The absence of question

Recently, I visited my old work place; a sort of think-tank formerly known as the Institute of Governance Studies (IGS, renamed BIDG in 2014). At the time, it was run by a man called Rizwan Khair. He was a genius of sorts -- not only for his contribution to the national governance debate, but for his pragmatism and understanding of the mind of social scientists. He had the acute ability to stimulate creativity in his researchers. We would work overtime for very little pay, with great pleasure, because he allowed us to analyse the problems of the polity, and to propose topics of publication, with minimal supervision. If we strayed off-course, or attempted propositions we couldn’t back up with facts, he would correct us, and shame us into submission. As if he was William of Occam himself (who taught his student not to multiply entities beyond necessity), he would use his razor sparingly. We loved him for refraining from the urge to micro-manage, control, and constrain our analytical curiosity. Such men are hard to find. When he resigned from the institute, many good researchers left as well. Years later, when I spoke to some of my former colleagues at the department of politics, I jokingly asked: “What’s up with politics these days?” (Jokingly, since the practice of self-censorship had already been apparent to all of us for some time). Witty as always, my colleagues replied: “What politics? We don’t speak of such things.” We had a good heartfelt laugh, I paid my respects to some of my favourite colleagues, and then I left. And I did so with a rather bitter-sweet feeling.Speak no evilThe practice of self-censorship is nothing new in Bangladesh, and elsewhere in the world. For example, in Singapore, voting slips for national elections were tagged with serial numbers, such that the government knew who voted for whom. Singapore is the most wonderful little police state ever invented, where cops are nowhere to be seen, and yet, violent crime is nowhere to be found. However, when citizens speak of their government at the dinner table, they must first look over their shoulder, and then lower their voices to the point of whispering. Prior to 2005, I had never expected that this sort of trend would emerge in Bangladesh. Controversy, public debate, and published forms of contestation, were always the trademark of the modern Muslim democratic polity that the rest of the world found so interesting.

So, can we entirely put the blame for the culture of silence upon the current government? We cannot

Academics and pundits were overtly critical of authority across the party divide. Newspaper men, equally so, were “dishing it out” on a daily basis. However, in 2011, some years after the “military interregnum,” I noticed some not so subtle changes beginning to creep up. At a conference hosted by IGS and the University of Bath, I presented a paper on comparative legal systems. I disagreed with most pundits and scholars who regarded the constitution as “progressive,” since next to every individual fundamental right, there was a sub-clause that was so vague that it seemed to invalidate every fundamental right in question (eg citizens have the right to speak freely, unless they do so against the “interests of the state”). I apologised to the audience and said: “Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, criticising your constitution.” I expected a critical backlash, but to my surprise the exact opposite happened: “You are not offending us at all, speaker” I was told and, “in fact, we can’t criticise our own constitution, since we might be arrested under the contempt of court laws. You foreigners are the only ones who can criticise our laws … so you should do it.” In 2003 and 2004, I would tell my Singaporean friends that the idea of a one-party system was too controversial to ever be realised in Bangladesh, since the Father and liberator of the nation was instantly removed by the military when he attempted such a constitutional move in 1975. Yet, we now find ourselves in a similar situation. But can we blame the government for the current culture of silence and self-censorship? Not entirely, I think.The blame gameThe international community is also to blame for the current state of affairs. For example, in 2005 when the army seized power, a brief article in The Daily Star stated that they had been urged to seize power by the resident coordinator of the UN. Allegedly, they were given the ultimatum that if they did not intervene in the upcoming election, which was predicted to be “rigged” by the incumbent party -- they would have to forfeit their role as the world’s greatest “peace-keepers,” from which the army retains a great deal of income. Here, the reader would not be wrong in asking “what business was it of the UN resident coordinator of Bangladesh to intervene so dramatically in the party-politics of another country?” The first tenet of international law (the right to “sovereignty” and self-determination) explicitly forbids this practice. It was established by the peace treaty of Westphalia in 1648 -- ending 30 years of religious warfare in Europe. Presumably, the UN resident coordinator was well aware of international law. Unfortunately, the UN in Bangladesh are not the independent players they seem to be, but are themselves dependent on bilateral donors. They can do nothing for the poor in Bangladesh, without prior budgetary approval. The Department for International Development (DfID) is one such donor, which in turn takes its cue directly from the ministerial cabinet in the UK. The ministry of foreign affairs in the UK know very little of the politics of Bangladesh and have to rely on social scientific briefings from universities and academics. In 2005, a famous Bangladeshi lecturer at the School of Oriental and African studies (SOAS) argued in a widely publicised paper that democracy in Bangladesh was a pointless exercise, since at the current stage of economic development there was not enough economic surplus from which to extract income to redistribute wealth. Incidentally, the same scholar was also, at the time, a key adviser to the DfID in Bangladesh. Today, the global development consensus is, more or less: “Growth and economic development should come first” and only later should we concern ourselves with democracy. So, the international community (or perhaps call it the “UN-international-academic-development-complex”) is also responsible for the current state of affairs. Many other nations openly applauded the military takeover in 2008. And what was the role of the now outcast BNP?On all of usTheir street politics was not reasonable at all: The hartal culture, assassination attempts of the AL leaders, their indifference to the rampant abuse of power for personal economic gain (as reported in the media) leading up to the military takeover in 2005. So, can we entirely put the blame for the culture of silence upon the current government? We cannot. We must all take part of the blame. It should be understood that the incumbent party is actually stuck in a sort of Machiavellian double-bind and are dammed if they do and damned if they don’t. Today, the AL would benefit from a proper opposition party -- just to call themselves “honest” and effective. But as of yet no reasonable opposition has emerged. I don’t think that the government actually wants a one-party state system -- but they really have no option, currently. Until such time that a reasonable political party emerges to balance the scales at parliament -- civil society waits and listens, patiently, to the eerie sound of silence.Jens Stanislawski works as an adviser to various development partners in Bangladesh and is the Managing Director of Research and Action for Development (ReAD).