The Politics of Responsibility and Compassion

It was far better than I expected -- said my teenage son after we watched the 4K 50th anniversary re-release of Sholay. The Bollywood blockbuster is a masala remake of classic Chanbara and films from further afield, particularly Akiro Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns.

However, unlike those Japanese and North Atlantic productions, Sholay is a Bollywood movie through and through, giving us not just action sequences but also comedy, including of the slapstick type, as well as romance.

For example, Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan don’t share a single romantic line, but the evolution of their unfinished romance is perhaps one of the best ever filmed. 

The movie was released on August 15, 1975. Back before the Long July, when like many, I had given up on any imminent prospects of a democratic Bangladesh, I had planned to release an essay on Sholay, to be published on the 50th anniversary of that fateful day. 

Perhaps I would have expounded on the above. Perhaps I would have wondered about the iconic double-headed coin bearing the image of King Emperor George VI, or the Angrez-era jailer not looking that old. 

Perhaps I would have noted that notwithstanding the shot-by-shot remakes of many Leone scenes, the grim and grey wild west is a lawless, bleak land, whereas the mid-20th century rural India is green, evoking hope and resilience.

Perhaps I would have written about the scene where Thakur says non-violence doesn’t work against tyranny, and the blind muezzin provides the moral compass as the azaan plays in the background -- can this be imagined in today’s Bollywood?

No one in Dhaka would have published it, of course. But I would have written all that in a mark of personal defiance against the cult of Mujib that the fallen despot had used to prop up her regime. And of course, an essay like that a year after the storming of Ganabhaban seems churlish. However, the movie still matters for the politics that is unfolding in Bangladesh currently.

A retired cop hires two lovable rogues to avenge his family murdered by a bandit -- that’s how the story is summarized for a western audience. At its core, this is a revenge story. In the original version, the movie ended with the bandit being arrested by police -- India was under a state of emergency, and censors in Indira Gandhi’s brief fling with dictatorship didn’t want to show vigilante justice. The re-release has Gabbar Singh killed by Thakur, after which he breaks down and weeps, then we cut to Jaidev’s funeral. The scenes pack an emotional gut punch, because it makes it very clear that vengeance isn’t justice.

There are so many things to criticize Sheikh Hasina about that we often lose sight of the fact that her entire political trajectory has been fundamentally about vengeance. And ugly, grotesque, ritualistic display of vengeance, to be precise.

For example, consider the way the death sentences were implemented for the perpetrators of the August 1975 massacre. There were live telecasts resembling a celebration, and not a single moment of somber reflections about the tragedy and how the nation ensures that such is never repeated. 

There is a straight line connecting those executions to the lynch mob at Shahbag and its reaction in Shapla Chattar, violent crack downs against opposition activists, incarcerations, illegal abductions, torture, leading all the way to atrocities of the Long July. These violent delights have violent ends -- to quote the Bard. 

Soviet dissidents used to toast to the success of a hopeless cause. Two years ago, when it was becoming ever so apparent that the Hasina regime was about to get away with yet another rigged election, the struggle indeed appeared hopeless, particularly to those of us abroad. Many of my comrades were exiles, each with a tale of their own. I had often feared the horror that might have awaited Bangladesh once the regime had fallen.

Indeed, Awami League ministers themselves had often talked about tens of thousands being massacred. In a country of 180 million people, and judging by what happens elsewhere after such brutal regimes fall, fear was justified.

In the event, August 2024 saw nothing like what many had feared. Bangladesh, by global historical standards, was a peaceful country after Hasina and her entire coterie fled.

And yet, and yet ... a young politician being assassinated, his funeral becoming a political theatre, seemingly astro-turfed mob burning down the largest two newspapers in the country and cultural institutions, something is rotten in Bangladesh, and violent ends may well beckon these violent delights.

Naomi Hossain and Asif Shahan have noted that the Monsoon Revolution was born out of aspiration, not desperation. In his one of the earliest facebook post, Mahfuj Alam talked about July gana akankha -- people’s aspiration from July.

What exactly was the aspiration of the young people who braved Hasina’s goons in the first half of July 2024, before Abu Sayeed? What was behind the quota protests?

Over the past decade, we have seen a rapid expansion in the supply of graduates. What does a university graduate in Bangladesh aspire to? We don’t need Bangla novels to know that the answer includes a stable job, social status, and a suitable spouse.

Many from the recent cohorts of graduates were the first ones in their families to attend university. Why should we think their aspirations are any different from those of the older generations?

While the supply of graduates increased, there was no commensurate increase in the supply of jobs that require university education.

Further, many of the public universities that have been established across the country over the recent decades have relatively poor standards -- not to mention a general decline in the quality of education under Hasina. 

This meant the opportunities for the graduates of universities such as Begum Rokeya, where Abu Sayeed studied for his degree in English, were far limited from an English honours student from my parent’s generation.

Even if we had a democratically elected, liberal government instead of the Hasina despotism, there would have been a fundamental mismatch between the demand for and supply of graduates, and between their aspirations and the reality.

Set against that backdrop, the line between aspiration and desperation was probably very blurry for many young people out in the streets in the Long July.

As Asif Saleh noted in a Facebook status when Hasina’s goons started the bloodbath, the future looked grim and bleak to the youth facing a life of a precariat.

The Monsoon Revolution was never capable of changing the fundamentals. Our fundamental demographic challenges remain. Of course, Hasinomics was never capable of addressing these challenges. But with the despot gone, we have a shot at a better future.

But that’s in the future. The present is still grim for many. Perhaps even grimmer than July.

Of course, there is the economic slowdown that preceded the monsoon and was exacerbated by it. But there is also the massive change in wealth and power that has been going on across the country, and the frustration of those not being able to partake.

Except for the first few days after Hasina fled, post-Hasina Bangladesh had been a remarkably peaceful place, with relatively few acts of violent reprisals. One explanation for this is that at the grassroots level, henchmen and minions of the fallen regime had personal, often filial, connections with the members of the largest democratic party, the BNP. Using these connections, many of these local petty thugs had traded their ill-gotten wealth for safe passage.

Many of the young veterans of the Long July that belong to the BNP have benefitted from this wealth transfer that shows up as dokhol in local parlance. Those without the BNP affiliation has missed out. For them, the desperation is replaced by a sense of frustration.

Five decades ago, after returning from the War, Azam Khan sang, jala jala jala jala mone rey, frustration!

The singer changes, the song remains the same.

That reservoir of frustration is always there to be set afire by Awami League’s agents, failed would-be revolutionaries like Mahmudur Rahman, Farhad Mazhar and Pinaki Bhattacharya, and Islamists who want to turn Bangladesh into a draconian theocracy.

For far too many people, chaos is a ladder, and the youth of Bangladesh, the expendable cannon fodder.

The fire engulfing Bangladesh in the past few days may have many specific causes, but the aspirations, desperations and frustrations of our youth make such conflagration an ever-present danger.

That is, if we were to have any hope to achieve the July aspirations, we need to revive the economy. Not just a cyclical rebound reflecting pent-up demand, we need sustained, broad-based economic growth. And only an elected government can provide the policy certainty and institutional reforms that will create sustained 6-7 percent growth needed to meet the aspirations of our youth. 

Surprisingly, there is only one party that is even remotely talking about policies. Or perhaps not surprisingly. Back in 2012, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir wrote about the Bangladesh Nationalist Party being focussed on future, not the past (his elegant Bangla phrasing was, otit ke bhuley giye noy, bhule theke).

I had not appreciated the message then. I certainly do so now. Unfortunately, none of the other supposedly democratic, so-called pro-July parties tend to talk consistently about their vision for the future, choosing infantile rhetoric and ridiculous historical revisionisms. 

The July participants deserve better.

Of course, an election is not enough. We also need the political parties to agree on a few ground rules: the loser will accept the verdict; the winner will avoid trying to rig the next one; and successive governments will leave key institutions alone from politicization.

We have been talking about constitutional reforms for a year. We know about the economy. But fundamentally, we need to have an accord between key political actors immediately, committing to these ground rules about the election.

Unfortunately, there is no guardian in the country with the moral authority to persuade anyone to do anything like the above. Certainly not anyone in the Interim Government who has shown repeatedly their preference for optics over substance.

As I write this piece, I am reminded of a novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay, who is best known for Shei Shomoy, Prothom Alo and Purba Paschim -- epic novels set in the 19th and 20th century Bengal and among the Bengali diaspora.

Eka Ebong Koyekjon is not an epic. It is a tale of a politically naïve young man giving his prime years to the struggle for freedom, only to find himself unfit for the world when the struggle had formally ended -- this novel deserves to be far better known.

As I write this, recalling that novel, I wonder -- what does a revolutionary do when the revolution has ended?

Sharif Osman Hadi was a July veteran. Like many of his generation, his political journey began in the brutality of Shapla Chattar massacre of 2012. Like many, he experienced the safe streets and quota movements of the late 2010s. He emerged as a firebrand, even foul-mouthed, rhetorician after 36 July. But he also understood the importance of culture and institutions.

And in the last few weeks of his life, he had eschewed revolutionary politics for electoral one. His grassroots, low-budget, door-to-door campaign in the heart of Dhaka against a long-term political veteran was certainly noticed, and not just by political junkies but ordinary voters. 

And then came the shot.

From a rebel with a cause to a maturing politician whose life was cut shot by a bullet -- Hadi’s journey parallels that of Malcolm X, the American civil rights hero, and Chris Hani, a South African freedom fighter. The latter’s assassination, particularly, caused a reckoning in his homeland, and hastened the end of the Apartheid regime.

Can Hadi achieve something similar as a martyr?

This piece is being written as his janaza is being held. Reports from Dhaka have been of a city dreading the worst. Not surprising given the arsons of the last two nights. Will we see worse?

Sholay isn’t the only iconic movie to come out of Bollywood 50 years ago. A tale of two brothers, a cop and a criminal, Deewar has the iconic line -- I have mother. The previous scene, however, has the cop telling the criminal that the path the latter was on ended only in ruins.

The path Bangladesh has been on the past 48 hours ends only in ruins.

Mahfuj Alam used to talk about the politics of day o dorod. The first term, day, loosely translates as obligation or responsibility. The second one, dorod, translates as compassion or mercy. Every Muslim knows the phrase Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim -- the most Beneficent, the most Compassionate.

Can we reorient our moral compass towards the politics of responsibility and compassion?