As I come to the last day of the week, I find certain developments disturbing me.
Firstly, the murder of the professor at Rajshahi University. Within a few hours of the gruesome act, all fingers were pointed at the student wing of Jamaat, which was to be expected, considering other murders committed on that campus where the victims were teachers with a progressive agenda and the Jamaat-Shibir activists were found to be the perpetrators.
Should the state machinery delve into speculations? Some highly placed government ministers and other high-ups made bold statements as to such links, some discussants on TV even acting as judge, jury, and executioners in the media. Jumping to conclusions is rash.
All this happened before law enforcers even completed their work. And then what do we see? The police arrests some people and toe the line of the government, and stick to the “official” line of the complicity of radical Islamists in the matter. On the other hand, RAB comes up with a few others – arrested and presented in front of the camera; these arrested ones assert that the murder was a result of personal enmities.
This dichotomy between the police and RAB brings many questions. Are the regular police acting towards a conclusion expected by the government in power? Is RAB on a collision course with the police, or is the discord between the two branches of law enforcers reaching a boiling point?
Wouldn’t it have been better for the two branches to compare notes before they faced the media? Maybe if they had met and consulted among themselves about their arrests and other findings, they could have given a unified picture to the public instead of the mass confusion that prevails now among the common people. This is no way of law enforcement in my view. Such lame methods may allow the actual criminal to go scot-free.
The second matter is the return of the prodigal son Latif Siddique. His words have offended the religious people of the country, and the government moved quickly in dismissing him from all posts. One may question as to why such rapid action, but apparently that question is now taboo in Bangladesh.
I personally find his ramblings about religion in New York to be that of a man who has a loose tongue, and if I were religious and a devout believer with full understanding of what my religion says, I would have laughed it off. But that is not the case with millions of Muslims in this country who get riled up very easily.
However, as a minister of an overwhelmingly Muslim majority country, he should have guarded his personal views on Islam, and he left the government no choice but to sack him. If he is an atheist or an agnostic, it’s his personal matter, but in today’s world of omnipresent media, a small gathering in New York does not avert the eyes of the ubiquitous cameras. It was a faux pas that would always have bitten him and finished his political career. The politicisation of the whole affair is what bothers me the most.
The main opposition party, BNP, started screaming and shouting from the very beginning like a teetotaler in a watering place. Some have even called for the enactment of a blasphemy law. Do these politicians realise the implications of such a law? I also note that some politicians of the treasury bench have also voiced such demands, including immediate hanging of Siddique. What kind of harebrained statements are these?
The Islamist parties which have gone dormant of late also got the chance to assert their regressive voices and demands at the failure of the law enforcers to arrest him at the airport. Why would anyone give the Hefazatis a chance to raise their voices and to once again come up with their demands which would take the country several centuries back? It boggles the mind.
And when the bearded tupi-clad participants of processions demand hanging of all apostates, are they within the law of the land? Siddique may have said things that would offend the religious-minded people of the country, but is their (the “religious scholars” on the streets) faith so fickle that it would feel threatened by the rambling of one man? Are we in the times of the Inquisition?
Lastly is the case of the leaking of question papers at primary level exams. It was probably the most disturbing news of recent times. I was astonished to see TV reports and read the news items in the papers about the matter.
When I was in school (in the 70s), we often heard about cheating at SSC and HSC levels and that has been going on with various degrees of ubiquity over the decades, but this is the first time that I heard about such malpractice at primary or junior level exams. I have seen reports that gave avowals of tiny tots who said that their teachers told them what to expect in the question papers. Question papers of upcoming exams were found on the pages of social media.
Some have already jumped to massive government conspiracies being hatched to keep the majority of the people at a level of ignorance that would make them subservient to the power holders when they become adults. However, the fact remains that the pollution of the young minds that will inevitably happen because of these malpractices will bring doom to the future of the country.
The young of the country will bring prosperity to the country with their capacity to work harder than the older generation. A person who is 25 today will have approximately 30 years of working life ahead. If this generation of the twentysomethings fails to deliver, the aspirations of the nation will vaporise like camphor, and Bangladesh will fail to reach any of her goals.
