Walking in a bustling city and
presuming honking vehicles as soulless
backfires, becomes a cruel reality
as souls, these days, are mortgaged to rambling former bureaucrats
and tedious televangelists.
Chastity ridden and clerical,
they incite dread on TV
roars to suppress the feminine
terror returns,
ripping apart lives, killing many in the name of God.
The clash of ignorance is on
raised in the turbulent sea of faith
as sagacious men quarry and squander time
only to mislead.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
An Area of Darkness
Nurturing a narcissistic mind
invites consistent illusions
forgotten is the weary world
provinciality forsaken.
The mind wallops Lisa Ray
manifesting a beauty obsessed temporal world
Long ago did Thoreau prophesized
through the immortal words in Walden
the ways for building of a soul
to live a life
beyond sorrow and ignominy
Baudelaire cursed ennui
deeming it destructive
utterly ravaging man
chanting for Lady Macbeth
whose soul so potent in crime
provided perfect cure
for a heart
profound as an abyss
worthy of invoking ladies of the night
While Satan spirits his soul with Faustian wishes
fuelling the dark Le Fleur du Mal
Such poetic journeys need a shattered naked soul
To triumph over the diabolic
Leading to happiness
This is soul’s journey uniting all erring humans
Quivering poets they are,
Sages of past, present and future.
# The title refers to V S Naipaul’s non-fiction An Area of Darkness
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Atonement
They marched past
brittle streets,
entered a highway
of meaningless commotions,
Pouring hearts out
beating melancholy drums
told sad tales of crime
committed ages hence,
Wary of oddities let loose
state servicemen guard the procession
with a fanatics’ zeal,
appeasing
outrageously suspicious masters
busy plotting peace
while millions walk barefooted
towards the kerbala of soul
armed with sorrows and sores only.
brittle streets,
entered a highway
of meaningless commotions,
Pouring hearts out
beating melancholy drums
told sad tales of crime
committed ages hence,
Wary of oddities let loose
state servicemen guard the procession
with a fanatics’ zeal,
appeasing
outrageously suspicious masters
busy plotting peace
while millions walk barefooted
towards the kerbala of soul
armed with sorrows and sores only.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
A long walk to the shore
PRELUDE
I firmly believed in love.
I was a fool.
Nina and I stumbled over each other at the gates of a bookstore. She was hurrying out while I was trudging in. We were crinkled embarrassingly into each others arms the next minute.
This is how we met.
Literature and film are strewn with such chance meetings. In my case it became a reality and I thought, Lady Luck finally smiled upon me.
We exchanged glances without deciphering the significance of such mutual compassionate looks. I was then preparing for a trip to Bangkok. A tedious regularity my office had forced upon me.
SCENE 1
The temperate coup de grace with Nina changed it all. Mutual exchanging of the glances went beyond imagination; we exchanged addresses, cell numbers, even the book that we bought from the bookstore. A single moment of exchanging looks turned into endless days of maddening euphoria.
The following weeks were brilliant. I flattered my colleagues telling them of false commitments in the family. They wondered what have come of me who otherwise treated family affairs with utter apathy. However, I was happy to get out of that graveyard, a less sophisticated media agency offering little to go on with my lavish life-style. My expenses were looked after by my grandfather’s lawyer, who meticulously arranged the demands of ours, the good for nothing grandchildren of Barrister Azizul Huq, now deceased.
SCENE 2
Sex never made us quiver.
Of course, I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy the buxom beauties popping up every now and then on those Indian channels. A self-proclaimed feminist, a friend of mine in the college often used to assault me with her proverbial diatribe “imprudent chauvinist”. The ladies from the virtual world twisted and turned with me every night in bed and I used to wake up in the middle of the night just to tame the firm virility disturbing my slumber.
I was an artful voyeur at best before I met Nina.
As for girls, it is repeatedly told; pretend to spend their entire life dodging the man they love. Sex, for most of them, is a way to beget children. Babies are born and perhaps the urge to revel dies out. I thought Nina might very well fit into that stereotypical bourgeoisie category.
Mythology often threatens to disrupt the bourgeoisie sexual aesthetics. As is the case with Hera and Zeus, failing to decide who derives the most pleasure from mating, summons Teiresias. He alleges if measured on the scale of pleasure, in the act of sex man has one measure to woman's nine. At this Hera becomes incensed and curses the hoary prophet with perpetual blindness. Man and women, it seems, is locked up in a mortal combat as to who wins the battle of the sexes. But the battle also extends as far as to who derives the most pleasure in love making.
I had never come closer to a girl before Nina. Closer with regard to the laws of attraction Nina was the first one who gave me a finicky feeling of being closer to something indestructibly attractive. I felt the wonders of conquering the unattainable other.
I hardly cared for her body. It was more of a Platonic passion. I never told Nina that we should smooch or if more outrageously put, sleep together. I was literally an apostle to St.Augustine in life and love. I gave up on my addiction for the cyber girls. She turned into my reticent obsession. I loved the times past midnight when she rang up and we talked till the silly prayers from the nearby mosque urging the faithful to bend their back signaled our parting for the day. We hung up the phone to go to bed and I started to dream about her soon. I wonder if she had done the same.
Each and everyday the phone conversations followed a linear momentum, assumed the structures of a parallelogram, confirmed to the hyperbolic regulations.
“Darling, you looked a goddess today”,
“I know…my looks are all for you”
“I think I found the love of my life”
I often heard her sniveling smiles at the other end when we delved ourselves completely into the passionate grammar and syntax of love.
She disappeared one day without any hint. Failing to locate her I was devastated and felt doomed. I had already earned a bad reputation in the office and now it seemed as if the whole sky came crashing down upon me. I hounded for her like a madman.
SCENE 3 as Interlude
“A trip to Thailand will help”, Hafiz argued the day when I disclosed her disappearance to him. Many of my male colleagues agreed to that. Perhaps they understood my situation best. When the one you love is gone it is very easy to let your oddities go loose. Ogle, ooze (getting an erection) and ovulate (wank) as vulgar Shams in the finance department put it while uttering his experiences spontaneously.
Love fades while you are away from your lover, he declared with a tepid certainty. But I just couldn’t fathom it at all. Mere physicality all the time, this is what they really prized. I just cannot be like those guys unaffected by the seamy sides of love. I felt our bumpy office was turning them into heartless beasts.
I repeatedly told myself that it was the worst of times and as I lost my life/love (the way I thought back then) desperate measures were the order of the day.
Either I had to sip one of those deadly pills to put an end to this psychic torment or I had to ward off her memory in style (by following Hafiz’s flashy prescription).
SCENE 4
I was decided. I had to go to those modern pleasure gardens to ward off her memory. In ancient India they had sumptuous pleasure gardens with cavorting courtesans. A few adept in Ars Erotica taught the rules of love while the courtesans willingly submitted themselves to put the lessons learned into practice. The modern version of the pleasure garden is overtly materialistic and regulated as per market economy. Boldly put, pleasure gardens declare the might of lust (just like harems did centuries ago).
I reached Bangkok after some hustling days in the office at Dhaka. I checked myself into a hotel and soon headed off to find ‘pleasure’ as hyenas scavenge for flesh. Soon I landed into an escort agency. I was sensing Nina memories will soon disappear for good.
And there I met Francoise, a lanky Frenchman Nina once introduced to me as her colleague.
“Bonjour”, his words seemed wry to me.
“Ça va”, I chuckled back in uneasy French.
He said he was surprised to see me in Thailand. Drawing out a visiting card he disappeared and I stood there grasping the importance of his petty gift. It was perhaps that of his funky business Nina told me about. I wondered how this visiting card will draw my lots.
I decided to pay the Frenchman a visit.
Françoise welcomed me heartily inside his mansion. It was a large villa, well-decorated inside with a pool at the rooftop. He showed me around.
“Today we are in here for a surprise”, he said all of a sudden. I was taken aback as he spoke in wily voice.
He offered me a drink. Today I was uneasy with him from the beginning and pretended religious conviction forbade me to drink. In no time, he was at his Dionysian best and began snorting as a pig.
“I’ll show you something you clean ass”, now words came fumbling out of him, “Lets go see the babes, them all crazi, luvelee, eeu’ll wuunt them.”
Like a lover in heat forcing her mate to bed he rushed through the staircases to a room from where tangy music was hollering outside. Françoise flung the door open and we thrusted ourselves into the room. And there I stood amidst the craziest of acts possible. In the most bizarre fashion few lady boys were entertaining a bunch of tourists, men and women included.
Bored I came outside the hotel putting paid to the frolics Francoise seemed to have reveled in. A while later he also came out. Seeing my melancholy mood he put his hands on mine. Though taken aback I guessed he will be uttering something about Nina. And he did.
“There is something I need to tell you boy”, he seemed procrastinating “I know I should have told you earlier but I just couldn’t. “
SCENE 5 as the End
I sensed melodrama might now anchor the shores of mine which up until now distanced away from me.
What Françoise uttered came out as revelations, “Nina is fighting for life for some weeks now in a hospital in Bangkok. She was send here by our employers’ trust as soon as the disease was diagnosed. There is no chance of survival. A genetic disease has swallowed her as the doctor said.”
I lost words for an instant but then with a frantic, lullaby-like voice told Francoise to take me to her. And the next couple of hours I waited with a pounding heart in the car while the burlesque Frenchman drove.
Soon I discovered myself in front of her hospital room where I was going to see her after months. With a tepid knock I entered her room. She saw me the moment I saw her.
But then what I did was something even more melodramatic. I scurried out the place with tears gushing forth. I bussed myself to a nearby town within hours and boarded a hotel overlooking the sea. I wandered the beach aimlessly with a death wish.
Somewhere in my heart, voices told, it’ll take me closer to Nina soon.
I firmly believed in love.
I was a fool.
Nina and I stumbled over each other at the gates of a bookstore. She was hurrying out while I was trudging in. We were crinkled embarrassingly into each others arms the next minute.
This is how we met.
Literature and film are strewn with such chance meetings. In my case it became a reality and I thought, Lady Luck finally smiled upon me.
We exchanged glances without deciphering the significance of such mutual compassionate looks. I was then preparing for a trip to Bangkok. A tedious regularity my office had forced upon me.
SCENE 1
The temperate coup de grace with Nina changed it all. Mutual exchanging of the glances went beyond imagination; we exchanged addresses, cell numbers, even the book that we bought from the bookstore. A single moment of exchanging looks turned into endless days of maddening euphoria.
The following weeks were brilliant. I flattered my colleagues telling them of false commitments in the family. They wondered what have come of me who otherwise treated family affairs with utter apathy. However, I was happy to get out of that graveyard, a less sophisticated media agency offering little to go on with my lavish life-style. My expenses were looked after by my grandfather’s lawyer, who meticulously arranged the demands of ours, the good for nothing grandchildren of Barrister Azizul Huq, now deceased.
SCENE 2
Sex never made us quiver.
Of course, I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy the buxom beauties popping up every now and then on those Indian channels. A self-proclaimed feminist, a friend of mine in the college often used to assault me with her proverbial diatribe “imprudent chauvinist”. The ladies from the virtual world twisted and turned with me every night in bed and I used to wake up in the middle of the night just to tame the firm virility disturbing my slumber.
I was an artful voyeur at best before I met Nina.
As for girls, it is repeatedly told; pretend to spend their entire life dodging the man they love. Sex, for most of them, is a way to beget children. Babies are born and perhaps the urge to revel dies out. I thought Nina might very well fit into that stereotypical bourgeoisie category.
Mythology often threatens to disrupt the bourgeoisie sexual aesthetics. As is the case with Hera and Zeus, failing to decide who derives the most pleasure from mating, summons Teiresias. He alleges if measured on the scale of pleasure, in the act of sex man has one measure to woman's nine. At this Hera becomes incensed and curses the hoary prophet with perpetual blindness. Man and women, it seems, is locked up in a mortal combat as to who wins the battle of the sexes. But the battle also extends as far as to who derives the most pleasure in love making.
I had never come closer to a girl before Nina. Closer with regard to the laws of attraction Nina was the first one who gave me a finicky feeling of being closer to something indestructibly attractive. I felt the wonders of conquering the unattainable other.
I hardly cared for her body. It was more of a Platonic passion. I never told Nina that we should smooch or if more outrageously put, sleep together. I was literally an apostle to St.Augustine in life and love. I gave up on my addiction for the cyber girls. She turned into my reticent obsession. I loved the times past midnight when she rang up and we talked till the silly prayers from the nearby mosque urging the faithful to bend their back signaled our parting for the day. We hung up the phone to go to bed and I started to dream about her soon. I wonder if she had done the same.
Each and everyday the phone conversations followed a linear momentum, assumed the structures of a parallelogram, confirmed to the hyperbolic regulations.
“Darling, you looked a goddess today”,
“I know…my looks are all for you”
“I think I found the love of my life”
I often heard her sniveling smiles at the other end when we delved ourselves completely into the passionate grammar and syntax of love.
She disappeared one day without any hint. Failing to locate her I was devastated and felt doomed. I had already earned a bad reputation in the office and now it seemed as if the whole sky came crashing down upon me. I hounded for her like a madman.
SCENE 3 as Interlude
“A trip to Thailand will help”, Hafiz argued the day when I disclosed her disappearance to him. Many of my male colleagues agreed to that. Perhaps they understood my situation best. When the one you love is gone it is very easy to let your oddities go loose. Ogle, ooze (getting an erection) and ovulate (wank) as vulgar Shams in the finance department put it while uttering his experiences spontaneously.
Love fades while you are away from your lover, he declared with a tepid certainty. But I just couldn’t fathom it at all. Mere physicality all the time, this is what they really prized. I just cannot be like those guys unaffected by the seamy sides of love. I felt our bumpy office was turning them into heartless beasts.
I repeatedly told myself that it was the worst of times and as I lost my life/love (the way I thought back then) desperate measures were the order of the day.
Either I had to sip one of those deadly pills to put an end to this psychic torment or I had to ward off her memory in style (by following Hafiz’s flashy prescription).
SCENE 4
I was decided. I had to go to those modern pleasure gardens to ward off her memory. In ancient India they had sumptuous pleasure gardens with cavorting courtesans. A few adept in Ars Erotica taught the rules of love while the courtesans willingly submitted themselves to put the lessons learned into practice. The modern version of the pleasure garden is overtly materialistic and regulated as per market economy. Boldly put, pleasure gardens declare the might of lust (just like harems did centuries ago).
I reached Bangkok after some hustling days in the office at Dhaka. I checked myself into a hotel and soon headed off to find ‘pleasure’ as hyenas scavenge for flesh. Soon I landed into an escort agency. I was sensing Nina memories will soon disappear for good.
And there I met Francoise, a lanky Frenchman Nina once introduced to me as her colleague.
“Bonjour”, his words seemed wry to me.
“Ça va”, I chuckled back in uneasy French.
He said he was surprised to see me in Thailand. Drawing out a visiting card he disappeared and I stood there grasping the importance of his petty gift. It was perhaps that of his funky business Nina told me about. I wondered how this visiting card will draw my lots.
I decided to pay the Frenchman a visit.
Françoise welcomed me heartily inside his mansion. It was a large villa, well-decorated inside with a pool at the rooftop. He showed me around.
“Today we are in here for a surprise”, he said all of a sudden. I was taken aback as he spoke in wily voice.
He offered me a drink. Today I was uneasy with him from the beginning and pretended religious conviction forbade me to drink. In no time, he was at his Dionysian best and began snorting as a pig.
“I’ll show you something you clean ass”, now words came fumbling out of him, “Lets go see the babes, them all crazi, luvelee, eeu’ll wuunt them.”
Like a lover in heat forcing her mate to bed he rushed through the staircases to a room from where tangy music was hollering outside. Françoise flung the door open and we thrusted ourselves into the room. And there I stood amidst the craziest of acts possible. In the most bizarre fashion few lady boys were entertaining a bunch of tourists, men and women included.
Bored I came outside the hotel putting paid to the frolics Francoise seemed to have reveled in. A while later he also came out. Seeing my melancholy mood he put his hands on mine. Though taken aback I guessed he will be uttering something about Nina. And he did.
“There is something I need to tell you boy”, he seemed procrastinating “I know I should have told you earlier but I just couldn’t. “
SCENE 5 as the End
I sensed melodrama might now anchor the shores of mine which up until now distanced away from me.
What Françoise uttered came out as revelations, “Nina is fighting for life for some weeks now in a hospital in Bangkok. She was send here by our employers’ trust as soon as the disease was diagnosed. There is no chance of survival. A genetic disease has swallowed her as the doctor said.”
I lost words for an instant but then with a frantic, lullaby-like voice told Francoise to take me to her. And the next couple of hours I waited with a pounding heart in the car while the burlesque Frenchman drove.
Soon I discovered myself in front of her hospital room where I was going to see her after months. With a tepid knock I entered her room. She saw me the moment I saw her.
But then what I did was something even more melodramatic. I scurried out the place with tears gushing forth. I bussed myself to a nearby town within hours and boarded a hotel overlooking the sea. I wandered the beach aimlessly with a death wish.
Somewhere in my heart, voices told, it’ll take me closer to Nina soon.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
God is dead, Marxism is undergoing crisis and Bangladesh is tottering
These are the multinationals, like General Motors and Nestle; these are the big industrial groups that weigh, on the monetary scale, much more than big countries like Egypt.
Ahmed Ben Bella
Since Nietzsche declared the death of God, Allah or the Over-Soul as Emerson puts it, the world has seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sad demise of communism, China’s rapid march towards market economy as well as the brisk rise of US militaristic imperialism. While the public tentatively accepted these changes the market gave rise to the vulgar cult of Madonna, Britney Spears and Anna Kournikova. Today the market encourage obscenity on one hand while on the other, states continually devise firm laws (both religious and secular) to impose subtle control on the population. Human dignity in this Mammon driven age has also sunk to the lowest. Societies are obsessed with the fetish, frolic and food. The states are forebodingly Kafkaesque more than ever. This situation is more relevant to the Third world countries.
Man’s greed for personal wealth, jealousy towards the Other and a primal urge to dominate gave rise to capitalism as early as the times of the Pharaoh. Feudalism soon took over. Renaissance and colonization established a deft capitalist system. Then came advanced industrial capitalism fuelling the economy of major Western European nations. All these countries had colonies scattered round the globe and their industries were fuelled by raw materials produced by the native labors of the colonies.
Marx had argued that communist revolution spearheaded by the working class (or the proletariat) was inevitable in advanced industrial nations. It was in the rational self-interest of that class to create such revolution and alter what Marx called the ‘relations of production’ to keep pace with the ‘means of production’. He felt people were led to misrecognize reality by false ideas which were put into circulation. Marxism did triumph and the 20th century saw the rise of egalitarian states as dreamt by previous visionaries. The capitalist forces stumbled across the globe giving rise to states based on the concept of communism.
Capitalist counter-revolutions were also sweeping the globe with the United States leading the party. Finally, religious fundamentalism (who are only but allies of capitalist ruling class) and CIA conspiracy aided by Pentagon made to survival difficult for the Leftist block. Of course, there were irregularities and corruption within the state system of the Communist bloc that made it difficult to survive. However, some communist nations still survive as pariah nations. Ferocious market economy has made the very conception of Communism obsolete. One might go as far to say that the former communist nations are themselves to blame since they had everything in common with the modern day military regimes (with censorship, totalitarianism, state-sponsored oppression). As military regimes around the world are the finest examples of the American policy of ‘regime change’, states were forcefully turned communistic by the Soviet Union. Former Czechoslovakia is the finest example of that.
People often fail to distinguish between Marx and Lenin. Antonio Gramsci comes to their aid distinguishing intellectuals as traditional and organic with the organic prioritized because he is able to change the society through revolution. Lenin was an organic intellectual who implemented Marxist theory while Marx remained an intellectual in the traditional sense. Of course, there is no denying the role Ché Guevara, Mao Tse-Tung or any other great revolutionaries in shaping the history of proletarian struggle. “Revolution” is what made Marx’s ideas come to reality. Such revolutionaries now only seem a mere shadow of the bygone century. What the 21st century has in store for us?
Bangladesh as many argues has experienced “revolution” with the present CG govt. taking control of the state after the political parties failed to hold on to a crippling democracy that ran for almost sixteen years. Bengalis fought a glorious war of liberation to free themselves from imperial hegemony, religious fundamentalism and oppression of the poor and helpless by the rich. But soon a system was erected to ensure a permanent military-bureaucratic exploitation of the masses. Is the current govt. at the helm is truly ‘revolutionary’? A rational mind will say it is not; a military-elitist (sushil samaj) takeover aided by the bourgeoisie can never be a revolution.
Moreover, democracy has been dormant for months now. As the days are galloping by it seems the naughty elite has finally got a firm grip upon the state. Begging for advice from the ADB and WB has become regularity. Privatization has become one of the ways to make the rich richer. And then there is the army to instill fear upon the public. The arrests of the DU teachers plainly serve as a better example.
True, our democracy failed partially due to the short-sighted politicians. They not only failed to bolster the parliament with hotly contested constructive debates but also indulged in rampant corruption irrespective of the ruling party or the opposition. The nation has failed to grasp the immense potential it has in terms of manpower as well as national wealth (gas, coal etc). The bully-boy BNP-Jamaat alliance govt. left no stones unturned to sell the gas and coal to the multinationals waiting to pounce upon the Third World wealth. The AL govt. was not an exception either. Now where will the Bangladeshi public go from here? Is there no way out for them or they are just stranded in the cul-de-sac of dirty oligarchic politics?
The questions asked will only be answered in the future. In the meantime, we can only hope for a similar U-turn taken by many Latin American rulers to lessen American hegemony. But that too seems impossible for us. The rise of Islamist neo-cons is an eerie sign. They have extended their complete support to the present state of the nation. It’s a heaven for them to promote religious laws to subjugate, oppress the masses further and they have grabbed their opportunity to the fullest only to serve the rulers’ interests. But the most beneficiary is the business community. That’s why syndicates still exist to raise price of the essentials. New multinationals are also flocking to exploit our weaknesses to the fullest. The beneficiaries again are the elite and a certain section of the growing middle-class. Others are just busy trifling and aimless loitering in the murky waters of globalization in the false hope of shaping their future.
The solution lies within the public. They must rise to explore their potential to the fullest. History is full of impetus with the recent Phulbari & Kansat uprising, the glories of 1969, 1971 and the 1990 uprising to bring an end to military dictatorship. This road to freedom is by no means easy. They must stand up to the ill motives of the elitists, religious fundamentalists and their perfect ally “the good for nothing bourgeoisie”. The military-bureaucratic forces might prove difficult to beat but their ignominy in the face of mass uprising is a part of the glorious history of mankind. The people must beat out the burden of history to re-create history itself.
Ahmed Ben Bella
Since Nietzsche declared the death of God, Allah or the Over-Soul as Emerson puts it, the world has seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sad demise of communism, China’s rapid march towards market economy as well as the brisk rise of US militaristic imperialism. While the public tentatively accepted these changes the market gave rise to the vulgar cult of Madonna, Britney Spears and Anna Kournikova. Today the market encourage obscenity on one hand while on the other, states continually devise firm laws (both religious and secular) to impose subtle control on the population. Human dignity in this Mammon driven age has also sunk to the lowest. Societies are obsessed with the fetish, frolic and food. The states are forebodingly Kafkaesque more than ever. This situation is more relevant to the Third world countries.
Man’s greed for personal wealth, jealousy towards the Other and a primal urge to dominate gave rise to capitalism as early as the times of the Pharaoh. Feudalism soon took over. Renaissance and colonization established a deft capitalist system. Then came advanced industrial capitalism fuelling the economy of major Western European nations. All these countries had colonies scattered round the globe and their industries were fuelled by raw materials produced by the native labors of the colonies.
Marx had argued that communist revolution spearheaded by the working class (or the proletariat) was inevitable in advanced industrial nations. It was in the rational self-interest of that class to create such revolution and alter what Marx called the ‘relations of production’ to keep pace with the ‘means of production’. He felt people were led to misrecognize reality by false ideas which were put into circulation. Marxism did triumph and the 20th century saw the rise of egalitarian states as dreamt by previous visionaries. The capitalist forces stumbled across the globe giving rise to states based on the concept of communism.
Capitalist counter-revolutions were also sweeping the globe with the United States leading the party. Finally, religious fundamentalism (who are only but allies of capitalist ruling class) and CIA conspiracy aided by Pentagon made to survival difficult for the Leftist block. Of course, there were irregularities and corruption within the state system of the Communist bloc that made it difficult to survive. However, some communist nations still survive as pariah nations. Ferocious market economy has made the very conception of Communism obsolete. One might go as far to say that the former communist nations are themselves to blame since they had everything in common with the modern day military regimes (with censorship, totalitarianism, state-sponsored oppression). As military regimes around the world are the finest examples of the American policy of ‘regime change’, states were forcefully turned communistic by the Soviet Union. Former Czechoslovakia is the finest example of that.
People often fail to distinguish between Marx and Lenin. Antonio Gramsci comes to their aid distinguishing intellectuals as traditional and organic with the organic prioritized because he is able to change the society through revolution. Lenin was an organic intellectual who implemented Marxist theory while Marx remained an intellectual in the traditional sense. Of course, there is no denying the role Ché Guevara, Mao Tse-Tung or any other great revolutionaries in shaping the history of proletarian struggle. “Revolution” is what made Marx’s ideas come to reality. Such revolutionaries now only seem a mere shadow of the bygone century. What the 21st century has in store for us?
Bangladesh as many argues has experienced “revolution” with the present CG govt. taking control of the state after the political parties failed to hold on to a crippling democracy that ran for almost sixteen years. Bengalis fought a glorious war of liberation to free themselves from imperial hegemony, religious fundamentalism and oppression of the poor and helpless by the rich. But soon a system was erected to ensure a permanent military-bureaucratic exploitation of the masses. Is the current govt. at the helm is truly ‘revolutionary’? A rational mind will say it is not; a military-elitist (sushil samaj) takeover aided by the bourgeoisie can never be a revolution.
Moreover, democracy has been dormant for months now. As the days are galloping by it seems the naughty elite has finally got a firm grip upon the state. Begging for advice from the ADB and WB has become regularity. Privatization has become one of the ways to make the rich richer. And then there is the army to instill fear upon the public. The arrests of the DU teachers plainly serve as a better example.
True, our democracy failed partially due to the short-sighted politicians. They not only failed to bolster the parliament with hotly contested constructive debates but also indulged in rampant corruption irrespective of the ruling party or the opposition. The nation has failed to grasp the immense potential it has in terms of manpower as well as national wealth (gas, coal etc). The bully-boy BNP-Jamaat alliance govt. left no stones unturned to sell the gas and coal to the multinationals waiting to pounce upon the Third World wealth. The AL govt. was not an exception either. Now where will the Bangladeshi public go from here? Is there no way out for them or they are just stranded in the cul-de-sac of dirty oligarchic politics?
The questions asked will only be answered in the future. In the meantime, we can only hope for a similar U-turn taken by many Latin American rulers to lessen American hegemony. But that too seems impossible for us. The rise of Islamist neo-cons is an eerie sign. They have extended their complete support to the present state of the nation. It’s a heaven for them to promote religious laws to subjugate, oppress the masses further and they have grabbed their opportunity to the fullest only to serve the rulers’ interests. But the most beneficiary is the business community. That’s why syndicates still exist to raise price of the essentials. New multinationals are also flocking to exploit our weaknesses to the fullest. The beneficiaries again are the elite and a certain section of the growing middle-class. Others are just busy trifling and aimless loitering in the murky waters of globalization in the false hope of shaping their future.
The solution lies within the public. They must rise to explore their potential to the fullest. History is full of impetus with the recent Phulbari & Kansat uprising, the glories of 1969, 1971 and the 1990 uprising to bring an end to military dictatorship. This road to freedom is by no means easy. They must stand up to the ill motives of the elitists, religious fundamentalists and their perfect ally “the good for nothing bourgeoisie”. The military-bureaucratic forces might prove difficult to beat but their ignominy in the face of mass uprising is a part of the glorious history of mankind. The people must beat out the burden of history to re-create history itself.
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