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.
Showing posts with label Stanley. J. Tambiah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanley. J. Tambiah. Show all posts
Friday, March 12, 2010
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Untold Story of Bangladesh - How Journalists Failed A Nation
For years, I tried to bring to the attention of the international mainstream media how student politicians in Bangladesh were raping girls and killing each other – and failed.
I recall writing to New Hope International, and the editor sending me a terse note saying that if I found democracy so deficient, what alternative did I propose? Earlier, the chief editor had said that they would have been happier if I had attributed the violence I described to the market-friendly policies of the World Bank and the IMF!
I approached the Christian Science Monitor – they weren't remotely interested. I wrote to The Nation – thinking that this paper would surely be concerned about the plight of teenage boys used as thugs by the political parties; I never even heard from them.
I sent an article to the New Statesman. I got a reply saying that the relevant editor would get back to me after the Christmas holidays. I never heard from him again.
Then, my own analysis told me what was going on – these major newspapers were part of what I have come to call "The Freedom Industry". Since their readers have been indoctrinated into believing that democracy is God's gift to mankind (George Bush's phrase), any criticism of democracy would not go down well with them. Prestige and money were at stake.
Finally, I learned about the Alternative Media/ indymedia.
My first break came when Csaba Polony of Left Curve published a cycle of poems on the murder of student politicians by student politicians. I was grateful: I realised that criticism of students – who were supposed to have overthrown a dictator in 1990 – would only be acceptable to low-budget, low-circulation. non-mainstream newspapers and magazines.
And that turned out to be the case: I sent my article to an online journal called Axis of Logic. The editor was breathless with excitement: he immediately published it, and even tried to call me from America – but it's not easy to get through to Bangladesh!
You can access the article here:
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23393.shtml
It's called THE FREEDOM INDUSTRY AND STUDENT POLITICS IN BANGLADESH: every year, on the average, 50 student politicians were being murdered after the democratic transition of 1990. Why? Because these kids were being used by the political parties to bring down the incumbent in street battles and campus violence. Those street battles are called 'hartals' (these are not 'general strikes'!). Here's a description of a hartal: " Salahuddin (33), a fisherman, was killed in a skirmish between the two student wings of the political parties in the latest hartal. Two rickshawpullers – one of them unidentified, the other Badaruddin (32) - were bombed while they were pulling their rickshaws during hartal hours. It took them 24 to 48 hours to die. An auto-rickshaw was burned to ashes, and when the driver, Saidul Islam Shahid (35), tried to put out the flames, he was sprinkled with petrol, and burned to death. It took him more than two days to die. Truck driver, Fayez Ahmed (50), died when a bomb was thrown on his truck. And Ripon Sikder, a sixteen-year-old injured by a bomb, died on 4th May at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital after struggling for his life for eleven days." The whole idea of a hartal is to keep traffic off the roads to paralyse the country and discredit the ruling party – and that's where you need the boys.
The boys were allowed – even encouraged – to rape with abandon. According to the Minister of Women and Children's Affairs, the number of rapes skyrocketed from 407 in 1990 to 2224 by 1997.
In September 1998, a committee investigated allegations of sexual abuse at Jahangirnagar University against boys from the Chatra League, the student front of the then ruling Awami League. It revealed that
“more than 20 female students were raped and over 300 others were sexually harassed on the campus by the "armed cadres of a particular political party. "
No one was charged.
In desperation people resorted to lynching: lynching was unknown in Bangladesh. If people caught a thief, they used to give him a good beating and hand him over to the police. Now, they started killing them. And then came the public torching of muggers and robbers – they were cremated alive in broad daylight by a populace that had had enough.
Then, I realised that reading newspapers – ranging from The Economist to the Guardian to the New Statesman – would not give me a true picture of the world.
Only anthropologists could do that.
The first eye-opener was Stanely J. Tambiah of Harvard University. In his book, Ethnonatioalist Conflict and Collective Violence in South Asia (a book that, to my knowledge, no mainstream paper ever reviewed), he blames the rise in violence throughout South Asia on the party political system.
He says: ‘...participatory democracy, competitive elections, mass militancy, and crowd violence are not disconnected. (Stanley J. Tambiah ,Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia, (New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1996), p. 260)."
I noticed that none of the NGOs ever raised their voices against student politics. Odd: these were supposed to be "civil society". Then two anthropologists revealed the truth.
The writers speak of an "aid market" that local NGOs know how to exploit.
“The political significance of such a massive proliferation of NGOs in Africa deserves closer attention. Our research suggests that this expansion is less the outcome of the increasing political weight of civil society than the consequence of the very pragmatic realisation that resources are now largely channeled through NGOs.”
The authors also - like myself - attribute the spread of democracy since 1990 to foreign donor pressure, and reject outright the notion of an emerging civil society: “It cannot simply be a coincidence that, now that the West ties aid to democratisation under the guise of multi-party elections, multi-party elections are taking place in Africa.” (Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey, 1999)23, 22, 118).
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, donors insisted on multi-party elections. The Economist finally acknowledged the truth after fourteen years: “...the cold war’s end prompted western donors to stop propping up anti-communist dictators and to start insisting on democratic reforms” (December 18th 2004, p. 69).
Then, when democracy threatened to turn Bangladesh into another failed Muslim state, western governments intervened: they again allowed the army to take over on January 11th 2007.
The number of student politicians murdered plunged from 48 in 2006 to 10 in 2007 and 6 so far this year. The restoration of (colonial) democracy in December means that more kids are going to be killed every year, and more women raped by these kids.
But no newspaper will ever tell you that.
(For more articles on Bangladesh and violence, you can visit my website.
I recall writing to New Hope International, and the editor sending me a terse note saying that if I found democracy so deficient, what alternative did I propose? Earlier, the chief editor had said that they would have been happier if I had attributed the violence I described to the market-friendly policies of the World Bank and the IMF!
I approached the Christian Science Monitor – they weren't remotely interested. I wrote to The Nation – thinking that this paper would surely be concerned about the plight of teenage boys used as thugs by the political parties; I never even heard from them.
I sent an article to the New Statesman. I got a reply saying that the relevant editor would get back to me after the Christmas holidays. I never heard from him again.
Then, my own analysis told me what was going on – these major newspapers were part of what I have come to call "The Freedom Industry". Since their readers have been indoctrinated into believing that democracy is God's gift to mankind (George Bush's phrase), any criticism of democracy would not go down well with them. Prestige and money were at stake.
Finally, I learned about the Alternative Media/ indymedia.
My first break came when Csaba Polony of Left Curve published a cycle of poems on the murder of student politicians by student politicians. I was grateful: I realised that criticism of students – who were supposed to have overthrown a dictator in 1990 – would only be acceptable to low-budget, low-circulation. non-mainstream newspapers and magazines.
And that turned out to be the case: I sent my article to an online journal called Axis of Logic. The editor was breathless with excitement: he immediately published it, and even tried to call me from America – but it's not easy to get through to Bangladesh!
You can access the article here:
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23393.shtml
It's called THE FREEDOM INDUSTRY AND STUDENT POLITICS IN BANGLADESH: every year, on the average, 50 student politicians were being murdered after the democratic transition of 1990. Why? Because these kids were being used by the political parties to bring down the incumbent in street battles and campus violence. Those street battles are called 'hartals' (these are not 'general strikes'!). Here's a description of a hartal: " Salahuddin (33), a fisherman, was killed in a skirmish between the two student wings of the political parties in the latest hartal. Two rickshawpullers – one of them unidentified, the other Badaruddin (32) - were bombed while they were pulling their rickshaws during hartal hours. It took them 24 to 48 hours to die. An auto-rickshaw was burned to ashes, and when the driver, Saidul Islam Shahid (35), tried to put out the flames, he was sprinkled with petrol, and burned to death. It took him more than two days to die. Truck driver, Fayez Ahmed (50), died when a bomb was thrown on his truck. And Ripon Sikder, a sixteen-year-old injured by a bomb, died on 4th May at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital after struggling for his life for eleven days." The whole idea of a hartal is to keep traffic off the roads to paralyse the country and discredit the ruling party – and that's where you need the boys.
The boys were allowed – even encouraged – to rape with abandon. According to the Minister of Women and Children's Affairs, the number of rapes skyrocketed from 407 in 1990 to 2224 by 1997.
In September 1998, a committee investigated allegations of sexual abuse at Jahangirnagar University against boys from the Chatra League, the student front of the then ruling Awami League. It revealed that
“more than 20 female students were raped and over 300 others were sexually harassed on the campus by the "armed cadres of a particular political party. "
No one was charged.
In desperation people resorted to lynching: lynching was unknown in Bangladesh. If people caught a thief, they used to give him a good beating and hand him over to the police. Now, they started killing them. And then came the public torching of muggers and robbers – they were cremated alive in broad daylight by a populace that had had enough.
Then, I realised that reading newspapers – ranging from The Economist to the Guardian to the New Statesman – would not give me a true picture of the world.
Only anthropologists could do that.
The first eye-opener was Stanely J. Tambiah of Harvard University. In his book, Ethnonatioalist Conflict and Collective Violence in South Asia (a book that, to my knowledge, no mainstream paper ever reviewed), he blames the rise in violence throughout South Asia on the party political system.
He says: ‘...participatory democracy, competitive elections, mass militancy, and crowd violence are not disconnected. (Stanley J. Tambiah ,Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia, (New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1996), p. 260)."
I noticed that none of the NGOs ever raised their voices against student politics. Odd: these were supposed to be "civil society". Then two anthropologists revealed the truth.
The writers speak of an "aid market" that local NGOs know how to exploit.
“The political significance of such a massive proliferation of NGOs in Africa deserves closer attention. Our research suggests that this expansion is less the outcome of the increasing political weight of civil society than the consequence of the very pragmatic realisation that resources are now largely channeled through NGOs.”
The authors also - like myself - attribute the spread of democracy since 1990 to foreign donor pressure, and reject outright the notion of an emerging civil society: “It cannot simply be a coincidence that, now that the West ties aid to democratisation under the guise of multi-party elections, multi-party elections are taking place in Africa.” (Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey, 1999)23, 22, 118).
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, donors insisted on multi-party elections. The Economist finally acknowledged the truth after fourteen years: “...the cold war’s end prompted western donors to stop propping up anti-communist dictators and to start insisting on democratic reforms” (December 18th 2004, p. 69).
Then, when democracy threatened to turn Bangladesh into another failed Muslim state, western governments intervened: they again allowed the army to take over on January 11th 2007.
The number of student politicians murdered plunged from 48 in 2006 to 10 in 2007 and 6 so far this year. The restoration of (colonial) democracy in December means that more kids are going to be killed every year, and more women raped by these kids.
But no newspaper will ever tell you that.
(For more articles on Bangladesh and violence, you can visit my website.
Monday, August 11, 2008
my morally challenged elders
I shouldn't speak ill of my elders, but with all due respects, they are a bunch of scumbags.
One moment, they will say "Joy Bangla! (Victory to Bengali)", and the second moment, they will say to their children, "Get out of this country; this country has no future; what will you do here?"
Most of my elders are Awami Leaguers, though there are some BNPers. Both groups are mad, especially the former (the latter are focused on money, which, as economists will tell you, is highly rational).
As Harvard anthropologist Stanley J. Tambiah has observed: “In India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, the attempt to realise the nation-state on a Western European model has virtually failed. The nation-state conception has not taken deep roots in South Asia or generated a wide-spread and robust participatory “public culture” that celebrates it in widely meaningful ceremonies, festivals, and rituals”.
Some of my relatives refuse to 'salam' people – that wouldn't be 'Bengali' (sorry, Bangalee); that would be – Allah forbid! – be Muslim. One branch, my mother assures me, used to wear the "dhoti" – including the women. My parents themselves get the vapours whenever they see a burqua!
Their nationalism consists of identifying with the pre-Islamic "culture" of South Asia, I suppose. But then, why stop at Hinduism? Why not Buddhism? After all, Bengal was the last redoubt of that noble religion. The magnificent ruins at Paharpur are those of the first Buddhist monastery in the world, drawing tourists and experts regularly from east Asia.
Or why not Jainism? Or Sikhism? These are South Asian religions, too.
The answer is that nationalism, a western ideology when transplanted to the east becomes
incoherent – all manner of contradictions result. It becomes a dogma only for fools and the intellectually challenged.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in Iran. Some – certainly not most – of my Iranian friends are nationalist.
What does that mean?
That means that they 'believe' in Takhte Jamshid, or Persepolis. They 'identify' with Zoroastrianism and the Achaemenids – like the deranged Shah.
But – at the same time – they are immensely proud of the great (very Muslim) poets – Hafez, Rumi, Sa'adi....These poets were devout Muslims, but Iranian nationalists reject Islam and yet cling to Muslim poetry.
And why identify with Zoroastrianism? Why not with Manichaeism, or its many variants?
Indeed, why not identify with the religions of the Central Asian linguistic group, the Aryans (from which the word 'Iran' comes)? Why not identify with Central Asia?
How far back in time should we go? We should go back to East Africa, where humanity was born (if you believe in evolution; otherwise, with Adam and Eve, if you are Jew, Christian or Muslim); and there are Hindu, Buddhist....cosmologies and cosmogonies – take your pick, it's a la carte, not table d'hote.
If we stop at central Asia – at the Aryans – then Indians and Iranians are – wait for it! – the same people!
Nationalism in Asia is the ideology of morons. In Europe it was the ideology of lunatics (I say 'was' because the European Union is the attempt to destroy nationalism where it was born.)
German nationalism (the reflex of French nationalism, which cost around 2 million lives all told) was internally consistent. The German race was the Aryan race (consistent, but factually incorrect, for 'Aryan' refers to a linguistic, not racial, group). The blond beast was the greatest of all beasts – the uberman, to vary the metaphor. Given this premiss, all else follows with horrible logic: the lebensraum struggle, the killing of the mentally retarded Germans, a punishment extended to gypsies, homosexuals, and, finally, the Jews.....
How can any human being want to be a nationalist?
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