Column by Mahfuz Anam: Taste of freedom regained
The student-led people's movement toppling an autocratic government reminds me of a song by Sabina Yasmin: "Shob kota janala khule dao na, ami gaibo gaibo bijoyeri gaan" (Open all windows, I want to sing the song of victory). Though it was in praise of our Liberation War, it resonates in my heart today. Suddenly, we are living in a world without barriers of thought. Many of us had forgotten how to speak freely. We would always either switch off or put our mobile phone in the adjoining room, because of the surveillance regime that we lived under. Self-censorship became embedded in our subconscious. A small minority of print media tried to hold power to account while the rest competed with each other to genuflecting themselves to power. They opted for "lapdog" journalism rather than being the "watchdog." Fear of saying anything other than the koshered version was so prevalent that frank opinions were only expressed in the most intimate of settings. Anybody speaking to us as journalists would preface their comments by saying "not to be quoted."
For the last 10 years or more, nothing could be said against Sheikh Hasina or any member of her family. Expressions like "powers that be," "highest level of decision-making," etc were used while referring to the former prime minister. A law was enacted, under the guise of showing respect to the father of the nation, that made punishable even the slightest criticism of any member of Sheikh Hasina and her family. Throughout her tenure, the use of cartoons of the former PM, her sister, son, daughter, niece and nephew, or any negative comment about them, however well-documented, was not permitted, and harassment including jail term could not be ruled out. Anything but the "family" was the norm in our storytelling.
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Rigged elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024, and Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League getting away with it, served to demoralise us the most. In every democracy, however flawed, elections serve to be an occasion for robust expression of the public will. This the people of Bangladesh, save those belonging to the ruling party and its allies, were deprived of. Also, by repeatedly manipulating elections, the Hasina government deprived itself of the vital feedback that free and fair elections usually give, as evidenced by the last election results in India. By manipulating elections, Sheikh Hasina, her government and her party never got the real message and, as such, suddenly found the ground shifted from under their feet when the student-led movement started.
The question that keeps on churning in my mind is: how did we go there? Why couldn't we prevent this from happening? Did we protest as we saw our freedoms being erased? Here comes the issue of moral bankruptcy of our intellectuals in general. As we saw Sheikh Hasina get more and more entrenched in power, we became more and more amenable to compromise.
The Awami League led a group of 14 parties in which some very renowned politicians were involved. These politicians spent their lives in trade union movements, fought for peasants' rights, women's rights, anti-extremism and democracy. But as a part of the then ruling party alliance, they all got sucked into the world of privilege, wealth and power. How could these leaders not see the rot that was setting in?
Over the 15 years of Sheikh Hasina's tenure, we didn't hear of a single resignation from any post within the government or outside. No minister, no MP, no academic, no professor, no vice-chancellor, no judge ever had the moral courage to stand up and say, "Enough. I will not take this anymore and will be guided by my conscience."
The way the highest tier of judges fell in line to oust the then chief justice, Surendra Kumar Sinha, will remain as the most shameful capitulation of the judiciary to the executive in Bangladesh's history. All Appellate Division judges were called by the president, on returning from which the group declared that they would no longer sit in any bench or participate in any deliberations where the chief justice would be present. In effect, all the judges expressed "no confidence" in the chief justice. But on what grounds? No explanation was given.
This one instance in which the mere wish of the prime minister led to the sacking of the highest judge of the highest court, with not even a demur by so many senior judges, sealed, in my view, any chance of independence of the judiciary. But it was brought on by the judges themselves. Couldn't a single judge resign to protect the dignity of the judiciary?
When the judiciary succumbed without clamour, all the other institutions and the people within them lost hope. One by one, most institutions collapsed—and often with our own help.
Judged against the background of total institutional collapse, the crucial significance of the student-led uprising cannot be overestimated. The chief of the interim government Prof Muhammad Yunus most appropriately termed the uprising our second "liberation." It is truly so. We now have a genuine chance of undertaking fundamental reforms that we so desperately need.
The student-mass uprising has broken down all structures of oppression. It has opened the door for all of us to dream again. Freedom is in the air and our right to free speech seems to have been regained. What the students have taught us is to never lose hope. When all doors were shut, the students crushed the barriers and opened them all. A fresh wind of change is now blowing through Bangladesh. New hope, new expectations and, most importantly, new possibilities are coming before us.
We must remember that just as we are good at fighting for justice, defeating the autocrats, and driving the military back to the barracks, so also we have a sad record of not being able to reach the goals that inspired us to fight the oppressor.
We missed the opportunity to build Sonar Bangla, first due to Bangabandhu's fatal mistake of launching BAKSAL and then because of his brutal murder along with his family and the consequent entry of the military to run the country.
The second opportunity was missed with the fall of General Ershad and the restoration of an elected and representative government. There was a well-thought-out plan by all the political parties that came together to topple Ershad's autocratic government. But when BNP came to power in 1991, that plan was ignored. When the Awami League came to power in 1996, it did the same. Thus, instead of the politics of unity, development and peace, we entered a phase that The Economist termed "the battle of the Begums."
Now we have a third opportunity. Usually, nations are not so lucky. How we make the best use of this occasion will be our biggest challenge. The most urgent task is to unify the nation. We must not lapse into the same destructive culture of relegating the interest of the country behind that of the party and putting the interest of the party behind that of the leader. We have suffered enormously because of it, and it is true for us all.
Mahfuz Anam is the editor and publisher of The Daily Star.
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