A wise man once rightly said: “If you do not know why, you cannot know how.” In this small sentence, he summarised in a clever manner that in trying to accomplish anything, if we are unaware of the objective of the task, we cannot be expected to do it properly.
This phenomenon is very common and there are innumerable examples around us. Students fail to learn lessons properly because they cannot grasp the goal of learning itself; gluttons satiate themselves beyond their need because they do not understand the purpose of eating and many of us lead meaningless lives because we do not know why we are even living!
Our inability to be aware of the objective limits our capacity to formulate the correct approach, or even to detect the inefficiency and flaws of existing ones.
Politics in Bangladesh seems to suffer from a very similar disease, as many a discerning mind has diag-nosed.
Believe it or not, politics itself is ideally supposed to be a struggle by the righteous and philanthropic among us, who seek the opportunity to serve their people. Differences in opinion may occur but only in terms of how the intended service can best be provided.
Party A may argue that Policy 1 is the best approach while Party B can show their confidence in Policy 2. However, both the policies should really have the same objective to serve the people and this basic re-quirement can in no way be neglected.
In short, politics is expected to be a healthy competition of opinions and it should exist only to ensure that the best approach is found, chosen and established in practice.
Not only in Bangladesh but internationally, politics has deplorably lost its purpose. In point of fact, politics today looks so distorted and so unlike its ideal picture that one wonders if anybody even remembers the purpose of its existence in human society?
In today’s Bangladesh, politics is often about egoism, narcissism, depravity and harassment of rivals.
The original sacred and selfless concept behind politics, seems to have been erased from the memories and conscience of people entirely.
So when a politician is caught red handed engaged in an act of corruption, surprise is an uncommon reac-tion. Such is the ease with which we have evolved to cohabit with the unscrupulous without much discom-fort; a sad but relevant example of adaptation which tallies with Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The people in general have little expectation from their leaders who are mostly devoid of the qualities which should be expected to be present in a sound politician.
As has been indicated in the beginning of this humble piece, the true reason behind the present political instability is that we are failing miserably to conceive the importance of understanding the purpose of poli-tics itself.
If we can manage to assimilate the idea of the goal of politics, surely we would then be able to deduce the correct approaches which will lead us to our objective.
However, immature people without knowledge are always going to pick leaders who can at best be as good as they are themselves!
Consider the magnitude of danger faced by a nation when it picks leaders who seem to little understand the true purpose of politics.
A leader’s goal in taking part in political affairs should only be to obtain the chance to contribute to serving the people, helping the distressed and feeding the hungry.
If contrasting motivations creep in, the result is the slow poisoning and consequent death of righteous-ness.
Too often this end is manifested by the treating of politics by politicians and the people as only a way of gaining wealth and power, and of maltreating political foes.
Only through a massive change in our attitudes, can a transformation be realised.
We must learn to think critically and eliminate absurdities that are present in our conceptions, expectations and understanding.
Instead of being servile sycophants to leaders with questionable deed and records, we should voice our opinions and demand a thorough cleansing of the domain of politics to expurgate the filth of corruption and related ailments.
