Now that that country is in the grip of political mayhem, discourses on its future are naturally debased. A kind of ennui among the general public has not helped the cause of sharpening awareness of ideas, particularly those concerning civil activism. Coterie politics has replaced the brand that once roused the entire nation. Intriguingly, politics far removed from the lives of the general mass is thriving albeit in a distorted and monopolised manner. In some way, it is autocracy by a set of oligarchy.
It is exactly at this point of political detachment, the Hutu-Tutsi type of fierce rivalry for power between the contending groups is claiming lives of the common people. With the indefinite blockade programme enforced, people's movement either in the capital or across other parts of the country, particularly on roads and highways, has become extremely risky. In some way Dhaka is detached from the rest of the country.
In a situation like this, security of people's lives has been seriously compromised. People with no political allegiance, while travelling on public buses or drivers, helpers or conductors of transports, are usually becoming the target of arson or bomb attacks. In an unusual situation like this, definitions of political programmes too are getting changed or otherwise reconstituted. For example, blockade is a more serious programme than strike or hartal -only more so when non-stop blockade is observed. But how ludicrous all it looks when blockade has to be reinforced by calling hartal!
Essentially, politics in all its forms and themes is imposed on people who are better of without it. It is awfully cruel to use the public as a fodder to political violence and carnage. Why should the common people be the target of political violence? Let the contending parties come to realise that every life is sacrosanct and if a single man, woman or child gets killed in the strife waged by the political parties, they should be charged with murder. Human liberty nowhere allows anyone to cause the most painful burn injuries to others who are not even enemies or rivals. They are as much the sons and daughters of this soil as those who inflict this barbaric injury and death.
Crimes like this do not lose any of their severity because those have been committed in the name of politics. But as a result of recurrence of such inhuman incidents, the intense shock and trauma the public have so long undergone are somewhat dissipated. The gradual psychic habituation is what points to something really ominous. An acceptance by default! Society's slide into lawlessness is the next probable step where taking life on the smallest of pretexts or no pretexts becomes an easy and simple proposition.
The other option is the ruthless use of force to deal with the perpetrators of such anti-social and criminal acts. In that case too, the outcome may not be in favour of democracy. Undue importance to such agencies and at times out-of-the-way operations by them end up creating a terror state. In either case, the values and norms of democracy stumble head over heels. There lies the danger of unregulated and irrational political practices which benefit none in the ultimate analysis.
In the name of democracy
Neil Ray | Published: January 19, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00
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