Hasanuzzaman Choudhury

Think about a state, a polity which is controlled by female, family, filth, fiction, feuds, fecklessness, fetishism, farrago and above all non-stop ferocity. This is a state which is flooded by paternity, family tie, ancestry, dynasty, heredity, line of decent, lineal inheritance and succession. This is a state where power, authority, rule and leadership are preserved on lineage and racial basis. This is a state where patrimonial and matrimonial relationships or alliances of vulgar local conglomeration operate making successful condition for grabbing and unchallenged sharing of state power, authority and leadership and for that matter obviously enabling one's effective control over public exchequer, coercive apparatus, decisions, allocations, opportunities, monopolization of the resources-gains and self and super imposed championship over all public and even private affairs. Offspring, clan house, and genealogy are most important qualities which invariably make hundred percent preconditions fulfilled in this land for successful involvement in the coterie of power structure.

This is our Bangladesh. This scenario is fearfully, unwillingly and filthily accepted as an axiomatic truth everywhere here in this country. This is a truth demonstrating itself starting from centre to periphery, from capital to corner, from top most edifices to downtrodden farthest region. This feature is, on the one hand, propagated as ideological moorings by walking liars and projected by the power camp as blessings. Simultaneously on the other hand this scenario has been accepted by the mass as their fate and demonstration of fidelity.

But the beauty and balance of our social contract on which Bangladesh is established is endangered. Our polity which is originated through general will is dismissed. Our common goal, welfare and future are all absolutely denied, shattered, jeopardized and lost. End product and net result of the above mentioned feature of our state, polity, power structure and leadership have only established banditry as the standard practice of the unholy hoax and fox power structure and presented only bankruptcy for the nation comprising of one hundred and seventy million people with a wretched life system. Does this scenario of our state apparatus, power structure, leadership stature and nationhood at all demonstrate minimum positive connection with our much sounded but in practice most empty spirit of our liberation war of 1971? Is it for this kind of Bangladesh that millions of our fellow brethren sacrificed their lives? We know hard facts. We are in the midst of reality. We don't want to hear fairy tales and only blatant lies. We have tolerated enough. Bandits' blithering must be stopped. Their barrenness is revealed. Their barbarism should immediately be bludgeoned. This is not a soliloquy in solitude. This is a shouting at the top of the collective voices from the sleazy billions against the skullduggery of the slob power structure, snake-like ruling elite and self-styled lowest grade leaders and their smarmy sycophants.

This state of tyranny and this statehood of patrimony are reflections of most irresponsible whimsical and savage exercise of governmental power by a coterie of amoral persons demonstrating only possessive impulse and criminal will. Here state affairs are not run, things are not considered, and acts are not implemented in proper and mass-welfare direction. Usurpation is the basis of the power mongers. So rule of law and natural justice are violated everywhere, every time and in every way. Brute force has become the rule of the day. This is why nowadays in our Bangladesh a microscopic minority is glutted with superfluities and simultaneously vast majority and population geography of billions lack daily necessities and practically starving. No justice, no congenial atmosphere, no proper planning, no effective direction, no building of facilities, no achievement based consideration, no information, no entitlement, no accessibility, no empowerment, no public sphere enhancement, no committed intellectual entanglement, no guarantee, no presence of effective operational constitutional-legal mechanisms, no conscience actor, no consciousness and collective sense and above all no protest, resistance and rebellion have made poor starving multitude settled with their lives without least and minimum remedy of these sufferings and miseries. In Bangladesh people are hypnotized in such a manner that they are always running to welcome their chains thinking that they are securing their freedom and liberty. People have surrendered their inherent freedom at the altar of the savage patrimonial and ancestral power structure. They have in fact dismissed the real distinction between vertical human beings and burdened beasts. Degradation of humanity and denial of their freedom and rights have become the go of the day in this hard earned delta called Bangladesh.

In today's Bangladesh, the ruling coterie is a ready gimmick winner. But entire Bangladesh with its one hundred and seventy million human beings is really defeated. Ruling elites have got free license. They are doing whatever they like without any interruption, question, protest and challenge. Few examples may be cited here:

1. Damn care about implementing their election manifesto and electoral promises such as rice per kg at ten taka, employment for every household, free fertilizer to the farmers, rule of law, freedom of press, judicial independence, proper maintenance of law and order, working of effective democracy, guarding of national boundary and interests, removal of corruption from every sphere, banning partisanship, securing honour of Islam and its due status and not doing anything against it.

2. Regular and random beating, humiliation of different kinds, killing, arson, hijacking, capture of land-house-property, dishonouring people, slandering campaign, raping women, ransom collection, etc.

3. Suppressing protest and opposition of all kinds and shades.

4. Destroying fundamentals, core values and basic tenets of the constitution by arbitrary, under the table and illegal constitutional cut and paste amendments.

5. Destroying the judiciary.

6. Looting, hijacking, manipulating and seizing permit license and tender etc.

7. No submission of property accounts.

8. No deputy speaker from the opposition in the parliament and no discussion on agreements and treaties with foreign countries.

9. Destroying the educational institutions through narrow partisanship, fake and undue appointments, constant brutal operations of partisan and yes man educational administrators.

10. Loot, arson, rape, hijack, tender mongering, brutal ransom collection, regular armed actions by student wing, youth wing, labour wing and the mother party members and even by law-makers. Open killing, imprisonment, illegal torture, secret killing etc. by the ruling party elements. Killing of thousands of compatriots and also foreign diplomats, businessmen etc.

11. Dishonouring teachers and Aleem class in every way. Open insult, ill behavior, bad name, cheating, threatening, injury, raping, removing from the job and killing etc. are also being done throughout the country.

12. Rejection of Islam from the constitution, state functions, educational curriculum, prescribed books, culture etc.

13. Plunder of share market.

14. Hallmark scandal.

15. Destiny scandal.

16. Padma Bridge scandal.

17. Destroying banking and insurance sectors.

18. Failure in water sharing with India; no honourable agreement; allowing India multimodal corridor, all sorts of transit without any reasonable benefit, custom duty, charges, fees, return or dues; failure in getting proper Asian highway route (Route 41); failure to check regular border killing by BSF etc.

19. Isolation from the Muslim world causing ban on visa, return of employees and fall on foreign exchange remittance along with friendless frontier.

20. Conspiracy regarding Grameen Bank.

21. Partisanship of police, medical and other professions; beating police personnel, insulting and injuring doctors, injuring large number of journalists and killing of at least eleven of them.

22. Destroying Anti-corruption Commission.

23. Destroying consensus regarding non-party caretaker government.

24. Creating communal tensions for narrow ends and ulterior motive.

25. Conspiring with three Hill Tract Districts in favour of India and other imperialist forces.

26. Total establishment of brutal tyranny in governance all over the country and repeatedly becoming champion in corruption by all accounts receiving from indigenous and foreign institutions and media etc.

27.Running the state, controlling the government machinery and taking all the decisions arbitrarily, secretly and in tyrannical manner altogether denouncing the public interests and future of Bangladesh.

28. Withdrawal of seven thousand five hundred cases of the ruling party elements without proper mechanisms. Releasing 22 criminals already sentenced to death by the court. Ignoring the much publicized corruption of ministers and government party leaders including some top most persons from amongst their nearest kith and kin etc.

In today's Bangladesh, violence is being practiced by the ruling coterie and their party cadres. Here power structure leadership is using the technique of doublethink and doublespeak. This means they are saying one thing and doing just the opposite. They are making their standpoint, stance and acts with the objective of obscuring the actual meaning of what they are doing! Press, police and other machineries are totally under the feet of the ruling coterie. Most irresponsible statements, contradictory information and blatant lies are regularly coming from the ministers, law makers and other highly placed persons both from government and party. Governance has gone in the hands of wrong-headed and parochial touts. Shameless interest seekers are now the controllers of the state. The audacity they have shown, the anger they have demonstrated and the arson they have applied to destroy the peaceful public life and its security must not be forgotten.

These ugly persons are thinking that they are the owners of the country. They believe that democracy is for them and for their ally political investors only. They suppose that the people of Bangladesh are fools and stupid enough to understand their savage acts and the people are not capable to judge their own interests in the best manner. So the ruling coterie has become totally carefree and shamelessly keeping people's property and even public exchequer in their own pockets. They are forcibly occupying river, canal, land, hill, forest, house, farm, shop, factory, car, school, mosque, graveyard, pond, bus, institution, playground and even daughters and housewives. Mass media is also making false propaganda in favour of power structure and trying to build up a make-belief stable picture of the situation. But distortion of facts and befooling the entire populace cannot work for a long time and ultimately entire edifice of lie crumbles down like house of cards.

In Bangladesh ruling coterie with their sycophants and the so called intellectual agents at least for the time being have become able to own, run and control the state, government, society, media, institutions and populace keeping themselves at the helm of all affairs.

Questioning everything is the starting point of solving deadly problems the country is now confronting. We must be concerned each time whenever freedom is endangered, liberty is insecure, rights are curtailed, lies upon lies are told, distortion of history are being done, facts are being suppressed. We must be concerned each time whenever corruption is being done; means of violence and terrorism are adopted. We must be concerned each time whenever people's honour is shattered. We must be concerned no matter how, when, where and in what way our conscience is under siege.

We must remain conscious, alert and united. We must question and speak out. We must act and resist. Nothing must go unchallenged. Let me finish this write-up quoting from Antonio Gramsci,

"An historical act can only be performed by 'collective man' and this pre-supposes the attainment of a 'cultural-social' unity through which a multiplicity of dispersed wills, with heterogeneous aims, are welded together with a single aim, on the basis of an equal and common conception of the world, both general and particular operating in transitory bursts …..or permanent base."

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Dr. Hasanuzzaman Choudhury is professor of Political Science, University of Dhaka. He can be reached at dr.hzchy@gmail.com