Untold Facts

Jalil’s Disclosures made Mid- term Election Obvious

Obvious
Awami League’s former General Secretary Abdul Jalil’s disclosures made in London on the 23rd September about organized fraud in the December 2008 election of Bangladesh even if he has not exposed everything in the fraudulent deals for reasons best known to him, it has made obvious for Bangladesh to hold a mid term election.

Nothing new
Holding mid term election is nothing new or uncommon in parliamentary democracy. The period fixed for a term of five years just as we have following the British example, there are precedence of holding mid term election in Britain as also in other countries like India, for example.

Democratic essence
If one would imagine the term in essence of democracy, it would only be logical that mid term election fits well and rightly into democratic values. It is so because, people are the sovereign and that for any reason the sovereign power of the people is dented that need be repaired and rectified by holding mid term election immediately as far as would be practicable and feasible in the shortest time limit.

Onus
It’s true that the seating government holds power and authority to hold such election. Nevertheless, they have no option but to hold the election immediately. In Bangladesh, the matter should be taken as urgent by the government for it has already put them to the vulnerable position of illegitimacy for the election had been fraudulent just as Jalil has courageously exposed, and many other had seriously doubted, even including the Awami League for many of their high ups got astonished for the overwhelming victory that they did not expect. Neither many believed the 85% turn out of voters that never exceeded 60% before, not to mention of many centers that calculated turn out figure of voters at over 100%!

The Election Commission
In case the authorities concerned takes on the stand that Jalil’s disclosures in the matter had been baseless, the onus would fall on the Election Commission, etc to prove that Jalil was incorrect. In such contesting points the Commission has no option but to go to the court immediately. Simple statements in the press may not believably do the job.

Clandestine fraudulence
Clandestine matters hardly keep concrete evidences. Even so, the matter should be opened to the people for future guidance and preventing recurrence of any fraud or any complaint about fraudulent acts

Frauds in the past
In the past there had been complaints about frauds in elections. The fraudulent acts involved inaccurate electoral rolls, false voters, counting frauds, etc. That the Election Commission took two long years in place of three months for the accurate preparation voters lists and all relevant subjects for the 2008 election for avoiding the previous shortfalls now seem to have failed, if one has to believe Jalil- no good reason to disbelieve him. That means that our systems are inefficient, corrupt and unreliable. We cannot have angels though from heaven for the job. The same inefficient and unreliable lots have to be put again and again to do the job unless and until it corrects from within and becomes more reliable one. That also means that we should have the mid term election right now and should be ready for such other in future as well till we become efficient and reliable through repeated exercises for likely transparency.

Hasina did not disown fraudulence
Quite obviously Hasina has reacted in New York (She is staying there) as is reported in medias in Dhaka on the morning of 29th September that she has advised Jalil to resign from the position of M.P. he had been elected in the same process that Jalil himself termed as fraudulent. That’s Jalil’s own matter. But why did not Hasina say anything so far yet on the underhand deal of Sheikh Rehana and others in the fraudulent mechanics! Such lack of transparency has further increased doubts about her integrity and that in turn strengthened the case for immediately holding the mid term election by her government.

Author: M.T. Hussain

Secular Hasina urged Communal Minority Group to Save Democracy in Bangladesh!

There was a news report published in a Dhaka daily with a two column cover photo on the 27th September that the Bangladesh Prime minister Sheikh Hasina in a an audience with her in New York the previous day with some delegates of the minority communal group asked them to help protect democracy from any likely threat in the country.

Was that not a curious matter first that ‘secular’ party chief Hasina allowed audience to a communal group staying in New York and claiming to be something for Hasina’s secular political Persuasion in the country? Even so, that curious matter happened. Why?

It is pleasing to hear about preservation of democracy by any body in politics. But it is also true that some politicians of the Awami League genre disturbed democracy at quite many instances and stages. Hasina’s ‘illustrious’ father historically well known to have gone rough with multi-party democracy in the country so much so that despite his earlier stand for open and multi-party democracy before saddling on to the State power turned an absolute dictator of the worst kind. He swept on the multiparty democracy and pluralism to one party State, and for repression of the one party rule he used extra constitutional Rakhi Bahini to contain dissenting voices that are common with pluralism and multi-party democracy. He closed down all newspapers, many of long standing and popular thus making unemployed huge working journalists except for only four for his own sycophancy two under his direct control and other two under his nephew Moni just only to play sycophancy and not for open freedom of speech and thought as are pre-requisites for democratic exercises.

It was more curious matter in Bangladesh that the non democratic men and institution like the Bangladesh Army restored democracy from the dictator Hasina’s father’s clutch not peacefully though but through obvious bloodsheds.

In the backdrop of historical experience, what did Hasina point out to the communal elements representing there in New York, if at all, about at most ten percent of the people of the country for protecting democracy?

The onus is now on Hasina to save democracy. Provided she could behave right as democracy demands there is no danger because, the people love democracy and not, for example, one party dictatorial BAKSAL of her father.

Author: Dr. M.T. Hussain

Jalil’s Partial Disclosures- What Else Left?

Former Awami League General Secretary Abdul Jalil’s some disclosures about the Party’s high ups immoral secret deals in the December 2008 Bangladesh election made in London on the 24th September published there and also in many Dhaka dailies on the 25th and continued on the 26th though have produced some uproar in conscious circles were certainly not everything connected with the black deal that he also has hinted at to disclose more facts in the clandestine matter.

Whatever Jalil has disclosed about for saddling the Awami League to the power of the State of Bangladesh and Sheikh Hasina the Prime Minister for the second term secretly with person to person contact, Sheikh Rehana, Hasina’s younger sister and the most likely immediate inheritance to the throne following Hasina, being the crucial player in the deplorable immoral game. The other player, he mentioned, was a national organization, could have been misplaced for the reason that some key person in the organization could have been in the fowl game but cannot certainly be the whole organization involving every one in the set up. These disclosures though new in the mouth are nothing new to circles that had been keeping track of things in the nasty game for the last nine months. However the cynics got a reconfirmation of what they have been hunching about and looking for reconfirmation in the matter.

What must be deeply probed into for the dignity and security of the nation is that there had been other more important players that Jalil did not disclose. Whether he would know and even if he knew all about would disclose in public is uncertain.

The whole game of satanic nexus 1/11, the Caretaker Government and the Army Chief Moin had been actively joined by Indian central intelligence agency R&AW. Whoever of the DGFI did help in the deal, it was due to Moin’s direct initiative and order, because he was the head not only of the defense forces but also of the DGFI. The Indian Bengali High Commissioner in Dhaka Pinak in concert with some other powerful players played the external decisive role that was played, if Jalil said the truth about, internally by Rehana. The two in groups joined hands in the secret deal. Even if Jalil knows about this nexus he is not going to disclose it, I am afraid. It is amazing to note that Jalil has not mentioned the name of Moin who had been the key player in the whole game from 1/11 to the safe exit from Dhaka following his ‘retirement’ from the Army, despite his every attempts to get another extension that Hasina was very much willing to give Moin but could not do so for otherwise pressures from within.

The Awami League has been hardly any of democratic but all through a fascist organization. Power game is the only issue dear to their leaders. Though money- making goes with politics in Bangladesh and Jalil being one of the successful bankers need not go for money making possibly any more now onwards, he had very likely high hopes for power in the administration that he longed this time but failed to get hold of with no hope in future. His frustration might as such be the cause for the outburst even though that risked his life and profession in Bangladesh. Now the question is, would he go on saying all other truths or put a stop to the rest he has not disclosed yet.

Author: Dr.M.T. Hussain

Guiding and Misguiding Innocent Simple Folks

‘Misguiding’
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina has asked the people on the Eid Day, as reported in some Dhaka dailies, not to get ‘misguided by self seekers’. She stated further that her father had sacrificed for the cause of the people that she also would do being his daughter. That was a nice occasion to listen to such pleasing words from her. But the people would rather tend to keep their fingers crossed.

Ponder
Her activities so far during the last nine months or so, if one would forget what she did during her first term (1996-2001) for the time being, any intelligent person may reasonably hesitate hundred times to go by her words than to doubt in whatever she says in almost any matter.

Betrayals
Both internally and in external matters, people have been fast loosing confidence on her leadership. Internal inefficiency, mismanagement, deteriorating law and order, politicizing everything from A–Z, on the one hand, and subservience of the administration and the country to external powers, on the other, that already earned her, according to a foreign research source, as the most despised leader just now in the country. Her Foreign Minister concluding a visit to the big brother’s capital recently has offered them the Road and Ashuganj River Port Transit that she is soon going to reconfirm through signing the relevant document. She has offered three multinational companies based in the USA-Conoco Phillips and in Ireland -Tullo to sign the inequitable oil and gas exploration deals in the off shore that the people have already risen to protest and protect the national valuable resource. She has already compromised the security of one tenth of the country in the southeast or in the CHT region for providing advantage not only of the big brother but also for some other foreign vested interest groups destined to perpetuate inequity of one group of residents against the other in the area that even her much higher stature father did not dare to venture into. When these issues running deep against the interest of the country are very fresh in people’s memory, how should she dare say that being imbued with the ‘sacrifice’ of her illustrious father, she would not betray the cause of the country and the people.

Inspiration
Well, it is nice to draw inspiration from the sacrifice of any illustrious one much more so for someone illustrious and also fatherly figure. There would have been nothing injurious in such illustration of the daughter to follow her father provided the father would consistently pursued the cause as in open rhetoric he uphold before being saddled to the State power. No elderly conscious men and women can forget that her father as the opposition leader in Pakistan and that in the topmost position in the administration in independent Bangladesh had been two different personalities, admirable earlier one and condemnable the latter.

Cheap popularity
Her father was known to be a champion of democracy, equity and welfare of the common people that the people believed in their own way. Thus he earned cheap popularity in the 1960s and particularly in the run up to the general election of the country in late 1970. That cheap popularity gave him and his party overwhelming majority victory in 1970 election almost as Hasina won apparently in 2008 December election.

Bloods
Unfortunately, people had no smooth sailing for democracy but a bloody war, at whose fault that’s a different matter. ‘Blood and Tears’ (See Jyoti Sen Gupta 1978) however saddled him to power of the independent Bangladesh in January 1972. Even so, people had high hopes that then on democracy would take firm root in the country and welfare of the people in democratic set up would prevail in the country. But alas, people were led to deeper frustration not only in terms of pluralism and democracy but also in acute economic difficulties caused not only for mismanagement and inefficiency but also for agreeing to remain subservient to Delhi. The subservience was well documented in the 25 years treaty terms, particularly in the Articles 8, 9 and 10 so much so that even military hardware purchase approval had been kept at the pleasure of the big brother! In fact, these terms of subservience happened to be replica of the Exile Government P.M. Tajuddin’s ‘Seven Point’ undertaking of total subservience to Delhi as pre condition for armed intervention by India for making Bangladesh independent of Pakistan (Oli Ahad, Jatiya Rajniti 1945-75, 2nd Edn. Dhaka, n.d., p. 450). It was incidentally known later on that Syed Nazrul Islam, the Exile Government Acting President, failing to bear the shocks of the terms of ignominy fainted then and then after the P.M. Tajuddin had signed the Seven Point undertaking in his presence.

People’s misery and their fortune making
People’s frustration mounted to the peak when they realized that in midst of misery and massive hunger of the common millions, the kith and kin of the top boss along with the party cadres of various levels were getting fatty and rich quicker not through lawful and moral means but by resorting to all forms of corruptions! The Law enforcing agencies were helpless in containing the massive corruption. Even the army deployed failed to halt the corruption not for inability to identify and arrest the corrupted lots of the ruling party but for the top boss’s direct order not to ‘harass’ the party men and followers even though they had been almost 95% of the smugglers, looters, snatchers, rent seekers, etc.

Loot Pat Samity
Realizing these wide spread corruption going on causing untold sufferings of the millions of common poor people, the oldest of the politicians and then put in house arrest for years after 1972 Maolana Bhashani through his clandestine and insignificant media issued leaflets, timely booklets, etc. protesting against all those unlawful and immoral acts terming the party as the ‘LOOT PAT SAMITY’ or association of looters and muggers. At one occasion the top leader or Hasina’s father also admitted frankly that many countries had gold mines but he had mines of thieves. His Red Cross Relief Chairman Gazi Golam Mostafa did not make only the biggest relief misappropriation but also he was known to amass properties so huge that he had alone in some Indian bank Taka one thousand million. Cynics say that that money in the Indian bank had caused his death along with his wife in the Indian soil in a ‘car accident’! Other leaders were known to have had about four thousand million Taka in Swiss banks as I read the facts in some London newspapers in mid 1975.

R&AW’s Rakhsi Bahini
Corruptions, inefficiency, nepotism, favoritism were not everything, the political and social dissents when naturally had been spreading, State repression were let loose on all opponents. The private hoodlum groups for torture of opponents had been reinforced by the killer but unconstitutional RAKKHI BHINI planned, controlled and operated by the Indian central intelligence agency, the R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing, a misnomer). The annihilation, inhuman torture and killing of opponents went unaccounted for and remained unaccounted as yet. Some estimates stated that killing in three and a half years during 1972 to mid August 1975 went not less than 37,000 and up to 40,000 with impunity.

Lone party BAKSAL
The most unfortunate matter was that when such killings and all forms of repression could not bring any welfare of the common people and the leader felt incapable to continue in power through popular support, he made a decree on the 25th January 1975 in the Parliament session of the historic shortest duration of 13 minutes that put the last nails into the coffin of multi-party democracy. Although there had been officially pluralism since the days of January 1972, the top leader’s words and utterances had been God sent messages and laws in action. He formalized thus the sole dictatorship by introducing one party rule, forbade all other parties except his own one slightly changed in appellation as the BAKSAL or Bangladesh Krisak Sramik Awami League. Thus the one time democrat turned himself shamelessly as the absolute dictator and the State a country of darkness. That darkness deepened to the peak in mid June 1975 when he banned all newspapers except four, two under his direct government control and other two under the ownership of his dear nephew Moni for anything but propagating sycophancy that he deeply loved to have. Thus the freedom of press was not only completely choked to death but also made thousands of journalists unemployed and many popular newspapers banned for good from publication that were not restored until after the victorious coup of August 1975.

Indira’s pleasure
Amazingly, when all freedom loving people and the free world condemned the one time democrat for turning himself into a dictator, the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi being known as the guardian of the so-called ‘largest democracy in the world’ congratulated him for introducing the BAKSAL.

Banga Enemy
The people were dumbfounded with no hope for any outlet from the “Animal Firm”. So it was obvious that the patriotic army struck him down and then restored pluralism and multi-party democracy. People felt so greatly relieved that they welcomed the deliverance spontaneously. There was protest anywhere by any person much less by any group for the leader who had been undoubtedly popular at one time. In London I had experience of watching celebrations and public meetings in support of the fall at the Aldwich area in front of the India House, Aldgate area, Oxford Street, Hyde Park Speakers Corner, etc. There could have been fear of the army in Dhaka against any such protest by the lovers of the demagogue but what about any such protest being held in the free places like London, etc.? I recall further that the BBC TV in London at 1 P.M. in the news on the 15th August 1975 displayed live coverage of dishonoring the portrait of the leader at the premises and pavements of the 28 Queens gate, that is, in front of the Bangladesh High Commission premises. In other words, when the leader fell, he was the most despised person that the British renowned journalist Anthony Mascarenhas termed as falling from the position of the FRIEND OF BAGA/BANGLA TO THE POSITION OF THE ENEMY (The Sunday Times, London, 17 August 1975). Who would disown these assessments of facts?

Remain true Democrat
Private and personal illustration of father by daughter is however one thing and national cause of crucial importance is another. Hasina has to remember that peoples’ love for any body or any leader is not all time enduring but subject to change with commissions and omissions. Should Hasina keep up with her father’s earlier attitudes for pluralism and open democracy she would be welcome in the position, but if she turns on to the dictator and oppressive stature of her father that he took on before his tragic fall she may not be welcome as she had been in January 2009. Failing to identify and isolate the two stature of her father, she would not be telling the real truth and as such would only be misguiding the common simple folk either ignorant of the facts or have forgotten the ugly stature of her father in the passage of time.

Author: Dr.M.T. Hussain

Pointing Fingers at Bangladesh’s Smallness: What End?

Pointing fingers
Not that everybody in the nature is equal but in common unequal. As a geographical entity Bangladesh is smaller than many countries, but not smaller in population size but the 8th largest in the world. Even so, fingers are pointed out to Bangladesh as something helpless for the geographical location and size. It’s really a matter of wonder to me when the chorus is joined by not only some ‘intellectuals’ here but also by cabinet ministers of this government, in particular.

Product of historical forces
The geographical location, size and in some way vulnerable position of Bangladesh territory are products of historical forces of the last six decades or so. Whether the historical forces had been right or wrong in value judgment is a different matter. But they had been the realities of the times and actions of our forefathers.

East Bengal/Bangladesh
Bangladesh as the country is known after 1971 had been in more factual reality East Bengal of the British period (1757-1947). In social term the common people in the area had been worst sufferers during the British Rule. Incidentally the majority people happened to be Muslim in religious belief, but the elite landholders, property owners and social power holders in the main belonged to the non-Muslim class save a few exceptions. That was not the social elite class structure before the end of the eighteenth century or to be exact before the introduction of the so-called Permanent Settlement in 1793 A.D. by the British East India Company Governor General Cornwallis. Before 1757 .D., during the Muslim Rule of several centuries, the elite land owning came not only from non-Muslims but also from Muslims, as well. There was thus some balance in social justice and equity among all religious people. In addition to distributive justice, the Muslim sovereigns, no matter whether located in Delhi/Agra or elsewhere in greater Bengal such as in Dhaka, at Sonargaon, etc. stood for social justice and equity in terms of Islamic equality between man and man, despite feudalism, not in the way of in-built social inequality of caste segregation and injustice of the non Muslims of much older culture and civilization.

Fall out of the Company Rule
The British colonialists despite change of the mode of Company rule to the Crown’s control in 1858 following the revolt and first independence movement in 1857, the Permanent Settlement was kept unaltered that perpetuated the disadvantages of the overwhelming Muslim people so much so that not only their earlier elite land owning and property owning lots broken down to almost non-entity but also the distributive justice of the Muslim period to almost ashes. The age-old Muslim Wakaf system of distributive justice for education and equitable social welfare had been annulled almost along with the Permanent Settlement that was not restored though partially in the Wakaf Act of 1913 arduously tabled in the Imperial Legislative Council by M.A Jinnah in 1911.

The British and Lackeys
The British rulers having had aid of their local henchmen of the new propertied class turned to enemies of the overwhelming majority people of East Bengal who happened to be Muslims. In the beginning of the twentieth century the people of East Bengal and Assam had a ray of hope for emancipation from the oppression and exploitation in the partition of the region into two separate provinces, East Bengal & Assam and West Bengal. West Bengal had Calcutta its capital and East Bengal & Assam got Dacca as the capital of the new province. Unfortunately, the division that promised some benefit to East Bengal and development at par with Calcutta centered West Bengal was not liked by the elites who had already established themselves as the propertied and advanced elite during the past British rule then gone on for 150 years. They rose in protest and revolt to annul the partition and get abandoned the creation of the new province and the new capital Dacca by the British Government in London. The terrorist movement of the Bengali mode started then and then that among other terrorists happened to produce Surya Sen, Khudiram etc. from among the extremist ‘Hindu middle classes’ (Azad, India Wins Freedom, Delhi, 1988/1992, p.5) having had set the goal for epical Hindu Ram Raj in Bengal. The Bengal poet Tagore not still then have had received the Nobel Prize in Literature actively joined the movement for annulment of the partition of Bengal through his writing of special poems, joining in meetings, rallies, processions etc., if he had not direct link with the active terrorists. Their main slogan was that they stood to preserve their MOTHER BENGAL from VIVISECTION by the sword of the Jabans (Foreigner Muslims)!

The Congress
The Congress Party established in 1885 by a British bureaucrat Octavian Hume by then turned into elite Hindu organization went on to lend support to the anti vivisection movement of the Calcutta based Bengalis. The East Bengal people, the Muslims in particular being unorganized against the joint onslaught of the Congress and the Calcutta elites rose to unite for preservation of the new province of East Bengal and Assam and the age old Muslim city Dacca as the capital. Nawab Khawja Salimullah of Dacca, a great philanthropist, provided the leadership with all earnest and huge sacrifice. The founding of the All India Muslim League in Dacca in 1906 was the direct outcome of his effort in organizing the backward people of East Bengal and the Muslims, in particular.

The Crown Yielded
Unfortunately for the people of East Bengal and Assam the British Crown yielded to the pressures of the Congress Party, the Calcutta elites and their terrorist activities on the increase and so annulled the partition through a Royal Decree in December 1911, washed off their hands from the ‘settled fact’ of East Bengal province and restored status quo of the pre 1905 position; Dhaka was abandoned as the capital of the new province to its previous District/Division status. All development works connected to the new province were stopped and the people of East Bengal once again relapsed into frustration and backwardness. Calcutta rejoiced the ‘re-unification’ of Bengal having all their previous privileges and authority restored. The Calcutta elites of the Congress genre celebrated the abandonment of the new province as their great victory for MOTHER GOD BENGAL! The Muslim League as poorly organized as they were failed to uphold the new province.

The Muslim League did again
The East Bengal Muslims having the banner of the Muslim League in about three decades gained strength and power to assert themselves not alone though but with the Muslims of other parts of India under the same banner and under the sparkling leadership of M.A. Jinnah decisively and through popular mandate restored once again in 1947 the East Bengal province and the capital Dhaka not though as the province of the British empire but of the new Muslim independent State of Pakistan. Very amazingly this time the Calcutta elite had forgotten all about the unity of their MOTHER GOD BENGAL! Nehru, Patel etc of their leaders who mattered then in a deep despise in 1947 let East Bengal have the present geographical shape, ‘truncated and moth eaten’, go out of their Indian federation. Well, they wanted unity of Bengal and the Punjab only at the cost of continuing subjugation in minority status of the Muslims all over in the post British Indian subcontinent, not providing any scope for autonomy even in the Muslim majority provinces in the western region and in the eastern locality as Bengal had happened to be (Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal 1937-1947, Delhi, 1976, pp.244-245), and as had been proposed to be provided in the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan but by design or default exploded by Nehru ( S. S. Husain, The Wastes of Time: Reflections on the Decline and Fall of East Pakistan, Dhaka, 1995, pp.108-09; Azad, Op. Cit., p 165). That obviously meant for East Bengal nothing of any provincial status much less independent and sovereign Bangladesh and Dacca the capital as they now enjoy the positions, honors and statuses.

Post 1971
In 1971, another episode was enacted. Despite their covert designs the province was not amalgamated into their domain; Dacca also retained the status of capital not only of the province but also of the independent State of Bangladesh. Thus the historical forces of the times played their parts in the making of the geographical smallness and vulnerability.
During the Pakistan period the smallness and vulnerability was not that threatening as India and Pakistan had been contending powers in the region. Pakistan still is the contending power for it has acquired nuclear power despite massive poverty of the common people. Bangladesh has the same sort of widespread poverty but lack in nuclear arsenal to have inner strength and confidence against the big neighbor that also encircles Bangladesh.

Many smaller
There are many smaller countries in the world with the kind of disability Bangladesh has. Are they all infested with the fear and inferiority complex as some elites here including some cabinet ministers have constantly been showing up of late?

Visionless lackeys
Bangladesh foreign relations and diplomacy if could be lifted out from the kind of over dependence on the big neighbor, there should be no dearth of friends to help in other parts of the globe. Bangladesh’s huge manpower though a liability in some sense, they could be strength and assets, as well, to fight in all fronts the likely adversaries provided they are trained, educated and motivated in the way needed. Failure to do these tasks ahead of the nation is the likely cause of inferiority, helplessness and vulnerability and not the territorial smallness and encirclement as such. The obsolete cliché of blame game of ‘anti Indian mentality’ reposed on the erstwhile Pakistan in Bangladesh that ended nearly four decades ago would not cu the ice unless and until the big neighbor continues to annihilate the people of Bangladesh in every possible fronts from almost A to Z. The ball is thus in India’s court. That is however said nothing to absolve the Government of their onus to take on and continue to pursue the dignified sovereign policy path for honorable existence of the country.

Author: M.T. Hussain

Shaikh Hasina’s Blood Thirst still Unmet!

A retired judge of the Bangladesh High Court, a close senior friend of mine, phoned me on the 16th September morning and conveyed some of his feelings about P.M. Sheikh Hasina’s latest note of caution given in the floor of the House on the 15th in apprehension of another Peelkhana massacre. He began his reaction, “ROKTO JOKHON DIECHI ARO ROKTO DIBO” that her father did arrogantly stated on the 7th March 1971 Ramna Race Course historic meeting. The blood letting episode that followed, some recorded and some not recorded at all, is now tragic part of Bangladesh history, he reminded me on the telephone.

Hasina told the house further that she believes in the democracy as had been defined long ago in the mid nineteenth century by US the President Abraham Lincoln. She did not say anything though that the very US President gave his life not only to save democracy in his own country the way they believed in and practiced but also preserved the Federation and its integral sovereignty right then threatened to be from falling apart. That she spoke about the Peelkhana tragedy of blood bath perpetrated on the February 25-26 gone on for over fifty odd hours under her administrative nose and knowledge, how is that she had again the information for similar and another bloodletting to tell the Parliament for what! To wash off her hand in advance for any blame? How can she do that wash off that she cannot do for the simple reason that she is the all-powerful Prime Minister of Bangladesh as ever with absolute majority in the Parliament having all control at her disposal including the Defense Force of the country? Are not the rhetoric she made then in the matter something fishy?

On the 16th morning fortunately I got in the Internet a 14,000+ words item that analyzed in minute details the BDR massacre. The gist, I should say, was that some well-known top ups of the Awami League (I refrain from naming them for security fears) were fully involved in the massacre from behind and in full knowledge of the P.M. Hasina and the Army Chief Moin. The fact has other proofs in that the 3 investigation processes have already been seriously dented and so kept many issues secret for protecting the masterminds behind of the ruling party. The trial process thus, according to a senior specialist, is certain to run into ‘hocus-pocus’ (See weekly Holiday, Dhaka, 18 September 2009). There is reason to believe that Hasina had the nod for the massacre for reasons close to her heart. One, she believes in reprisal killings at the rate of ‘ten for one’ that she had a standing order to her cadre killers. Two, she hates politics but has taken on it for ‘avenging the blood of her father’ as she had on record told to the renowned BBC journalist Serajur Rahman in early 1980s in London Bush House (BBC Head Quarters) (See also Dhaka Bangla daily the Naya Diganta, 24 March 2009). The skeptics are saying that the brutal killing of the 57 brilliant and senior army officers in the February mayhem was not enough to meet her thirst for blood of the genre who killed her father in August 1975; that is why she is on planning to have some more bloodletting to meet her unmet thirst for blood, and to keep her, according to Serajur Rahman again, HUQQA HUAs or sycophant lots blind following in chorus.

After all democracy is conscientious active participation in arguments, reasons and rationality of all concerned and not HUQQA HUAs blind followings.

Author: Dr. M.T. Hussain

Undue Interference of the Secularist Government

The Awami League vows for secularism and non-interference into religious matters. So the Government of Bangladesh of the party is honor bound to follow their well-known commitment to remain and behave as secular in all matters, particularly in religious matters. Unfortunately, they are contrarily found to continue to betray their commitment particularly, for Islamic issues.

The nearly two hundred year old tradition, convention and usage since 1828 A.D. of the renowned Sholakia (Kishoreganj) for leading the Eid Congregation by the appointed Imam of the MUTAWALLI is being interfered with by the Government of P.M. Sheikh Hasina this time in September 2009 by removing and replacing the regular Imam by appointing a controversial NGO personality. Why?

The Sholakia is nothing of any government organization like say, Baitul Mukarram, but a non-governmental organization and is run by its own mode of Islamic tradition maintained for ages. What business the secularist government had to do there by the naked interference as they did flouting the Islamic norms and traditions?

Some skeptics were taunting Hasina that she is going to establish Muslim Caliphate in Bangladesh and so has gone for the venture in the matter as a test case. Others say that she would ask her newly appointed Imam to say special prayer for her late father and for herself as were used to be done for the Caliphs during the past Caliphates! That would be in a way appreciable venture for all Muslim countries, as she would abandon the People’s Republic for Islamic Republic! She would certainly then abandon JOY BANGLA for VITORY TO ISLAMIC CALIPHATE OF BAGLADESH or for any such new Muslim slogan! Keeping ahead the next OIC meet she may thus broaden her support in the organization and in the Muslims countries. Older ones may recall that how Houwery Bumedin, the former Algerian President, did manage to take in his own plane Hasina’s father along from Dhaka to the OIC meet in February 1974 in Lahore that for her father’s great relief absolved him of the high treason charge for welcome recognition of Bangladesh by Pakistan. How could Hasina be averse to the OIC?

Let God bless Hasina for the initiation she has thus made for the Islamic Republic from the Sholakia Eid Jamat Imamate venture.

Author: M.T. Hussain

Rent Seeking Style by the Awami League Groups Since January 09 Onwards in Bangladesh

Razzmatazz of immorality
The last eight months beginning in January 09 of the Awami League rule of Bangladesh has been nightmares for all the non-Awami Leaguers who constitute not less than half of the 150 million people of Bangladesh. Personal and group annihilations of all the opponents have been going on almost uninterrupted. Killing of the opponents political believers have been a sort of sport of the Awami League groups. Unfortunately the most shameful is that the students of colleges and universities have been in the forefront for all inhuman acts and terrorisms including merciless murder of the fellow students of opponent political groups. Possibly the most shameful and tragic matter is that they have been on with those beastly acts at the tacit nod of the top leader, in particular. Illegal rent seeking including unlawful tender snatching have gone on and they have been earning millions in Taka not only in Dhaka but also almost in every locations wherever they have scopes and can lend their hands on.

Boss’s ‘warning’!
At some stage we knew that the top boss had ‘warned’ them not to indulge in those illegal and anti-social acts; but the message either went unheeded or enjoyed tacit nod to earn as much you can in the scope available. The boss had been relieved of the 13 corruption cases as against none of the opposition party not for their weaknesses being ‘politically motivated’ but for the simple fact that the top boss holds all and absolute power of the State. How could then a boss with guilt in own credit instruct others not to indulge in unethical and immoral anti-social acts? Even if one does, that cannot obviously have any moral force behind for any compliance

Three groups
The worrying thing is that the those who are helpless victims of rent seekers beginning in 2009 is that they have to pay illegal rents to three groups, not one of the same genre as they used to before 2009. This is because, now the seekers though being of the same party genre are divided into factions as they would have their own booty well ahead not after making division among the contenders.

Rent seeking in multi-party system
It is true that in multiparty open democracy rent seeking by political parties is nothing uncommon even in advanced countries. But there is a difference. The rent payers get due receipts and their contribution is subjected to open account and income tax exemption benefit for such payers. Here in Bangladesh the matter does not go that legal and known accountable way.

Fall out of unmet election pledges
The rent seeking matter has taken graver turn here for the facts that the Awami League despite their commitment in the 2008 election manifesto to provide at least one person of each family into regular wage earning employment has already evaporated in the last eight months that frustration led obviously to rent seeking in rather more vigorous way, particularly, by those aspirants of the party cadres. The other frustrating issue is that as days goes by and the fraudulent nature of the election result of December 2008 is more known to the people, the ruling groups being exposed of their dishonesty have naturally gone into hara-kiri to desperately seek rent and earn by hook or crook in the shortest possible time before they are out from the State power by one way or the other. One reliable source told me that the areas of possible sources of rent payers have been amicably divided in most cases, and where amicable settlements were not agreed upon they engage in infighting between factions for not only rent seeking but also for tender snatching, dominance in specific areas, taking lease of local markets even in rural areas, from college- university student admission quotas, hall admission seats etc. – one may think of anything for expanding influence sphere for future and timely political show down against opponents.

No declaration of assets
It is amazing to note that despite the Finance Minister Muhit’s open public assurance that for transparency assets and properties of the ministers and M.P. s etc. would be made public by February 2009, and then recommitted to do so by April or May at the latest looked like by now in mid September as a forgotten matter! Why?

Dhaka University campus scene
The Dhaka University being the premier higher education institution and located in the capital city, students of the Awami League variety or the Students League concentrates most naturally in this campus. Their leaders are no less powerful than any minister, because, they remain very close to the top boss for mutual interest and support. They have chauffer driven cars at their disposal obviously at the cost of public exchequer. Drivers’ wages, maintenance bills of vehicles, fuel cost, etc are not born by the student leaders from their own purse but by money from rent seeking or even from fuel stations bills paid by from the public exchequer.

Union Bosses
Other cadre groups as well like labor leaders, trade union bosses of various units like Doctors’ Engineers, bank employees etc. enjoy similar cash benefits at bargain price from ‘clients’. The professional union bosses earn special booties from appointments, promotions and transfers. Even dismissals from jobs of certain unwanted guys could be rewarding by discrete means.

Late President Abu Syed Chowdhury
I clearly recall here the cry in wild of the late President Justice Abu Syed Chowdhury on the 23rd December 1973 warning in public somewhat indirectly though to the party men and the bosses as well of the time, ‘NOITIKOTAHIN KONO JATI DUNIATE TIKE THAKTE PARENA’ (no immoral nation can survive as honorable nation in the world). Such was the headline in the daily Bengali ITTEFAQ the next day on the morning of 24th December. The misfortune for the saying of the universal truth dawned on him immediately that he had to resign right on that day as the President of Bangladesh, obviously by pressure of the then top boss of the Bangladesh Government. Naturally as the retired justice of the High Court and a respectable person of conscience had to say the truth in public as he had fully realized the total degradation of ethics and morality among the ruling class of the time that genre unfortunately rules Bangladesh since 2009, as well. Unfortunately we don’t have a highly ethical person and to utter the same truth with courage about erosion of morality at that position like Justice Chowdhury today. His prophesy was not incorrect but of historical truth with a difference though. The nation had crushed those thugs and immoral genres by the 15th August Revolution of 1975 and so re-earned its own survival.

Author: Dr.M.T. Hussain

No India’s (JUJU) Fear of Sheikh Hasina!

Silly
On the 9th September, Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the House and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh while speaking in the Parliament and seen in the TV screen looked very exuberant and confident that she had no fear at all of India JUJU. Her logic and assertion appeared to have been based on that the people of Bangladesh fought for and sacrificed for independence in 1971. On the same evening in the Parliament there was a row and serious indiscipline continuing for fifteen minutes as the report we had in the media that the 1971 war owed all to the armed men and not to any politicians! The indiscipline cooled down only after the State Minister Tajul Islam, himself an army man and freedom fighter amended his comment and included in the list the politicians, as well. The other silly remark she made was that should Bangladesh not join the ‘Asian Highway’ the country would be isolated from the world!

Sheikh Hasina in 1971
Recalling back one may find that Sheikh Hasina in 1971 had both good and bad days; she had been carrying her first issue JOY and her father in the West Pakistan prison. The independence war went on in the real war fronts not only in the absence of her father but also in her being in almost royal care of the army doctors and nurses in the Dhaka Cantonment Combined Military Hospital (CMH). In that sense State Minister Tajul Islam was right before amending his first comment about politicians’ participation in the war fronts. Many fought undoubtedly very courageously for the name of Hasina’s father but none for Hasina’s name, because she was then a young house wife of a working young scientist and rarely known to other people except to the very near ones. The question of her participation in the war did not arise at all for her age just passed teens and first child carrying or expecting mother. Only historical forces and incidents of rare kind made her the P.M. not only this time in 2009 but also in the earlier term (1996-2001). Even so, when she as the P.M. shows courage for upholding the sovereignty of Bangladesh against India (JUJU), the attitude is undoubtedly laudable. People would appreciate her in the exuberance shown. But the crucial questions remain elsewhere.

India in 1971
The first is the tricky issue of legacy of India’s active help in the 1971 war of independence and the way they came in for help that in the end despite heroic sacrifices of the Bangladeshi freedom fighters, the war ended in the form of war between India and Pakistan. Whatever may have been the argument against this thesis and whatsoever have been the style of rhetoric, the surrender of Pakistan Eastern Command was not made, in fact, to the joint command of the Mukti Bahini and the Indian Army Eastern Command but to the Indian command General Arora alone who signed the document as against Pakistan’s General Niazi. That documentarily made Bangladesh then an occupied territory of Indian army. The incident preceded another lacuna that established India as the invader for at least three days of the territory of East Pakistan starting on the 3rd December 1971 for the simple reason that Indian Government did not recognize Bangladesh as an independent country until on the 6th December 1971. Such initial lacunas put the Indian lordship on top that clearly impinged on and limited the sovereignty of Bangladesh. Thus until the withdrawal of the Indian army in March 1972, Bangladesh had been not only under Delhi’s full army control but also the administration were being run by them.

Fall out of 1971
The withdrawal of the Indian Army from the soil of Bangladesh was not completed and took effect unless and until the so-called ‘friendship’ treaty was undertaken on the 19th March 1972 in Dhaka that made Dhaka in reality subservient to Delhi for the term of 25 years set therein. The articles of the treaty 8, 9 and 10 were clear proofs for the point. That amazingly looked like an extension of the Seven Point Treaty Tajuddin, the Exile Government P.M., undertook as pre condition for armed help before the war began in December 1971. The interesting issue about the total subservience under the treaty was such that the then Acting President of the country Syed Nazrul Islam got fainted as Tajuddin had signed the treaty in his presence in Delhi for the document was nothing but a signed piece of paper for Bangladesh to give in to remain bonded subservient to Delhi for good for Delhi’s help for winning in the impending war against Pakistan and getting Bangladesh out of Pakistan frame work. The clauses 8, 9 and 10 of the 25-year treaty, in fact, formalized those conditions of subservience Tajuddin had yielded. In other words, the recognized formal leader of Bangladesh gave a clear and irrevocable nod to those disabilities about sovereignty of Bangladesh at per with India.

1996 onwards
The treaty duration expired in March 1997 when Hasina had been in power as the P.M. in her first term. She tried to renew the treaty for her safe survival, but could not do so for stiff opposition in the country against the treaty. But she took other means to give India other advantages against the sovereignty of Bangladesh. The first one being the 30 years treaty for Ganges water sharing that in fact gave all advantage to India so much so that Bangladesh since then continued to receive less than what normal natural quantity should have been obtained as from the age old natural course of water flow down in Bangladesh territory in the Padma River. The other one was the inequitable treaty signed with the Hill Tracts people so much so that the people other than tribal groups turned into second-class citizens in their own ‘sovereign’ country.

Term 2009 onwards
In the second term she began in January 2009, she is well on for giving land transit to India first by nodding to use the Ashuganj River port that was resisted by the people for decades, seems to have yielded to India for the Tipaimukh Dam /Barrage at the cost of consequent desertification of about one fourth of the eastern south of Bangladesh that is estimated to cost Bangladesh nearly two and a quarter million Taka loss of production etc. each year for adverse effects of the Tipaimukh Dam just as Farakka Barrage‘s adverse effects have been costing nearly one and half million Taka each year to Bangladesh and would continue so possibly at increasing figures year after year. Nod is given by the recent visit of the Bangladesh Foreign Minister also to the loss of Bangladesh due to India’s Gazaldoba Barrage erected recently at the upstream of the River Teesta like the Farakka is yet to be figured out but the likely figure would be anything of thousands of million Taka each year as adverse effects during each dry season scarcity of water flow since about a decade now as the Teesta Irrigation Project of Bangladesh has been made almost nonfunctional due to withdrawal of almost all water in the dry season by India (See, Asaf Ud Dowla, Daily Naya Diganta, 13 September, 2009). The amazing thing is that when she has been pursuing without putting the slightest resistance against India for the sovereignty of the country clearly as a loyal good woman of India, her humbug on the question of sovereignty can be nothing, to say the least, but only absurd rhetoric.

Anti-Indians
It is reported in The Times of India on September 11, 2009 that Delhi need be ‘hard’ on Dhaka for anything and everything that Bangladesh tend to hit India’s interest. The prestigious daily of India has invented that the bureaucracy and intelligence people being trained as ‘anti-Indian’ have been trying to restrain Hasina to become soft on India in any matter! What a new theory! Fortunately, the daily has, in their way, reconfirmed that compared to the patriotic bureaucracy she is much more for protecting Indian interests. Albeit, so. How can she forget that she had the best sympathy and protection in Delhi not only during her six years of trying time following the 1975 August coup in Dhaka but also it is well known that Delhi played the crucial role in bringing her the second term into power this time in the December 2008 general election revealing lately as the fraudulent one of only of its kind in the history of Bangladesh.

Humbleness
The real situation and geographical position is that Bangladesh has remained encircled by Indian territories almost on all sides. Bangladesh has, as such, genuine fear (JUJUR VOE) against the sovereignty and that mainly from India not only for India encircling Bangladesh but also much bigger in military might in comparison to the much smaller might of Bangladesh. There is thus no scope to remain careless about the threat that may at any time come from India as the past experience shows that since six decades now she has forcibly occupied many of her smaller neighbors and assimilated them all into the Indian domain, the only exception has been the continuing resistance in the Indian held Jammu and Kashmir.

India’s fear
I am sure India has a genuine fear that should India violate the sovereignty of Bangladesh, she might face continued resistance like the overwhelming people of Jammu and Kashmir now going on with huge sacrifices for over six decades. If Hasina has in mind the example of the continued resistance of the overwhelming majority people of Jammu and Kashmir, that is certainly appreciable and a different matter.

Hasina grossly wrong
I am afraid she is grossly wrong, illogical and very much silly when she said that Bangladesh would be isolated from the world unless it gets on the Asian High way obviously the way India has imposed on Bangladesh. Is that at all so? If she had really meant Asian Highway of the type of historic Grand Trunk Road of the 16th century that would have been something worth. Because we could then get road connection to the east and the West from further east of Akiab (Myammar) to Bangladesh to Delhi to Peshawar to Khybar to Kabul and onwards, not only to Nepal and Bhutan, our two other closest neighbors. Let’s not be fooled that we are now in 2009 A.D. in the fastest moving internet-age connecting one another from one corner of the globe to another in seconds, not even minutes. Besides, road transports are now a day considered not at all suitable for heavy goods both for quantity and for road durability in alluvial soil that most Bangladesh soil is. Bangladesh had no direct road/rail transports for the last six decades the way India has been insisting on and Hasina seems to have yielded to the idea. Even so, the people of Bangladesh, much less the country had not been isolated from the world. The silly remarks she made in the Parliament might have made, if one may use the term used by BBC’s renowned journalist Serajur Rahman, the HUQQA HUAs pleased but not any sensible one in the country.

Author: Dr. M.T. Hussain

Madarasa: Must be Closed Down for Attaining Vision 2021?

Romantic Professor

A University Professor in the presence of a Minister, some public representatives and academicians has predicted in course of a discussion in a posh hotel in Khulna on the 5th September (09) that all Madarasas must be closed down immediately for attaining ‘Vision 2021’. That was how a news item was published in a Dhaka Bengali daily on the 6th morning. The news item said further that there was some protests right then to the comment by some political activists of opposition parties of the Government, possibly, followers of enthusiastic Islamic faith.

Romantic Vision

The so-called Vision 2021 is nothing of the Professor’s own but of the Awami League Government now running the country since January 09. In this sense the comment he made for closing down the Madarasas for Vision 2021 is an agenda for implementation by the Government. It is thus crystal clear that he spoke for the Government both for the vision and for closure of the Madarasas, no matter if he is an active member of the Awami League or not. He seems to be nothing but a GOPALBHAR of the backward feudal Bengal’s silly past legacy.

Three ‘Secular’ governments

People in the know of things of the past two governments of the same genre have no hesitation to confirm that their earlier two versions of 1972-75 and the 1996-2001 had the same or exact intension in regard to the age old and historically one and a half millennium Madarasa learning and education in the Muslim world and so also for about 1000 years in the Bangladesh territory. But why the repeated romanticism and yet each time in the past ended in fiasco, if not this time.

What Vision 2021

Let us take first what Vision 2021 means? I have tried to know the details as a septuagenarian retired educator from all accessible sources including the Government but I must admit that I have not been able yet to specifically identify the bits and pieces of the Vision 2021. My experience as a life long educator ending the last life time decade in a private university education faculty as its head that development of the highest quality of manpower is the sine a qua non for any meaningful vision ahead of any society and country. There is as such no disagreement that we must employ all our available resources for development of manpower expertise through quality learning at all levels and meaningful youth education and training towards continuing life long education.

Comprehensive learning

Education of human child is not merely limited to training of physical natural instincts but also of all faculties commensurate with one’s inborn ability that mysteriously remains unequal. In addition, education must at the same time provide for human attitudes and qualities that are essential for corporate living in society with many others alongside. In other words, education means acquirement of cognitive knowledge, skill to face life from childhood to the end and positive attitude to life for useful social living. Secular education provides for the first two requirements but not for the third, that is, of attitude formation. That is where the controversy remains and continues between secular and non-secular religious education. The controversy is not only a matter of Bangladesh but of all civilized society. Western education is largely secular but even so they have kept religion in the system for essential need for attitude formation. Learning to live as a good law abiding citizen, an essential learning package at the early secondary education in all countries is nothing but curriculum implementation for right and positive attitude formation.

Learning of Muslims

Education of the Muslim children since the days of the Great Prophet in the early seventh century and continuing since then was designed for comprehensive personality building inclusive of the three main essentials and though known as Madarasa education in Arabic term but are both schools of elementary learning, on the one hand, and colleges and university of higher learning, on the other. The history and past proud legacy of the Muslims are that such comprehensive learning made them not only useful productive workers but also worthy citizens armed with spiritual powers. This is not to deny that there has been no depreciation in the system for various reasons, one being the fall in political power and the other in decline of learning areas. Thus the West, who borrowed from the Muslims learning in the middle ages despite crusades for two hundred years, thrived in but the Muslims declined. Lapsing into despair, on the one hand, and getting addicted to poorly perceived Sufism, on the other, made the things still worse for the Muslims all over their own places. The ill fate of colonialism made another big blow to their own self-confidence so much so that they took shelter to the mosques and age-old curriculum of learning in almost all Madarasa. Bangladesh remained no exception to the unfortunate reality despite ‘independence’ and self-rule of the Muslim majority people. The unending tussle of the so-called secularists and the non-secularists is on since about six decades now after the foreign colonialists left the land and the people enjoying self-rule since 1947. The tussle this time in 2009 sponsored and supported by the government of brute majority has reached a pinnacle when the Professor of Economics seems risen to lend support to the present government. There is nothing unusual in his lending support, but being an economist educator there are few riddles to reckon with.

Riddles

The first riddle is that as upholder of the theory of free market economics as the great teacher Adam Smith initiated and pursued by many others during the last two centuries, unfortunately abandoned ethics and morality from his noted thesis of Wealth of Nations (1776), amazingly despite the fact that he taught Ethics and Morality in his early career as a university professor in Britain. Unfortunately, when the ethics and morality was abandoned for greed, only material gain and heartless profit making as he did in propounding the free market economy, the teacher could not have been respected as any good and compassionate human being. Thus I would have thought that no economists should poke their dirty nose in educational curriculum making. After all economics is nothing of any original subject of learning as it only until recently remained a small part of political science (political economy). On the contrary Political Science along with Ethics and Morality remained essential learning materials of Philosophy itself considered as the original subject of learning since at least about two and a half millenniums. Islamic learning had the same feature from the very beginning and had mutual exchanges in the heydays of the Muslims based at Baghdad and Cairo in early middle ages, in particular, keeping full conformity with the basic Islamic learning of the Al Quran, Ahadis and pure monotheism or Tawheed for comprehensive learning for development of Muslim personality in both secular and spiritual matters.

Philosopher’s Job

Curriculum making need be almost an exclusive matter for the philosopher who sees life as a wholesome one just as Plato prescribed for his design of PHILOSOPHER KING (Plato, The Republic, Penguin, 1955, p.304). Making Philosopher King does not mean everybody to get training to become king but for indication of the apex only leaving others in the various levels and process as workers for various vocations and professions. In a way that would be both vocationalization of educational levels and for training in producing law abiding citizens imbued with loyalty based on ethics and morality for employment in needful socially productive jobs. To my understanding the Muslims in a way followed the Plato model for learning and education. In fact, the Muslims had interactions with the West in matters of learning and education, and so both benefited from each other. Tragedy followed latter due mainly to colonization of the Muslims by the West and gradual secularization of European education that they imposed them in the colony, and succeeded partly, not fully. The partial failure kept Madarasa education to survive in almost all Muslim lands though in depreciated form but not in full potential as that existed before. I am afraid what the present Government has been trying to do is to foster the British secular system otherwise known as the Macaulay prescription for producing ‘interpreters’ and not wholesome learned and trained balanced human personality.

Illusion and reality

There is still debate in the West and elsewhere if the West is one hundred percent secular or founded on Christian ethics, morality and values. In social reality, say Britain, the nursery of democracy and also of ‘secularism’ has no written constitution and mainly governed by Conventions and Usages that are all based on Christian Values, Ethics and Morality. But whatever amount of secularism is now practiced there that has been doing more harm than good. Their family values have eroded, institution of marriage is a despised thing, living together without marriage and wedlock is common thing there, illegitimate child is not considered anything bad as such. These have spread in the name of ‘freedom and secularism’ and hostility towards religious ethics and moral values. Or in other words, these are the widespread vices in the West; they cannot be anything other than serious vices for they have been destabilizing natural bondage of family values and human society and creating new chaos every day. Fortunately Muslim societies are still largely free from these social vices not for ‘benefit’ of secular education, much less for science and technology, but for integrated learning curriculum as the Madarasa education provides.

Dishonest History Professors

In Bangladesh there are some dishonest historians and professors of History who as well found taking recourse to mutilating Muslim history in the recent days, obviously by the sponsorship of the then ‘Secularist’ government in as much as in school-college secular textbooks against alone Muslim history and proud legacy. One example I came across is a textbook written by three History Professors that mentioned in the text that the Muslim women following the Hindu widows used to get self immolation in the funeral pyres of dead husbands (See, Classes XI- XII History Textbook, published by the Open University in 1998/2000, p.135)! Funeral pyre is a common system for well off non-Muslims and not for Muslims. Muslims religiously take such burning of dead bodies in open as inhumanly beastly and religiously HARAM or forbidden. How could such Professors of History be given charge for framing textbooks?

Identity Question

The romanticism for closing down the Madarasa by not only the Professor but by the present Government that had the same intention in 1996-2001 but failed and also tried in some blanket way in removing almost all Muslim and Islamic symbols and insignia from government institutions during 1972-75 remains there as self immolating so far as Islamic beliefs and values were concerned. They did not only scrap off the Quarnic inspirational Ayahs from the emblem of say, Dhaka University (RABBI JIDNEE ILMA- Oh Lord Creator, expand my knowledge), and from the Dhaka Education Board the previous emblem (IQRA BISME RABBIKAL LAZI KHALAQ- Read in the name of thy Creator Allah), apart from leaving off Quran Tilawat at the very onset of independence and outset of 1972 but modified later on due to public pressure the abandonment with reciting along with other religious books. These misdeeds of identity scrapping away of the Muslims alone and not of other religious people had all been prompted by the academicians as one renowned Professor (Later on died as national Professor and buried in national honor) frankly admitted to me sometime before his death that it was he who proposed the abandoning the term ‘Muslim’ from the appellation of the Jahangirnagar (Muslim) University (Savar), as the then Government did for the Salimullah Muslim Hall, Fazlul Haq Muslim Hall of Dhaka University, etc. To make the long story short it may safely be concluded that the game of sham secularization and so the intent to close down the Madarasa is thus fraught with grave danger against the long established identity of the Muslims who constitute 90% of the 150 million population of Bangladesh as in 2009.

Author:M.T. Hussain
11 September 2009