All that was wrong this Pohela Boishakh

Pohela Boishakh was celebrated with due fanfare and not many reports on molestation of women were made. However, these are early days yet: News of untoward incidents may still crop up from the rest of the country. There has already been a report of a cop “misbehaving” with a female student of Dhaka University in the campus. Goes to show that cops are still men first, and men in Bangladesh have an inherent tendency to think of all women as fair game. Not that the case is much better around the world. However, in this case, one or more constables apologised to the female student, a member of the leftist student organisation of DU, and things did not escalate into a major incident. The government’s measures towards extra security and restricting all outdoor soirees within five in the afternoon all but fell on its face, especially on account of this incident of supposed sexual harassment. The people who ensured that they would spread a blanket of security (many layers, apparently) proved to be the perpetrators. It may be mentioned here that Dhaka University students kept extra vigil to stop any untoward incidents from taking place. It was with utter dismay that Nasiruddin Yusuf Bachchu, a freedom fighter and cultural activist, mourned that the authorities declined to grant permission for the traditional soiree at the Rabindra Sorobor at the Dhanmondi lakeside -- it has been a tradition to hold such an event starting late afternoon and running into late night. Thousands of people with their families usually have joined the event over the last several years. Does this year’s cancelation signal a deathblow to this fine evening of poetry, song, dance, and merriment? Pity. What next? I was also dismayed by the tone with which our Prime Minister made her New Year speech at the Gonobhobon. It’s fine that she emphasised that observing Pohela Boishakh has no conflict with religion and that people should not hurt the “feelings” of others. It would have been fine if it ended there. But calling free-thinking bloggers, en masse, “dirty and people with convoluted mentalities” wasn’t exactly tactful. I concede that there are many blogs which only serve to titillate hatred among people, but it would be foolish to think that all blog posts are made with similar intentions. She then went onto emphasise that her life is ruled by Islamic teachings and that she herself gets hurt when someone criticises her religion, that it is to be expected in case of any religious individual, but she then suggested something that will surely end up giving zest to your average machete-wielding mullah: If any “untoward incidents” occur as a result of these free-thinking writings, can anyone blame the government? Yes, the blame can be put on the government, for its failure to provide security to its own citizens. What our PM should have done is ask the aggrieved to take their complaints to the courts and seek rulings on defamation or libel; instead, she asked people to seek divine justice … in the afterlife, I presume. Later in her speech, she discouraged people to take the law into their own hands, but the damage had already been done. “Secularism” has, sadly, become mere lip-service in today’s Bangladesh. Bangalis who fought to remain Bangali and retain their culture have become Muslims first and Bangalis second. I consider myself a Bangali and will do so till my last breath, but a Bangladeshi? I am not that sure anymore. Hunter S Thompson once wrote: “The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.” Considering all the draconian measures which were taken by the police to water down Pohela Boishakh celebrations, one is forced to think if the people who want to spend Pohela Boishakh with unbridled joy and fanfare are too insane. And as such the sane ones, ie the police, need to shoo away or even lock up the insane revelers after 5:00pm. No matter that they failed abysmally in nabbing and punishing the hoodlums who sexually harassed women last year at Suhrawardy Udyan, a stone’s throw from where the police were stationed, and even later when evidence was published. In turn, they decided to take action against the social media site that highlighted those pictures. I guess the police thought that the hoodlums were acting from a certain level of “sanity.” They, however, have been looking for the twentysomething woman who lost all her clothes to the rampaging hands of sanity -- what bloody insane behaviour for a woman to go to a crowded place in the evening! Kudos to the defenders of the law for pinpointing where the problem lies: It’s the bloody women with their “alluring” physical attributes that are too distracting for the criminally sane. The nation is surely slip-sliding to a puritanical hell, and after a certain point, there is no turning back. Let’s quote Thompson again: “The edge ... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” This country is standing at the edge of the precipice and is itching to jump into the abyss.