Uniting to realise a supreme goal
Friday, 18 December 2009
Saqeb Mahbub Rafi
After 38 years of independence, a citizen of independent Bangladesh can very justifiably put forward the question - ‘ki hote parto... aar ki holo?’ (what could have happened and what actually happened?). The nation that was dreamt of remains a dream while year in and year out we feel patriotic for a day only to get on with our daily lives the next day.
The nation dreamt of was a sovereign country free and independent from the control of a distant neighbour. We achieved that, sure, but is that all we dreamt of? To say so would be taking away the honour of all those who sacrificed their lives and all those who suffered to see their loved ones perish. Because, the dream was not only to call this land Bangladesh, it was to be able to say: this is ‘my’ country, where I will not live like a subordinate citizen, where I will be able to realise my dreams and when mistreated, I will be entitled to justice. To this day, most of our people live in extreme poverty, minority groups are routinely terrorised and justice under the law remains a rarely practiced phenomenon. We speak of ‘Muktijudhher chetona’ or the spirit of the liberation war, and instantly relate it to the trial of war criminals or benefits for freedom fighters’ families or political affiliations. How we gracefully ignore the fact that those who martyred themselves did so with the hope that their compatriots would live in a better place with better lives, baffles me rather painfully.
The spirit, or chetona, is not simply in remembering the sacrifices of those brave hearts. They believed the nation was more important than the individual, and upholding the spirit is to do as they did - to put the country before our own self-centred ambitions, to sacrifice a few of our individual dreams so the dreams of many come true. We can be true victors only when we can proudly say we are a nation united in our efforts to improve the lives of millions who live in poverty and suffer injustice everyday. For that, we don’t need one great Obama, we only need a few good people who want to change our lives forever.
(The writer is at the Department of Law (LLM), London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He can be reached at e-mail: “S.B.Mahbub@lse.ac.uk”)
After 38 years of independence, a citizen of independent Bangladesh can very justifiably put forward the question - ‘ki hote parto... aar ki holo?’ (what could have happened and what actually happened?). The nation that was dreamt of remains a dream while year in and year out we feel patriotic for a day only to get on with our daily lives the next day.
The nation dreamt of was a sovereign country free and independent from the control of a distant neighbour. We achieved that, sure, but is that all we dreamt of? To say so would be taking away the honour of all those who sacrificed their lives and all those who suffered to see their loved ones perish. Because, the dream was not only to call this land Bangladesh, it was to be able to say: this is ‘my’ country, where I will not live like a subordinate citizen, where I will be able to realise my dreams and when mistreated, I will be entitled to justice. To this day, most of our people live in extreme poverty, minority groups are routinely terrorised and justice under the law remains a rarely practiced phenomenon. We speak of ‘Muktijudhher chetona’ or the spirit of the liberation war, and instantly relate it to the trial of war criminals or benefits for freedom fighters’ families or political affiliations. How we gracefully ignore the fact that those who martyred themselves did so with the hope that their compatriots would live in a better place with better lives, baffles me rather painfully.
The spirit, or chetona, is not simply in remembering the sacrifices of those brave hearts. They believed the nation was more important than the individual, and upholding the spirit is to do as they did - to put the country before our own self-centred ambitions, to sacrifice a few of our individual dreams so the dreams of many come true. We can be true victors only when we can proudly say we are a nation united in our efforts to improve the lives of millions who live in poverty and suffer injustice everyday. For that, we don’t need one great Obama, we only need a few good people who want to change our lives forever.
(The writer is at the Department of Law (LLM), London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He can be reached at e-mail: “S.B.Mahbub@lse.ac.uk”)