A policeman berates a woman here in this capital city of the country for wearing a teep on her forehead and almost runs her over when she answers him back.
A survey by the Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (BILIA) reveals what many of us already know: Education on national history is flawed, and is not properly being imparted to the young in the educational institutions of the country.
These two stories need to be taken up one after the other, the objective of which should be an initiation of corrective measures.
First, that policeman. His impudence in loudly asking a woman why she is wearing the teep raises the very important question of how such individuals are recruited in the various levels of the government.
This policeman’s responsibility should have been loyalty to the state through upholding the heritage of the country. He clearly failed to do that and in reprimanding the woman, an academic, over her teep, he brazenly undermined the very fundamentals of the state of Bangladesh.
Which now should have those who manage the affairs of state, beginning at the very top, go for a serious rethink on the damage being done to our state institutions -- the police department, the civil service, education, et cetera -- through the presence of elements like this rogue policeman wearing not his professional helmet but a skullcap and, shockingly, riding a motorbike that is not his.
In this country, where over the past many decades secularism as a way of life has taken a bad mauling, the ideals which went into the War of Liberation nevertheless still resonate among the people of the country.
The younger generation, born long after the war, has through the demonstrations at Shahbagh in the course of the trials of the war criminals of 1971, proved conclusively, that all is not lost.
With women coming to the defense of the teep on social media, we know the country is still ours to hold fast to.
And yet, we need to recover what we have so far lost, thanks to the interruptions in the political process by military and quasi-military rule as also the creeping entry of the robber barons, of shameless capitalism in our collective existence. The state of Bangladesh is in grave need of making its way back to full and unfettered secularism and Bengali nationalism.
And the passage to that restoration necessarily lies in a comprehensive survey of how many elements like the teep-obsessed policeman happen to be in our administrative structure. Saboteurs within the administration, in the various tiers of the government, are a danger to the future.
So what do we do? We simply need to identify them and weed them out, through our very own cultural revolution and through a fast-track but peaceful process. Too many bad eggs have come into the basket. They need to be discarded without pity.
And even as that action is undertaken, provisions must be introduced in the laws of the country guaranteeing a full screening of individuals seeking employment in the service of the republic, indeed a full inquiry into their background.
Their political beliefs must be put to the test to ensure that recruitment to state institutions throws up the best in terms of loyalty to the principles of the constitution.
Additionally, it should now become the responsibility of the state to ensure that any assault on Bengali cultural heritage -- and women wearing the teep on the forehead are an integral part of that heritage -- will be treated as a crime at variance with the objectives of the state.
Any statement anywhere against culture, any demonization of citizens on the basis of their religious or cultural beliefs must be swatted down swiftly. Fanaticism and religious radicalization militate against our social and political history.
And let it not be forgotten that Bangladesh emerged as an independent entity that was home to all its people -- Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, ethnic groups. Any assault on or any denigration of any of our citizens is an attack on the state, is treason. Let that be made part of our collective being.
And now to the matter of history as it is not, repeat not, known by the young. The BILIA study does not surprise us, for over the years we who have grown into the late sixties and have remembered the minutest details of national history have failed to pass the story on to our children and grandchildren.
Our education system, let us be frank about it, has busily remained engaged in promoting a culture of golden GPAs for the young in schools and colleges. The old rules of the game, with students poring over textbooks in preparation for class and annual examinations, have been flung to the winds.
The intelligent student of the pre-GPA era, one who had a rather impressive idea of the world he was part of, is dead and gone.
In stark terms, the promising thinkers and intellectuals who once emerged from schools and colleges are today a story of a lost, precious past. And what we have these days is a ludicrous scene of students and teachers and parents celebrating results of the SSC and HSC results in pointless dance and loud screams of happiness.
But how many of the young who have come through these examinations are aware of the history of their country and of the world they are part of? Not many years ago, following a gigantic celebration of a plethora of GPAs and golden GPAs, only four among these star students could qualify at the admission test for the department of English at Dhaka University.
That angered the authorities, for here was a clear hint of how the education system was coming to nought. The authorities were not ready to acknowledge that the system they had put in place was fast producing a generation of GPA-studded mediocrity.
The BILIA study would have us know that many -- and that many is certainly a very large number -- among the young have no idea about the four national leaders who led the Mujibnagar government in 1971. Are we surprised?
When a young student, asked by her teacher what she knew of the 1952 language movement, responds that a war between Bangladesh and Pakistan took place in 1952, it is the depths to which education has plunged in the country we are reminded of again.
Where are the men and women who will teach history to these young?
More to the point, where is the emphasis from the government, from the state, on the critical significance of history?
A nation which loses its history, which does not teach its young the political legacy on which it is based is surely on its way to losing itself in the sands of time.
And the teaching of history, we might add, is not a narrowing down of its constituents but a full appreciation of and deliberations on the men and women, in the case of Bangladesh, who have been important players in the creation of the country.
History is a comprehensive and not a selective affair. Our children need to be educated on the idea of Bengal before it transcended to being the idea of Bangladesh.
They must be taught about Bangabandhu’s life and career and sufferings. Classroom lectures and history textbooks must focus on every detail of the Mujibnagar government, of the roles played by Tajuddin Ahmad and his colleagues in forging resistance to the enemy in 1971.
We are at the crossroads of time in these present times.
The enemy is within, in the bizarre form of that radicalized policeman out to harass our women and our cultural heritage.
The enemy is in us, in those of us who continue to think of history in cavalier fashion, who are happy with sanitized or personalized or partisan versions of history.
It is an enemy that must be run out of town.