Independence Day, apart from a holiday

But whose celebration is it anyway? In 1852 an escaped slave named Frederick Douglass raised a similar question in the United States. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" was the title of his speech. He addressed the white people of America, saying that it was their national independence, their political freedom, and therefore, their celebration. Then Douglass instructed them to feel their shame for observing a happy holiday that reveals, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty, which turns their celebration into a sham.

We are going to observe a happy holiday tomorrow, many of us waking up late to watch a movie or visit a friend. There will be family reunions, visit to the parks, the smell of rich food wafting from kitchens. For the poor and the hungry, the day will bring its special lures. They will be fed in the community centres and local party offices. Beggars will have a field day with streams of people flowing in the parks and the streets.

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The Independence Day, which was earned in roughly 9 months, will last for roughly 18 hours from six in the morning to the strike of midnight. Then a tired nation will go to bed and wake up to go to work next day. There are others who must have already left the country on packaged tours. It is a shame how the Independence has given some of us the freedom to ignore it.

Two years after the fabled speech of Douglass, Henry Thoreau wrote in Walden that the Fourth of July represented an unattained ideal. Does not the 26th of March represent the same thing for us? Where is the society, which should be free from exploitation and oppression? Where is the country of freedom and equality? Where is the Golden Bengal?

Perhaps the ideal has shifted in the age of globalisation. Perhaps now we are more outward looking than inward, more material than spiritual. Perhaps economy needs to perform better than politics. Perhaps we need to be more corrupt than honest. Perhaps the new ideal is redacted in the clamour of ringing mobile phones, honking cars, droning TV channels, and heavy metallic sounds from construction sites. We are growing as consumers but shrinking as a nation.

Ronald Reagan warned against that shrinking in his Farewell Address to the American people. The "eradication of the American memory," could bring about "the erosion of the American spirit", he said. He suggested a few basic things, which included more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual. Then he offered lesson No. 1 about America. All great change begins at the dinner table and he hoped that starting from the night after his farewell, the Americans were going to begin their talks in the kitchen. He asked children to nail their parents, if they haven't been teaching what it means to be an American, because that would be a very American thing to do.

The foremost thing about being a nation is to know what it means as an identity and then to take pride in it. Do we know what it means to be a Bangladeshi, what virtues entail it and what vices curtail it? Do we know how to teach our children what it means to be a Bangladeshi? Do children know when to nail their parents if they are not teaching it?

What are we then going to celebrate tomorrow amidst the roar of canons, flying flags, festivities, illuminations, gymnastics, speeches and uproar of people? What are we going to celebrate in a nation that stands gloomy like a divided house? What are we going to celebrate when a foreign bureaucrat calls us a "troubling" nation? Others call us other names. They call us a fundamentalist state, a failed state and the most corrupt nation on earth for several years in a row.

Disgrace and disappointment hang over us like mushroom cloud. It is the sign of an implosion, a disturbing turmoil within us. We have been clashing amongst ourselves, tugging this country in different directions, our vile interests subverting the greater spirit of freedom. There are those who are going abroad to undermine this country. There are those who are arrogantly defending their silly mistakes and petty interests back home. In our contentions for power, we are gradually turning this country into a powerless state. We are expected to depend on others even on the 34th year of our independence. Donors tell us what to do. Diplomats tell us what to do.

True, we have earned a few Brownie points in last 34 years. The economy is growing at the rate of more than 5 per cent a year. We have got more skyscrapers, fancy cars, television per capita, calorie intakes, mobile phones and shirts on our back. According to Jean Dreze, a professor of economics at the Delhi School of Economics, Bangladesh has been doing much better than India in some critical areas of human development. The living conditions in Bangladesh is rapidly improving whether one looks at infant mortality, or vaccination rates, or school participation, or child nutrition, or fertility rates. These improvements are happening not just for a privileged elite but also for the population at large. Compared to that, India's development strategy is fundamentally distorted and lop-sided. The social progress has been slower and less broad-based, despite much faster economic growth.

If we celebrate anything tomorrow, we should celebrate our regret that we could have done better. We have done better in some areas and that tells us we could have done better in other areas as well. We have come a long way in 34 years and we could have gone further. When the clamour of children, fanfares, festivities and all the noise of jubilation subside at the end of the day, we should begin talking at dinner tables, parents to children, children to parents.

Our children must know and understand that it was not just another day out in a circus or a fair. They must understand that everything was part of one thing, that it was not a celebration of one particular day such as the Flower Day or the Chocolate Day but the celebration of our past, present and future. They must learn to extricate dream from despair, imbued with the pride of having a homeland where they can live out their lives with freedom and dignity in the manner a painter can use his paints and brushes to draw his imaginations on the easel.

Our 34th Independence Day is only hours away. Many people have died and suffered to bring us this day, many who were our own flesh and blood, our kinfolks, neighbours, friends, and villagers, who sacrificed their lives to build and protect our future. They did not have to do it. But they did it nonetheless for us, those who are living and breathing to rejoice a holiday tomorrow. It is their Day, which we are going to celebrate. While we watch TV, visit a friend, go to park, eat sumptuous meals and enjoy the recess of the day, we must feel grateful to them and tell our children about them.

Apart from a holiday, we should celebrate our national memory tomorrow, and thereby celebrate our national spirit. Let us talk about it at our dinner tables today, tomorrow and everyday henceforth.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.