Kansat,
Cricket And “Caretaker”: Height Of Regression And
De-politicization Of Bangladesh
By Taj Hashmi
09 May, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The dust has settled on the cricket
pitches in Bangladesh after the humiliating defeats of the home team
by Sri Lanka and Australia in a row. Meanwhile, the average Bangladeshi
has forgotten the brutal massacre of innocent villagers at Kansat by
Bangladeshi police in the midst of the ongoing debate on reforming the
unique (and absurd) “Caretaker Government” to hold free
and fair elections. Witnessing the cricket fiasco and the hyper politicking
over reforming the election machinery while Bangladeshi police were
killing innocent villagers at Kansat is like visiting a nihilistic world
of anarchy and absurdity.
What happened at Kansat,
a rural hinterland in northern Bangladesh, during January and April
2006 would have toppled governments or at least brought about months
long mammoth mass demonstrations, general strikes and total non-cooperation
with the government for the brutal killing of twenty unarmed civilians
anywhere in the civilized world. What is interesting that predecessors
of these inert Bangladeshis during the Pakistani period did never shy
out from coming out on the street protesting police and eventually military
brutalities on unarmed civilians. One may mention how the killing of
less than half a dozen Dhaka University students by police firing on
21st February 1952 kept the millions of Bengalis restive, agitating,
assertive and angry for about two decades against Pakistani ruling classes,
which eventually led to the creation of Bangladesh. Similarly in 1969,
Bengalis took a vow to avenge the killing of Bengalis by Pakistani police
and military. Cricket or elite power politics could never divert public
attention from the real political issues of mass empowerment, dignity
and eventually, freedom.
The Kansat Tragedy reveals
by turning Bangladesh inside out how neglected are the peasants and
working classes in the psyche of the elites. Peasants’ getting
electricity and fuel to run irrigation pumps seems to be the least important
thing to them. Not only had the ruling coalition been indifferent to
the Kansat peasants’ demands for unhindered supply of electricity
and fuel, but the main opposition parties and the vast majority of the
urban middle and upper classes also been indifferent, if not hostile,
to their demands. From the general apathy of the vast majority of Bangladeshi
elites across the board during and in the aftermath of the killing it
appears that most of the elite never meant what they said about the
“liberation of the people” before and after the creation
of Bangladesh.
What was most surprising
was the celebration of the “Kansat Victory” by the ruling
and opposition parties after the so-called truce between aggrieved villagers
and the government. The government did not take any disciplinary action
against the killers and yet everything seems to be normal throughout
the country. Some intellectuals have even portrayed the peasant agitation
and the brutal massacre of twenty-odd unarmed peasants as a “peasant
revolution”.
The mass apathy towards the
Kansat Tragedy, excepting a few general strikes by not-yet-been-corrupted
students, indicates the state of mass de-politicization of the people.
The vested interest groups either brain wash and hegemonize mass consciousness
in the name of their parties or religion to keep them dormant/next worldly/depoliticized
or to activate them politically through phony and divisive non-issues
like “Bengali” versus “Bangladeshi” or “pro-”
versus “anti-Liberation”. Non-political distractions like
playing Bangladesh in test and one-day cricket matches against leading
cricket teams of the world have also been very efficacious in depoliticizing
the masses. In short, besides being a red herring, cricket in Bangladesh
is also a political football of the rival political elites.
The history of cricket in
the region reveals that contrary to the general perception, there is
nothing so new about cricket in Bangladesh. Bengali youths have been
playing the game at least since the 1860s while the game per se was
introduced to Bengal about a hundred years before its arrival into the
Punjab and Sri Lanka. So, the moment we see Bangladeshis over-celebrating
their extremely few and far between cricket victories, we know something
has gone wrong. One does not know how Bangladesh would celebrate a hypothetical
victory in series of test and one-day matches against all the leading
teams of the world in a year, including its winning the World Cup. We
know the abysmal state of the infrastructure – shortage of playgrounds,
mass poverty and lack of physical fitness of the vast majority of the
population due to low calorie intake – Bangladesh is most likely
to remain an underdog in the arena of games and sports. This, however,
does not mean that one undermines the Bangladeshi cricketers for achieving
whatever they have achieved during the past few years despite having
so many problems and not having at least 500 cricket pitches for such
a vast population.
The wild celebrations smack
of only the collective sense of disproportion and inferiority complex
of the polity. Did Pakistan celebrate in the similar manner when it
defeated India and England in the early 1950s and other leading teams
afterwards? Sri Lankans also did not cross the line of decency after
winning the World Cup and after so many victories against all the leading
teams in the world. Sri Lankan leaders and elites did not nourish (let
alone expose) any inferiority complex. One should not miss the not-so-hidden
message in the Bangladeshi wild celebrations, which conveys the following:
“Look, even we Bengalis can defeat Pakistan and Australia”.
This is not similar to what the Japanese did after defeating the mighty
Russians in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Figuratively, Bangladesh
today is not another Japan against Russia. Bangladesh’s defeating
Pakistan or Sri Lanka, West Indies or India (let alone the tiny Zimbabwe)
should not become such occasions of wild celebrations.
The cricket mania, a calculative
political distraction to depoliticize urban youth, has been so successful
that after the crushing defeat of the non-test playing Kenya by test-playing
Bangladesh Bangladeshi dailies publicized the event (actually a non-event)
as a “White Wash of Kenya” in the front page. If this reflects
some journalists’ immaturity and arrogance, a by-word for inferiority
complex, then one does not know what is predicting an innings defeat
for Australia, as the media did after Bangladesh had scored 400-odd
runs in the first innings only to eventually lose the match to Australia.
The ongoing opposition demand
for reforming the “caretaker system” is another problematic
move to resolve the problematic concept of “caretaker government”
to conduct “free and fair” parliamentary elections in the
country. The Awami League-led Fourteen-Party-Alliance (thirteen of them
having very negligible to no political clout at all) has been insisting
on having a discussion with the ruling coalition to fine tune the “caretaker
system”, but is adamant not to put their heads together with any
member of the Jamaat-i-Islami, which is a part of the ruling coalition.
So, apparently there are two tricky problems to resolve. First, fine
tuning the “caretaker system” and then doing it without
any participation by the Jamaat. The opposition simply insists on not
interacting with any War Criminals and collaborators of 1971.
So far so good. However,
those who know the recent past of Bangladesh during the last twenty-odd
years know that top Awami League and Fourteen-Party-Alliance leaders,
including Sheikh Hasina and Rashed Khan Menon among others, had absolutely
no problem in hobnobbing with some top Jamaat leaders, including Matiur
Rahman Nizami. Not only Sheikh Hasina and Nizami were together, holding
joint meetings and rallies against the first BNP government of Khaleda
Zia during 1991 and 1996, but there are also eye-witness accounts of
Rashed Khan Menon’s literally embracing Nizami in public meetings.
One may also point out that
on the eve of the Presidential Election of 1991, Justice Badrul Haider
Chowdhury, the Awami candidate, went to Ghulam Azam’s residence
(the Jamaat patriarch and controversial collaborator of the Pakistani
occupation army in 1971) for his “blessings” or political
support as the Jamaat had thirty-odd MPs, more than ten per cent of
the electorate. What is even more significant that the unheard of concept
of an unelected “care taker government” by the political
scientists anywhere to run a democracy for three months and hold the
most important elections in a parliamentary system was a brainchild
of the controversial Ghulam Azam, who became a pariah to the opposition
only in the late 1991 for various other reasons.
Those familiar with Bangladeshi
political culture and socio-political history know the opportunism and
lack of commitment to any ideology or leader by the bulk of the Bengali
(mainly Muslim) politicians. Consequently one has no reason to be surprised
at their vacillation. However, what is very unfortunate for the nation
is that “politics” (in the pejorative sense) has over-powered
economics and common sense, decency, justice and truth. One wonders
if Bengalis could successfully elect the right type of representatives
in 1937, 1946, 1954, and most importantly, in the 1970’s Parliamentary
Elections in united Pakistan without having this bizarre, peculiar and
outlandish “caretaker system”, why on earth do they need
it now?
As we have experienced in
the wake of the three parliamentary elections since 1991 held under
“caretaker governments”, the outcome of the elections has
never been acceptable to those who have to sit in the opposition bench.
So, what is the big fuss about the system, which is neither foolproof
nor anything to be proud of as a democracy? Having this absurd concept
of “caretaker” simply implies that the Bangladeshi polity
and the voters are in regression, in a state of immaturity and that
no body is trust worthy any more to hold free and fair elections in
the country. One is not sure if after the next parliamentary elections
in 2007, as an alternative to the “caretaker system”, the
leader of the opposition (whoever she or he will be around) would be
asking the UN for International Peacekeeping Force to hold “free
and fair” elections in the country.
In sum, while the rich is
getting richer and poor poorer at an alarming rate for the last thirty-odd
years, despite all the poverty alleviation programmes through the NGOs
and public sector, the bulk of the politicians and members of the civil
society, intellectuals, students, bureaucrats and businessmen have been
engaged in an unhealthy rat race – some to survive and some to
get-rich-quick. Consequently the real problems –such as population
growth, lack of health care and education, hunger and poverty, hyper
inflation (about 10,000 per cent price hike since 1970), rampant corruption
by politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats – have receded to
the background, as designed by political, business and professional
elites. The upshot is the preponderance of non issues and red herrings
to distract the masses from the real issues. Hence the celebration of
“Kansat Victory” in the wake of the massacre, lunatic exuberance
over cricket and the phony war and controversy over the outlandish “caretaker
system”.