The recoil of politics

And that reminds of an interesting exchange between the Inquisitor and the Chaplain during the trial of Joan of Arc in George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan." The Inquisitor orders the Chaplain to sit down, but the Chaplain refuses to comply. Then the Inquisitor says: "If you will not sit, you must stand." To that the Chaplain says: "I will not stand," and flings himself into his seat. The irony of conceited minds is that they do not care about right and wrong when it comes to pride.

So what we saw over the last few months is the see-saw action between the two political sides. If one sat down, the other stood up. And the whole thing has been a matter of pride. No, I don't mean it was a proud thing they did, but they have done it out of pride. What happened is loud and clear. The problem drifted away each time the solution looked near.

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If we take the caretaker government as the microcosm of the republic, then the Shavian determination looks even more familiar. Ten advisors and their chief, eleven gentlemen of good upbringing and academic background failed to see eye to eye. Four of them stood up while seven others sat down, the same flim-flam, the same taradiddle, where the light of knowledge and shadows of ignorance came to a twilight play of pathetic pride.

In fact pride stalks our minds like a psychotic killer does the neighbourhoods at night, looking for victims to lash out in the passionate intensity of his deranged mind. Somehow, we don't realize that we are deranged in our haughtiness and intransigence, our attitude and behaviour hiding the sickness like the silencer muffles the sound of a gun.

There are so many ways pride infiltrates our lives, and then gradually hardens its muscles around the sensitive areas of our souls. Then our thoughts become rigid, our judgments sclerotic, visions blinded and minds closed. Perhaps pride works like silt, layer by layer its deposit creating the hard surface of arrogance. In petty pace the proud mind advances from complacence to confrontation as it gets convinced that a fight is not lost until the defeat is conceded.

Before one realizes, arrogance does its magic. It creates bullies amongst the barristers, demons amongst the doctors, wackos amongst the writers, because the one and only thing everybody understands is force. And that force works not only through the finger that pulls the trigger or the muscle that intimidates the weak, but also through loquacity of the lawyers, erudition of the editors, jurisprudence of the judges, talent of the teachers, and power of the politicians.

Hence, our politics is stalled halfway between the power of pride and the pride of power, a bizarre pageant of the neurosis of arrogant women and men (in order of leaders and followers) who do not hesitate to use their power of hauteur to dominate others. If one political alliance has threatened with force and another has sabotaged with Machiavellian guiles, it is the unflinching arrogance of both sides, perhaps different in style but not in substance, which has ultimately translated into senseless showdown.

We have recently seen a similar showdown between the chief advisor and his, first estranged, now former, four advisors where the arrogance of power replaced them as quickly as the power of arrogance had forced them to resign. It is possible that the chief advisor, in his other manifestation as the president of the country, finally sought to scoff at that standoff. He adopted the wisdom of the Munich Logic, a phrase coined after Israeli athletes were taken hostage during the Munich Olympics in 1972. It simply means that one should not appease the aggressors, no matter what.

But what the president did is meet arrogance with arrogance. He was taking decisions against the advice of his advisors. Here also one gets the smack of the same old problem of pride defying common sense. Stand up if asked to sit down, and sit down if asked to stand up. And pride intertwined with pride created many more pockets of arrogance. If anything, that is the only thing which has made progress in the course of last few months.

Right now, the solution may be clouded but the problem is clearly in sight. The presidency, the caretaker government and the election, looks like all three birds are lined up in the trajectory of a single stone. As political arrogance begets more political arrogance, these three institutions remain targets of arrogant minds keeping their guns at full-cock.

Then what is the future of our politics? One day this president will not be there. If once burned is twice warned, the prospects for the caretaker government do not look very bright. Sooner or later, the political parties will go to the polls. But we are still going to be left face to face with our arrogance.

In case we do not know, arrogance is when the bribe taker doesn't think he is doing anything wrong. Arrogance is when the political activist has no qualms about stamping on his dead rival. Arrogance is when election commissioners don't want to quit. Arrogance is when the president wants to do what he likes. Arrogance is when politicians expect others to fix the mess created by them.

Let me put it in ballistics terms. If pride is the bullet then arrogance is the recoil of the gun. Our politics is not hitting targets because the impact of the recoil is much larger than the force of the bullet. Ban arrogance and take the recoil out of politics. Proper pride will see that the projectile travels far without having much propellant blast.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.