The present political conundrum has elicited a stupefying number of reactions from people, who have been quite judgmental and overenthusiastic about finding a culprit. Innumerable essays written by those we regard reverently as sages, have been published by newspapers both Bangla and English.
Talk shows have spared no efforts to bring to the public the opinions of those who are believed to possess insight. We also seem to have reached an unimpeachable conclusion as to who must be held responsible for what we are going through now.
Whether it is an ordinary street loafer or a qualified university professor, everyone seems to agree that it is the major political parties who are to blame. However, this is a very immature verdict, and just as Sherlock Holmes used to demonstrate to Inspector Lestrade that the most obvious conclusion is not always necessarily the correct one, permit me, reader, to show you that the real culprit is the public and not party “A” or party “B”.
Indeed, it is time to stop blaming our political parties. It has become a popular cultural practice today to lampoon our politicians and to criticise them mercilessly. The reader should not get the impression that I am trying to assert that our leaders are beyond the realm of culpability. It is impossible to gainsay that politics in Bangladesh is a domain frequented by reprehensible reprobates with no sense of moral rectitude.
However, who else can be blamed other than us? We are the ones who made these choices. We are the ones who made them leaders, actively or passively. We are reaping as we sowed and yet another proverb holds true, unsurprisingly. Yet, when sages are looking for shoulders to mount blames on, they would invariably choose the political parties.
“The political parties are too interested in partisan battles”, they would say. It has become such a hackneyed sentence that all the different ways of saying it have been exhausted already.
We know that our political parties appear to be concerned little about public welfare but they would not have been here to push the country to the brink of anarchy had we not chosen them ourselves.
Now you may ask yourself: “Did I really choose A or B?” Yes, you did. Consciously or passively.
Bangladeshis have a surprising lack of enthusiasm in actively participating in political affairs of the country. It may be regarded as a peculiar apprehensive docility.
Such an attitude is not unusual among people who have developed an inferiority complex over centuries dominated and ruled as they were by foreign powers. Our people hardly had the right to have an opinion regarding what happens in the sidereal realms of those who ruled the country in the eras of the British Raj and united Pakistan.
Even before those periods, they had been ruled by foreigners of different races and origins. A history of enslavement of such length probably debilitated the feeling of self-confidence in us and we ceased to believe that we should choose the people who rule us.
That, probably, is how our lack of active interest in politics grew over time. So, unqualified people had the opportunity of assuming crucially important positions of leadership after we started to rule ourselves finally.
How can the situation change? Well, we must stop acting like a herd of sheep. When we do decide to choose a leader, we must be more aware, and conscious in our choices. Most importantly, we must stop hiding in our homes like frightened rats, while some unprincipled people toy with our future. A little courage could do us a world of good.
