“Was up by sunrise and started the New Year with Robindro Sangeet at Ramna and the Mongol Shobhajatra from Charukola. Can’t even begin to explain how incredible it was -- the colours, the music, the songs of new beginnings, and people dancing on the streets. Reminded again and again of how wonderful our culture is, and what a bunch we Bengalis are -- people whose lives revolve around food, music, friendship, and fun! Here's to another year filled with all that and more. Shubho Noboborsho!”
This is how the day began for a young woman in Dhaka on Pohela Boishakh.
And this is the Pohela Boishakh we have known ... until the incident of the evening that snatched all the beauty away from this colourful day. Not that it didn’t happen in the past (the bomb blast at Ramna Botomul that killed several people who were there to rejoice the new year ... the bodies lay bloodied and lifeless, here and there). This year’s targets were women.
It’s a shame, no doubt. Unless one writes, expresses through any form -- through protests, creativity, or even a status on a social network, the anger keeps burning. So I write -- though it seems like all things will remain the same, and nothing will change.
Haven’t women been slaves to men or been considered commodities for years and years? Till today, to some men, a wife and a cow can be the same, depending on who is more useful.
Walking or jostling down the crowded lanes of Gausia Market, a young woman is bound to be nudged -- a touch here and a squeeze there. Never on Earth can a girl or a young woman take these molestations with a pinch of salt. Sometimes they turn around and hit the fellow hard with their bags, sometimes a sandal is used (if time permits) or one tight slap.
Most of the time she just ignores it. Maybe she tells her friend. The scar remains. The scar hurts for days, months, years even.
Pohela Boishakh, Ekushey February, or Boi Mela, any such national celebrations with swarms of people, can we expect these guys to suddenly become civilised? The sex-starved losers do what they have always done, and will do the same on these days of celebration. While the women ignore them, their scars run deep.
However, what is alarming about the incident that took place in the evening of Pohela Boishakh this year is: First, the police force remained silent, and continued to deny that any such incident had happened that would prompt them to mobilise their forces.
Second, this was not a random hustle and bustle. It was planned. As we heard and saw from the television news, a group of men have been identified. It seems that the incident of the molestation was a planned act of terrorism.
The second alarm is that it rings the bell of doom. Some forces out there are making sure that our secular festivities become dangerous grounds to tread upon. They hack down Avijit in such a mela and they carry out planned molestation on Pohela Boishakh. Do you think any guardian in their right mind would allow his/her daughter to go out on the next Pohela Boishakh?
What is worse is -- the purpose of these radical fundamentalists would be served better when girls and guardians of girls recoil in fear.
No milling around of boys and girls together. By and by, no girls on the streets. Everybody should stay in their little holes or be forced to wear a burkha for protection? Would a burkha do much to protect?
“Servants should be seen and not heard,” and for the woman in radical Islam, she should neither be seen nor be heard.
Don’t we need to stand up and strike back? They talk of women empowerment, they talk of girl’s education, they talk of equal meritocracy for men and women, they gloat over women’s earnings through garment industries and microcredit loans. But when such an incident disturbs the very roots of our being and we are at a loss to come up with strategies to curtail this hooliganism -- out of desperation, young boys and girls use foul language to express their anger on social media ... but the policy-makers remain silent.
Why can’t one word be sent out by the prime minister or the opposition leader to indicate that they have zero tolerance for such an incidence? Is it the potential votes that they are counting? Will such a statement make them lose the vote of the radical fundamentalists? What percentage of the population do they comprise? Surely, not more than 50% -- the women’s vote.
If radicalism can stretch its wings and expose its fangs, and thereby make the threat that politicians take into cognisance, then women too can be a force to be reckoned with.
Women want respect, women want safety, women want freedom.
If you want votes, speak for women. Speak up!
