Many decades ago, in an interview with a British magazine, Field Marshal Ayub Khan had frustratingly told the journalist that it appeared that pluralist democracy could work only amongst people in colder climates. Well, in the progress of time, countries as varied as India, Russia, Jamaica, and Moldova have poked serious holes in the hypothesis of the late Pakistani president.
But Bangladesh keeps stubbornly proving that the self-proclaimed field marshal may have been on to something. No, the reference is not just to the recent travails of dubious voterless elections and endemic tyranny of the student wings of ruling parties. Frankly, the structural politics is of lesser concern to me in this regard; rather, what worries me is the social undercurrent that is anything but tolerant.
We want to ban everything that displeases us: Hindi serials, bizarre political parties, rock bands, New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Durga Puja, milads, offensive books, mothers-in-law, sports utility vehicles, cigarettes, alcohol, women athletes, English medium schools, uppity newspapers, fancy clothes … well, you get the point. Granted that the same people don’t want to ban all the same things, but the first reaction to being given offence is, more often than not, a call to ban something.
Or to banish someone. Declaring a person “unwanted” in a city or district is a favourite tool of expressing personal indignation, Bengali-style. Following closely, are righteous calls to kick someone out of the club, the party, the country, and what not. The coup de grace, of course, is the moral frothing of the mouth demanding that someone’s citizenship be revoked because the said person has upset a lot of worthies.
Being merely banished from the city or the country is immeasurably better, of course, than being banished from the world! Those who cause grave offence to very important people – as a Kolkata-based exiled novelist and a former air force chief have found out – can easily trigger calls across social media for their necks to be hung by the executioner’s rope.
The first reaction to having our feelings offended is to reach, it seems, for the bluntest available tool to silence the offender. Not to argue, not to reason, not to debate the merits of the matter, but to silence into submission if needed, into the grave if possible.
I wish I could say that such Talebanesque reactions of medieval mindsets are found only amongst the less enlightened. Sadly, if newspapers, blogs, and social media are any indicators, this lack of tolerance is one place where Bangladeshis of all stripes are thoroughly united: Arch secularists and religious fundamentalists, British educated lawyers and rickshaw-pullers, professors and factory workers, Awami Leaguers and Jamaatis, Sylhetis and Noakhaillas, and so on and so forth.
Apart from the obvious ethical dilemma in wanting to silence offending perspectives, the wise man, when doing honest introspection, can plainly see that such an attitude does rarely work in a society made up, principally, of human beings who are curious, enterprising, and supervised by other human beings who are greedy.
Go to Nilkhet market and tell me that the banned publications, from Playboy to Salman Rushdie, cannot be found … that is, if you cannot find those proscribed things on the Internet by virtue of a few keystrokes. Perhaps you want a good bottle of prohibited Scotch … a few thousand takas in hands of the right people will produce it miraculously in most of Chittagong, as the port city’s denizens well know.
Or, look at Ayub Khan’s Pakistan where every time a bad organisation is banned, it resurrects itself under a slightly different name and goes on its merry way. As for hanging, well, it seems to work well to stop the proven perpetrator of a violent crime but is rather counter-productive against ideas or products which have a market, however small that market may be.
The Islamists recently executed a Rajshahi University professor whose mystical beliefs were offensive to the rabid ones; I can assure you that those sublime Sufi beliefs are not going anywhere except from strength to strength, despite the morbid bloodlust of the purists.
Bad ideas can only be beaten permanently by one method: Through an intellectual duel with good ideas. Common sense, human psychology, and history all confirm that essential truth. Suppressing ideas or hanging people on the basis of expressed thoughts is a cowardly approach unfit for the 20th century, let alone the century after that.
That such an approach is comforting to lazy minds or uneducated souls is only human; that otherwise enlightened folks like journalists, educators, lawyers, and “democratic” politicians would be tempted by the conceit that one has a right not to be offended is astounding.
More than astounding, it is dangerous to a people who wish to find their places amongst the civilised nations of the world.
