Dates and olive from Bangladesh******
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Nehal Adil
Bangladeshi dates and olive are getting popular not only in our country but abroad too. People prefer Bangladeshi fish and poultry too. They are being exported. Why Bangladeshi dates and olive could not be exported? Middle East is the biggest consumer of olive and dates. This is part of Arab culture and food habit. In our country dates and olive are imported mostly from Arab countries and even from Spain. We have an upper class which from the British time hates to consume local products. Are they the old British upper class? Obviously you can ask this question. They suffer from crisis of identity. This upper class has emerged after liberation without a cultural root, an analyst of urban anthropology told me. They make frequent foreign trips, go for medical check-up to Bangkok or Singapore, eat corn flakes with imported bottled milk and now it is a fashion to drink imported bottled water and at least filtered water managed by foreign companies. We are told there was a corrupt government in the past which patronised national companies and made black skinned millionaires. Not only the American ambassador but great free traders like the commerce minister denounce them. We must import and get into debt. That is free trade and democracy. An angry trader from Babubazaar told me the other day. But I think that is an over simplification of the reality around us. Everything depends on our people. I think, vast majority of our people started loving native things. They remember a man who wanted to make this country Sonar Bangla - Golden Bengal - with native products and native people. He was brutally killed by the enemy. The freedom fighter, who succeeded him, followed the capitalist road but he tried to create brown entrepreneurs, a national capitalist class. He too was brutally eliminated. The deadliest attack after one eleven came on his legacy and the nationalist capitalist class. They were branded as corrupt, their properties were confiscated. It was said, it was all meant to make room for foreign capital by handful of national traitors. Yet, the enemy has failed to kill our patriotism. They come out in millions to observe Pahela Baishakh and Ekushey February. On those occasions the state shows its muscle power as if it is a crime to observe those days. A man in black uniform told me in Ramna Park that they will take serious actions against miscreants who turn out on Pahela Baishakh. I asked him why he calls those who observe Pahela Baishakh miscreants. He was angry. Do gentlemen come out in the street with women in millions? I had forgotten that constitutionally Bangladesh is an Islamic State by the un-constitutional amendments by the unconstitutional military dictators. It has reverted Bangladesh to Pakistan negating all the blood of our martyrs. Those who want to turn the country to an Islamic Sheikhdom co-exist with that philosophy, under the guise of democracy, as Professor Muzaffar Ahmed (not the one of Transparency International Bangladesh), the only surviving member of the Liberation War Advisory Committee recently observed, the other day. He is a friend of the government, its well wisher. I do not think the question of dates and olive involves the Islamic or anti-Islamic spirit. Food, culture and dress have no religion though unfortunately in our sub-continent that has been identified so by our colonial masters. As such the servants of the Republic in full uniform with arms come out on Ekushey February and Pahela Baishakh to save the Republic from infidels, I was told by a cultural activist. People out in the street on Pahela Baishakh eat dates and olive because they save them from burning heat of Rudra Baishakh. They eat Hilsa and Panta for the same reason. Dates and olive save you from heat so do Hilsa and Panta. They are part of our culture. They do not harm anybody. It was the psychological barrier created by the colonialists that fed the division. The Police and Army were created by the British imperialists and they nurture such hatred, a cultural activist told me when they saw me talking with the man. I told him, every nation has police and military. They are the children of common people, of workers and peasants. They should adapt to the spirit of an independent country. The shocking report by the US State Department on human rights in Bangladesh virtually brands the black uniformed men as state terrorists. True, some of them were recruited from the cadres of a ruling party in the past with fanatic ideology, then in power, but I won't denounce all of them. That will create a national divide. And I think foreigners should not poke their nose. Police in Chicago and LA are known for greater brutality. But I uphold the rights of women, ethnic and religious minorities and the poor who are often victims of aggression by state power some time. A girl stepped in. She is a theatre artist who walks to Shilpakala Academy. She was from Jessore. Her accent sounds like that from India. Though she is a Muslim, she is harassed sometimes by people in plain cloth. She told me that they grow olive and dates in Jessore. She thought it was Muslim food and it was Sunnat to eat them. But they are sold as products from Saudi Arabia. And then she said, she was proud it was grown in Bangladesh. Ziku, a food trader, once told me he wanted to export dates and olive abroad if I could find some customers for him. I think it would be better if we eat our own dates and olive instead of exporting and importing them. You could call it a reactionary idea in an age of globalisation. But our people like native dates and olive. They grow them.
Bangladeshi dates and olive are getting popular not only in our country but abroad too. People prefer Bangladeshi fish and poultry too. They are being exported. Why Bangladeshi dates and olive could not be exported? Middle East is the biggest consumer of olive and dates. This is part of Arab culture and food habit. In our country dates and olive are imported mostly from Arab countries and even from Spain. We have an upper class which from the British time hates to consume local products. Are they the old British upper class? Obviously you can ask this question. They suffer from crisis of identity. This upper class has emerged after liberation without a cultural root, an analyst of urban anthropology told me. They make frequent foreign trips, go for medical check-up to Bangkok or Singapore, eat corn flakes with imported bottled milk and now it is a fashion to drink imported bottled water and at least filtered water managed by foreign companies. We are told there was a corrupt government in the past which patronised national companies and made black skinned millionaires. Not only the American ambassador but great free traders like the commerce minister denounce them. We must import and get into debt. That is free trade and democracy. An angry trader from Babubazaar told me the other day. But I think that is an over simplification of the reality around us. Everything depends on our people. I think, vast majority of our people started loving native things. They remember a man who wanted to make this country Sonar Bangla - Golden Bengal - with native products and native people. He was brutally killed by the enemy. The freedom fighter, who succeeded him, followed the capitalist road but he tried to create brown entrepreneurs, a national capitalist class. He too was brutally eliminated. The deadliest attack after one eleven came on his legacy and the nationalist capitalist class. They were branded as corrupt, their properties were confiscated. It was said, it was all meant to make room for foreign capital by handful of national traitors. Yet, the enemy has failed to kill our patriotism. They come out in millions to observe Pahela Baishakh and Ekushey February. On those occasions the state shows its muscle power as if it is a crime to observe those days. A man in black uniform told me in Ramna Park that they will take serious actions against miscreants who turn out on Pahela Baishakh. I asked him why he calls those who observe Pahela Baishakh miscreants. He was angry. Do gentlemen come out in the street with women in millions? I had forgotten that constitutionally Bangladesh is an Islamic State by the un-constitutional amendments by the unconstitutional military dictators. It has reverted Bangladesh to Pakistan negating all the blood of our martyrs. Those who want to turn the country to an Islamic Sheikhdom co-exist with that philosophy, under the guise of democracy, as Professor Muzaffar Ahmed (not the one of Transparency International Bangladesh), the only surviving member of the Liberation War Advisory Committee recently observed, the other day. He is a friend of the government, its well wisher. I do not think the question of dates and olive involves the Islamic or anti-Islamic spirit. Food, culture and dress have no religion though unfortunately in our sub-continent that has been identified so by our colonial masters. As such the servants of the Republic in full uniform with arms come out on Ekushey February and Pahela Baishakh to save the Republic from infidels, I was told by a cultural activist. People out in the street on Pahela Baishakh eat dates and olive because they save them from burning heat of Rudra Baishakh. They eat Hilsa and Panta for the same reason. Dates and olive save you from heat so do Hilsa and Panta. They are part of our culture. They do not harm anybody. It was the psychological barrier created by the colonialists that fed the division. The Police and Army were created by the British imperialists and they nurture such hatred, a cultural activist told me when they saw me talking with the man. I told him, every nation has police and military. They are the children of common people, of workers and peasants. They should adapt to the spirit of an independent country. The shocking report by the US State Department on human rights in Bangladesh virtually brands the black uniformed men as state terrorists. True, some of them were recruited from the cadres of a ruling party in the past with fanatic ideology, then in power, but I won't denounce all of them. That will create a national divide. And I think foreigners should not poke their nose. Police in Chicago and LA are known for greater brutality. But I uphold the rights of women, ethnic and religious minorities and the poor who are often victims of aggression by state power some time. A girl stepped in. She is a theatre artist who walks to Shilpakala Academy. She was from Jessore. Her accent sounds like that from India. Though she is a Muslim, she is harassed sometimes by people in plain cloth. She told me that they grow olive and dates in Jessore. She thought it was Muslim food and it was Sunnat to eat them. But they are sold as products from Saudi Arabia. And then she said, she was proud it was grown in Bangladesh. Ziku, a food trader, once told me he wanted to export dates and olive abroad if I could find some customers for him. I think it would be better if we eat our own dates and olive instead of exporting and importing them. You could call it a reactionary idea in an age of globalisation. But our people like native dates and olive. They grow them.