Who is right amongst the left?
WAR doesn't determine who is right, says an anonymous quote. "Only who is left," it cryptically concludes. Four decades ago this country fought a war in 1971, and three million people died in it. But has it been able to determine who is right amongst us? Those who are left, meaning survived that war, are yet to make up their minds.
Of course, it was right for us to fight for our independence. Of course, Pakistan was wrong when its army cracked down on us. Then there's a slew of few other rights. Our mother tongue has been our state language. Our national identity has been our pride. Nobody can contest that we have done the right thing securing our rights.
Then why does a nation that fought united in 1971 stand divided now? Why is there such a rift between the ruling party and the opposition? It runs so deep that those two sides don't even like to face each other in the national parliament. The leaders don't talk between them. The cadres are even more zealously hostile to each other.
And, why does this larger division divide us in every walk of life? Students on the same campus draw each other's blood. Equally true for teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, bureaucrats and businessmen in their respective places of work.
Those who died in 1971 are dead, but those who lived proved deadly. In their fight to be right, they have ripped this country roughly in the middle. Find any organisation, any institution, you will also find it split into halves.
History is also divided into two different streams. One party's treasure is another party's trash. The names of streets and buildings change with change of government. Fortunes of people rise and fall. One party's heroes are another party's zeroes. One government's promotees are OSDs in the next.
To sum it up, this nation is afflicted by conflict. The war in 1971 determined who was right between the enemy and us. But it hasn't been able to settle that question for us. Everybody is right when many things are wrong. Everybody counts the milestones, nobody knows the road. Everybody has assumptions, nobody has conclusions. We have converging aspirations, but diverging ambitions. We are a collective nation of individualistic notions, united to divide, not divided to unite.
Past 1971, when was the last time we agreed as a nation? When was the last time we found a common platform? Our political system functions like two buckets in a well: one goes up, and the other comes down. Every election is fought like a war. The winning party ignores the losing one. The ruling party forgets the opposition. Electoral contest turns into a fight for elimination, not assimilation.
Forty years after winning the war, what does it mean to win an election? It's supposed to give the popular mandate to a political party or coalition of parties to rule the country. Instead what happens is amazing. It becomes mandatory for the ruling party or coalition to rule out the opposition. Perhaps the war in '71 was only the beginning. It never ended for us. We are still fighting.
We are now fighting over more things than before. Our textbooks change when there is a change in government. So does our calendar of national events. The songs we sing, poems we read, and speeches we give have the characteristic impression of the party in power. Even the dress we wear isn't immune to that madness. Mujib coat is for Mujib. Safari suit is for Zia.
Two generations of divide and rule is being escalated to a third. Lately, the posters on the walls show a cluster of three faces to mark the transition on both sides of the political divide. A news daily, while conducting a survey on the first year of this government, went the extra mile. It also surveyed how people viewed the transition of power from the mothers to their sons. We have no dearth of people who believe they are right even when adding fuel to fire.
In fact, one half of this country is deeply convinced that the other half is wrong. The country is divided into two extremes, two different rights founded on extreme prejudice. What does it mean? It means two halves of the population are mutually exclusive.
It's an unfortunate democracy, if democracy is what we choose to call it. The political parties are intolerant. The leaders are indifferent. The followers are impatient. Hatred is rampant. Behind the façade of representative politics, it hides the soul of fascism.
Fierce loyalty to the leader, not the people, is the hallmark of this politics. Full of ideas and devoid of ideology, this is the politics of popular frenzy. Right and wrong are driven by passion, not by logic.
Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a columnist for The Daily Star.
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