Nirad C. Chaudhuri, in his otherwise stimulating article ‘India, West Bengal and East Bengal’ overlooked two leaders who would disprove ‘the fact...that no responsible political or military leader has ever played with the security of his people when military resistance seemed irrational’. They are Napoleon and Nehru.
The French revolutionaries had every reason to fear that their cause would not succeed: they were surrounded by monarchies bent on killing the infant republic in its cradle. By all rational calculations, republicanism was bound to fail. That it did not was largely the work of Napoleon. However, his astonishing military successes were due to that epochal innovation in military history: the National Army – a body of people dedicated to a set of ideas for which they were willing to die by the thousands.
Again, on his return from Elba, Napoleon knew that this time, not only was all Europe against him, but even his own country: he still destroyed 100,000 lives on a personal gamble.
In our own day, we have seen similar revolutionary wars undertaken by a nation covetous of dignity and freedom against – by all rational reckoning – seemingly invincible military might. Vietnam and Iran are the latest examples. As Joseph Conrad said, “It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world; great achievements are carried out in a warm, blessed mental fog.”
Therefore, pace Nirad Chaudhuri, it is not the “fact of the matter that East Bengal Muslims and their leaders did not know the basic principle of seeking or continuing a political conflict when faced with an overwhelming military superiority of the opponent”. The fact of the matter is that there was no revolutionary, national sentiment shared by the whole people. As Mr.Badruddin Umar has observed, the winners of 1971 were the new elite, totally divorced from the aspirations of the people. As Mr.Afsan Chowdhury has pointed out, those villagers who took up arms did so to protect their homes or as a reaction to violence against their villages, not for the ‘nation’.
There is another parallel to the actions of Sheikh Mujib: those of Nehru during the border-conflict with China. Here was a ‘responsible’ political leader who had been advised by diplomats and military experts not to confront China on the battlefield. He chose to ignore them. Nehru refused to negotiate; he was goaded on by the political class; he firmly believed that China would not attack; the army was politicised at the top and the officers were inefficient.
The very possibility of Chinese retaliation for Indian provocation was rejected. Without a shred of evidence, the Intelligence Bureau endorsed this illogical view; those officers who questioned the assumption were shunted aside to make room for more docile soldiers. And the most docile of them all was General Kaul. The chief of general staff, without any combat command experience, was moved to active command despite the knowledge of his total unsuitability for the post! When General Thapar suggested that China might counter-attack, Nehru said that he had ‘good reason to believe that the Chinese would not take strong action against us’. Soon, the situation was out of his hand – he was a pawn of the powers he had encouraged, both national as well as international.
Therefore, it is not the Bengali Hindu or Bengali Muslim who has 'the disease’, as Nirad Chaudhuri put it. Rather, it appears to be a South Asian trait: intransigence, the inability to accommodate any other point of view but mine, an unrealistic appraisal of the situation – all these qualities are on abundant display in South Asia. We see them at work in the Kashmir question in India, in the Tamil question in Sri Lanka, and in our own domestic politics in Bangladesh.
However, the real lesson of Nehru’s debacle is different. Despite losing the newly-won freedom of India to China (but for Chinese forbearance), he not only did not resign, there was not a murmur against his continued leadership. Moreover, his daughter and his grandson went on to inherit his position. Similarly, Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, despite losing half the country, managed to bequeath power to his daughter. The Bandaranaike family, notwithstanding the fact that it was father who started the Tamil-Sinahlase division, managed to keep the prime ministership as well as the presidency simultaneously in the family! Our dynasties have their similar origins in fiascoes and debacles.
The experience of being ruled for several hundred years by foreigners must have eaten away the intellectual fibre of our elites. Surely, it will take several generations before we start thinking for ourselves, and not let others do our thinking for us. Perhaps 60 years of ‘independence’ is not enough for independent thought. How long before the slave mentality finally disappears?
In South Asia, failure pays.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
lobsters and diamonds
Glenn Jones studied several hundred menus in the United States, going back into the past. He made a remarkable discovery: there was a time when lobsters were so cheap that they were used as fertiliser! They were so abundant that they were fed to prisoners and children in orphanages. Servants deplored the fare, bargaining with their employers not to be served the crustacean more than twice a week.
Then lobsters became scarce, and their price began to rise. In 1870, a meal cost $4 (in today's money), but $30 dollars or more around 1970.
That's when the lobster became a prized delicacy, sought by the rich.
This is an excellent example of the failure of economic theory: economic theory predicts that the more expensive a product, the less people will consume it. When the supply of lobsters began to shrink, the price rose, and the product came to be in greater demand, pushing prices even further.
This observation was made a hundred years ago by Thorstein Veblen: he noticed that the rich engage in conspicuous consumption; they value things just because they are expensive (diamonds, for instance).
If you're still not convinced, consider the case of diamonds ('girl's best friend'): if diamonds were cheaper, more people would buy them, right? Wrong! Diamonds can be as cheap as glass, and hardly anyone would buy them then.
The only reason why diamond is not cheap as glass is because DeBeers, the cartel, hoards several billion dollars worth of diamonds in its vaults: it releases just enough to ensure that the price remains high – but not too high. Does that make sense? It certainly goes against economic theory: if diamond drops sufficiently low in price, nobody will buy diamonds!
It is the same case with gold: there is enough gold in the world's central bank vaults and the IMF's hoard to make gold as cheap as any metal. Then who would ever buy gold?
Still not convinced? Consider silver: at one time, it was very expensive; today it is cheap, and how many people crave silver?
Then lobsters became scarce, and their price began to rise. In 1870, a meal cost $4 (in today's money), but $30 dollars or more around 1970.
That's when the lobster became a prized delicacy, sought by the rich.
This is an excellent example of the failure of economic theory: economic theory predicts that the more expensive a product, the less people will consume it. When the supply of lobsters began to shrink, the price rose, and the product came to be in greater demand, pushing prices even further.
This observation was made a hundred years ago by Thorstein Veblen: he noticed that the rich engage in conspicuous consumption; they value things just because they are expensive (diamonds, for instance).
If you're still not convinced, consider the case of diamonds ('girl's best friend'): if diamonds were cheaper, more people would buy them, right? Wrong! Diamonds can be as cheap as glass, and hardly anyone would buy them then.
The only reason why diamond is not cheap as glass is because DeBeers, the cartel, hoards several billion dollars worth of diamonds in its vaults: it releases just enough to ensure that the price remains high – but not too high. Does that make sense? It certainly goes against economic theory: if diamond drops sufficiently low in price, nobody will buy diamonds!
It is the same case with gold: there is enough gold in the world's central bank vaults and the IMF's hoard to make gold as cheap as any metal. Then who would ever buy gold?
Still not convinced? Consider silver: at one time, it was very expensive; today it is cheap, and how many people crave silver?
The Conversion of Asoka (fiction)
The Conversion of Asoka (fiction)
Bangladesh has devils to exorcise: this is the story of Lalla Rookh, a distraught mother, whose son enters the sinister world of student politics. Not even the well-meaning Zafar Shah can help her, as evil seemingly triumphs over good.
click below to read:
http://unlikelystories.org/sayeed1107.shtml
Bangladesh has devils to exorcise: this is the story of Lalla Rookh, a distraught mother, whose son enters the sinister world of student politics. Not even the well-meaning Zafar Shah can help her, as evil seemingly triumphs over good.
click below to read:
http://unlikelystories.org/sayeed1107.shtml
Friday, October 26, 2007
racism in england
A friend of mine is a doctor in England – a consultant, in fact. He came to Bangladesh a few months ago, and he told me that the English regard colour as Muslims regard the pig.
One of his patients came to him and said: "I don't mind coloured doctors, but my friends do."
He has to put up with such taunts regularly.
Another friend – also a doctor, but a Ph. D candidate at a prestigious university – says that he would never live in England because of the racism he has encountered.
My cousin's husband recently went to England to do his MBA, leaving his wife and new-born son behind. He planned to take them to England after finishing his MBA and getting a job.
He was little prepared for his experience there. Now he swears he will return because he doesn't want his son to go through what he has to go through.
One of his patients came to him and said: "I don't mind coloured doctors, but my friends do."
He has to put up with such taunts regularly.
Another friend – also a doctor, but a Ph. D candidate at a prestigious university – says that he would never live in England because of the racism he has encountered.
My cousin's husband recently went to England to do his MBA, leaving his wife and new-born son behind. He planned to take them to England after finishing his MBA and getting a job.
He was little prepared for his experience there. Now he swears he will return because he doesn't want his son to go through what he has to go through.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
the positive stereotype of the western woman
The first thing to note is that western women do not suffer any harm through war – they are at the delivering, not the receiving, end of the missile.
A UNIFEM report has it that " The economic cost of violence against women is considerable — a 2003 report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the United States alone exceed US$5.8 billion per year: US$4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly US$1.8 billion."
In peaceful Geneva, Switzerland, a randomly selected study of nearly 1,200 ninth-grade students revealed that 20 per cent of girls had experienced at least one incident of physical sexual abuse (http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures.php).
According to The Care Center (www.teencarecenter.org ):
• Of rape victims who reported the offense to law enforcement, about 40% were
under the age of 18, and 15% were younger than 12.
• Of 1,000 representative female students at a large urban university, over half
had experienced some form of unwanted sex. Twelve percent of these acts
were perpetrated by casual dates and 43% by steady dating partners.
• Female adolescents are frequent victims of sexual assault and rape. The
incidence of rape in the United States peaks among young women 16 to 19
years of age. The reported incidence of rape and sexual assault reflects a
fraction of the actual frequency of this crime. The National Victim Center
estimates that almost 700,000 women are raped each year, and that 61% of the
victims are under the age of 18.
• Female adolescents are at high risk for becoming victims of acquaintance rape
or “date rape.” Studies have shown that the highest incidence of acquaintance
rape occurred in grade 12 and during the freshman year of college. Of the
25% of college women surveyed who reported having had unwanted sexual
intercourse, 84% knew their assailant, 57% of the episodes occurred on dates,
and 41% of the women stated that they were virgins at the time of the assault.
Again, this is probably an underestimation of the true incidence of date rape
Alcohol a factor:
• It is estimated that approximately one-half of assault cases involve alcohol
consumption by the perpetrator, victim, or both. Moreover, while alcohol
consumption and sexual assault frequently co-occur, this phenomenon does
not prove that alcohol use causes sexual assault. Rather, alcohol contributes to
sexual assault through multiple pathways, often exacerbating existing risk
factors. For example, the desire to commit sexual violence may actually cause
alcohol consumption in that a male perpetrator drinks alcohol before
committing a sexual assault in order to justify his behavior. Whereas, among
college-aged males, fraternities encourage both heavy drinking and the sexual
exploitation of women.
Date rape drugs:
• Date rape drugs or drug-facilitated sexual assault causes sedation and amnesia
to the extent that a potential victim cannot resist or may not be aware of the
assault. In fact, about 25% of the women who contacted the Canadian Sexual
Assault Center reported that drugs were a factor in a rape. The most
commonly reported drugs in addition to alcohol to facilitate sexual assault are
flunitrazepam and gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), which is now touted as
a new recreational ‘club drug’.
Long term effects:
• Victims of marital or date rape are 11 times more likely to be clinically depressed, and 6 times more likely to experience social phobia than are non-victims. Psychological problems are still evident in cases as long as 15 years after the assault.
That's not a pretty picture for any society, especially one that claims to be the universal conscience, with the ability to tell right from wrong. Why should a society that respects women as individuals, unlike (remember) Muslim society, why should such a society present such awful statistics?
I will let Andrea Dworkin speak on the subject of western man's perception of western woman.
"The skin of white women has a meaning in pornography. In a white-supremacist society, the skin of white women is supposed to indicate privilege. Being white is as good as it gets. What, then, does it mean that pornography is filled with white women? It means that when one takes a woman who is at the zenith of the hierarchy in racial terms and one asks her, What do you want?, she, who supposedly has some freedom and some choices, says, I want to be used. She says, use me, hurt me, exploit me, that is what I want. The society tells us that she is a standard, a standard of beauty, a standard of womanhood and femininity. But, in fact, she is a standard of compliance. She is a standard of submission. She is a standard for oppression, its emblem; she models oppression, she incarnates it; which is to say that she does what she needs to do in order to stay alive, the configuration of her conformity predetermined by the men who like to ejaculate on her white skin. She is for sale. And so what is her white skin worth? It makes her price a little higher. (http://www.voxygen.net/cpa/speeches/dworkintxt.htm)"
What Andrea Dworkin had to say about women being objectified in western society cannot be easily denied: and one does not have to go as far as pornography to see it (though we must keep in mind the fact that pornography in the US alone constitutes a $10 billion industry). Advertisements routinely use women; there are women's pageants still; the diversity of lingerie that western, consumer society has dreamt up – and which is almost totally missing in a place like Bangladesh – can leave little room for doubt that women are meant to be gazed on – consumed - by men....
In conclusion, what are we to say about the positive stereotype of the western woman against the negative stereotype of her easter sisters?
They are both completely wrong.
A UNIFEM report has it that " The economic cost of violence against women is considerable — a 2003 report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the United States alone exceed US$5.8 billion per year: US$4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly US$1.8 billion."
In peaceful Geneva, Switzerland, a randomly selected study of nearly 1,200 ninth-grade students revealed that 20 per cent of girls had experienced at least one incident of physical sexual abuse (http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures.php).
According to The Care Center (www.teencarecenter.org ):
• Of rape victims who reported the offense to law enforcement, about 40% were
under the age of 18, and 15% were younger than 12.
• Of 1,000 representative female students at a large urban university, over half
had experienced some form of unwanted sex. Twelve percent of these acts
were perpetrated by casual dates and 43% by steady dating partners.
• Female adolescents are frequent victims of sexual assault and rape. The
incidence of rape in the United States peaks among young women 16 to 19
years of age. The reported incidence of rape and sexual assault reflects a
fraction of the actual frequency of this crime. The National Victim Center
estimates that almost 700,000 women are raped each year, and that 61% of the
victims are under the age of 18.
• Female adolescents are at high risk for becoming victims of acquaintance rape
or “date rape.” Studies have shown that the highest incidence of acquaintance
rape occurred in grade 12 and during the freshman year of college. Of the
25% of college women surveyed who reported having had unwanted sexual
intercourse, 84% knew their assailant, 57% of the episodes occurred on dates,
and 41% of the women stated that they were virgins at the time of the assault.
Again, this is probably an underestimation of the true incidence of date rape
Alcohol a factor:
• It is estimated that approximately one-half of assault cases involve alcohol
consumption by the perpetrator, victim, or both. Moreover, while alcohol
consumption and sexual assault frequently co-occur, this phenomenon does
not prove that alcohol use causes sexual assault. Rather, alcohol contributes to
sexual assault through multiple pathways, often exacerbating existing risk
factors. For example, the desire to commit sexual violence may actually cause
alcohol consumption in that a male perpetrator drinks alcohol before
committing a sexual assault in order to justify his behavior. Whereas, among
college-aged males, fraternities encourage both heavy drinking and the sexual
exploitation of women.
Date rape drugs:
• Date rape drugs or drug-facilitated sexual assault causes sedation and amnesia
to the extent that a potential victim cannot resist or may not be aware of the
assault. In fact, about 25% of the women who contacted the Canadian Sexual
Assault Center reported that drugs were a factor in a rape. The most
commonly reported drugs in addition to alcohol to facilitate sexual assault are
flunitrazepam and gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), which is now touted as
a new recreational ‘club drug’.
Long term effects:
• Victims of marital or date rape are 11 times more likely to be clinically depressed, and 6 times more likely to experience social phobia than are non-victims. Psychological problems are still evident in cases as long as 15 years after the assault.
That's not a pretty picture for any society, especially one that claims to be the universal conscience, with the ability to tell right from wrong. Why should a society that respects women as individuals, unlike (remember) Muslim society, why should such a society present such awful statistics?
I will let Andrea Dworkin speak on the subject of western man's perception of western woman.
"The skin of white women has a meaning in pornography. In a white-supremacist society, the skin of white women is supposed to indicate privilege. Being white is as good as it gets. What, then, does it mean that pornography is filled with white women? It means that when one takes a woman who is at the zenith of the hierarchy in racial terms and one asks her, What do you want?, she, who supposedly has some freedom and some choices, says, I want to be used. She says, use me, hurt me, exploit me, that is what I want. The society tells us that she is a standard, a standard of beauty, a standard of womanhood and femininity. But, in fact, she is a standard of compliance. She is a standard of submission. She is a standard for oppression, its emblem; she models oppression, she incarnates it; which is to say that she does what she needs to do in order to stay alive, the configuration of her conformity predetermined by the men who like to ejaculate on her white skin. She is for sale. And so what is her white skin worth? It makes her price a little higher. (http://www.voxygen.net/cpa/speeches/dworkintxt.htm)"
What Andrea Dworkin had to say about women being objectified in western society cannot be easily denied: and one does not have to go as far as pornography to see it (though we must keep in mind the fact that pornography in the US alone constitutes a $10 billion industry). Advertisements routinely use women; there are women's pageants still; the diversity of lingerie that western, consumer society has dreamt up – and which is almost totally missing in a place like Bangladesh – can leave little room for doubt that women are meant to be gazed on – consumed - by men....
In conclusion, what are we to say about the positive stereotype of the western woman against the negative stereotype of her easter sisters?
They are both completely wrong.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Flash flood in Khagrachari
Khagrachari is a small town in the district of the same name. Nestled in a valley ringed with blue, magnificent hills, it is a jewel in the crown of the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.
Next to the town runs the rivulet known as the Chengi, which pours its meagre stream into the artificial lake of Kaptai.
Meagre stream? Most of the time: meagre, but lovely, especially when its meanders are viewed from the hills.
However, on the night of the 16th of October, 2007, the Chengi changed beyond recognition. It had rained all night, and by dawn, the river was a surge of rapid waters carrying flotsam from the hills. It was a magnificent sight!
A brief trip into the city, and the devastation wrought by the usually docile Chengi was heartbreaking. People had woken up with their houses flooded, their crops destroyed, their belongings ruined….
And what was worse was that this was the second flash flood in a month. But the previous overflow of the monsoon had been mild. The city people recalled that the last time such a terrible flood had occurred was in 1984. They are a hardy lot, and every year during monsoon – which lasts from June/July to September/October – they are visited by at least one such calamity.
The Chengi reminded me of that famous line uttered by Mrs. Moore in E. M. Forster's "A Passage to India": "What a terrible river…what a beautiful river!"
The story of the flash flood is told in pictures below (copy and paste in browser to view).
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7343&l=8ad2c&id=737674415
Next to the town runs the rivulet known as the Chengi, which pours its meagre stream into the artificial lake of Kaptai.
Meagre stream? Most of the time: meagre, but lovely, especially when its meanders are viewed from the hills.
However, on the night of the 16th of October, 2007, the Chengi changed beyond recognition. It had rained all night, and by dawn, the river was a surge of rapid waters carrying flotsam from the hills. It was a magnificent sight!
A brief trip into the city, and the devastation wrought by the usually docile Chengi was heartbreaking. People had woken up with their houses flooded, their crops destroyed, their belongings ruined….
And what was worse was that this was the second flash flood in a month. But the previous overflow of the monsoon had been mild. The city people recalled that the last time such a terrible flood had occurred was in 1984. They are a hardy lot, and every year during monsoon – which lasts from June/July to September/October – they are visited by at least one such calamity.
The Chengi reminded me of that famous line uttered by Mrs. Moore in E. M. Forster's "A Passage to India": "What a terrible river…what a beautiful river!"
The story of the flash flood is told in pictures below (copy and paste in browser to view).
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7343&l=8ad2c&id=737674415
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Two Religions of Bangladesh
The Two Religions of Bangladesh
Category: News and Politics
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_iftekhar_070307_the_two_religions_of.htm
The Two Religions of Bangladesh (Analysis)
According to Ninian Smart, nationalism is as much a religion as any of the regular variety. Nationalism has never been able to supplant Islam in Bangladesh, and the two religions coexist in hostility.
Category: News and Politics
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_iftekhar_070307_the_two_religions_of.htm
The Two Religions of Bangladesh (Analysis)
According to Ninian Smart, nationalism is as much a religion as any of the regular variety. Nationalism has never been able to supplant Islam in Bangladesh, and the two religions coexist in hostility.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
