What does it mean to be a Bangladeshi in the year 2016? That we have more money in our pockets than we’ve ever had before? That the current state of our governance is the most stable it has been in years? Or is it the fact that we’re only a few more executions away from being completely exorcised of the demons from our history?
The answer is, of course: None of the above. It’s the same that it has been since the noughties, or the 90s, or the 80s, or … you get the idea.
Stagnation has been our national pastime for as long as we have existed as a sovereign entity, whether it be in our culture, our sense of social justice (any justice for that matter), or even what we strive for as individuals, as citizens -- (more) cars, (more) real estate, (more) everything.
Which is a shame really, especially when you observe the violent, necessary birth of our nation and contrast it with the bloated and confused perpetually larval stage that we are in right now.
Yes, Bangladesh’s birth was a necessary event in the history of human struggle; at least, in part, to show the world that it was, in fact, possible for David (Bangladesh) to outdo Goliath (not the nation you’re probably thinking of), if not outright fell him … with some help, of course.
Where exactly did things go wrong, then? How did a restless desire to be free give way to dreams of complacency? When did victory turn into vacuity, grief to grievance?
We clearly haven’t forgotten how to voice ourselves over causes. Loud, screeching calls for nothing short of death for the war criminals of our history can be heard everywhere between a mouse click and a thousand miles away.
But why? That’s a war we’ve already won. Bangladesh still stands despite the logically disproportionate amount of beimaans and Razakars still in our midst, doesn’t it? What exactly would the forced deaths of a few decaying old men yield? Not any sort of justice, that’s for sure.
There are still numerous invisible wars to be fought, of course, but it appears we have yet to learn how to pick our battles very well.
You hear fewer cries when it comes to the incumbent government’s ambitious Orwellian designs of gathering arbitrary data into each and every citizen and their dog -- trading (ironically) freedom for whatever ambiguous phrase involving “terrorism” they are sure to come up with soon. Outside of newspaper coverage, there is next to no commotion being made on the streets over a massive mishap that saw the hard-earned remittances of more than a million Bangladeshi migrant workers toiling away far from home vanish into thin air.
On this day, 45 years ago, Bangladesh became an independent nation, and we have made it a point to remember that fact every year ever since. But what it meant to be independent in 1971 varies wildly from what it means to be independent in 2016, and, at least, in that sense, Bangladesh is on a level playing field with the rest of the world, as bizarre and surreal as that may sound.