Situating the CHT Accord within a Moral Paradigm
In recent weeks, the CHT Accord has certainly been one of the most commented, analysed, explained, hailed and appreciated or derided and criticised event in the media. The debate and contrasting comments have focused mostly on, on the one hand, the need for peace, harmony, development, conducive conditions for exploitation of natural resources of the region, end of blood shed and discrimination and plight of the hill people and the consequent justification for concluding the accord. On the other hand, doubts about the correctness or desirability of concluding an accord with a particular body of the hill people, legality and constitutional validity of powers conferred on the regional bodies (parbattya zilla parishad) including limited eligibility for membership of these bodies, restrictive conditions on land ownership and use of minerals, implications for the unitary character of the state, its security and sovereignty have been the central concerns of its critics, with the spillover effect into the national politics including the proper functioning of the Jatiya Sangsad.
None of the views expressed so far, particularly in the print media, has focused on the moral aspects of rights of people, particularly the people of the minority communities in a pluralistic society and, hence, this essay attempts to interject certain relevant moral dimensions into, as it were, the foray.
Long gone are the days of city states which could function by totally excluding all groups but one from the ambit of power, privilege and authority. Every state and society today includes large sections of men and women who are disadvantaged because they are denied equal access to the resources of the society. These sections, depending on the deployment of the vocabulary of the commanding discourse of the majority people, have variously been termed as blacks, niggers, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, aborigines, indigenous, underclass, tribals, immigrants, untouchables, scheduled castes, guest workers, 'women' and so on. Compelled to live in societies shaped exclusively by the majority, these groups or sections live in a world in which their lives are not theirs to live as they would have liked to live. For the minorities, or whatever other designation or description deployed to delineate them, the world belongs to the majority and the only way they can live a half decent life is by becoming like the majority. But then the paths and avenues for imitating the majority is usually blocked or made inaccessible due the structures of discrimination which are occasionally formal but often pervasively entrenched by the realm created by the majority. Our language of inequality, injustice, marginalisation, deprivation, expatiation and so forth is too feeble, too tame and hopelessly inadequate to capture their conditions and feelings and hardly any amount of provisions stemming from our paradigm of formal legality and equality can significantly change that world of the 'other'.
It is only when these formal concepts of equality are internalised by the majority through the realisation that all human beings have claim on each other arising from the fact that they belong to a common species, are similarly constituted, have similar basic needs and are equal at the deepest level that we can take the first steps towards a moral society in which whenever there is a suffering or a cry for help, every other human being feels addressed thereby. One may not always be able to help, but if one is not moved by that suffering or lacks compassion, then one loses sight of what is meant to be human.
When a person is denied access to sympathy because he is presumed to be differently constituted, or frustrated for lack of opportunities which he feels are more readily available to members of the majority group, or denied self-expression (circa language movement), or systematically humiliated, insulted, degraded, if not physically violated (circa our liberation struggle) - and thereby made a person without dignity, it becomes the moral duty of a human being to be sympathetic to these conditions of any group or section of people in his society. And when compassion, sympathy, goodwill or personal efforts are not sufficient to address these problems then it becomes imperative upon the state, the sole available instrument of collective action, to do the needful so that all persons within the state may become human again, both the majority and the minority.
And now moving on to positivism as a moral paradigm, it may not be pointless to reiterate that no group or section can degrade others for long without degrading and brutalising itself in the process. It has never been possible for any group, most usually the majorities in any society, to develop their own potentials and capacities at the expense of another. A mastan cannot become a mastan unless he brutalises others and in the process he brutalises himself and becomes a person devoid of tender feelings and, ultimately, a person without humanity. Similarly, when a collective, a majority in any society, prospers by denying the rights of others, such a course exacts a heavy toll on the privileged and the powerful whose lives remain superficial, pleasures crude, minds full of fear and hearts narrow and hateful and, ultimately, such a course almost inevitably leads to a society in which physical and organised violence becomes the primary mode of 'social cohesion', as is the case in too many countries around us.
Lastly, the moral duty to help others, the less privileged and exploited, stems from the need to correct past misdeeds. The dominant groups systematically maltreated the dominated groups and caused them much moral, material and psychological harm. They therefore bear a special responsibility for the plight of their victims and have a duty not only to end the harm but also to heal their wounds and help them become whole human beings. As moral beings the dominant groups cannot but regret the past and have a duty to redress its painful consequences.
It was morally wrong to have obliterated the material signifiers of their heritage by dam buildings in the 60s, to have denied the hill people their distinctiveness in the early 70s, to have forcibly occupied their habitats since the late 70s, to have brutalised them by the use of modern methods of organised violence since the early 80s, to have compelled them to leave their homelands in tens of thousands and flee into unknown territory and environment. Hence, it is now time to recognise that a tormented past for groups or sections of the society will not lead to a shared future for the whole society unless we find ways of pacifying its aggrieved and tormented victims.
It is only from the standpoint of the moral duty of a human being that we have to address the necessity of redressing our past treatment of the minorities and find the inner strength to recognise that even if they got a 'better deal' it is our moral duty to ensure them such a deal. By denying them, we deny our own morality.
Politics without moral responsibility for the wrongs committed is nothing but shontrash and politics lacks significance unless it becomes a medium for entrenching moral values for a better society.
The writer, a legal practitioner, is Advisor, Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST)
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