On cerebral corruption

Corruption has assumed a singular meaning - financial misappropriation and thus other inconsistencies in a character are absolutely overlooked that are defined as corruption, as well. Decay, rottenness, depravity, wickedness, perversion, loss of purity and integrity, bribery all these are corruption. However, where financial juggling is not in evidence it is generally considered corruption-free.  Therefore, a person that does not temper with monetary transactions is an honest man in our perception. It does not matter to what extent he/she is dipped into moral degradation, falsification, lies and manipulation for aggrandisement of personal, or group interest or of ideological preference, even against national interest.
People having other affinities to corruption are often financially corrupt, as well. Others that may not delve into misappropriation of cash but in  other things like allotment of land, plot, apartments, jobs, transfers and postings and foreign tours - and the list is rather long - where money comes legally as allowances, generally have a clean image. These hidden facets of corruption are rather overlooked. Of all types of corruption the most dangerous is ideological corruption whereby a segment of population is indoctrinated into a philosophy that is wrong based on falsehood and is convoluted and it is transmitted to next generations. People are changed from within and in the garb of an outwardly perfect pious man clean of any financial corruption become demons eating the society silently like termites and are difficult to eliminate like bedbugs.  These are the people that command religious, sate or political or societal authority. One glaring example of such corruption is misinterpretation of Jihad (holy war) to incite innocent youths to the extent of madness. So maddened, they willingly sacrifice their lives and behead captives openly driven by provoked zeal of serving Allah.
We take great pride in our liberation, and with that automatically come the memory of atrocities of the Pakistan Army and its allied forces and collaborators. Islam, for that matter, no religion endorses such heinous crimes like rape, arson, torture and killing, for any reason.
However, to our utter astonishment, we see some religious schools teaching students that such things happen in all wars to dilute the enormity of war crimes. They give false idea about the extent of casualties and severity of the action by the Pakistan Army almost making it so trivial that the children get an idea that nothing of the magnitude that the other tell them has happened. At the end they emphasise that Pakistanis never killed Muslims but non-Muslims almost implying that killing people other than Muslims  is not a sin.  This is an ideological corruption of the gravest proportion. By this these children learn to think that no crimes have been committed that merit trial and punishment.
Therefore, depicting those as criminals instead who demand punishment for war crimes or, at least, make them vengeful people seeking revenge for personal reasons. They give a concocted picture of our Liberation War subtly depicting it as a ploy of India dividing Pakistan and our leaders simply stooges of India.  The young mind of the children is fed with lies in absence of the facts before them they fall for that and it leaves a lifelong impression in their minds. Consequently, they transfer that to others with a conviction of their story being the truth. Therefore, this intellectual corruption is a much more dangerous thing that progressively eats into the fabric of the nation and has a much more serious implication than financial corruption that dies with a person or persons. Idea lives on.
This kind of corruption prevails abundantly in our political domain generally introduced by the Army dictators. They tend to rehabilitate and initiate criminals into politics looking for a base of support beyond the Army which cannot remain the pillar of support for the uniformed as soon as the uniform is shed. They need to do that to satisfy national and international pressure from the democratic forces. This pressure heavily depends on the strategic need of the West. These politicians, born in the barracks, put their own ideas of democracy like Basic Democracy of Ayub Khan. They even do not hesitate to delve into finance and economics wreaking havoc in the financial sector which takes a long time to come back to the track long after they had left. A prime case is reversing from mixed or socialistic economy to capitalistic system all of a sudden and at a time when the system is coming to maturity. For a system to settle takes time, to unsettle it just needs a decree.
Religion is a soft playground for military dictators and civilian politicians as it appeals to the majority of the people. Some political parties ride on religion, interpreting religion as it suits them. The followers of all these forces have their own agenda and propagate ideas that pollute the society immensely corrupting the ethical and moral perception of the society. This intellectual corruption is an extremely potent threat and the corrosive effect of those continues for a long, long time as it subtly corrodes into the nation's life almost irreversibly. Unfortunately, it has happened in Bangladesh. To put things at right footings we must put history correctly from before the inception of Bangladesh, explaining the causes leading to independence with documentary evidence to the new generation. It must be amply emphasised that we did not reach the climax in one day with the proclamation of independence and neither the struggle for emancipation ripened into a war of independence in a day or a month or a year. We had to struggle for a long twenty two years or so. The leadership did not help India to break up Pakistan but India helped us to achieve independence, of course, the break-up of Pakistan was a bonus for India.
A former senior Executive Director of the Bangladesh Observer, the writer is a Freelance Consultant.
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