Is Sex Work, Work?

Rubaiyat Hossain

The other night I was sitting by my window submerged in Kathleen Barry’s ground breaking book on female sexual slavery, and suddenly I heard a sharp voice pierce through the stillness of night-air, ‘kaaj korba?‘

There was a young woman in her mid twenties wearing a white shalwar kamiz standing on the pavement opposite to my house. The sodium light fell upon her, and I could see her face as she spoke again, ‘kaaj korba?’ I assumed that she was talking to someone, but I couldn’t see who it was since the other side of the street was dark. I had little trouble understanding that this woman was a sex worker, and she was asking a man, most probably a young boy (since she called him tumi: kaaj korba?), if he wanted to buy some sexual pleasure out of her that night. It is not uncommon to see sex workers roaming around in Gulshan.

When Tanbazaar and Nimtali brothels were evicted in 1999, and Kandupatti in 1997, one of the major concerns of the women’s groups and NGOs was that the eviction would disperse sex workers around the city, as a result of which a) availability of street based sex workers would increase, b) larger access will be created especially for young men, and c) finally risks of STDs and HIV AIDs would let loose. That is exactly what had happened, not to mention the increased suffering of women who are involved in this profession.

Whether or not sex work should be considered a profession is a long standing debate, but the immediate truth and urgency of the situation lies in the fact that we can see no way in the near future to put an end to men’s need for hired sex, thus whether we recognise sex work as a profession or not, it is, and will continue on.

The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh says, “The State shall adopt effective measures to prevent prostitution and gambling” (Artclie 18 [2]). However, there is also provision for an adult woman to take up prostitution by making an affidavit with a First Class Magistrate’s Couth with a Notary Public. This provision is proof enough that the state doesn’t prohibit selling sex, rather by introducing the affidavit option the state makes it legal on the part of the pimps, and other beneficiaries of the sex trade to employ  women without any legal intervention.

Most of the women who are bound to sex work have little or no rights. They are forced into the profession by abduction or trafficking. Some join prostitution after being tired of getting raped on the streets over and over again. When we see young street children, we must think twice while looking at the girls, because one of the most unfortunate and unavoidable fate that awaits street dwelling girls is rape.

Every woman fears rape. Sometimes it is considered worse than dying because of the psychological trauma, and the social stigma that arises as an aftermath. For those of us fortunate women who have had safe enough lives not to get raped or end up in prostitution, live in a world that is utterly different and ‘other’ than the one inhabited by sex workers. Their lives and experiences are constructed as normal for them while it is completely obscene and impossible according to our ‘normal’ standards. It is this type of contradiction that helps us to focus on society’s need to channel its perversion into a realm of untouchability to constantly exploit a group of women for the fulfillment of male sexual fantasies. As social stigma around prostitution is profound in our culture it further hides the sex workers from the social sight of us so called ‘bhadraloks’ and ‘bhadramahilas.’

We may choose to deny the existence of sex workers in Bangladesh, but there are actually thousands of them working in the twelve well known brothels around the country, and many scattered around the country, working on the streets.

A girl of ten who may be gang-raped and then sold to a brothel has little help available to her from the society. Once a girl has crossed the boundary by losing her virginity, and stepping over the threshold of the red light zone-nobody is willing to take her back. Sabina Khatun of Naripokkho points out that the majority of the sex workers are providing money to support their families, though they are not welcome to go back home. Similarly, many sex workers have lovers or husbands who they give money to on a regular basis (even for his other wife and family!) simply out of the intense desire to receive love and affection. Sabina, the coordinator of Shonghoti, a coalition of 86 voluntary organisation networking and advocating human rights for sex workers says, ‘one
major problem is guardianship rights for sex workers with children.’ Sabina pointed out that it is a common phenomenon among sex workers to give birth to, and raise their own children. In most cases the identity of the father is not disclosed, therefore, these children remain as illegal citizens unable to attend schools or access any other facilities.

The only hopeful side to the whole scenario of sex work in Bangladesh is the stunning survival stories of women who survived the brutality of sex work, and attempted to come out of it to seek a new identity for themselves. After all, it takes a lot of patience, and high spirit to come out of the atrocity of prostitution, swallow all the social stigma and marginalisation, and finall organise on a platform to help others who are suffering.

Women at Durjoy have set an example by organising a platform to demand rights as sex workers. It all started off on January 14, 1998 when CARE Bangladesh’s SHAKTI (Stopping HIV AIDs through Knowledge and Training Initiatives) project in conjunction with Naripokkho held an workshop with street based sex workers from Dhaka, Tangail, Jamalpur, Mymensing and Narayanganj. The most immediate concern of the sex workers was not HIV, but police brutality, mastaan atrocities, denied access to the legal system and health care, and finally the well being of street based sex workers’ children. Ten selected sex workers from this workshop were sent to Kolkata the same year to attend a  conference organised by Durbar, an organisation based in Shonagachi, the biggest red light area in Kolkata. The women at Durbar were very well organised; they even had a cabinet minister attend their meeting, and they raised the slogan of ‘gotor khaaitiye khai, sromiker odikar chai’ in order to claim rights as working women. This conference was an eye opener for sex workers in Bangladesh who came back, and immediately got together under the platform of Durjoy Nari Shongho with the support of CARE Bangladesh on February, 1998. Durjoy functions through eight drop in centers (DICs) in Dhaka city to provide a resting place, health care and access to legal aid to street based sex workers. Durjoy with the support and guidance of CARE Bangladesh is disseminating information to help prevent HIV AIDs. Durjoy identifies its urgent goal to establish the fundamental citizenship rights for sex workers and their children. Women at Durjoy have participated in various research projects on sex workers in Bangladesh, they have written in books, newspapers, and journals, and finally they run a childcare centre for children of sex workers.

One of Durjoy’s agenda is to establish sex works as a legalised profession. The chairperson of Durjoy, says, ‘even if with all these women working as sex workers, there are so many news of rape and sexual abuse everyday, think about what might happen if there were no sex workers!’ She does have a point, and it makes us ponder about the rising rate of sexual violence, forced prostitution, and trafficking of women around the country. The government policy of condemning sex work via the Constitution and validating it on the other by the affidavit option is quiet ambiguous. It rings a bell to the patriarchal framework of statecraft, which is reluctant to ensure the rights of those women who have been forcefully put into prostitution for the sexual fulfillment of the male members of our species.

The least we can do as privileged individuals is to simply acknowledge these women as survivors of continuous violence and deprivation, and shift our sense of stigma from these women to those men who actually force young girls into this profession and sustain them for the purpose of fulfilling a perverse desire to master, manipulate and exploit female sexuality.

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2005

Source Link : http://www.thedailystar.net/magazine/2005/12/05/perception.htm

LOVE
An Asymmetry

Rubaiyat Hossain

Love between a man and a woman is one of the most complicated emotional relationships that develop among human beings. Romantic love is more important for women than it is for men, because men grow up with a sense of identity that exceeds the boundaries of family life. Men are given the opportunity to spread themselves over large spans of spaces–intellectuality, sports, friends, music, nature, and moreover they have the mobility to actually explore the world around them. Women on the other hand are raised within the confinement of their homes, and they are accustomed to be emotionally centred on the family. Whereas teenage boys burst out with the recognition of the vast world outside, the taste or freedom, and the exploration of sexuality girls when they reach puberty become even more confined. They start spending all their time obsessing over romantic novels, TV serials, fashion magazines, and phone calls from the desired boys. Girls learn from a very early age that they have to be physically appealing in order to attract men, and they also learn that finding a man to build a family around is their main mission in human life.

A woman may have a job, education, career and friends, but her family is her ultimate essential. Similarly family is important for a man as well, but for him, other things exist too. Marriage and family maybe fifty percent or even be seventy (pushing it!) percent of a Bangali man’s life, but for a woman it is like two hundred percent! Romantic love is, whether or not we like it, one of the biggest emotional concerns of a Bangali woman’s life. It is something indeed worth thinking about because our sense of love is pretty clouded as it is. We never really analyse romantic love with a rational lens. Our sense of what love between a man and woman actually means, how it is politicised, how it is socially and culturally manipulated via print and electronic media, and finally how in most cases it creates the biggest hindrance for women to become complete-independent-free individuals remain relatively unexplored.

Like anger, fear, hatred, humour, love is an emotion. This emotion, however, is different from other emotions because material elements like marriage, childbirth, divorce, dating, etc., build up upon this emotion to give a person’s life a definite direction and shape. Love is the only emotion that channels itself into paving a path for our life. Our sense of love is constructed by the world around us. We learn how to love a man, and how to care for him not only by our instinct, but by the socially expected gender roles. A woman may totally love a man, and refuse to cook for him, but it would not be acceptable behaviour for a ‘woman in love’ according to our cultural codes. Social needs to sustain families on specifically prescribed gender roles also instruct us on how to love a man. There is a hidden code to exploit women in the whole cultural and social scheme of romantic love, mostly because the concept of romantic love has been authored by men, and is based on men’s fractured understanding of women as primarily sexual objects.

As women we need to understand the specificity of love between a man and a woman according to Bangali culture. We need to look at the specific signals we get from literature and the media. We need to understand the forces of cable TV layering up on our Bangali sense of love in creating yet another dimension of love and romance. We need to ask ourselves as women, when our biology and our society make us susceptible to being exploited and alienated from ourselves in romantic love, how hard do we have to work in order to battain a sense of balance in relationships?

I have often asked myself ‘can there be a female Devdas?’ Where do we find a leading female character totally struck by the complications of failed romance, driven to death via drugs or drinks, and finally dying in front of the lover’s home? If we try to imagine a woman in the role of Devdas how would we feel? The answers are not clear, because there have not been many Bangali female writers writing about romantic feelings, rather Bangali literature if full of instances of male writing up female characters struck by love, and therefore, Bangali women’s imagination and instinct about romance is heavily influenced by male ideals and expectations. Devdas is considered a milestone of romance in Bangla literature, but if we actually look at the romantic dynamics between Devdas and Paru we will notice many asymmetries.

Devdas is a story of unfulfilled desire. There are failed promises, violence, negligence, drinking, and finally death. Pain in this case accentuates the sense of romance. It seems as if pain is essential in order to make a love story truly a love story. Pain is always considered an integral part of prem in Bangla literature, as poet Sunil Gangopadhay points out, ‘pain as an emotion is more intense than pleasure.’ Considering pain as an integral part of romantic love is not a phenomenon peculiar only to Bangla literature, but the specificity of romantic love lies the predominance of male writers creating and controlling the notion of romantic love, which in many cases, demand the female characters to savour pain as pleasure. When Bangali women say ‘no,’ it is taken as a ‘yes,’ and it leads to an understanding of women as incapable beings to directly convey their emotions. There is always a gap between what they say and what they feel. This convoluted representation of female characters, and their preoccupation with pain as an element of pleasure is highly destructive for women, because it raises our tolerance level to male violence to a greater level.

Take for example ‘No Honnotey’ by Moitreye Devi, it is probably the closest one can get to finding a female Devdas in Bangla literature. In ‘No Honnotey’ the sense of pain and minor physical violence inflicted by the lover is made to appear as highly sensual. There is a scene in the book where the main character Ruu is kissing her lover in the library, and she finds tears running down her cheeks, and she says to herself, ‘is this harsha (joy) or bishaad (sadness)?’ This is the ultimate dilemma of romantic love in Bangla literature: you never know where pain ends and pleasure begins.

The ultimate love story of Hindu mythology is the one between Radha and Krishna. This love story that is bound to end in disaster since Krishna is not only much younger than Radha, but he is also her nephew. Their love story begins with Krishna alluring Radha, and ends with him leaving Radha completely submerged in love. There is a myth that, after Krishna left Brindabon for Mothura, Radha became a bird in grief and kept calling, ‘Krishna Kotha? Krishna Kotha?’ It is not a simple love story, but entails the love story between God and the devotee. It is also the epitome of love story, retold for centuries, used as the template for the male female dynamics in Bangla literature as well as Bollywood films.

Recent scholars studying South India bhakti poetry dating back to fifteenth century have speculated some very crucial dimensions of erotic love between Krisha and Radha. They have pointed out the utter asymmetry built into the love relation. The heroine is always depicted as relatively helpless in comparison to her lover. She can only wait for him, and suffer because of his absence. He is, on the other hand, free to come or not, to show compassion if he wishes, to save her life or simply let her die of love. For her the entire universe proclaims to his remoteness, both physical and emotional. She is dwarfed by the inherent inequality between them, and most interestingly she blames her situation in part on her womanhood. Being a woman puts her precisely in a position of helpless dependence. She is not even in control of her own emotions. Her heart is not hers to control as if a part of her self is split away. This sense of pain, and conflicted personality is a recurrent pattern in the female representation in South Indian bhakti poetry written between fifteenth and eighteenth century. Most poetry ends in the man showing up, and the woman giving in and making love.

Isn’t that what a lot of us do as women? We take violence, negligence, emotional unavailability from men, and always forgive them at the end. As Bangali women, we always learn to love our husbands or lovers as if they were our sons. I have heard many women say that they feel that their lovers are just like their little sons, and therefore, any mistakes on the men’s part are to be forgiven and forgotten.

In any case, as women we must be very careful while loving a man. We must remember that nobody is watching our backs but ourselves. We must remember that we are walking on egg shells, and if we are not careful enough to learn to put ourselves as the top priority in our heads, we are doomed to end up in uneven and violent patterns of love relationships.

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2005

Source Link : http://www.thedailystar.net/magazine/2005/11/02/perceptions.htm

Vol. 5 Num 523  |  Wed. November 16, 2005  |  Point-Counterpoint

Hirok Rajar Deshey: Ray’s allegory comes true

Rubaiyat Hossain

Dhaka had gone crazy over hosting the thirteenth annual Saarc Summit.

Bangladesh’s accomplishment in hosting this summit seems to function as a yardstick to the current regime’s success, given our late president Ziaur Rahman’s pioneering role in initiating this regional cooperation. As a child, Saarc meant nothing more to me than watching a bunch of TV programs, extravagant parades, and big paintings of state officials going up all over the streets.

As a grown up adult the summit seemed to bring alive nothing short of Satyajit Ray’s allegory of Hirok Rajar Deshey(In the Land of the Diamond King).

For those who have not seen the film, I shall summarize the story.

Hirok was a land blessed by the abundance of natural resources such as coal and diamonds. Hirok remained prosperous until the King became morally corrupt. Hiroker Raja or the King of Hirok appointed a wizard to run experiments in the Jantar Mantar room until he discovered an unique machinery capable of Mogoj Dholaior Brain Wash.

The King composed different mantras, and installed them in the machine for different segments of the population.

For the students the King wrote: Jaanar Kono Shesh Nai, Jaanar Cheshta Breetha Tai (There is no end to learning, thus learning is pointless) or Lekha Pora Kore Jei, Oonahaar-e More Shei(Those who educate themselves will perish in hunger).

For the peasants he wrote: Bhor Pet Nao Khai, Raaj Kor Deeya Chai(Though you may go with an empty stomach, you must pay tax).

Finally, for the entire population the King wrote a common mantra: Jai Jaabe Jaak Praan, Hiroker Raja Bhogobaan!(We hail the King of Hirok even if we lose our lives!).

Statecraft became that much easier in Hirok due to the clever usage of the Mogoj Dholai machine, and the King decided to hold a conference with all the neighbouring heads of states to show off his success in reforming the country. So the preparations went on in Hirokfor the conference, and it looked very similar to Dhaka preparing for the Saarc summit.

Hiroker Raja or the King of Diamond Land appointed his armed forces to push out of the city all the poor and hungry in ragged clothes into an area out of sight from the conference guests. Roads were cleared, schools dismissed, those not brain washed hunted down and killed or chased out of the city. Hirok, just like Dhaka, was being carefully constructed to depict exactly what the King wanted to hold up as the placard of their success story.

Restricting the beggars from certain zones, abruptly demanding people to stay confined in their homes, putting a curfew on people traveling into Dhaka city, pushing rickshawallahs to the margin, sealing off busy market places like Kawran Bazar, and closing down of major roads no doubt create a hindrance for our already struggling economy, especially for the working class, and small traders. Thousands of poor people had to go days without earning, especially as everyone rushes back into the city after the Eidholiday.

The hunger and suffering of our people rendered invisible by the colourful portraits and flags, the flashy cars of our state officials, and the few glimmering roof tops of Dhaka city. The Saarc guests did not see the real Dhaka, but one that was carefully constructed. Moments like this, we are forced to notice the widening gap between the mass, and the elite in the already problematic landscape of South Asian nationalism.

Nationalist politics during the British period, and the post 1947 development schemes of sovereign South Asian nations have been criticized by the contemporary historians of South Asia, especially those in West Bengal organizing under the banner of the Subaltern Studies Collective with the philosophy of unraveling the active involvement in the nationalist politics of peasants, workers, women, and other marginalized groups.

As the Subaltern Studies Collective points out, nationalist politics is inherently problematic in South Asia, since it fails to acknowledge the contribution of the masses. The historians argue that the result of such elitist interpretation and operation of the nationalist movement ends in a historic failure of excluding the masses from the centre of nationalist politics, and subsequently from the contemporary development agendas.

Recent historiography of South Asia, therefore, attempts to mitigate the gap between the mass and the elite in intellectual terms, as the ideological gap between the mass and the elite is identified as one of the most prominent stumbling blocks in our current development process. However, in present day Bangladesh there is no noticeable effort, either in the intellectual arena or in the government programmes to bridge the gap between the elite and the masses. Moreover, our status quo is limiting the sky, and the preparation for the Saarc Summit stood as a monument of the ocean-wide gap growing between those in power and those without it.

If the Subaltern Studies Collective is to question the elitist involvement of leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah who literally traveled the length and breadth of South Asia, then what has to say about our recent leaders, who are in power just for the monetary gain of remaining in politics?

Partha Chatterjee wrote, in the case of South Asian nationalism, the intellectuals led and the masses followed, but unfortunately in today’s Bangladesh, not even the intellectuals like Gandhi, Jinnah, or Nehru are leading, but it is a group of emotionally and philosophically barren power-hungry, aggressive, and violent men and women who are leading, and some of us who are brainwashed are following, and others fleeing the country.

The four-party alliance is very similar to the happy engagement between the Jantar Mantar wizard and the egoistic King from Hirok Rajaar Deshey. However, the day seems far off when the mass people of Bangladesh will be able to brainwash the King back in joining hands with them to raise the slogan of Dori Dhore Maro Taan, Raja Hobey Khan Khan(Pull down the leash and the King will be in pieces) and in bringing down the ivory tower of power and greed that has been mounting up in our land.

Rubaiyat Hossain is a freelance contributor.

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2005

Source Link :  http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/11/16/d51116020524.htm

Advertisements Are Brutal

Rubaiyat Hossain

Advertisements are brutal. They depict a level of joy and limits of perfection unmatchable in real life. It’s very interesting to observe and analyse them with attention because in today’s consumer driven world advertisements rule over our heads and hearts. Do this, and you will get that is the motto of advertisements: get a credit card your children will be healthy and beautiful, get a new tooth brush you’ll get a new girlfriend, use a fairness cream and you’ll get a job as a cricket commentator, change your shampoo and you’ll get married. Doesn’t it sound a little ridiculous when spelled out like that? Actually what advertisements do to us is lure us to a level of joy, fulfillment, success, and even love, yes, even love by spending money to buy a certain product. It is really interesting is to ask the ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions to better understand the inner messages being sent out by advertisements. Take for example the fairness cream ad. The girl is dark, her skin is oily, and she feels she is a burden for her family. She uses the cream, becomes beautiful, and gets a job as a cricket commentator. The ‘what’ of this ad is the ultimate goal, which in this case is success, self-independence, and financial sovereignty to support the family. The ‘why’ of this ad is the stumbling block before the girl to get to her goal, which in this case is her dark skin. Now the ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ are important because they give us a hint towards what is right and what is wrong, what is considered an obstacle, and what is considered a driving force. Dark skin is bad, unsuccessful, fair skin is good and capable of success.

The messages we get from the fairness cream ad are as following: if you are a woman and you want to get into a profession the most important element is your physical beauty. Fair is lovely and dark is ugly! Doesn’t it sound a little odd? Isn’t it important to have education, commitment and experience in order to get a job? At least that’s the way it is in real life, but in the world of ads clean shirts, fair skin, sparkling teeth all matter quite a bit. However, it is particularly problematic to give women a distorted message through the media that the most important attribute they need in order to be successful is ‘beauty.’ It perpetuates women’s role in the society as primarily sexual objects for the aesthetic and sexual fulfillments of men. The main strategy behind beauty related advertisements is to suggest that women’s bodies in their natural state are deficient, and with some serious help from certain women can actually achieve the beauty they see on TV everyday, but fail to measure up to.

Success and beauty go hand in hand for women. A woman can’t be unattractive, and do well in life at the same time. In our day and age, especially with the rush of globalisation that has brought the US based media much closer to the rest of the world, woman’s beauty has become the ultimate commodity. It is what sells the most. Female bodies are mutilated, injected with silicon, sliced out of fat in order to experiment with, and come up with new approach to female sex appeal. Female bodies are starved, manipulated, and messed around in any way possible to come up with more and more definitions and standards of beauty. Based on these standards and body types billions of business deals are made selling cosmetics, shoes, clothes, sun glasses, watches, bathing suits, and what not.

Women and advertisements have deep links because female bodies work as the centre pieces in most commercials. Gender roles are heavily prescribed within the ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ of advertisements. Take a popular spice ad for example the wife gets scolded for not being able to cook up to her husband’s expectations. She goes into the kitchen and starts crying. The spice packets come along’aai meye kedo na, ami achi bhebona.’ A study done by UNDP showed that one of the most common reasons behind wife beating in Bangladesh is usually related to a belated serving of the food. Women get beaten because the food is served late, or cold, or too hot, or simply not up to the husband’s expectations, just like the ad. The ad is based on the premise that a husband has the right to get angry at his wife who had just spent hours sweating over a meal in the kitchen. It is also based on the premise that it is a woman’s duty to cook and serve the food on the table while everyone else is sitting around to have lunch. The ad is based on the value system that when scolded by husbands, women will silently go back into the ultimate andarmahal the kitchen, and cry for the grief of not being able to satisfy the husband’s appetite. Given the husband doesn’t beat his wife in the ad, he certainly is shown in a position of power, and capable of intimidating his wife with anger. An uneven power dynamics is the founding ground for domestic violence.

How many times have we seen women pose beautifully with their manicured nails for detergent, soap, and dishwashing detergent ads? A wife keeps her husband’s shirts so clean that he gets a promotion, but when can we expect to see a man helping his wife wash her clothes sparkling white so she could get a promotion too?

As human beings of the relatively more attractive sex, we may have the desire to groom ourselves, avoid pimples, stop hair loss, use a deodorant, it is all fine, but we just need to be very careful about how far we will let the roots of advertisements seep into our brains. Are we actually going to start believing that we need to be absolutely beautiful in order to be successful? Are we going to believe that if our skin is not the right shade we will not get a job? Will we get scolded and go cry in the kitchen like the spice ad lady? Will we believe deep down that our faces are not good enough, and it needs to be taken forward? In fact, we need to keep in mind that advertisements related to women’s beauty and bodies are just a regime that is manipulating our bodies to feed more money into the consumer driven market economy.

While we sit and watch TV, before we are completely taken away by the hidden messages disseminated by the advertisements, as women, we may want to consider that, today patriarchy is shaking hands with capitalism to formulate new forms of domination and exploitation. Women are not expected to be confined to the homes anymore. They are allowed to go out, and have a job, and be famous, and become a starbut now they have a double role to play. Gone are the days when women were expected to be at home, bear children, and be good wives; now we have stepped into a time when the ‘bell jar’ of modernity is put on our heads for us to start believing that we are liberated, when we have actually been endowed with two full time roles, the one of a good wife, mother, and homemaker, and a successful and super sexy woman performing in the public. The absolute importance of being beautiful and sexy has been a central message being sent out by the media these days. Though there is nothing new about women’s preoccupation with beauty, we must take into notice our society’s increasing orientation towards visual culture, and how media messages are replacing our older value system of normative femininity with new ones.

Today a woman must not have an inch of extra body fat, eating biriyani or icecream has become sins, all women must straighten their hair, wear contact lenses, and look totally generic like the models, in Sandra Bartky’s words, “[w]hat was formerly the specialty of the aristocrat or courtesan is now the routine obligation of every woman, be she a grandmother or a barely pubescent girl.” Of course Bartky is talking from a Western point of view, our grandmothers are not there yet, but they soon will be if we keep feeding ourselves with media images, which with the rush of globalisation have accepted the dominant Western notion of women as primarily sexual objects.

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2005

Source Link : http://www.thedailystar.net/magazine/2005/11/01/perspective.htm 

Vol. 5 Num 442  |  Tue. August 23, 2005  |  Point-Counterpoint

Philosophical crisis: A confused Bengali nation

Rubaiyat Hossain

459 bombs have blasted almost all over Bangladesh in exactly thirty minutes. This is certainly not the first attack of this type, but it is definitely the first of this scale. August 17 attack has successfully instilled fear in the civilians’ minds.

Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, a banned militant group, has already claimed responsibility for the attacks. It seems as if they have lost faith in man made law: “[I]t is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh. There is no future with man-made law.”

The attack of August 17 is not an isolated endeavour, but it resonates with the same urge that has been heard all over the world in the terrorist attacks: a cry for an alternative to the Western hegemonic rule. Islamic fundamentalism is accepted by some as a valid alternative to counter the omnipresent forces of capitalism and Western imperialism.

In fact, Maulana Nizami argues that since communism has failed, and the Western model of capitalism is inherently un-Islamic and materialistic, Islam can potentially offer an alternative path of development for Bangladesh. If we get down to the bottom of things, the world-wide terrorist phenomenon embodies a philosophical rebellion against the Western capitalist mode of life.

A part of the world youth is certainly frustrated and hopeless enough to have been recruited to the militant Islamic fundamentalist groups. What these attacks stand for is certainly a very dark force, but what we must also analyse for our own benefit is that these forces come out of a) ignorance and confusion, and b) deprivation and sense of extreme marginalisation.

In specific reference to the case of Bangladesh, the ignorance is double layered: firstly, our lack of reflection and understanding of our national identity, secondly, a partial and selective understanding of Islam.

Take for example the word jihad. According to Islamic philosophy the word represents a vast notion that has to do with the ultimate freedom of spirit. Hazrat Muhammad (S) always advised his followers to fight against nafs, or ego comprising lust, desires and attachment to materialistic things. The battle against nafs is direct zihad-e-akbari (the greatest holy war). Hazrat Mowlana Rumi said, “our real enemy is nafs.” Allah declares in the Hadith-e-Kudshi (Holy Tradition): “Fight against nafs, because it is my enemy.” The notion of jihador holy war that is stained with blood, sword, and fear comes out of a very partial, materialistic, and ignorant reading of Islamic theology.

As per our national identity is concerned, do we really know who we are as a people? And even if some of us may claim a certain national identity, have we all reached at least a minimum level of homogeneity to unite under one common umbrella of national identity?

Counting from 1905, our territory has been shifted three times along with our national identity. In 1905 Bengal was divided and Bengalis all of a sudden became Bengali Muslims, in 1947 Pakistan was created and they became Pakistanis, and in 1971 Bangladesh was born and Bangladeshi Muslims came into being.

It is very hard to tell what percentage of our national imagination is based on our ethnic identity versus our religious identity. We exist in a permanent state of confusion as we step out of the pages of our history text books.

We always hear veterans complaining that the dreams of Muktijuddhohas not been realized, similarly Bangabandhu’s dreams of “Shonar Bangla” is also yet to be realised. We live in a state of shattered hopes and disappointments.

Dr. Humayun Azad rightly pointed out that for poverty stricken, uneducated, suffering masses religion works like a drug, which promises them to deliver all fruits of happiness only under one condition: blind faith and obedience to Allah’s words. The mass, incapable of reading or writing Bangla, cannot be expected to read, conceptualise, and understand the Holy Quran in their own terms.

Thus they become prey to the local mullahs, who often interpret the scriptures to their own ends. As religion and force enter the political realm to homogenise the mass under fear and force, we further lose ourselves instead of coming up with a coherent and comprehensive synthesis of national identity.

Some scholars argue that this turn towards religious nationalism is a world-wide post colonial phenomenon since late 1970s, and it is directly in link with the institution of Orientalist production of knowledge, and the application of such knowledge in the political sphere by “chains of real historical causation.”

Others blame it on the inadequacy of state building in Bangladesh, which failed to hold on to its nationalist halo of harmony and ethical commitment towards the state, and fell into the trap of choosing Islam as “that alternative morality to save the union.”

The revival of religious nationalism in Bangladesh could also be viewed in relation to traditional rural elite resisting the state and NGO lobbying towards “the predominance of capitalist relations in the transitional society.”

The process of Islamisation can also be viewed as a result of the ruptured “ideological hegemony over the masses established during the struggle against Pakistani colonial rule.” Ali Riaz argues that Islam is consciously used as a tool to earn public consensus as the state ruling bloc in Bangladesh fails to come up with an ideology suited both for the elites, and the mass.

Local mullahs are giving out fatwasto establish a superior ideology based on their inadequate knowledge of the Islamic scripture, militant Islamists such as Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh are poisoning our minds with blind fear to gain an ideological hold over our brains, but what are we — the so called conscious, educated, and middle class civil society — doing about it?

After bombs blast, we blame each other, point our fingers, and get heavily involved in politicising the whole event. The names and faces of those common men, women and children who die in the attacks get little or no attention. In haste we feel there is no time to look back and reconceptualise who we are as a nation.

But it is the philosophical right of each one of us to come in terms with our national identity, and discuss it on a national level. Our problems today are brutal and violent, but no good can come out of violence in response to violence. Only a cultural and philosophical internalisation of our national identity can help us reflect on the internal ruptures of our nation-state.

If we want to address the deep-rooted issues, we struggle to come up with a national ideology suited both for the elite and the mass. We must take active part in bridging the monstrous gap between the educated elites and the urban and rural masses. Today we must reconsolidate our internal dilemma as a nation to combat the forces of terrorism.

Rubaiyat Hossain is a freelance writer.

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2005

Source Link :  http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/08/23/d508231503110.htm