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Our Freedom; Answers still
blowing in the wind
Abed Chaudhury
March inevitably brings memories of our legendary travails. As the warm
wind swirls around us collecting dried leaves, dust and remnants of the last
paddy, our collective national psyche also becomes a part of that whirlpool.
Political pundits recapitulate the fateful days of March of 1971, some even
going further deep in memory lanes and digging up the days of March of 1940,
temporarily forgetting how hopelessly these two Marches are pitted against
one another. For like the tempestuous March wind, our national mind is also
cluttered with motley contradictions, the forces of history that has
conglomerated us also hides within it centripetal vortexes that threaten to
throw us asunder again. As we build pivots and bridges to sustain our
national space we are offered yet another nor’easter and our nation shakes
like our village mud-huts quivering in the ferocious winds of Chaitra.
So why do we remain so uncertain, the anchors of our national platform
kept weakened by endless dithering, the solemn congregations of our
nationhood defiled by violence, uncivil insults, and a downward spiral of
rascalization. Why after 31 years of independence people are still
persecuted for their political actions, school history books are changed
with every electoral change, and the discord over symbols and portraits are
so strong that they threaten the very house that shelters those symbols. For
the very well being of our young nation is being eroded by these puerile
conflicts; like natures cruel calamities that often visit our nation, our
self-inflicted ones seem hell-bent on destroying the very fabric of this
nation. The protagonists of this shadow drama seem strangely detached from
the probable consequences of their actions; it is as though they have been
made fatalistic and blind by their reckless greed to be consequential,
famous, and rich or all three. It is as though a genuine hope and resilient
vision has also left them and they are living recklessly for their last
days, collecting whatever credit they could for themselves and for their
dead. They are like the crews of an endangered ship who have forgotten about
the passengers and even the ocean, and are now ensconced in their cabins
watching old family footages and trying, through screams and fistfights, to
decide who owns the ship. Their shrill quarrel drowns both the cries of the
passengers and the roar of the waves that threaten to engulf the ship.
Yes this is March again. It is a month to remember our countless dead,
our slain comrades who perished because they valued their dignity more than
their lives, or simple folks who were in harms way facing an enemy so evil
that the blight of their misdeeds has defaced decades of history with no end
in sight. It is also a month to recapitulate and reclaim the luminous
moments that lit our lives and in the end gave us hope in those cavernous
days, in those months of the vultures. Instead of resurrecting the true
spirit of that time and thus obtaining accolades in history it is a pity
that a few mortals who have assumed stewardship of our national ship are
involved in an archaic battle of partisanship that assures them instead a
place in the dustbin of history. It is a pity because it is a matter of
choice for them to search within themselves and find more glorious and
humane elements that lie dormant. It is by becoming agents of true sacrifice
and dedication, and not by continuously demanding credit that they would
become genuinely honourable. In fact they diminish the true glory and honour
of their dead by continuously claiming credit on their behalf. Alas, they
have forgotten that true glory does not lie in monuments and fading pages of
books, but is sung in the melodies of this land, harboured in the huge
vistas of oral memories of our peasants, and mystically, even on the
shifting sands of our rivers.
Yes it is windy March again. In my younger days in Dhaka University I
used to see 10-year-old boys and girls collecting dried leaves and twigs
around this time of the year. They frequented the area around Curzon Hall
squatting and talking among themselves and increasing their load of this
harvest of dry March. While I was busy learning and often attending meetings
where radical leftist ideas were proclaimed, these little children of March
were working like scavengers of nature, forfeiting the promise of education
and upliftment right in front of our eyes. I see these kids even now though
a generation has passed and they must be the children of the kids that I saw
in the seventies.
What is the meaning of our freedom for these children? If we asked them
or their parents what their views were about the 10 most contentious issues
of our political debate what would they answer? Is there any place in their
lives for these questions that is sapping all the energy of our urban
literati? Reciprocally, where is the place in our political process for the
issues that concern these people? For instance, why aren’t we half as
incensed about the Arsenic problem, as we seem to be about the portraits
that should hang in our offices? When I think like that I feel as though I
am also a member of the crew of that imperilled ship simply driven by my
narcissism and vanity. I have a nagging feeling that the windy March of
political change, its events and metaphors and the sense of nationhood has
significantly escaped these true sons and daughters of our soil. I fear that
we have insulated ourselves from their world and interact with them only
when they are our servants and coolies. And as a final insult, having
forgotten about their particular concerns we have mythically elevated them
as “people” and have hijacked their political agenda through acts of cunning
manipulation. In the international arena we pass ourselves off as their
representative although we do not live the lives that they live. As I watch
the shenanigans of our ministers, oppositions leaders, poets, bureaucrats,
non-resident Bangladeshi patriots I cannot but think that we have lost the
lyric of the proverbial song.
Meanwhile the March wind blows ushering in the storms of Kal-Baishakhi.
The lyric of our song, our answers, might be blowing away in that wind.
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