Taj Hashmi - Fifty Years of Bangladesh, 1971-2021: Crises of Culture, Development, Governance, and Identity

Freedom and slavery are mental states.M.K. Gandhi

The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.Herbert Agar

This study is a sequel to my previous three works on Bangladesh: Ouponibeshik Bangla (Colonial Bengal), Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia and Women and Islam in Bangladesh. Although the stories are different, there are thematic similarities between this study and the previous ones. All of them have in common peasants, peasant culture, discrimination against underdogs and abuse of human rights. The title of this study could be the what-went-wrong-syndrome of Bangladesh. This is a departure from almost all the traditional studies on modern and contemporary Bangladesh. Only a handful of works by scholars like Sarmila Bose and Yasmin Saikia are dispassionate, objective studies on Bangladeshs Liberation War. This myth-buster sheds light on many known and unknown facts about the history, politics, society, and culture of the country. The country is not just another postcolonial counterpart of India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka; Algeria, Indonesia, Nigeria, Singapore or Vietnam. It became independent twice, once in 1947, and then again in 1971.

This historical sociology of Bangladesh is a myth-buster that sheds light on many known and unknown facts about the history, politics, society and culture of the country. Besides being a twice-born countryliberated twice, from the British in 1947 and from West Pakistanis in 1971it is also an artificial entity suffering from acute crises of culture, governance and identity. The author of this study attributes the culture and identity crises to the demographic by-products of bad governance. In addition to being overpopulated, Bangladesh is also resource-poor and has one of the most unskilled populations, largely lumpen elements and peasants. According to Marx , these people represent the unchanging remnants of the past. The second round of independence empowered these lumpen classes, who suffer from an identity crisis and never learn the art of governance. The proliferation of pseudo-history about Liberation has further divided the polity between the two warring tribes who only glorify their respective idols, Mujib and Zia . Pre-political and pre-capitalist peasants/ lumpen elements lack of mutual trust and respect has further plagued Bangladesh, turning it into one of the least governable, corrupt and inefficient countries. It is essential to replace the pre-capitalist order of the country run by multiple lumpen classes with capitalist and inclusive institutions.

Since this work is the first of its kind concerning the country, no single volume on history, politics, cultural anthropology, sociology, development studies and economics is going to be a substitute, let alone a competitor, of this multi-disciplinary study. I have pointed out here as to how the divisive polity of Bangladesh has become a fractured one, fast destabilizing the country beyond ones imagination. Despite the high GDP growth (67 per cent) and the visible improvements in the infrastructure in and around Dhaka (although one rainy day virtually turns the over-populated tiny citys congested roads into waist-deep canals), the bulk of the population have remained poor, uneducated, backward and superstitious, while the country has remained very poor. Fifty years after the Liberation, the country is still among the four least developed countries (LDCs) from South Asia, along with Afghanistan, Bhutan and Nepal, and the forty-six others across the world, mostly from the Sub-Saharan Africa.