The Pro And Anti-India Question In Bangladesh Politics

Bangladesh politics can’t escape India question. It was always there. For a long time, it can be assumed for obvious reasons, the issue will remain live in the politics. No one, if the person or the factor means politics in Bangladesh, owns any sense to ignore the issue.

History and geography, culture and society, psyche and practice, and economy and interests have made the question an important one in Bangladesh. All of these are entangled while each one influences the others. One can’t deny the way history shaped the related geographical and economic issues, the issues of culture and society. And, culture covers practices, custom, ideas while ideas are part of ideology, which is influenced by dominant interests. The interests play with the ideological issue.

In all spheres, whether one likes or not, people are central. But people are hoodwinked, confused, pushed aside by dominant interests. However, whatever is done, people remain the central. The acts – bamboozling and creating confusion, excluding and making mum – are proof of people power as those “noble” acts would not have been required if people were powerless.

People, silent at times under certain circumstances and vocal at moments of historical juncture, influence everything and everybody. None – dictators, comical characters on socio-cultural-political stage, men with murderer’s “spirit”, shrewd horse traders in political houses, insignificant persons in all historical phases, powerful personalities doing and undoing a lot, chatterers with their politically obnoxious words, man-slaughterers with mundane mind, obedient political pied pipers seeking petty perks – have the power to deny existence of people, most of whom are poor, most of whom are working hands, most of whom live at the lower tier of the long ladder of dramatically increasing inequality. This – the people – have a central role on the issue, the India question.

The India question was played like an ace by a part of Pakistan politicians, a band representing a historically-immature ruling elites, since this part of the sub-continent was turned a neo-colony in mid-August of 1947. The issue was virtually turned into one of the pillars of the ideology the state was selling to survive.

But that political-caricature collapsed. The 1971, the period of our Great War for Liberation, saw a tide opposite to the politics the Pakistan rulers strove to create. Actions of brutal “heroism” and “purification” that began on the midnight of March 25, 1971 in Bangladesh created an opposite reaction, which was more than an exact. An episode concluded.

And, India appeared as an ally to the people searching a survival-ground in the face of beastly aggression on the Bangladesh people’s peaceful life and land. Actions of the Pakistan ruling elites accelerated the job. In those days of our War for Liberation, tales of Pak army’s “bravery” in the Sialkot and Khemkaran sectors during the 1965 Indo-Pak war stood as skeletons. The undaunted Bangladesh people were writing an epic of their courage, pain and supreme sacrifice. India, depending on wishes of none, got a place in the hearts of millions. It was not only the ruling elites of India, the ordinary citizens, the persons on streets in the country were extending care and love within their capacity. Sources, or reasons of the two, of the ruling elites and of the commoners, were different. But a factor was emerging deep in the Bangladesh mass psyche while the neo-colonial Pak rulers failed to perceive the contradictions. The Pak rulers resorted to a military machination of a political problem. It was their limit. It was impossible for them to act in a different way at that junction of history. Failure to perceive that limit is a failure in studying society with its class content. It’s equivalent to purchasing or eliminating individuals with the hope of brushing out contradictions between social classes as money or fire power can’t bury contradictions within society.

The India question during the days since the historic December 16, 1971 victory of the Bangladesh people experienced high tide and ebb. Facts and fictions, real and fabricated stories, deals and diplomacies, water withdrawals and sharing, border-killings and border bazaars, gradually increasing trade and decreasing protectionist measures, Bangladesh ordinary person’s educational and medical requirements, and, most important of all, capitalist alliance between part of capitals in Bangladesh and India played role in shaping the issue. Factions within the dominant part of gradually growing up Bangladesh capital were also reckoning the issue: Where lies the better interest?

Geopolitics joined those. Aspects of geostrategy and geotactics obviously are not absent. Naked imperialism, outright imperialist acts of intervention, spread its Eagle-wings over the sky of all the continents, especially Asia-Africa-Latin America. The world now bears signs of dwindling influence of an old imperialist power. The phenomenon has coupled with a few other phenomena: increasing global competition, emerging economic powers and trade blocks, advancements achieved in the initiative to replace the old world-money – the US Dollar, new theaters of military mobilization, the Pacific-Indian Oceans are one of those, maze-like equations simultaneously taking shape in regions. The increasing military competition doesn’t recede with the change in terminology: “Pivot to” or “Rebalancing to” Asia. A few of these equations are yet to take full shape.

This perspective now compels all to recognize the fact: Bangladesh is strategically important. Bangladesh is a basket case, a Kissingerspeak, is now only a “gem” in the rugged modern political-history, a show of a lack of political far-sightedness of political scholars from a particular school. It’s the Bangladesh people that demolished the political assessment made immediately-after Bangladesh emerged victorious in one of its phases of struggle towards liberation. That – basket case – was Kissinger’s assessment. That Bangladesh was war ravaged, victim of scorched-earth, literally, policy of the occupying Pakistan military. Relevant commission report of Pakistan tells a part of the fact.

But the Bangladesh people busted the propagated myth – a hopeless people, an idle people, a dumb people, a worthless people.

All these, the history, the present perspective and the people, make the India question an urgent reality, a reality all in Bangladesh politics, trade and finance have to deal with. These, the circles in economy and politics, will define the rest. And, the residue, whatever will be left there, will turn insignificant.

Expecting an overnight change of policy of a state, especially of a state like India, is nothing but an exercise in utopia, or a child-like perception of state machine. A state commanded by a ruling class matured over centuries through economic and political struggles, and having command over a huge capital that passed its days of infancy long ago doesn’t change policy overnight other than a dramatic life-and-death issue. Similar change, if any, is a sign of decay within the ruling machine. Even, management or procurement plan of a single manufacturing plant owned by a group of matured capitalists is not changed overnight.

An election result doesn’t make a fundamental change in policy of a matured state if the class commanding the state doesn’t face crisis within. A dramatic change in state policy is found in states yet to get organized as a state with essential institutions for dominance. Banking on election result within a matured class is an utter failure in perception of politics and state craft, and a self-reflection on mirror, an image of self-immaturity. Encountering the India question, whether pro- or anti- , requires the lesson.

Very naturally, a political organization’s abrupt policy shift shows not only its heart, but also its brain. It shows many aspects: (1) a long, vigorous, intensive exercise with policy; or (2) an exigency; or (3) a desperate situation; or (4) attempt to abandon a few allies and court new friends. There are other aspects also. Meanings – interests – are there whatever of these or all of these play as reason or cause of the shift.

Interests are first of all related to economy, and that reaches class(es) or factions of one or many classes. A shift thus impacts class- or faction-allies. Thus any shift turns sensitive in politics with far-reaching impact. Pro- or anti-India position in Bangladesh is thus related to domestic politics.

It’s not only a question of an external ally or appeasing or befriending an external power for the sake of political power. Its first consideration is allies or adversaries within home. In simple term, it’s a cost-benefit analysis.

On the other hand, it’s a strategic question, not a tactical move. To deal a strategic question in a tactical style is the first condition of befooling self. The befooling will be done for the second time if a tactician considers that a matured state can be fooled by mere moves tactical in nature.

Turning pro- or anti-India has some other issues to be solved. One of these is: Credibility, internally and externally, will be lost if it ultimately turns out that the position is not real and meaningful, but a simple opportunistic vocalization.

Not fake, but a real position – pro- or anti-Indian – signifies shift in interests of factions of capital or classes involved. It’s a real show or an indicator in the entire politics.

A sudden tact or quick policy shift has the other side: the target of the shift – India. Does the state take decisions within a short time-span? Is the machine involved with policy formulation that immature? Are not elaborate exercises and detail analyses done by institutions of the state over a long period? Is memory of the machine so short that mere utterances can make it move in another direction? Doesn’t the targeted state machine look at connections of the tactician? Moreover, doesn’t maturity tell that an abrupt shift is unreliable as today’s abrupt shift can abruptly make an about turn tomorrow?

At least two recent announcements by two Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders on India are thus significant. They said: BNP is not anti-India, BNP was not anti-India, BNP shall not be anti-India. It’s significant if it’s real. It’s significant if it’s not real. It’s significant if it’s tactical. It’s significant if it’s a tactical move to face a strategic issue. It shows the inner-condition of the party, its relations with its constituents, the interests it prefers to serve, and some other conditions.

It’s thus a major question to others, left and right, in the Bangladesh political arena also as still the party – BNP – is considered one of the two major political parties. Thus it turns out a foolish yearning as one leader claiming to be people-oriented and left recently chided the party – BNP – for its inactions on a number of political and social issues. An utter failure in political learning with a theatrical posture!

We The People

People survive. People survive surmounting all obstacles, and people survive foiling all conspiracies hatched against them, and people survive defeating all aggressive powers.

It’s people who define their route of struggle, chart their road to victory, delimit their sovereign sphere, proclaim their sovereign rights, and restore their rights in sovereign space around life. People’s sovereign space and practice is a part of democracy, heart of politics.

But what happens when people find their “friends” are not their friends, their “leaders” are not their leaders, their “organizations” are not their organizations? What happens when people find their organizations are being sabotaged as part of a plan to defeat them, their organizations fail to foil sabotages activated against their organizations, their leaders fail to foresee, their organizations tail behind and fail to take initiative? What happens when people are demobilized and depoliticized?

These are crucial questions in the life of people. And, people’s life provides the answers to the questions.

Roman slaves found the answer: Spartacus. The Palestinian people found the answer: Arafat. The people of apartheid ruled South Africa had their answer: Mandela. The Venezuelan people organized the answer in their Bolivarian way: Chavez. The Cuban people created the answer: Fidel.

It’s not the persons, the individual leaders that created sovereign space of people. Its people that create sovereign space, and standing on this sovereign space people give legitimacy. A historic-socio-economic perspective produced and developed the leaders, the collective leadership, the movement the leadership developed and guided.

All these perspectives, the Roman society, the state of Palestinian people’s struggle prior to the emergence of Arafat, the Venezuelan society controlled by thuggish upper echelon drunk with oil money that overwhelmed the entire society with clientele culture, are completely different from one another. And, Spartacus comes from another historical era.

However, in all the cases, it was contradictions that developed the leadership and organizations casting off chattering, old style, etc. Mandela and his friends had to make an arduous effort to shape ANC, African National Congress. Arafat had to face series of bloody fights in Jordan and Syria, conspiracy, subversion and adventurism. Fidel’s charting of course was a lone effort having no help from traditional leadership.

In all the cases, the new leadership was farsighted, not less competent than their adversaries. Otherwise, they could not have organized their struggles.

In all the cases, moral standing was higher than their adversaries. These made them credible and acceptable to their constituencies. In reverse term, their adversaries lost credibility and acceptability. This gain-loss process is slow and long.

In all the cases, the emerging leadership stood for honor and dignity, and for love for life. Hatred was not guiding them. Serving, not dictating people was their motto.

With this leadership, people gained primary space – resurrecting sense of honor and dignity, visualizing goal, questioning around, getting organized in effective way, shedding practice and culture decadent social forces imposed and overwhelmed with, getting rid of clichés, initiating with realistic approach.

These facilitated claiming people’s sovereign space – struggle to shape a dignified, peaceful, prosperous life. Their passive attitude to their sovereign space moved to the stage of actively making claims to their sovereign space.

Despite intermissions of adventurism and missteps the entire approach of these peoples was constructive, positive. There was no place for hatred. Love for humanity, all life and nature led the initiatives.

These shook off clacking, promises without the tinniest grain of sincerity, proclamations entirely hollow, observations without scientific investigation, sweeping remarks, indiscipline, isolation from constituency, showmanship, theatrical heroism. Imagine an undisciplined slave army confronting a Roman army! Slave army defeated “valiant” Roman army in a number of battles. That slave army was disciplined, and all its members meant participation, meaningful participation.

Brutalized space

People lose ground in an opposite situation, where mainstream politics shamelessly throws away all its glittering clothes and denudes its heart: politics-commercialized, politics-terrorized. People’s inalienable rights and sovereign space get lost. Even their political opportunities, in most cases only tiny fragments, gradually begin to wither away. Their democratic rights to life, honor and prospects for prosperity are snatched away, which is manifested in indignity, engineered disunity, craftily promoted and fed illogic, dominance of hoodlum controlled organizations, ascendancy of backward ideas, and lost land, wage, security and peace. A decadent culture facilitating and strengthening dominance of backward concepts and practices occupies people’s cultural space.

In a brutalized situation, people feel betrayed and turn apathetic, and political participation gradually takes a diminishing downturn, a dangerous turn of time that provides dominating forces tighten its grip on people’s entire life, which includes their organizations also. It’s, the imposed condition, like treating people as animal, like considering them as sub-human, and the imposition is made by dominating forces, the consideration is made by forces monopolizing power.

To people, only sounds and no work by those claiming leadership then turns synonymous to betrayal as violence, in its many forms and manifestations, by all or part of forces of status quo ransack people’s life and peace. People then withdraw trust from the high-sounding leadership.

In such a situation, a situation brutalized and overwhelmed with inactivity, a blabbering leadership finds organizing people difficult, sometimes impossible, but it finds no time to search its soul and method. It’s shallow and incomplete if there is any soul searching.

Should it be capitalocracy?

Democracy isn’t universal. It’s either, in the present world system, capital’s democracy or people’s democracy.
Capital’s democracy, irrespective of, fashionably coined, liberal or illiberal, upholds interests of dominating capital. Its arbitrary character, its, where and when necessary, secretive working, its power to hide its workings out of citizens’ sight and supervision, its manipulation with the political system make it nothing but capitalocracy.

Recent developments in the advanced capitalist democracies provide evidences. The reality is crude and coarse if a serious search is made about capitalist democracies in the periphery of the world system. It’s an uncouth reign of capital. Contemporary examples are abundant there in the entire system, where elected government exercises its power trampling primary requirements of democracy, and doesn’t even hesitate to throw away bare minimum flimsy cover of civility, and mainstream politics takes away all of the sovereign space people possess.

Democracies are now considered by mainstream on a yardstick of illiberal and liberal despite all the facts that emerge from contemporary democratic reality in advanced capitalist economies.

And, the reality is:

“An illiberal democracy is a democracy by procedure only; the people elect the government, but they have little influence on government policy. The lack of influence means the government does not accord the full human rights necessary to achieve substantive democracy.” (Hallie Ludsin, “Returning Sovereignty to the People”, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 46:97 2013)

“Liberal democracies”, Hallie Ludsin writes, “are associated with free and fair elections, protection for and promotion of the rule of law, protection for basic human rights, and neutrality toward the determination of the common good.” (ibid.)

Don’t contemporary developments, not only the Wikileaks, the Snowden syndrome and the Guardian experience in and Evo Morales hackling by the so-called liberal democracies show a face of liberal democracy? The engagement of spies to infiltrate organizations active in the area of environment in advanced capitalist democracies, the “role” they played, and the way their misdeed are being “treated” expose the no-space people “enjoy”. Now, there are near-innumerable press reports from advanced capitalist democracies that expose their inner-working, their non-accountability, their all encompassing surveillance, their way of misinforming people, their way of invading other societies.

Manipulation with study results, opinion polls, human rights, and organizations floated for these purposes expose the face of liberal democracies. In so-called liberal democracy, corporations are now treated as person that strengthens role of big money in politics. This puts money on a higher ground than citizens. The entire business of capitalist democracy is opaque, a “mysterious” business as capital strives to deny any limit.

These practices are now “trickling down” to backward societies, where dominating interests are trying to construct a façade of democracy. The donor-democracy designed for underdeveloped economies is now much exposed.

Sovereignty encroached

The question comes: Whether sovereignty of people or of capital?

“Sovereignty lies with the people, as proclaimed by most state constitutions and as protected by international law, including possibly customary international law. Sovereignty in the people means that the people are entitled to receive the benefits of sovereign rights, not the government.” (ibid.)

But, with an army of unemployed, with vandalized unions, with decline in share of wages, with people in debt bondage and having no mechanism to listen to their voice, with financial instability, with control over information and media, with control over culture and leisure time and entertainment, with legislature serving dominating economic interests, with an essentially inaccessible judiciary, with political power and politics shaped to serve dominating economic interests, people find their sovereignty is effectively lost. With capital encroaching people’s life and rights all of people’s sovereign space is encroached.

A reality of spiraling disparity finds millions of people both in matured capitalist and backward economies confronting destitution while the rich protect and expand their wealth. The reality doesn’t allow people to act as source of sovereignty of reigning power, and reigning power thus de-legitimizes itself.

To the people of today’s world, one of the fundamental questions is inequality, an old curse spread over the globe. Now, the issue is being recognized by a part of mainstream as a human rights issue. Doesn’t inequality take away people’s sovereign space?
This fact, the reigning system of creating and perpetuating poverty and equality, tells the state of people’s sovereignty: it’s decapitated.

The rich stash money in suitable bank accounts to avoid tax, The MNCs “innovate” ways and “discover” places, actually the ways were made and the places were created for them, where it is required to pay less or no tax. Corruption, theft of public money and banditry with natural resources go unquestioned in politics and the thieves and bandits go scot-free.

What do people find in this reality? People find their sovereignty lives in utopia.

Referring to the British and Dutch East India Companies, Adam Smith wrote: “Such exclusive companies, therefore, are nuisances in every respect; always more or less inconvenient to the countries in which they are established, and destructive to those which have the misfortune to fall under their government”. (The Wealth of Nations)

Today, don’t MNCs dwarf the “famous” East India Companies in terms of all the “good work” that Adam Smith referred? The task of dwarfing is not only in terms money power. It’s in terms of political power that is germinated by money power.

What about power of and dulcet deals by financial elites, joined together in companies organized with their democratic laws and rules, done with their transparency and accountability? Don’t findings from studies carried out by mainstream research organizations, reports of commissions/committees in a number of advanced capitalist democracies constituted after the Great Financial Crisis, and revelations in even bourgeois press confirm this? Where do they put people’s sovereignty? Does financialization allow people a sovereign space?

What happened with the, now known to public, Iraq lie – “Saddam’s WMD”? Has not been an entire society devastated? Did the Iraq lie upheld peoples’, of Iraq, and other countries including the countries involved, democratic rights, a sovereign space? What happens even in tiny and underdeveloped economies reigned by Lilliputian black maharajas?

Facts tell: People’s sovereignty takes a travel to oblivion. Developments in these societies retain no sovereign space of people. Even, space for organizing democratic struggle gets lost there.

With militarization and/or terrorization of society scope for claiming people’s sovereign space gets lost. No space for people’s sovereignty is left in a society when only war, devastation, death dominate the society. An invaded society turns its first victim while the invader’s society turns the next victim.

People’s sovereignty appears a blue moon as capital’s diabolic power impacts, disintegrates and distorts everything around, all aspects of people’s life, as arbitrary authority, in all forms, formal and informal, rules people’s lives.

This reality takes away people’s sovereign space, effectively a democratic space.

People are put in the eyes of all storms during political and economical crises. During periods of turbulence, political or economic, people are the first victim. They are made scapegoats whenever any crisis makes a “landfall”.

“Stupid, dolt”

The question comes: Who are the people?

“People” is one of the concepts most denigrated by mainstream, the privileged classes. The privileged persons consider people as stupid, dolt, onager, and all the sub-human characters the “sophisticated” taste and “deep” knowledge of the privileged provoke.

Prince Albert once said “the masses on which popular government rests only feel and do not think”. The prince followed James Harrington. About 300 years ago, Harrington perceived people as cannot see, but can feel. There were more or less similar other observers including Carlyle, Mill, Montesquieu, Burke. Disraeli once said: As a political expression, the people are ‘sheer nonsense’. To him people belonged to the realm of natural history than to that of politics. (Cecil S Emden, The People and the Constitution)

On the contrary, to Mao, people are the workers, peasantry, the poor, and all who oppose imperialism. “[M]asses”, Mao writes, “are the real heroes …” (“Preface and postscript to Rural Surveys”) He adds: “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force of world history.” (“On coalition government”)

Private persons turn people as they join together in collective acts and thoughts, in gaining experience and summarizing those, and in claiming and gaining spaces – sovereign space, democratic space.

And, as Alain Badiou, philosopher from France, tells: “An event is political if its material is collective, or if the event can only be attributed to a collective multiplicity.”

Thus people, in their collective interest, think politically, dream politically, and act politically.

People’s silence, seeming inactivity, tolerance, seeming apathy, temporary listless condition changes as quantity changes to quality; missteps are rectified as people gain experience; passive approach is replaced by active approach as reality pulls in burning questions of life; and passive sovereignty takes the shape of active sovereignty.

New leadership and initiatives emerge and hope is renewed. Societies, and times carry evidence of this qualitative change as contradictions can’t be resolved mechanically and through conspiracies, as false assertions can’t replace facts, as lie can’t subdue moral standing, as deceptions ultimately wear out, as “Man does not exist for the law, but the law exists for man”, and as people don’t die. History comes at juncture as people echo Cromwell: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you.” 

This article first appeared in New Age, Dhaka in its Victory Day issue on December 16, 2013. 

The Way People Democratize

People democratize their spheres with own momentum, velocity and force manifested in its leadership, organization and politics. Trajectory of people’s democratization process that gets generated from contradictions in the realm of production relation ultimately frees itself from influence and control of dominant interests.

Dominant interest, because of its prevailing paramount position in economy and politics, influences, manipulates, distorts and deactivates people’s democratization process. The attempts persist temporarily, depending on reality; but the power equation changes as people turn matured in term of experience, theory, leadership, organization and ways of initiatives/struggles, and a seemingly frustrating, sometimes hopeless, situation gives way to a new dawn of hope.

An example, in brief, elaborates the way.

In retrospect

On March 9, 1944, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Muslim League leader in the British colony of India, said: “At present you should just stand by Pakistan. It means that first of all you have to take possession of a territory. …When you have once taken possession of your homeland the question will then arise as to what form of government you are going to establish.” (Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah, collected and edited by Jamil-Ud-Din Ahmad, lecturer, Muslim University, Aligarh, and member, All-India Muslim League council, 1947, Lahore) He was delivering speech at the Aligarh Muslim University Union. Jinnah was unwilling to enter into detail of type of government at that moment as that would have raised questions among a portion of his followers.

But Jinnah’s statement was an irrational one coated with emotion and apparent rationality. His audience, the Muslims of this subcontinent, accepted the statement. Their allegiance to and trust on him encouraged Jinnah to say arrogantly: “Fortunately, I came to the rescue of the Musalmans and prevented them from committing suicide.” (ibid.) Jinnah was addressing the All-India Railway Muslim Employees’ Association in Delhi on February 27, 1944. The Muslim League leader successfully hoodwinked analytical capacity of his audience that allowed him to make the boastful claim. It tells his level of influence at that time.

On August 14, 1947, the day Pakistan emerged as a dominion of the British Empire, the sentiment among the Muslim residents in Dhaka (at that time spelled as Dacca) was of jubilation. Jinnah was then unchallenged leader of the Muslims’ in both wings – East and West – of Pakistan.

But, within months, there was a voice of opposition. Courageous Baangaalee students steadfastly opposed Jinnah’s stand on language question. The voice of protest was unimaginable to many Jinnah-disciples. The defiant students, inexperienced in comparison to Jinnah, were standing against Pakistan establishment- leadership heavily loaded with Nazimuddin, Akram Khaa, and similar others in a bundle. Even, in 1948, a portion of Dhaka residents was opposed to the students standing for Baanglaa language.

In terms of political resistance, those were desolate days for Bangladesh, at that time it was East Bengal/E. Pak. The rebel Maulaanaa, Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani, was passing hard days in Dhaka. Even, it took courage to visit him as there were always the blood-red eyes of Muslim League as the arch rightist party in the seat of governance knew the fire brand Maulaanaa, a leader with rebellious peasant background. Communists in East Bengal were compelled to close down the book store, a single one, they initiated in Dhaka. At day time, Baareen Datta, a communist leader in East Bengal, as he conveyed in his memoirs Sangraammookhar Deengoolee, had to float in boats in guise of a floating hawker in Haor, vast seasonal water body in the north-central part of Bangladesh, as it was difficult for him to have a safe shelter in Sunamganj. His sister Hena Das and their comrades had the same “fate” in varying forms as their memoirs/autobiographies describe. Hired hoodlums, as Tajuddin Ahmad, the first prime minister of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh, narrated in his youth days-diary (now available in book form), assaulted students belonging to non-Muslim League camp. The hirelings used a government vehicle, the number of which Tajuddin noted in the diary. The lumpens went scot-free as Muslim League leaders were their political fathers. Ila Mitra, the Raanee Maa as the rebel East Bengal Shaotaals (mostly spelled as Shantal) used to address her with love and respect, had to face torture in untold term. The Shaotaals had their narration of facing barbarity and brutality unleashed by the Muslim League/Pakistan leadership. The fishers of Sunamganj, the sharecroppers of north-western part of East Bengal waging Tebhaagaa Andolon or Tebhaagaar Laraai, movement for a fair share of produce, the port and railways workers, the beeree (also spelled bidi), hand-made cigarette, workers and many others from the East Bengal working classes had to face police assault, detention, torture, jail and bullets. Killing of political prisoners in Khaapraa ward, a cell in Rajshahi jail, and death of hunger striking prisoners are only two of many such incidents.

But the days of the torturers were going to their dusk. Shamsul Haque, a young man from an ordinary peasant family, awarded an election-defeat to a Muslim League leader. That was unimaginable to the League leaders, aristocrat, in terms of East Bengal society, and powerful. In the election held in 1954, the Baangaalee people made a verdict: the mighty League was wiped out from the face of East Bengal. Only through conspiracy, riot, buy- in, horse trading, and other dirty machinations the rulers prevailed, up to the people’s upsurge in 1969, politically. Only a few months before the upsurge, in 1968, Ayub, the ruler at that time, jubilantly celebrated his decade of tyranny termed as “Decade of Development”.

Long before the 1969-upsurge, there were initiatives, in commoners’ ghettoes, to organize struggle for democracy. A booklet, part of those initiatives, said: “None has the power to push back time. History doesn’t cease moving forward. History is the witness: The flag of freedom shall fly high forever over this land of rivers, the land where swords of Harsavardhana and Man Singh broke down into pieces.” The Banglaa booklet was published in 1949.

How many persons imagined that the statement made in the booklet will turn true within only 22 years?

Jinnah’s Pakistan was rejected by the majority of its population. At least Muslim League leadership of all shades including Ayub, leading a faction of Muslim League, his E. Pakistani quisling Monaem, their bureaucrat advisors and industrialist supporters that included Adamjee, Bawani and co., Ayub’s vagabond-appearing local government wagon riders declined to listen to the murmurs the movement of the Baangaalee people made throughout the period. But their denial was not all powerful. Rather, the denial was standing on a hollow ground. People rose up in rebellion, and threw away the tyranny, and then, the glorious Bangladesh War of Liberation followed.

This dynamic – a population’s rejection of an ideology upheld by a group of elites, and the population tearing down the elites’ state to half – is difficult, sometimes impossible, to perceive by elite-brain.

Similar – people’s rejection of elite-ideology or -politics or -rule while ruling elites fail to gauge people’s discontent – difficulties/failures on the part of the elites were found in other lands also. It was found in Tehran during the last days of Shah. The failure was also present in Manila since assassinating Benigno Aquino.

Shah, his dreaded, elaborate intelligence network, his political allies, scores of journalists from important Shah-ally countries, Marcos, his politically active wife Imelda and their cronies failed to hear “mutter” below the surface under their heavy feet that encroached all spaces for dissent and democracy. Even Marcos and his cronies failed to “smell” changing position – tact in the name “democracy” – of their closest ally. King Farook in Egypt, King Idris in Libya, Samoza in Nicaragua and “Baby Doc”, Duvalier, in Haiti, Mubarak in Egypt, and their ruling machines and external master also failed to perceive the dynamic. Erdogan, the backward looking neo-Sultan in Turkey upholding repressive ideas, failed to perceive the Taksim protest threatening his dream for further dictatorial power.

It’s a dynamic people initiate to democratize their life – economy, society, politics and culture. Set backs and defeats that follow very often only reinvigorate people’s initiative to achieve victory, a long, arduous process.

Move to democratize

People keep on their move to claim democracy despite failures and set backs as democracy is the only space for organizing their life in a decent, dignified way. It’s the only space to get mobilized for resisting encroachers of the space required for organizing a peaceful, prosperous life.

Organizing political movement is their most important and effective way to claim democracy, people’s democracy. But it takes time, etc. to organize such a movement. Instead of spending time in frustration people initiate/can initiate other motions that facilitate their mobilization and forward movement.

A major part of these motions include producing literature. Pre-’69 Bangladesh-years experienced scores of literature mostly produced by students and political activists. Journalists with their political columns played a major role. That was a part of politicization of the masses of people in Bangladesh. In 1815, John Adams wrote to Jefferson: “What do we mean by Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies.” Other lands dreaming for democracy are not exceptions.

People’s initiatives/moves for democratizing their spheres are entirely and fundamentally different from “democratization” “initiatives” driven by external actors: other states and their organizations, funds, non-governmental organizations in appearance, banks, etc.

Aim of the external actors’ “initiatives” is to secure existing world order – the world market system – based on inequality while people’s initiatives aim to have a political system corresponding to economic interests of people – an equitable distribution, restoring people’s ownership on the commons, securing environment and ecology in the interest of people, a fair international trade regime, etc. As the two stand opposed to each other external actors’ “initiatives” aim to secure market, sources of raw materials and labor while the other one can secure its interest only by breaking the chain of market.

Market stands as one of the yardsticks for determining type of democracy: for the people or for the market, or in other words, people’s democracy or market’s democracy. Market and democracy cannot move together.

Jacques Attali, economist, philosopher and former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was special adviser to the president of France for 10 years. He finds “inherent conflict between the market economy and democracy” and says the “two concepts are contradictory” (“The Crash of Western Civilization: The Limits of the Market and Democracy”, Foreign Policy, Number 107, Summer 1997) He also finds “the marriage of democracy and the market economy suffers from three fundamental shortcomings”, and says “these two sets of principles [democracy and market economy] often contradict one another and are more likely to go head-to-head than hand in hand”. (ibid.)

Attali writes:

“In a democratic society, the promotion of the individual is the ultimate goal, while in a market economy the individual is treated as a commodity — one that can be excluded or cast aside for want of the right education, skills, physical characteristics, or upbringing.

“The market economy accepts and fosters strong inequalities between economic agents, whereas democracy is based on the equal rights of all citizens. By depriving some people of the ability to meet their basic economic needs, the market economy also leaves them less able to exercise their full political rights. Witness the swelling ranks of unemployed workers in much of the West who can vote but are otherwise increasingly disenfranchised and alienated.

“The market economy resists the localization of power, discourages coalitions between participants, and encourages selfishness, while democracy depends upon a clear identification of political responsibility, the coalition of citizens in political parties, and a general appreciation of our common fate. Democracies need political parties that are capable of molding platforms based on compromises between individual points of view, while market economies rely on competing individual centers.

“The market economy creates a world of nomads, whereas democracy can apply only to sedentary people.

“The market economy assumes that the aggregation of selfish behavior by all economic agents is best for the group, whereas democracy makes the assumption that the best outcome for any given group will result from the acceptance by a minority of the decision of a majority.” (ibid.)

As example he mentions:

“[O]ur companies and bureaucracies are organized on the basis of fixed plans and strict hierarchies. Can we imagine a real market relationship between divisions of the same company or between a boss and her assistant? Can we imagine an internal referendum on each decision made by a minister or cabinet secretary?” (ibid.)

Attali beefs up the argument:

“[F]ew Western nations including the United States would appreciate an international community where true democracy prevailed. (Imagine, for example, a United Nations where the most important decisions were made not by the Security Council's oligarchy of five nuclear powers but by the entire General Assembly on the principle of ‘one citizen, one vote’ or ‘one state, one vote’.) If international financial institutions had followed such a democratic system during the so-called Global Negotiations of the 1980s, there would likely have been a drastic shift in the global distribution of wealth that would have jeopardized the interests of the West in general, and of the United States in particular.” (ibid.)

By further dissection he adds:

“[A]pplying the principles of the market economy both within and among nations is problematic and undesirable. I know of no Western nation that seeks a free market in justice, law enforcement, national defense, education, or even telecommunications ... Few if any Westerners would want to live in a country where court rulings were for sale, citizenship and passports could be purchased at airline ticket counters, and air waves were auctioned off to the highest bidder without regard to content. And among nations, a free market for nuclear weapons, illegal narcotics, high technology, potable water, and pollution would promote the rapid growth of supranational political bodies and powerful nonstate entities capable of challenging national governments.” (ibid.)

People’s democracy, thus, stands opposite to market as principles and practices of market are opposed to principles and practices of democracy, rule of majority of society. So, people’s democratizing initiative opposes market. Otherwise, people cannot establish and consolidate their democracy, and market gets a freehand in dominating, distorting and encroaching democracy.

To tomorrow

Democracy ultimately stands on force, the force of majority. People in their struggle for democracy develop force of their own. The force initially, at a stage and as intermediate phase, gets manifested sometimes in Bangladesh (erstwhile E. Pak.) 1969-people’s upsurge, sometimes in Bangladesh 1990-urban upsurge, sometimes with yellow color in Manila, sometimes at Tahrir Square and sometimes at Taksim Square. In short, it’s the Tahrir-way, the Taksim-way or the Turkish summer-way, now at Taksim.

People’s democratizing initiative can begin as a demand to have bread or an effort to save a commons, a few trees on a small piece of land, and can act as a spark igniting people’s aspiration and yearning against authoritarian archaic ruler/ruling elites, and can shatter the ruler’s/ruling elites’ seeming invincibility, and can spread like wildfire. The outcome depends on other factors and conditions.

Despite similarities to many extents Tahrir is not Taksim, and Taksim can’t be copied elsewhere as conditions that generated Tahrir and Taksim are different. No imagination should be entertained to copy either of the two. However, the two, and similar others provide lessons, which are, broadly: educate, mobilize, avoid adventurism, find out areas for democratic initiatives by the masses of people.

At initial stage, people develop it through awareness, exchange of experiences. In the process, the democracy of minority social classes propagated as democracy-universal, a myth, gets exposed. Gradually, the development rises to the stage of effective organization. People, in their process to democratize, gradually exercise authority – people’s sovereignty – spanning spheres of culture, society, politics and economy.

In a journey towards a democratized tomorrow, initiating motions for democratizing spheres around include: (1) producing literature; (2) expanding publicity; (3) organizing exchange of experiences; (4) making demand for fair price shop; (5) organizing cooperatives; (6) planning and implementing environmental programs; (7) organizing programs for mitigating effects of climate crisis; (8) formulating demands to democratize credit giving societies/groups, re-/construction work groups, bodies managing educational institutions, storage facilities, health facilities, local government and projects; (9) claiming other commons.

Taksim revolt shows: Simple trees can mobilize people in a mass-based way shunning irresponsible comments hurting people’s sentiment, adventurous slogans and childish incoherent acts. In places and at times, it may be a river, a water body, a flood plain, an encroacher’s acts and connections.

These and similar other activities, people identify as they proceed, facilitate forward movement for democratizing spheres around people, enrich people’s experience, build up leadership, and space for further move. It’s a continuous process with more and more democratizing demands of people.

Bangladesh Workers' Struggle Toward Liberation

Politics of people and politics of elites are opposed to each other as conflicting interests form their respective bases although elites, within dominating political structure, very often sway people. Aspirations of the two camps stand on respective interests, essentially class interests, which are also opposite. And, spirit emanates from aspiration.

People's interest and aspiration are simple: a better life; and for elites, interest and aspiration are narrow that can't get materialized without encroaching people's interest. Swaying commoners in favor of elites' interests are age-old trick. Weakness – ideological, political, organizational – within commoners' camp makes it happen.

Time negotiates zigzag – compromise – path to manifest and articulate people's interests, aspiration, spirit. For manifesting and articulating people's interests and aspiration, longer and shorter periods, obviously historic that sometimes appears gloomy, of struggle, victory and setback emerge and decline. Through struggles in places of production and between classes carried on everyday – struggle for survival – people learn, refine and articulate their aspiration. Their spirit keeps them alive, vibrant, struggling, and struggle educates them, widens their view, matures their perception.

Elite minds, a few or many, but not all, sections, but not all the sections, fail to read the writing on the horizon of time, a socioeconomic process, as commoners' aspiration and spirit develop and gain momentum gradually. Sometimes it develops silently. Interests and failure to adjust these interests keep these minds blind, an immature demo.

Affairs within Pakistan , the state that came out in mid-August of 1947, testify the immaturity of its ruling elites. Its obstinate immaturity either failed to see the gathering storm or felt confident with its heavy-looking thin power base relying on which it imagined: the socioeconomic process could be thwarted. The effective meaning of the imagination, a farce also, turned out: failure in perceiving the socioeconomic process.

Reading socioeconomic process is not an easy task as the process at times is obscure, and at times is bold; at times it moves at snail's pace, and at times it hits with lightning speed; at times its complex character appears simple. It's so difficult that persons with pro-people sentiment sometimes take anti-people position. Aspiration and spirit of commoners, the great masses of people, a bunch of “stupid” to elites, take shape, and these prevail, push many interests and push a lot, and these make many sell outs at times difficult and at times impossible. These also suffer setbacks. But the setbacks are for a period, for “now”, an intermediate stage in their forward movement.

Stream of incidents in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh , during the period 1947-1971 presents evidence of the pattern mentioned in the paragraphs above. Struggle of industrial workers in 1947-71 Bangladesh provides an example that helps identify the spirit of the industrial workers joining the Bangladesh War of Liberation.

Score

Industrial workers in East Pakistan were facing problems and hardship. The workers were trying to bring their problems to the notice of authorities/owners. But those were brushed off by the ruling elites/machine.

Reality the workers were facing is evident from the following incidents:

1. On October 15, 1947, cement industry workers in Chhaatak [also spelled Chatak] went on strike to realize their demands that included withdrawal of retrenchment order issued on a number of workers, increase in minimum wage, dearness allowance, introduction of monthly wage system instead of a daily-basis system, provident fund for all, paid weekly holiday, annual leave, provision for medical treatment and regular food ration, brick-built house for all, end to retrenchment. About four years later, on April 22, 1951, the same demands were raised at a conference of these workers. (Badruddin Umar, The Emergence of Bangladesh, Class struggle in East Pakistan, 1947-1958 , pp. 68-9)

2. Resolutions for increase in salary, introduction of grain shops and removal of corrupt officials were adopted at the 1 st annual conference of the Post and Telegraph Union held on March 6, 1949 in Dhaka . (ibid., p. 64)

3. On March 20, 1949, Azizul Islam, a trade union leader, said at the 1 st annual conference of the East Pakistan Railway Employees League held in Dhaka : Every citizen has a share in the wealth of a state; and level of luxury should be lessened. Ishaq, another TU leader, said: They are branded as communists whenever demands for food, shelter, etc. are raised. The disparity in the living standards between the 90 percent and 10 percent people in the country must be removed as early as possible. (ibid., p. 60)

4. On April 6, 1949, Abdul Hye, a TU leader, said in his address welcoming a minister: We hear assurances many times that the Pakistan administration would be run on the basis of the great Islamic ideals of equality, brotherhood and freedom. But the government of Pakistan , by ignoring these promises, is trying to crush the labor organizations by all possible means. (ibid., p. 62)

5. At the 2 nd annual conference of the East Pakistan Trade Union Federation, held in May 1-2, 1949, Amar Banarjee, a TU leader, made demand to nationalize essential industries and abolition of zamindari system. (ibid., p. 53)

6. Thousands of dock workers, bled white by war, famine and communal riots, sent an open letter to the labor minister and labor commissioner in August 1950. The letter detailed their miserable condition: No regular wage, no job security, no rights, no medical treatment facility and no compensation for injury although there were cases of injury, even of death in almost every night, no payment of wages for two full days work on August 12 and 13, 1949 although assurances were made to make payment of wages, nine-hour working day, etc. With a hope the letter, at the very beginning, mentioned that all the workers were Muslims. But the letter was ignored. (ibid., p. 72)

7. Nurul Huda, a TU leader, in his address at the 3 rd annual conference of the All Pakistan Postman and Lower Grade Staff Union held in Sylhet on September 12, 1950 said: It was the duty of the government to provide proper livelihood to the poor postal workers. Reactionary elements denounce all as communists and traitors whoever tries to inform people about the plight of the workers. (ibid., p. 64)

8. Workers of Adamjee Jute Mills decided to hold a meeting on December 25, 1952. The day was selected considering that December 25 was a public holiday as the birthday of Jinnah, considered father of Pakistan . On earlier occasions, the mills authorities kept the mills running whenever the workers decided to hold a meeting on Sundays. The workers thought that it would not be possible to resort to the tact as that was the birthday of Jinnah. But the mills were not kept shut. However, not a single worker joined the mills on the day. There was strike. (ibid., p. 238)

The date of the first case mentioned here is mid-October of 1947, two months after the new state was bundled by the departing British raj . Shall any mind turn indifferent to the problems/grievances the workers mentioned or do the complaints/demands sound illogical? But the state, Pakistan , was not making positive response. Its response was negative: Denial, suppression.

The trend – denial and suppression of workers' demands – prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. Demands raised by the industrial workers throughout the period provide evidence. Sometimes the situation worsened as a whole or in an entire industry.

Denial

Grievances the industrial workers expressed or demands they made were mainly economic. Motive behind these demands was simple and humane: getting free from suffering, hunger, exploitation; a better life with health care facilities and housing; a fair share of the fruits of their labor; a space to articulate and share tales of suffering – a space for practicing democratic rights. These are bare minimum conditions for keeping human body of workers production-able, an essential requirement for capital also. But the immature capital and the state it operated denied this requirement.

Denial of these demands and suppression of workers made them aware of their rights of organization, assembly, expression. It was lessons from life: class struggle and struggle for production. “In spite of ... restrictions, working class militancy erupted in a number of long drawn out strikes. Between 1965 and 1968, 1.03 million man-days were lost in strikes. Of these, 587,000 man-days were lost in 1967 alone.” (Rehman Sobhan and Muzaffer Ahmad, Public Enterprise in an Intermediate Regime, p. 79)

Industrial workers gradually joined political movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh . Concepts of a society free from exploitation were gaining ground among the industrial workers. Decades of ideological-political work by progressive political forces contributed to this development among the industrial workers. Industrial workers gradually began raising political demands, and the demands were turning sharper, taking radical character. “In the three main movements against Ayub [a dictator with a non-martial law cloak] in 1962, 1964 and 1966, and in the election campaign of 1964, some elements of the working class were involved... [I]ndustrial workers faced the brunt of the repression in the streets when the government moved to use force against the movement.... It was not altogether surprising when the industrial workers for the first time came to the forefront of the political movement against the Ayub regime [...] in early 1969.... Their accumulated grievances against repressive labor laws and declining real wages began to find expression in a spate of strikes demanding higher wages and improvement of working conditions.” (ibid., pp. 80-1)

The 1965 Indo-Pak war, Tashkent Declaration on ceasing Indo-Pak military hostility, 6-point program for autonomy of East Pakistan and following political developments on the national stage influenced psyche of the masses including the industrial workers. The Mass Upsurge of 1969 and the tidal bore in 1970 made a change in the political spectrum and perception of commoners – industrial workers, peasantry and others closer to them. The '70-tidal bore took away hundreds of thousands of lives in the southern East Pakistan, and the people of East Pakistan, the Baangaalees, found the Pakistan rulers indifferent to the Baangaalee people. Even, not a single political leader came to see devastation wrought by the '70-sea surge and sympathize with the helpless Baangaalee people. Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani, the rebel Maulana, said in a mammoth Dhaka public meeting: Leaders from the western wing including Mia Mohammad Daulatana, Abdul Qayyum Khan, Nawabzada Nasrullah, and others have not come to see our suffering. A Dhaka Baanglaa daily headlined Maulana's utterance: Oraa keu aasenee , none of the political leaders from the western wing came to see our plight. The rift was visible.

And, the sense of deprivation, experience of suppression, aspiration for a better life in a democratic environment, spirit for struggle were articulated as cracks in the Pakistan state started surfacing. The industrial workers were imbued with a dream for a happier life as far left student activists turned labor organizers increased their political-organizational activities among the workers. One of the slogans popularized by left student activists was Tomaar aamaar mantra, samaajtantra , our mantra is socialism. It was dream for a society free from exploitation. Related publications also present similar facts.

“Working class consciousness and militancy inevitably grew with the size of the modern industrial labor force.... [I]nstead of merely abstaining from work, the workers occupied ... [enterprises] and confined the owners/managers within the premises until their demands were conceded. Gherao [the industrial action of occupying an enterprise] engulfed virtually every industrial centre and even spread to commercial enterprises and offices....Between 1968 and 1971 the number of unions in [ East Pakistan ] increased from 411 to 1174. At the same time man-days lost from strikes increased from 154,840 in 1968 to 366,901 in 1970.” (ibid., pp. 78, 81-3)

Verdict that the people of East Pakistan gave in the 1970 election was unequivocal: Get free from hunger, deprivation, repression; have a democratic life. Living condition of the industrial workers and political environment taking shape through conflicting interests were shaping the mass psyche. The industrial workers were no exception.

Sacrifice

“As early as of 1 st March [1971] the working class leaders and other student leaders gave the call for an independent Bangladesh [at] a mass rally of workers and students.” (ibid., p. 91) The spirit turned well-articulated: A life liberated from the clutches of hunger, exploitation, deprivation in an independent democratic country.

Masses of people started taking active role in political life. Faceless “idiots” appeared bright in processions, on the streets, in agitations. So, Bangladesh found many commoners turned courageous fighters. One of those many was, as Ittefaq , a leading Dhaka Baanglaa daily, reported, “Ayub Ali, 35, an employee in a cloth store and bears the burden of the helpless family of his dead father-in-law in addition to his mother, wife and daughter. He joined the procession defying curfew on the night, at 11p.m., of March 2, 1971. A bullet hit Ali's leg. That leg has been amputated. Now, he is a limbless man, and his future is a dark, uncertain. Yet, a light of happiness plays over his face, it's, probably, a happiness of sacrifice.” (March 16, 1971) The prevailing political environment and mass-mood was sharp with contradictions. On March 21, 1971, on the page of Holiday , the famous Dhaka English weekly, Enayetullah Khan, a leading editor in the country, portrayed: “[T]he city of Dhaka is ringing with the cry for national liberation....The slogans which rent the air with resounding echoes from all quarters demand absolute liberation.... [R]ural Bengal is preparing itself for a militant and protracted struggle under the leadership of the left radicals committed to a people's democratic order.” (“Regardless of constitutional footwork people's struggle continues”)

The war began. It was the masses of people, millions in number, joining the War of Liberation. Bangladesh was glowing with glory. And, the Pakistan ruling elite-“mind” full with incapacity to perceive the sociopolitical process, dumbness and stupidity to the brim, tried to stand against the tide of time. It was idiocy. But, history stood against the shrewd-looking idiotic Pakistan ruling elites only waiting to be denied by time and a war for liberation. It was a time with bravery of and sacrifices by the masses of people.

“As the [liberation] war intensified it was the students and workers, now joined in increasing number by the sons of peasants, who came in their thousands for training in the camps. It was they who suffered the privations of the training camps and then with rudimentary training and weapons went out to risk their lives against the Pak[istan] army.” (Sobhan and Ahmad, op. cit., p. 94) The spirit is not covered with confusion.

Many Baangaalees like Kootoob appeared on the stage of liberation. Kootoob, a boatman from a village in the southern district of Barisal, used to ferry the freedom fighters, informs Nirmal Sen, the revered journalist. One day his boat was attacked by the occupying Pakistan army while freedom fighters were on way to a guerrilla operation riding his boat. He lost his right arm as a bullet of the army shattered it. That arm was amputated. Now, Kootoob can't row boat, his path to livelihood. His family members are five with three daughters at the age of marriage. “I don't know the number of Kootoobs in the country.” (“ Mookteejooddha o akjan Kootoobuddin ”, “The war of liberation and Kootoobuddin”, Dainik Bangla , Dec. 15, 1991) A spirit for liberation led millions of Kootoobs, millions of peace-loving toiling masses, seemingly silent souls, to the war for liberation, a glorious act in lifetime, an act shaped through years of struggle.

The spirit is univocal: a dignified life, a happy life, a peaceful life. Through sufferings, struggles and lessons learned the working people contributed to manifesting the spirit that a nation upheld.

New Age , Dhaka , published the article in its Bangladesh Independence Day special issue on March 26, 2013.

Constitutionalism Of The Dominating Interests In Bangladesh

Incidents of plunder in the Bangladesh society narrate the state of the labor and the dominant capital in the land. It’s neither the creation of a person or a group of persons nor of a particular party or parties, but of the dominant capital dictating the terms of incidents in economy, society, culture, education and ideology, governance and politics.

Resources plundered and appropriated by entire dominant segments, formally and informally, were created by entire classes in the entire society.

A wide allegory can be found in the Taj Mahal on the banks of the Yamuna. A section in this world turns amazed while they stand in front of the Mughal mantrap as it catches their love-thirsty senses. Another section sympathetically searches sweat and tears of only the workers, who were compelled to bend their backs to erect the edifice of governance. A mechanical, micro view indeed! But, the surplus labor of entire classes in the society robbed, appropriated and expropriated that enabled the rulers construct the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, the forts and palaces in hearts and corners of the empire gets lost from the sympathetic “mind”-sight.

Broadly, the same type of concretion goes on in the Bangladesh society. Whatever has been plundered, appropriated, tricked, taken back by plunderers, appropriators, lenders and “donors” as booty, profit, privilege, perk, interest, rent were produced by entire classes in Bangladesh and by labor from Bangladesh working in far flung corners of the world. The volume of profit, pilferage, repaid loan, reinvested money, luxury, wastage signifies the volume of surplus value generated by labor in the entire society. In exchange, the toilers are scrapped without paying any value; the fact that exposes the toilers’ dominated position and the dominating capital’s commanding location.

A “bit” more barbarous narration is hidden in the account of labor from Bangladesh that toils abroad. The labor there slices out a portion it was paid for its necessary labor time, and the sliced out portion is sent back home, the remittance, for consumption by its dependents. This consumption in home and abroad is essential for capital as it helps regenerate capital. The economy feels assured with the remittance, and the mainstream makes itself glorified with the cumulated currency sent by labor working abroad, at times in inhuman condition. It’s, as Marx observed in Grundrisse, the toilers have been “stripped of all value” although their labor power has value. Mainly dominant segments appropriate that remitted money, which was paid to labor to keep itself alive as labor power is required to produce profit. A shameless and cruel face of dominant segments gets exposed.

It also shows a failure of the dominant segments of the society. Dominant segments fail to employ labor in home and depend on exporting labor although the country requires labor as there is so much work to do – encounter poverty, illiteracy, declining quality of education, diseases, inhuman slum life, defaced environment, suicidal pattern and trend of urbanization, loss of crop lands, forest and water bodies and many similar important and urgent tasks!

In the face of this degradation, the people are paying. They are paying increasingly for medical treatment, education and housing, for defaced environment and ecology, for pilferage by and luxury of a few; they are paying in home and abroad. And, they are paying for circumstances rife with instability and uncertainty, plunder and corruption.

The ways the people pay is a known fact. They pay with the surplus value produced by entire classes in the entire society. Ultimately, it’s the labor that produces the surplus value that reaches to all others and taken away by others through a number of “conveyor belts”. Labor power generating surplus value is there whether it’s toll extorted by a hoodlum or deceit-money tricked by a bank-buster or fees charged for trading education and health care or diamond encrusted ornaments sold in newly-inaugurated diamond outlets or a luxurious party of feast or many Mahals, palaces, or super shopping malls or interest, service charge.

This is the allurement. This, the surplus value, allures. Capitals from home and abroad move in, expand its net, trick, fraud, forgery, and construct facades that hide its motive and moves.

The journey started decades back, immediately-after the indomitable Bangladesh people formally defeated the occupying Pakistan army on the Sixteenth of December, 1971, a day as bright as sun in the history of the nation. A large transfer of property took place with a far-reaching consequence. With an investment ceiling of only a few hundreds of thousands of Taka, the Bangladesh currency, the local capital’s journey ensued. The amount was small, but the promise was big. And, capital began its plunder, robbing, maneuvering, political tricks, and the acts of hurting and humiliating the people. The investment ceiling gradually was obliterated as the dominating segments were accumulating money-power. The more the surplus value was produced the more intense turned the drive by capital.

With intensified drive by capital the dominating segments broke down into factions, and the competition between the factions turned crueler and bloodier – conspiracies and killings in politics. Its drive in the arena of economy took political form loaded with incapacity to resolve its internal contradictions.

Politics faithfully followed the path charted by the dominating segments factionalized by competing “hunger”. Each of the factions of the dominating segments denies democratization for the other competitor that ultimately takes away democratic space of the masses. The roots are in economic interest, which is ultimately class interest. So, it was an act by dominating segments, but concocted neither by any person or persons nor by a party or two.

Individual or individuals play significant role at junctures of history with favorable perspective. But, they alone can’t shape history, can’t determine path of politics and can’t define functions in economy. “General historical circumstances are stronger than the strongest individuals”, said Plekhanov in his essay “On the Role of the Individual in History”. It’s class or segments that act decisively or falteringly as it try to take hold of helm to advance its interest.

The reality got articulated in politics, in constitutionalism going on for decades. The politics of the dominant capital houses many homo nullius coloris, man of no color. These crème de la crème, cream of the cream, play significant role in politics and they stand for the common ground of the competing factions of the dominating capital.

Although the segments representing the dominating capital fail to devise an arrangement acceptable to all its factions to divide surplus value but they jointly resort to manipulations, where the dominant and the dominated are equal in abstract democratic pronunciations yet unequal in real power and privilege. The dominant segments try to practice democratic manipulation but lack tools and skills required for manipulation. A deceptive formal democracy, as Marx told in Grundrisse, “turn out to be inequality and unfreedom”, where labor is not free, but the plunderer, the appropriator has all the freedom.

A degeneration of democracy of the dominant interests pervades the society, where free is plunderer-power, appropriation-tools and deception techniques exercised and used by the dominant capital and bonded is the labor. The consequential reality is, as Marx observed in The Poverty of Philosophy, “the freedom of capital to crush the workers.”

Constitutionalism practiced by the dominating interests is shaped by these interests imperfect within. As dominant segments are not stable with its constitutionalism they deny democratization of political life. In the political arena, feudal-absolutism dominates.

Sometimes, to secure dominant position, faction or factions of the dominating segments mobilize people by mongering popular demands. But, the crisis, the degeneration, of democracy denies departing the hall of constitutionalism. At times, the dominating capital’s three branches of governance, like tria juncta in uno, three things in one or a single heart in three bodies, engage in quarrels with one another, one tries to nullify the other, and that spreads into the area of its constitutionalism; at times, it infringes people’s democratic space; and at times, it stands against pronouncements it regularly proclaims. The acts are directed neither by a single person nor by a single party, but by the competing interests of the dominating segments, and the interests define their constitutionalism. Thus standing on a degenerating base and resorting to contradictory acts its constitutionalism continues distorting its own democracy.

Bangladesh: Politics With Padma Bridge

Politics with the planned Padma Bridge is now live in Bangladesh. Equations in politics that the planned bridge has generated are complex, multi-dimensional, and bear deeper implications in more than one level.

Accusations and counter-accusations centering the $2.9-billion bridge issue involve many actors, visible and invisible. The accuser, the world famous, and to many, infamous, World Bank, has also turned jurist and executioner, and the judgment was delivered while the judgment process was going on, and execution was carried our before the judgment was delivered.

As press reports said the WB approached the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Bangladesh corruption watchdog, submitted documents/evidences of alleged corruption and the anti-corruption agency claimed that necessary process was initiated.

Then the next scene in the drama was staged. The WB took its decision before the ACC announced completion of its process. The WB, the lead and coordinating agency in the consortium funding the bridge project, announced cancellation of funding $1.2-billion it had pledged for the project on Jun 29. Thus, an accuser turned not only executioner, but both, jurist and executioner.

Bangladesh politics, fully loaded with competition in its own form as in all other countries, found an issue in its agenda. Bangladesh Awami League, the political party heading the government, initially tried to explain the issue and publicly expressed hope for pursuing the WB in reversing the cancellation decision. Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition party in parliament, assumed traces of corruption.

The usual political bout began. Now the Dhaka press is running stories on accusations and counter-accusations aimed at political competitors: AL and BNP.

The opposition party, BNP, has tactical advantage. It can easily point fingers to the AL. Section of the Bangladesh opposition political elites have suggested compromise with the WB.

There are talks of favoring a particular firm, a universal capitalist reality. And, a few fingers point to the global lender.

But, all information is not placed before the public. And, strangely, Bangladesh progressive camp has not made strong demand to make the entire business transparent and a white paper to be prepared by an independent body. They had a better chance to reach public with the issue and unmasking motive and method the Bretton Woods institution follows as the bridge is very close to the heart of Bangladesh people. The global lender has given them a scope but that has yet been denied.

The party in government, AL, found tactical ground in another place: Political mobilization. Sheikh Hasina, the Bangladesh prime minister, made a call to patriotism and national honor as she dealt the issue in her speech delivered in the concluding day of the last session in the Bangladesh parliament. She cited the entire incident, her government’s efforts to dig and continue digging the alleged corruption. Then, she made observations and remarks, significant, in terms of the WB and honor of Bangladesh people. The Bangladesh prime minister outlined her government’s plan to finance the bridge construction with resources to be generated in home.

In a central leadership level meeting of AL, as Bangladesh media reported, Sheikh Hasina hinted role of Professor Muhammad Yunus, the micro credit proponent, behind the WB decision. However, the US ambassador in Dhaka issued a statement canceling the assumption related to the hinted role of Prof. Yunus.

Contributions to fund the construction project have been pledged by the Bangladesh parliament members and different sections of the society. These came out as a show of national honor in the face of high handedness. The Bangladesh government has drafted policy on opening bank accounts to raise fund for the purpose.

Sections of Bangladesh capital also expressed their willingness to finance the Padma (it should be Paddaa as Dacca, the Bangladesh capital, is now properly and correctly spelled Dhaka) bridge construction project.

In appearance the planned Padma Bridge over the river Padma, the lower part of the Ganges (Ganggaa) and one of the longest rivers in the world, has connected a lot of actors, within Bangladesh and outside of the country. It is another example of “development”, “aid”, credit, ties, dictation, politics in poor countries.

Role of external actors in Bangladesh is an old story. This land is experiencing masters’ hands since pre-liberation days. Wikileaks has made latest revelations of interesting characters, concerns, issues, factions, information gathering, brief but sharp descriptions of allegiance. Sometimes, roles of external actors are very stark, visible, crude, arrogant, humiliating. Protests and silence, both follow external actors’ role, suggestions, advices, demands. The common people also notice these silently and they mark who stands where and who is closer to whom. Their expression comes out in due time.

At least a partial reality of Bangladesh economy, politics and aspirations of sections of Bangladesh society are getting revealed by the incidents and initiatives centering the planned bridge. Sections of Bangladesh capital and sections of ruling elites also come to light with their aspiration, capacity, tact, limitations. Contradictions and compromises, now and in the coming days, are being and will be connected by the planned bridge.

Reports on alternate sources of financing from abroad, possibilities of involvement of firms from Malaysia and/or China have been carried by the Bangladesh media. Geopolitical considerations, very significant, surface.

Bangladesh, rich in resources and possibilities and poor in distribution, is the home of more than 150 million people and experienced insurgency in its south-eastern corner a few years back. Bangladesh sitting on the head of the Bay of Bengal, and the Bay on the shoulder of the Indian Ocean, is not far away from the Palk Strait, the Andaman Islands, the Ten Degree Channel, and the strategic straits: Malacca, Makassar, Mindoro, Lombok. The Indian Ocean now is a space for strategic maneuvering by a number of blue water navies. Bangladesh, adjacent to India and Burma/Myanmar and closer to Nepal, Bhutan, China, Sri Lanka, Thailand, now occasionally turns seat of international tactical moots, and is now moving from garments manufacturing to ship building. Its smaller ships are now being exported to a number of European buyers along with its garments to the European and North American markets. The country’s loss or profit in its state of jute trading with Iran following sanctions imposed on the oil producing country is a question, but not in the agenda of anti-imperialist politics. Sections of Bangladesh capital are connected in varying ways and levels to capitals in other countries while hydrocarbon resource is a major issue of competition and politics in Bangladesh. External relations the country maintains officially are a complex exercise. The country provides shelter to a group of Rohinga, who had to leave their homes in Burma a few years ago. Recently the issue surfaced once more, and the country has not accepted advices from a number of powerful external actors to provide shelter to the Burmese citizens. The country’s position on Kosovo is a question to a number of important international actors.

Bangladesh is home to a number of micro credit debtors, totaling to more than total populations of a number of countries. The issue turned a live political issue on the occasion of release of Tom Heinemann’s documentary on micro credit. Internal and external actors appeared and are still appearing repeatedly on the issue. Sometimes, these appear interference and the actors turn so desperate that they keep no façade to hide their reliable friend. The Bangladesh people politically disregarded and stood against imperialist plan during their valiant struggle for liberation, and, at times of awareness and struggle, the people stands against imperialism and its friends.

Ruling elites of this poor country have not yet succeeded to get out of the situation basically described as the general crisis of the Bangladesh bourgeoisie by Badruddin Umar, a leading Marxist theoretician in Bangladesh, in the famous Bangladesh weekly Holiday in July-September, 1977. A legislature acceptable to all factions of the ruling elites is yet to materialize.

Politicization, an imperative to rule and a very normal process to all classes according to respective capacity in all societies, is carried out earnestly but is opposed theoretically by all factions of the Bangladesh ruling elites and their theoreticians as the process is yet to bring coherence and equilibrium between the factions. Donor advices are there to train up political entities of the ruling factions so that a stable ruling system can come up and operate. But their methodology ignores elite character and ingredients formulating the character. Exercises with NGOs in Bangladesh are not always happy one for the donors. Rather, a few turned ridiculous while a few exposed subservient character. Political activities and mobilizations or efforts for these by a section of NGOs are now not a hidden agenda in Bangladesh.

In most of the times, schedule of general election brings assumptions of uncertainty in Bangladesh politics. Actors, visible and invisible, turn active in overt and covert ways.

These realities are there as the Padma bridge politics emerges.

The way the World Bank issue was discussed by Sheikh Hasina is quite unusual, sharp, unambiguous in the history of Bangladesh parliament. Never before in the history of the Bangladesh legislative assembly the global lender was discussed, dissected and criticized for so long time with such words. Her pronouncements sometimes made one imagine hearing voices from Latin America. She spoke of national honor and dignity, of the Glorious War of Liberation, and was critical of the World Bank method and its practices. The World Bank lending-“development” business has turned into a political issue in Bangladesh carrying geopolitical implication.

Now, more people in Bangladesh know the global lender, its role in Bangladesh, the way the bank deals with poor borrowers. No political literature has taken the issue to so many citizens as the incident has done. This is the way people learn from day-to-day political developments.

None is sure about the way payments would be made by the masters for the political incident, politics with the Paddaa Bridge. Appeasement? Political price? A new, more faithful lackey? Whatever happens there in the politics of Bangladesh ruling elites, people will learn and their lessons will accumulate furthering politicization of the society.