Government is not a trade which any man or a body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

by Nurul Kabir

WHILE the whole world is set to celebrate International Mother Language Day today – February 21 – the Bangladeshi Bengalis, who glorified the day by sacrificing their lives to politically uphold the democratic importance of the recognition of a mother tongue by the state 57 years ago, is now faced with the responsibility of re-living the spirit of the language movement by way of putting up resistance against the scheme of getting ratified two years of anti-people emergency rule of the military-driven government of a few unelected individuals.
   What was the political spirit of the language movement, popularly known as Ekushey, then, that the young Bengali students of the day took to the streets to resist, with their lives as only weapons, the undemocratic attempt of the erstwhile military-bureaucratic state of Pakistan to suppress the mother tongue of the country’s vast majority of the people? The answer lies very much in the question: The spirit of democracy – the politically legitimate urge for the state to recognise the democratic freedom of the people to express their hopes and aspirations, frustrations and grievances, dreams and dilemmas, et cetera, in the mother language/s of the citizens.
   Notably, the ruling coterie of the erstwhile Pakistan tried to impose Urdu, a language developed in the military barracks of the Mughal and subsequently spoken by a very small aristocratic section of the Pakistani populace, as the lone lingua franca of the state on the millions of Pakistanis, Bengalis and non-Bengalis alike, particularly the Bengalis that constituted 64 per cent of the total population.
   To the collective consciousness of the Bengalis, it was not just the language which was being suppressed, rather it was the politics of the suppression of the language that mattered the most – not to mention that the language, or any language for that matter, itself is politics. The politics pursued in the attempt of arbitrary imposition of the language of an aristocratic few on the vast majority of the ordinary people was the politics of undemocracy, for politics of democracy tends to honour the interests of the majority – if not accommodating the interests of all concerned. That the people of all walks of life had actively joined the initial resistance put up by the Bengali students against the aristocratic reluctance of including Bangla as one of the state languages was a manifestation of the Bengali’s democratic spirit of generally rejecting the undemocratic political idea of the state being sensitive to the interests of the privileged few. The Bengalis won the struggle, and the thinking sections of the people learnt that the culture of resistance is of vital importance to earn, consolidate and secure democratic victories in the national political life – an invaluable lesson that helped the Bengalis sustain some two decades of resistance, on the basis of a secular-democratic nationalist polity, against the non-secular authoritarian regimes of Pakistan and eventually wrestle out the nation state of Bangladesh in 1971.
   How could the lesson of the language movement – effectiveness of political resistance against undemocratic polity for democratic victories – help today’s Bangladesh, which is to deal with two years of arbitrary rule of a few unelected individuals backed by an anti-people military junta? The military generals, who on the pretext of political instability had the president promulgate on January 11, 2007 the ‘state of emergency’ and ruled the country from behind a civilian façade of a so-called ‘caretaker government’ for two years, and that too with the fundamental rights of the citizens forcibly kept suspended, are still there to get the newly elected parliament legitimise all the deeds and the misdeeds of the illegal regime. The politicians, or members of the parliament to be precise, are faced with three options: putting up decisive political resistance against the illegitimate desire of the military generals and totally rejecting the idea of legitimising the generals’ political adventure, forging a political compromise and partly legitimising the illegitimate regime and staging a complete capitulation to the military establishment and provide blanket legitimacy to its illegitimate rule.
   Needless to say, the three perceived political steps will leave, naturally, three kinds of impacts on the country’s future political course. If the parliament takes the first option and turns down the illegitimate desire of the military leadership to get its unconstitutional rule fully ratified, the legislative body will also have to censure the military generals and their civilian cohorts. If the process can be sustained – that is possible by mobilising the people – any general would give a second thought on taking the political control of the state machinery, which will in turn effectively help the civilian political process to go ahead, even on a bumpy zigzag road, which is most important for the people to fight for democratising society and the state.
   If the parliament goes for the second option in question, which the ruling parliamentary coalition led by the Awami League appears to have been proceeding towards, and ratifies in the name of maintaining ‘constitutional continuity’ some of the ordinances that the military-controlled regime had forcibly imposed on the civilian population, the chance for future military interventions in the civilian political process will remain wide open. The option, if implemented, will leave no deterrent, legal or otherwise, for the military leadership to take over power in the future. Rather, it will leave a precedent of how easy it is for the military top brass to happily rule the country, behind a civilian façade, for some years and stay amused for the rest of the life without facing any punitive measure. An inspiration for future generals to grow politically ambitious, indeed! Besides, a political compromise today would eventually led the elected incumbents to leave more grounds for the military establishment in the days to come, for example meeting the not-so-hidden military aspiration for sharing power in the civilian political dispensation – a proposition dangerous for the democratisation of society and the state.
   If the parliament takes the third option, providing blanket legitimacy to all the deeds and misdeeds of the military-controlled caretaker government that is, it would not only be an injustice to the people at large, it would also prove to be disastrous for the political process as whole. In fact, the third option, which is a demand of the military-civil coterie that illegally ruled the country between January 2007 and December 2008, and got benefits out of the regime, if implemented, may relegate the political class as a whole to the junior partner of the military in running the affairs of the state.
   Besides, before deciding on this option, the parliament members need to take note of the fact that a division bench of the High Court has observed, while giving a verdict on a writ petition against certain provisions of the Emergency Powers Ordinance 2007 and the Emergency Powers Rule 2007 on December 3, 2008 that a ‘state of emergency’, if not approved by the parliament, automatically ceases to have effect after 210 days since its promulgation.
   However, given the amount of anti-people, anti-political steps the illegitimate regime in question implemented, successfully or unsuccessfully, no Bangladeshi parliament can provide it with the legitimacy, fully or partly, without betraying the spirit of the language movement.
   Notably, the military-driven regime in question imposed an emergency that brutally denied 150 million people their inalienable right to the freedom of speech, banned the right to dissent and took away the right to assemble to register protests against injustice even when their livelihood was destroyed systematically, their houses demolished within no time, their jobs taken away without paying for the labour already used by the state while their fresh employment opportunities remaining absolutely uncertain. The Emergency Powers Rule also denied citizens the right to seek bail when arbitrarily accused of crime by the state and denied the court its inherent right to hear a bail petition – a proposition absolutely inconsistent with the concept of the ‘rule of law’ that presupposes an accused as ‘innocent until proven guilty’.
   Many an arbitrary action of the military-driven regime had resulted in massive unemployment, unusual inflation, unprecedented social and political injustices, but none was allowed to speak up their mind against the regime – let alone putting up resistance. Moreover, the security intelligence agencies humiliated politicians, harassed businessmen, insulted teachers, muzzled the mass media, intimidated journalists, so on and so forth. On top of that all, the regime made all-out efforts to redraw the country’s political landscape with a view to introducing a political order subjugated to the military control – a proposition bound to be proved disastrous for the sound growth of a democratic polity in any country on earth.
   However, faced with the responsibility of dealing with deeds and misdeeds of the military-driven caretaker regime of Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed in the month of February, the parliament members of both the treasury and opposition benches will pay homage to the language movement martyrs today by placing floral wreaths at the altars of Shahid Minars across the country. The political importance of such ritualistic observation of the day apart, a real homage to the martyrs could only be paid by re-living the spirit of the language movement martyrs: resisting in parliament the undemocratic aspiration of a small but powerful military-civil coterie to get its arbitrary social, political and economic actions taken against the interests of the vast majority of the people ratified.
   True, the previous parliaments had never dared think of declaring illegal the illegal military or quasi-military regimes of the past, but this is an opportunity for the ruling Awami League to initiate real ‘change’ – the party’s pet slogan this time around – in the political practices of bowing to the military pressure. It remains to be seen whether the ruling coalition that commands more than three-fourths of the majority in parliament dares to call a spade a spade, and thus live through the spirit and lesson of the historic language movement of the people.

Copyright © New Age 2009