Our fiddling Neros

If the politics of the past few weeks should remind us of anything, it is as if the parents of bride and groom were fighting over a proper invitation to the wedding. The Prime Minister called the political parties to a dialogue with the government. The opposition spurned that call because they claimed it was not a proper invitation. Then a messenger from the PM's office hand-carried a letter from the Prime Minister to the Leader of the Opposition, which was received by none other than a security guard who said there was nobody in the house and that he had no prior knowledge that the letter was coming.

All of that high drama would have been cute if we weren't living in exceptional times. The country was reeling under suicide bombs, and the politicians were looking for deals. That is where the Neroesque mentality sets in. The leaders stick to their guns no matter what. Now you know why Nero fiddled in a burning Rome. Power has nothing to do with the plight of people.

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H.L. Mencken, American journalist and literary critic, once joked that the US President Calvin Coolidge slept more than any other President, whether by day or night, but while Nero fiddled, Coolidge only snored. One of the dismal businesses of politics in our part of the world is that it doesn't always guarantee that leaders will be wakeful to the needs of their people. From the times of Nero when people were ruled in the name of God to modern-day democracy when the country is ruled in the name of people, this is one thing which hasn't changed. The leader comes before the party and the party comes before the people. People are the means of power, not its end.

Take it or leave it, that's how politics works. Politicians are different animals. We have weekends, festivals, obligations and duties when we are able to set aside occupational calling to make personal considerations. But the politicians are somehow incapacitated, their passion ingrained in their profession, everything they do being part of the game, every move, every word, crafted to gain tactical mileage.

But it is obnoxious to see that happening right in the middle of a national crisis. It is almost like this country has been invaded by an alien force, which is threatening to disrupt our security and freedom. Perhaps it's the most crucial time in our history since independence, yet the circus hasn't stopped for a minute. It's business as usual for our politicians. It's the same intransigence, same arrogance, same clever maneuvering to fish in the troubled water.

Perhaps the timing is bad, a national crisis coinciding with election-year extravaganza. Every party needs to stand up and stand out, roll up their sleeves to reach out and touch the voters. Perhaps our politicians don't know how to keep things separate, subsuming the larger national cause within their habitually narrow political interests. Yet it is hard to believe that such is the case, that even at the time of grave national danger they must act for political gain.

That is what has happened though. There has been call for the government to step down. There has been call for the ouster of Jamaat-e-Islam from the ruling alliance. All of that is fine. But how is that going to solve the problem? How is it going to dampen the kegs of gunpowder, detonators, and explosives, which lie around in the nooks and corners of this country? How is it going to rein in the madness that has seized the hearts of countless men, who are convinced that the world can be changed if they blow up everything?

If anybody cares to read, there is clear sign of defiance in the violence imprecated by the militants. People are blowing up to make that point, to denounce the degeneration, to renounce the recklessness that marks the state of our politics. It has taken time to arrive at that extreme, to undergo the upheaval that sends death-bound souls to their sacrificial frenzy. There is a trajectory of transformation about the whole thing. Between exploitation and explosion, the militants are seething with the fervent fury to strike at the fetid fulcrum of our putrid politics.

In fact the militants are the by-product of our mindless politics, a reaction to the infraction in the moral discourse of our public life where we have pushed the envelope too far to condone all mischief. The militants are a reminder that there is a limit to everything, that rotting stops when it becomes fertilizer. Only if you will look at this contradiction! Our self-serving politics has met with its nemesis. There are selfless people who are ready to die in order to change it.

In 1770, Edmund Burke wrote in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, "When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." Let us face it, we are currently engaged in a contemptible struggle but the good aren't willing to associate with the bad. Yet the question is who is good and who is bad between politicians and militants? One slowly kills hundreds of thousands, another kills dozens in a bang. One is clever, another is committed. One is opportunistic, another is fundamentalist. One exploits, another explodes.

Without any intention of glorifying the militants, we must ponder how they are different from the erstwhile rebels of earlier centuries, except that here the ideology is religion as opposed to some man-made doctrine. Rightly or wrongly, these people are killing and dying for their belief, their well-meaning intention obfuscated by the means they have adopted. But these people are fighting for a larger cause, admirably setting aside any concern for their own well-being, even life, to propagate their message.

It is silly that both politicians and militants have one thing in common. They don't have any consideration for the people. On every other matter, they stand on opposite ends. The politicians hanker after life, the militants blow it away. The politicians want earthly recognition, the militants want a place in heaven. The politicians are calculative, the militants are decisive. The politicians use the world in the hope to embellish their lives; the militants use their lives in the hope to embellish the world.

The purpose of the peroration is to make a point. Today's militancy is an outburst of yesterday's politics. Politics of confrontation has nourished the rage which has invoked the militant response. If politicians are fighting today to blame each other it is only intensifying the confrontation amongst them, which will only help the growth of militancy instead of bringing it to an end.

The opposition has given a fresh deadline for the fall of government. The ruling party gathered in a grandstand last Wednesday to show that it was ready for showdown. What will happen to the militancy? How can you cure cirrhosis if you can't stop drinking?

Neros of the country are least bothered. They are fiddling in the burning Rome, so long as they can walk in the corridors of power. Until the day comes when the militants will turn upon them.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.