Much has been said about the kind of politics that has drained the country of its patience, energy, and resources by attributing it mainly to the stances of two leaders. Actually, when times become tough and crisis builds on crisis, people have little time for any deep analysis.
They tend to oversimplify the cause and seek a simple solution; change the actors responsible for the crisis and we will get rid of all our troubles. But the reality is not that simple. Changing personalities without changing our attitude to nationhood, democracy, political philosophy, and views on governance that have metamorphosed over the last few decades cannot solve our current political problems.
These problems go beyond the simple issue of elections and next government; they touch the very definition of our nationhood and political beliefs. These are fault lines that divide the nation and continue to expand year by year.
Some of the fault lines of our nationhood were with the country from before its birth, and these mostly dealt with our identity, the most cardinal of which was based on religion. The Liberation War and the indignity that Bengalis as a race underwent in Pakistan years gave a new meaning to our identity and most Bengalis of then East Pakistan realised that religion alone could not solidify a nation.
This, along with the economic and political repression of then East Pakistan by a coterie of powers guided by an army obsessed with power would lead us to demand self-government and autonomy for us Bengalis.
Birth of Bangladesh was not easy, except to those who think that the nine-month war was a cakewalk. Those who had gone through it know how difficult the war had been, what it was to see hundreds of thousands felled to the ground, millions losing their home properties, and millions living sub-human lives in a foreign country.
Yet, when Bangladesh was groaning under brutal assaults of a junta gone berserk with war on civilians in the name of religion, there were elements from within the Bengalis who became fifth columnists to lend their hands to the ruling junta. Some were indeed fanatically religious, and others were mercenary.
But when the junta left the country in shackles they left behind their political acolytes in independent Bangladesh to fend for themselves. And indeed they fended for themselves by thriving on the generosity, and sometimes naiveté of the forgiving Bengalis. One time openly anti-liberation and Pakistan loyalists, the self-declared flag-bearers of our religion, would lie low only to rear their heads when opportunity struck.
One would think that the political thinking and cultural mindset that aided and abetted the rulers of then Pakistan and worked against Bangladesh would disappear with the emergence of a secular Bangladesh.
Today after more than four decades of liberation we realise that it is not the reality. Instead, the reality is that politics in the country is divided by the same chasm of dissension that launched the war of liberation.
There are several reasons for the developing fault lines. The first is our inability to restrain and regulate religious forces in the country. The second is our innate inability to separate religion from politics. The third is political rehabilitation of anti-liberation forces at state abetment.
Our inability to restrain and regulate religious forces is a combination of historical indulgence of religious institutions and personalities, fear of facing religious backlash, and more importantly manipulation of these forces by political leaders, often those seeking support to obtain or retain power.
Political rehabilitation of anti-liberation and religious forces began with the first onslaught on democracy in less than four years of independence, on the blood of the country’s founder. They would gain their strength and develop political muscle in subsequent years of military-led governments that spawned a new kind of politics, politics of cantonment, which would allow political berth to everyone and anyone who would vow allegiance of support to the new rulers.
As years went by, political parties created and promoted by army dictators would embrace these forces with open arms and give them a free hand in the country’s politics. Thus, the once foes of liberation would aim to be the new partners of government of a country they opposed.
But these alone do not explain the current wave of non-secular and conservative thinking that seems to be affecting a majority of the people in the country. A good part of this thinking arises from failure of secular politics in the country, failure to establish truly secular education, failure to separate religion from politics, silent promotion of religious schools and institutions, and failure of successive governments to root out and punish incidents of religious intolerance.
Also, the effort of a single political party to claim sole ownership of the struggle for independence and subsequent victory alienated a significant section of the population making them apathetic to the rise of conservative forces in the country. The values that guided our Liberation War and were enshrined in our first constitution would gradually dissipate giving place to the values that the war stood against.
It is not a lament that the country’s politics be divided; in fact, it is natural that it be so. The lament is that the division is not based on difference in policies of domestic economy or foreign relations. The difference is between principles and political ideology -- between a thinking that once divided the sub-continent in two parts based on religion and an ideology that led to the birth of Bangladesh.
The chasm that separates politics of the country now is between having a national identity based on ethnicity, language, and culture as opposed to religion alone. The fault line is between groups that believe in a free and open society that believes in diversity, and those who want to take the country back to an ideology far different from the one on which the country fought its independence.
This need not have happened, and the fault lines would not have developed if care was taken by the political leadership to honour the values of our independence struggle. But the myopic leadership kept its narrow focus on securing and retaining power, and not on building a nation.
The current political battles only affirm this assessment. To prevent a reversal to the ideology and politics that the country once spurned, we need to change our attitude to nationhood, democracy, political philosophy, and governance.
This may be a long-term effort, but it can only happen if our current political leaders focus more on building the nation, its true identity and values, and less on building their own castles of power.
Ziauddin Choudhury has worked in the higher civil service of Bangladesh early in his career, and later for the World Bank in the USA.
