How patriotic are we?

How many of our politicians are patriots? How many of our so called intellectuals are patriots? How many of our traders are patriots? How many of our industrialists are patriots? How many of our bureaucrats are patriots?

I may be wrong but to me it looks as though a large number of these people are not patriots. How can they be, when most of these respected people are vigorously pursuing their own selfish goals and that too often at the cost of national interests?

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The teachers are concentrating their efforts more in advancing the interests of one or the other political parties than imparting education to their pupils. Businessmen are working toward fattening their purses, no matter what. The intellectuals are busy in using their intellect in advancing the cause of their political gurus more than steering the country to the right and honest path. The industrialists are industriously working towards building their own empire, often at the cost of lives of the labourers and workers.

With due respect to our political leaders and their stooges, it is my impression that they should do some serious soul-searching and ask themselves as to how much their actions are patriotic. Over the years, they have shamelessly engaged themselves in advancing family interests and at best their party interests. Had it not been so we would have been much better off today.

I do not know of any political party or leadership that has kept its promises to the people's welfare and well-being. It has been a story of continuous lies and deception. None of the parties have fulfilled or kept even 50 percent of their pledges. So selfish and ruthless are our lawmakers that many of them have and are still indulging in using the religious terrorists to destroy the independence of this country just to be in the seat of power. How patriotic is that?

There are yet those who wish to establish their hegemony and be in the seat of power by paralyzing the entire country through picketing and violent political agitation, street violence, so on and so forth. These people are nothing but exploiters, they are exploiting you and me. They have turned this country into a playground for their dirty game of politics. They are no patriots.

The other day one of our team members participating in the Commonwealth games at Sydney was charged with indecent behaviour with a young woman while another "disappeared." Well, that is not patriotic, or is it?

Look at the history of Bengal of the not too distant past, the rule of the last Nawab of Bengal, Nawab Sirjuddowla. His Chief of Army betrayed him. People with some degree of honesty would agree with me that such legacy of betrayal was also seen during the last days of our war of liberation when the Razakars who were mostly Bengalis carried out the Pak occupation forces' master plan of brutal killing of our intellectuals. Once again "we" played into the hands of our enemies. Our legacy of patriotism is rather poor.

We have yet another brand of unpatriotic people who have been bleeding this country for decades, these people whom I call "lobbyists." They usually move about in flashy cars, are seen often around teashops at the lobbies of the cities' five star hotels. These are the fortune hunters also known as the "money chasers."

Many of them have minted millions in collaboration with some unscrupulous government bureaucrats and their "middlemen" through winning tenders for large projects involving millions in grafts, jacking up the price of projects, and causing loss of millions to our national exchequer. These are ruthless people who have little or no regard or concern for this poor country. They are vicious and have a tight network that is not easy to break through.

There is no denying of the fact that many Bangladeshi expatriates living abroad are actively engaged in tarnishing our country's image in the name of partisan politics. They are being encouraged and backed by some of their high-profile political gurus back home.

Except for the fact that we have a magnificent parliament building, perhaps the finest example of architecture anywhere in the world, there is nothing that is democratic about this country. We have now adorned the seat of the most corrupt country of the world for the past several years. We are a bunch of shameless people without the least concern and love for the country. People who are known and perceived as most corrupt are often seen as the ones talking most about fighting corruption.

The corrupt practices of many of our lawmakers have reached such horrific proportions that, to my mind, many of them should be declared as enemies of the state. Of late the NBR has recently unearthed a racket whereby a number of our lawmakers are importing expensive duty-free luxury cars, a privilege granted to them exclusively to facilitate import of cars for their personal use, and sold them to their rich business friends. Such is the level of patriotism among the cream of our citizens on whom people have reposed all their trust.

With such an acute downward swing of our moral and ethical values, encompassing nearly all cross sections of the population, how can anyone be a patriot in the truest sense of the term?