A half century after the declaration of Bangladesh’s independence, there are the dreams of the future I share with my fellow citizens in this land of poetry nurtured by a deep consciousness of history. I dream of life gathering to itself the raiment of beauty, the power of profound meaning.
I dream of a time when citizens will have a voice in how they are governed, will expect and get answers to the many questions that assail them as they go about their quotidian life, will not be ignored, will be treated with dignity.
I dream of a time when government will speak for all citizens, when cronyism will be a bad dream, when the nightmare of corruption will pass into a dark past we will not cause to be reborn, when sycophancy will not block the path to the rise of the meritorious and the patriotic.
I dream of an era when men and women of insidious intent will not steal from public coffers and scamper away to foreign lands, to live off the corrupt wealth they have brought with them. I dream of a political system that will not merely tell us that the wheels of justice will grind for those who take the nation for a ride but will convince us that justice has indeed been done.
I dream of an age where professionalism will underpin the nation’s institutions and partisanship will be abjured, when citizens of all classes and categories will not be turned away from the doors of justice on excuses that have in the past turned life into incalculable misery for them.
Half a century after March 1971, I dream of Bangladesh being home to all faiths, of being a haven of secular freedom for all its citizens. I dream of a future where the Hindu will not have his home smashed and his idols insulted, where the Christian will know his church is safe, where the Buddhist does not feel he is an alien in this People’s Republic, where the Muslim turns his back on majoritarian sentiments.
I dream of a revival of the values which formed our moral compass as we went to war, under Bangabandhu’s leadership, against a rapacious enemy 50 years ago and won the battle. I dream of winning the war we are yet engaged in, that of the building of a liberal society of happy men and women on the fundamentals of Bengali nationalism.
I dream of a land where no individual and no parochial outfit will dare to suggest that Bangladesh’s girls not be educated, that its women stay confined in the home. My dream is of a social order where government will not appease such medievalism but will come down hard on its purveyors and convince citizens that they have nothing to fear, that the country will be a reflection of their aspirations, that government exists to serve them, not the other way round.
I dream of informed intellectual debate in parliament where lawmakers will raise questions in the public interest and will get answers, where ministers will come prepared to respond to citizens’ worries, where legislation will be enacted in the interest of present and future generations.
I dream of a political system that will have room for vibrant opposition, where a strong opposition presence will add substance to democracy, where ruling party and opposition will argue their positions vigorously and leave it to the nation to decide the validity or otherwise of their politics and policies.
In my dream, I envision a system of education open to all, free for all, education which produces citizens willing and ready to tackle the world outside our frontiers, education that nurtures in people respect for all other people, for the peasant and the worker and for the downtrodden whose quotidian struggle has kept this nation going.
I dream of a future where no repressive laws will undermine our basic dignity as citizens, where journalists will not be handcuffed and carted off to prison, where the media will not be impeded as it goes about carrying out its professionalism, where individuals with grievances about media reports will follow established procedures to come by redress rather than shoot the messenger.
I look to a time when trade unionism -- in journalism, in the factories, indeed everywhere -- will protect professional interests without permitting narrow parochialism to seep into it. I dream of a media where journalists in my country will speak truth to power, will not genuflect before those who exercise power, who will keep asking questions of the powerful until they are satisfied with the answers they come by. I dream of a time when partisan journalism will be an embarrassment cast into the waste bins of the past.
My dream is of a society where poor primary school teachers asking for a raise in salaries will not be beaten by police, where citizens will not disappear, where freedom of association is guaranteed, where the ruling party and the opposition enjoy equal right to march on the streets, to articulate their demands, to let citizens in on the goals they have set for the country.
I dream of government enacting and implementing policies that will roll back the damage being done to our villages, that will put in place laws preventing industrial houses from acquiring agricultural land to build their enterprises, that will preserve the reputation our agrarian economy has had for centuries. I dream of a time when loan defaulters will have comeuppance for their sins, where corrupt bureaucrats will answer in public for their malfeasance, where law enforcers indifferent to the enforcement of the law will answer to the law for their lapses.
I dream of a renaissance of ideas, in literature and drama and research, of a cultural revolution that will disseminate to the world beyond our frontiers the timeless traditions we are heir to. I am drawn to thoughts of a future where libraries around the world will contain shelves of books on Bangladesh’s cultural heritage, political history, and economic preoccupations. I dream of libraries in our villages, of young people widening the expanse of their imagination through reading.
I dream of an era where we will instill the lessons of history, ours as well as that of the rest of the world, in our young. I look forward to those moments when our diplomats will enlighten governments abroad on democracy digging deeper roots in Bangladesh, on the resilience of its people in tackling the many dangers, natural and man-made, they confront from time to time.
I dream of politics being purposeful, of ministers being role models for people, of civil society strengthening itself as a watchdog over the doings of the powers that be, of think-tanks promoting myriad ideas and having those ideas reach all citizens throughout the land, of elections being fair and free, of all candidates and parties taking part in the vote without fear or intimidation.
My dream expands into a landscape where rule of law will be a given, where human rights will underpin all that we do, in and outside government, where the powerful will be answerable for their actions to the people.
It is a dream I share with my fellow citizens -- that the ideals and idealism which led us to the War of Liberation 50 years ago, a war that left 3 million of our compatriots dead, will be revisited and reinvented, by gradual yet purposeful degrees, 50 years on.
Fifty years on, in my dream, it is the values expounded by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman I see making a return to a new generation of Bengalis. I dream of a re-creation, in the historical mind, of the strenuous struggle waged by the Mujibnagar government in our long-ago war for liberty.
Half a century after March 1971, I dream of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh translating into an assertive articulation of the dreams of the people of Bangladesh, at home and abroad.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
