through education. These were the people Mujib led. Consequently, the Awami League's biggest supporters are to be found among the university teachers, and the intelligentsia. They are in a position to refute history and sanction murder.

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.

noosepapers

I am sick and tired of hearing newspapers extolled: apparently their only function, according to men like de Tocqueville and Amartya Sen, is to provide information. The former is a more discerning writer and reflects that newspapers serve to form associations of like-minded readers; that is, those possessing the same prejudices.
It is a short step – not a giant leap – from this consideration to one about the powers of language. These views totally ignore the persuasive powers of language. In Bangladesh, for instance, one of the chief functions of newspapers is to promote jingoism and nationalism. When the world is trying to move away from nationalism, with all its inherent destructiveness, our newspapers wholeheartedly devote themselves to perpetuating it.

Newspapers have been responsible for the misery of the Native Americans, for inciting wars, for inflating speculative bubbles thereby creating poverty where there was abundance…all with the power of language to persuade.

The Frankish Disease

"Your language is closer to you than your jugular vein."

From where did this piece of wisdom come to this part of the world? It wasn't always there. When the British came, we gladly relinquished our languages and learned English (and still do). Something changed between the time the English arrived and the time they left. They taught us more than 'Jolly good!" and "Old boy": they taught us nationalism.

But not all of us: only the microscopic minority of educated 'monkey-see-monkey-dos' produced by the imperial education system in South Asia.

But nationalism was not all we ingested from the superabundant harvest of western civilisation. There was Marxism, socialism, secularism, democracy….

That these contradictory ideas could lodge in a single head seems extraordinary today, but one must keep in mind the fact that we had been ruled for two hundred years, and rendered incapable of thinking for ourselves.

Take the Middle Eastern expression for nationalism: when it first arrived there, it was known (correctly) as the 'Frankish idea'. The accompanying physical malady that accompanied it was known as the 'Frankish disease'. Now, syphilis has the same effect on the brain as the Frankish and other assorted ideas. Therefore, we were able to accommodate all sorts of opposing ideologies in one diseased brain.

The climax of these intellectual developments, if lunacy can be credited with development, was the 1972 constitution of Bangladesh. Nationalism was part of it; as was nationalisation of all industry in solidarity with the workers of the world (but – heaven forbid – not the nationalisation of land). How Bengali nationalism could appeal to a Czech factory worker was beyond comprehension. The architects of the constitution wished to create a paradise on earth – but for Bengalis only. But 'Bengalis' also designated those living in West Bengal in India. So, Bengali paradise was not for West Bengalis. Yet nationalism reached across the border….In other words, the constitution was a cocktail meant for immediate inebriation.

In fact, one can't blame the pater patriae for kicking over that piece of paper as a colonial-period relic: it was really just that.

A constitution not in keeping with the culture, the 'manners', to use de Tocqueville's expression, of the people must be worth less than the paper it is printed on. Indeed, it is not worth less, but worthless.

The Soldier and His Girl, or Nationalism Castrated

She was a fifteen-year-old nationalist (nothing out of the ordinary about that; I've even known ten-year-old nationalists). She went for a drive with her boyfriend and they stopped at the lake. I hope he wasn't getting a blow job, for at one point she bounded out of the car and went for an angry walk. Had he suggested something more lewd?


Well, depends on your point of view. All he had said was that he was going to join the army. He was lucky she didn't bite off his pecker.

Now, Bengali nationalists hate the army: which is odd, for nationalism and the military have always been grand bedfellows. The French Revolution created the people's army, first seen in action on a more modest scale during the birth of American nationalism: hence the American love of the military. German nationalism reached its peak under Bismarck and a higher peak under Hitler: in both cases, the militarization of society was a hallmark of nationalism. An English friend of mine (who was twice my age, and died in the '80s) used to tell me how during the First World War, young women would bring flowers to young men not in uniform: implying that they lacked balls. Lawrence's writing is full of the associations between nationalism and the military.

Of course, ours is a bogus nationalism: words never travel, for the way of life that constitutes their meaning never travels. So, we have a bogus nationalism and a bogus democracy. Throughout South Asia, these things are bogus, as many a scholar has pointed out. (A nationalism that finds expression in love for a foreign nation, a foreign culture, a foreign religion is one phony nationalism.)

Of course, in Bangladesh, nationalists have a special beef against the military: the military (and politicians) murdered the Father of the Nation, much as Zeus cut off the genitals of Cronos. In Greek myth, the foam that the dick caused in the waters gave rise to Venus; in our case, unfortunately, it gave rise to the Daughter of the Nation (no Venus, unless Venus in Furs without the looks).

Now, she was interned for a year by the army: hence there is an enduring hatred between nationalists and the military.

As for our fifteen-year-old nationalist, I really don't know if she accepted her hussar, or reproduced little nationalists in her turn.

An Evening With Nationalists

As I've mentioned before, most of my wider family are nationalists – they are supporters of the Awami League. That they are beyond reason and sanity, everyone knows: that they are beyond humanity should not be a well-kept secret either.


My wife and I spent an evening with them: it was supposed to be a getting-together to mourn a dead relative, but we found the booze flowing merrily enough, and, naturally, singers at the podium.

But that was nothing compared to what followed.

My cousin and his wife had recently come here for a short visit. A more tragic couple I have yet to meet. She had breast cancer, and had had a mastectomy performed. She was under chemotherapy. They were devout Muslims, and thoroughly apolitical.

But she had a major defect in the eyes of her nationalist relatives: she wore a hijab (albeit with the face showing). That she was very religious seemed to earn her the scorn of everyone present. And they were both revolted by the booze, which the company sensed.

The girl was crying. She spoke, sobbing, to one of my uncles: "Nobody knows what we're going through" I heard her say. And I could imagine: besides the Damocles' sword of cancer hanging over you, there's the sheer cost of treatment in America; even insurance was expensive and my cousin had lost his job in the economic downturn, and his wife couldn't work.

And my uncle told her: "Try to take things lightly".

How do you take cancer lightly? Is religion an inappropriate response to the prospect of imminent death?

So, there were these secular nationalists, swilling booze and listening to the songs of Tagore, and looking down their collective noses at my cousin and his cancerous wife for being practicing Muslims, non-Awami Leaguers.

Isn't that our country writ small?

Nationalism - Across The Border

One evening, in a conversation with my father, he related how a close family friend had lampooned the Koran the previous day.

He had made fun of the Prophet (SA) and the Koran: he had ridiculed the fact that the Prophet (S) had several wives, that he had revelations….In short, Islam was nothing but puerile idiocy.

Some time ago, this gentleman's wife had tried to ridicule the Koran to my face by saying that the Koran mentioned slavery. I said, "So what? It discouraged slavery."

"But why should a holy book mention slavery?"

At this point I ceased to discuss the subject, for I was talking to one of the supporters of the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina, people impervious to reason and united by a virulent hatred of Islam.

This family was a special case: the gentleman was the brother of a certain army general who had been brought out of retirement to be army chief. The entire family (the children included) shared this hostility to Islam. Oddly enough, when the daughter studied in India, she did so at the Aligarh Muslim College, and lived on its premises. Take advantage of Islam whenever it suits you, I guess.

I have learnt that hardcore supporters of the Awami League share a hatred of Islam. It is necessary to join the club. It is like the hatred of capitalism that was required of card-carrying communists.

And, of course, there's the corresponding love of Hinduism and India.

One of my cousins became a bank manager and one of her first democratic actions was to order that all women employees must wear the saree, and no woman could wear shalwar-kameez: the latter is a Pakistani (so Muslim) dress, while the former is an Indian (so Hindu) costume. She and her husband are forever traveling to Kolkata and hobnobbing with the intellectuals there and inviting them over to stay at their house in Dhaka. When my family and I go over to their house, we frequently come in contact with a Kolkata intellectual. It is a nauseating encounter.

An artist confided in me that unless you were anti-Islam (not just atheist), you couldn't succeed in the fine arts in Bangladesh. It seems that the entirety of our practitioners of higher education has gone over to the Awami League.

Why this hatred of Islam? The fault lies with our nationalism. Nationalism usually glorifies folk culture and the ways of the masses: but the ways of the masses is inextricably connected with Islam.

So our nationalism is an ersatz nationalism, as all South Asian nationalisms are. It is merely a cover to loot the people.

My wife and I, out of a perverse curiosity, went to see a nationalist film at a local theatre: I think it was the Balaka. It was based on a story by Humayun Ahmed. What impressed me was the fact that not a single rickshaw puller or garments factory girl was present: the audience consisted entirely of 'ladies' and 'gentlemen'.

This is our 'nationalism': for the elite, of the elite and by the elite – and across the border!

A Bangladeshi Bluestocking

http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Bangladeshi-Bluestocking-by-Iftekhar-Sayeed-090223-9.html

(click above for article)

Nationalism in Bangladesh is shot through with contradictions, some ludicrous and some dangerous. A local columnist has championed local culture by sounding off against Arab culture – claiming that the hijab is an import from the latter. This would be risible but for the political consequences for that embattled Arab people, the Palestinians.

How many million make millions?

"Millions with flowers in their hands while (sic) toddlers holding their mothers' hands or riding their fathers' shoulders joined (sic) the Shaheed Minars that turned the monuments into the human sea.

Barefeet (sic), wearing black ribbons and clutching bouquets of flowers, thousands of people from all walks of life approached the Central Shaheed Minar in the capital to pay homage to the martyrs of the language movement, observing International Mother Language Day.

The entire Dhaka University campus and its surrounding areas turned into a human sea as youths, freedom fighters, politicians, foreigners and others walked towards the memorial with due reverence in queues, many of them singing in chorus 'Amar Bhaiyer Rokte Rangano Ekushey February Ami Ki Bhulite Pari.'" http://thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=76967 )

This is a description of the yearly ritual held on 21st February in Bangladesh. It is a nationalist ritual.

How many people attended?

In the first paragraph, we read about "millions with flowers": if millions moved across Bangladesh, how is it that we haven't seen any signs of this?
And what the "millions of flowers" – where's the stench? Surely, such a large number of flowers must leave an awful pong behind, and, indeed, where did so many flowers come from?

And what kinds of flowers were they: roses, tulips, China roses....or water hyacinths? Only if the latter, could there have been "millions with flowers".

Then the number shrinks when we reach Dhaka: " thousands of people".

That's much better: but I personally don't know anyone who went.

And since I don't have a TV set, I couldn't analyze the pictures to see what the class composition of the "thousands" was: how many rickshaw pullers were there, garment-factory girls, street vendors, farmers....?

We are only told: " thousands of people from all walks of life ", and that's all. But the writer gives himself away in the next paragraph: " youths, freedom fighters, politicians, foreigners and others". Where were the sans-culottes? The "others'? These sound like a residue, a substratum, a scum, an afterthought...surely not the people? More like the 'cetera' after 'et'!

And this furtive nocturnal gathering is supposed to be a national festival: who is the nation, then? A couple of thousand insomniacs?

It has been estimated that 7% of the French participated in the French Revolution, and 11% Iranians in the Iranian one.

Suppose even 1% of our people came out at midnight on 21st February: that would be an impressive army – no, a veritable horde – of 1,500,000 (the size of roughly China's army). But the Daily Star article clearly said "millions with flowers". How many make "millions"? 5 million? 10 million? That would mean an astounding 3 to 6% of the population! Half a French revolution 56 years after the event! Surely every satellite would have picked out such a migration? Surely every newspaper and TV channel would have broadcast the mass of humanity? Not to mention all those flowers.

So it seems even the middle classes didn't come out – they were snoring.

Not only that, I haven't heard of any other country or people who celebrated a so-called International Day – it seems that neither the national, nor the international, turned up for the International Mother Language Day.

The chap who penned that piece should take up fiction – clearly his forte. Not reportage.

In a novel perhaps he can answer the question: who is the nation (and in a sequel, he can delineate the 'International")?