by F R Chowdhury
In my retired life I spend lot of time reading news papers specially those published from Bangladesh and the ones by our community abroad. Syed Abul Maqsud is one of those writers whose articles I read with lot of interest. In my present article I shall reflect on two of his recent articles. The first one dealt with decency, courtesy and sense of protocol that our previous generation of politicians had. They had tolerance and respect for each other’s point of view. They may belong to opposing camps but always treated each other with respect and dignity and thereby reached a higher level of respect in the eyes of general public. We never heard Congress Party leaders using abusive language against Muslim League leaders even when they (ML) decided to campaign for a separate homeland for the Muslims of the sub-continent. I came to know from Mr. Maqsud’s article that Liaqat Ali Khan was invited by Nehru for a dinner at his place just days before Mr Khan left India to to become the prime minister of Pakistan. I also came to know how President Ayub Khan invited Sheikh Mujib for an exclusive dinner with him immediately after Mujib was released from Agartala conspiracy case. No doubt those politicians were refined and cultured. You can conclude outright about their good up-bringing.
Compare the scenario now. After Dr. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize, instead of congratulating him, our prime minister said, “Dr. Yunus sucked the blood of the poor”. Syed Ashraful Islam came with the theory of white wine and cheese sandwich for winning Nobel Prize. Private lives of politicians have become important public references. We come to know who drinks all night and then gets up in the afternoon instead of morning. How disgusting! So long it was confined within our country. Now we are crossing limits. We have broken all tradition of diplomatic protocol and etiquette to refer to politicians of other countries. Syed Ashraf has recently referred to Nisha Desai of United States as a “minister of two annas” which means she is not even 1/8th of a minister. He also ridiculed her Indian ethnicity. Mr. Ashraf perhaps does not know that United States is a land of immigrants. There are very few sons of the soil. The ancestors of present citizens were all immigrants. So what is so funny about Nisha Desai being of Indian ethnicity? Mr Ashraf should educate himself. Mr. Ashraf should know that it is unthinkable for a political leader to talk about a minister of another country like that. As a Bangladeshi I feel ashamed of myself for having such political leaders in the country. This was not enough. Talking about the election of 5th January, the prime minister said in the parliament that Bangladesh would have met the same fate as Thailand. The prime minister should not have said that. Because of such utterances in the parliament, Thailand could even call back its ambassador. We talk lot of rubbish internally but we must not do so involving other countries and foreign dignitaries.
The other article written by Mr. Abul Maqsud that I liked very much had a title similar to the one that I am writing today. He very rightly pointed out that politicians of yesterday like Chittaranjan Das, Subhas Bose, Karamchand Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Jinnah, Liaqat Ali, Nishtar, Salimullah, Fazlul Haq and Nazimuddin were all rich people. They were born in aristocratic families and were well educated. They had money, fame and power. They had lot of clout within their own societies. What they did not have was the love of people. They came to politics to join that missing link. Through politics they wanted to serve people and gain their love, affection and respect. They never made money through politics rather they bartered away lot of their fortune for the politics that would do good for the people.
Politics today is a different story. Political activities provide the best opportunities to make money. Initially you got to be a muscle man. You must be able to terrorise people so that they feel afraid of you. Then you will be in demand with the political parties. There is every chance that you will be hired or recruited by the party in power to make their grip stronger to perpetuate their rule. You will become the channel for collection of all illegal donations and contributions. In the administration it has become a common practice to take bribe (speed money) and pass on appropriate shares for higher authorities. If you happen to be an honest man then you are a problem for others. You will soon become an OSD.
There are different modes of corruption. I do not know what you will term as payment by the poor government of Bangladesh of huge consultancy fees in foreign exchange. I would term it as corruption. Car full of cash money bound for the residence of the minister (black cat) has been termed as no corruption. The people involved in Padma Bridge scandal have been found innocent even though World Bank pulled out of the project. The corrupt government thrives on corruption. The words corruption and bribery have now reached a glorified place in our dictionary.
People of Bangladesh suddenly lost their voice. Perhaps it is because of this reason that Mr. Maqsud was very careful and moderate in his writing. I have not heard of people going to jail for criticising the prime minister in a civilized democratic country. The head of the government is never supposed to be above criticism but that is what is in Bangladesh. There have been number of killings and disappearances of political opponents. These are not always carried out by criminals or political thugs but sometimes by members of law enforcement agencies. The disappearances of Ilyas Ali, murder of Sagar-Runi and killing of as many as seven persons in Naryanganj still remain to be solved. The nation has to find some way to get rid of this illegal criminal government. We have to again become Nur Hussains to demand for democracy.
London, 02-December-2014 <fazlu.chowdhury@btinternet.com>