Sense & Insensibility
Seeking solace in wise words
Let us have the auspicious beginning with a few time-tested quotations that will appear quite pertinent in the context of what has happened in Bangladesh over the last three decades. The first quotation is from Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America. It goes like this:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. -- (The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, July 4, 1776).
The history of Bangladesh shows that the people have done this on a number of times when they felt that their "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" have been threatened by the governments, which had turned oppressive, non-democratic, unilateral and utterly corrupt. People have gotten together and abolished those governments.
This is the lesson of history, but politicians in this country hardly took lessons from it and kept creating the same mess over and over again to perpetuate their immoral hold on the people.
The second one is from Confucius, and reading it one would wonder how could he write about Bangladesh in circa 500 B.C. He wrote:
"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."
If Confucius had the opportunity to visit Bangladesh in recent times and witness a group of people sleeping on mattresses made of currency notes and owning wealth worth millions of dollars within five years, he would have patted his own back for having said those words so long ago.
But what would have shocked him beyond comprehension is finding the same group of people not feeling ashamed at all for amassing that kind of wealth, despite their bad governance of Himalayan proportion.
And the third quotation we offer is from a politician of more recent times. He is the assassinated US president John F. Kennedy. Kennedy is known for some of his beautiful four-liners. Here is one that will again remind us of the situation at home.
"Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource."
How much have we done to make our education progress to the level that was desired by us when we fought our liberation war? How much have we invested to extract the best of products from the human mind in this country? Albeit, these are questions easier asked than answered.
The above quotations will perhaps make one go back in time and urge one to do some soul-searching. When the people were fighting the Liberation War in 1971, they had entrusted some people with the responsibility of materialising some of their dreams in the independent Bangladesh.
Since poverty was pervasive in the infant country, we did not dare to dream big, so our dreams were small and poverty-stricken too. We wanted basic education, simple food, basic healthcare and a humble shelter above our head. But, can the majority of the people say that they have these basic amenities of life?
Today, everyone is talking about how most of those politicians we had trusted with our dreams failed to create an environment where rule of law existed to facilitate establishment of a philosophically progressive, scientifically forward looking, intellectually endowed, and economically thriving society. Today we see "in a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."
And decades of misrule and bad governance have resulted in total chaos and disorder that is reigning supreme in every nook and corner of our society. When money-minting coaching centres keep multiplying, when shoddy pathological labs operate openly, when used medical supplies are sold in markets, when trashy clinics sprout in every lane and by-lane, when adulteration of food items goes on in full gusto, when contaminated blood is pushed into human bodies in hospitals, can we say we have achieved progress? When peddlers sell drugs in every street corner, when dilapidated buses and trucks are given fitness certificates, when small vehicles are given route permits to haul humans on highways, when rotten wheat and rice is allowed to be sold in the market, when duty-free garment raw materials are sold openly in shops, when counterfeit currency notes are traded in abundance, can we say we have achieved the ideals of our liberation war?
When some members of law enforcing agencies extract money from both the accused and the victim, when innocent people are picked up, kept in the lock-ups and released after money has been paid, when smugglers, extortionists and murderers are given nomination to contest MP elections, when young girls are coerced into prostitution, can we say that we ever had something remotely resembling good governance?
Those small dreams of ours have not been materialised. Wealth un-accounted for in the hands of a few groups does not mean we have progressed at all. So, we shall dream on to see that each and every citizen of the country eats equally well and enjoys the fundamental rights to health, education and shelter.
Until that is ensured, we shall seek solace in the wise words of the magnificent people who walked on this earth once.
Shahnoor Wahid is Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.
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