Eid Mubarak

My first Eid overseas was 20 years ago.  When my family first came to these shores, Eid days were not really all that fun.  I liked the prayer, but that’s about it.  After the prayer, the local community would gather in the house closest to the mosque.  Did I say ‘community’?  There were only a handful of Bangladeshi folks in this part of the world in the late 1980s, community is probably an overstatement.  Anyhow, we would go the house closest to the mosque after the prayer, and then after a bout of nashta everyone would move off to the next house, and then another, and so on. 

It would be the same set of ‘uncles’ and ‘aunties’ in these gatherings.  They’d try to recreate Bangladesh, or what they’d remember as Bangladesh.  They’d play casettes of whatever they bought from the last trip home.  They’d discuss house prices here, and land prices in Dhaka.  They’d debate over the latest political gossip – something about the two netris and an army general.  They usually had a great time. 

We, the younger ones, didn’t find any of that fun.  We’d much rather be with our mates – Deshi or otherwise.  Our normal routine – sports, debates, hanging out, or for a nerdy kid like me, simply reading – was upset by Eid.  And we saw little upside.  At least I knew how Eid was in Dhaka.  For many of my peers, Eid was little more than another reason to put up with annoying elders.

Then I left home for university.  All of a sudden, I started missing Eid.  I started going to the uncles’ and aunties’ houses.  If nothing else, I could have some great food.  But even more so, just being in those settings was like being home (by which, I mean where my parents were, not Dhaka).  Those of you who are in the West without family would know exactly what I mean. 

I started enjoying Eid.  On the Eid days, I’d just drive around in my beat up Pintara and visit as many families as I could.  This was a lot of driving, as I lived in an urban sprawl. 

Eid those days didn’t involve any preparation.

These days, Eid means cleaning house, and shopping, and lot of cooking, and mehmandari.  These days, the community in my little town is a thousand strong.  Gone are the days when everyone could meet up after the prayer.  These days, after the prayer, we usually meet up with some friends.  We go to the nearest house from the mosque.  We play the latest music we downloaded.  We talk about house prices, here and back home.  And we speculate over the latest political goss - still involving two netris and a general.  Plus ca change!

But that’s alright.  These days, I look forward to Eid.

Eid Mubarak all.

(This is based on an e-mail to my comrades in DWC, some of the most inspiring people I’ve had the privilege to work with.)

The case for a meeting

A meeting between the two former Bangladeshi prime ministers that is.  Ever since Barrister Rafiqul Haque, legal representative of both the leaders, proposed such a meeting couple of weeks ago, our chattering classes have been busy discussing it.  Thus far, the BNP chairperson has agreed to meet the AL chief, and the latter has said she will think about it.  Awami-leaning opinionmakers have been less than enthusiastic about a meeting ­– and that’s putting it mildly.  And very few appear to be optimistic about what such a meeting could produce.  I am in the latter camp – I don’t really see a meeting achieving too much.  But I am still strongly in favour of such a meeting.

The cartoon controversy one year on

A butterfly flaps its wing somewhere in Borneo, setting off a perturbation in the weather system that eventually leads to a depression in the Bay of Bengal, and millions in the coastal Bangladesh fear the worst.  This is a popular characterisation of chaos theory – a branch of mathematics that says that small changes in the initial condition has big impacts in the final outcome.  I don’t know whether Arifur Rahman read about chaos theory or not, but when one of his cartoons was published by the Daily Prothom Alo last Sep, what happened was pretty close to chaos. 

This was a time of fraying nerves.  Tazreena Sajjad describes the zeitgeist of the time here.  It was within weeks of the Dhaka University riots.  For a while, there were rumours of Prothom Alo being shut down.  In the event, things calmed down after Prothom Alo editor, a one-time communist, apologised to the Imam of the national mosque in the presence of the information minister of the military-backed regime.  

After a year, we can think about the controversy with a calmer mind.  That’s what this post attempts.  First it notes the role played by a new generation of activists – online and in the ‘real’ world – during the crisis.  Then it notes that this wasn’t the first incidence of its kind.  Finally, it discusses where and how we might draw the line between freedoms of speech and faith.

(More at UV)

Wishlist 2: (a partial) return to 2001

A lot has been happening in Bangladeshi politics in the past few days, so much so that even the circus coming out of America is taking a back seat in terms of drama.  What does all this mean?  Was Mrs Zia released as part of a deal?  Or did the regime buckle to her demands?  Or was it the BNP chief who buckled?  What’s really behind Tarique’s ‘retirement’?  If he is so sick, how come he hasn’t seen a doctor yet?  What’s the story with the life-long leadership issue?  Why isn’t the AL chief coming back to Dhaka?  What about the proposed face-to-face meeting of the two leaders?  Are we likely to experience a new hope, or a phantom menace? 

Dear reader, I’ve got nothing intelligent to say about any of these questions.  I suspect we’ll know the answers to some of these questions soon enough.  And others we may never know.  Leaving these questions aside, this post will note what I wish to see, and what I wish not to see, in the coming months.  I wish that the coming months resemble the period leading up to the 2001 election.  I also wish that the post-election era looks nothing like what happened after the 2001 election. 

These wishes follow from the earlier list (some of which appear to be materialising – at least everyone is talking about joining the election process).  Some of them are incentive compatible – meaning they are in the best interest of the party.  Others, however, require work – one hesitates to use the word ‘reform’ these days.  But I contend that these wishes are far less utopian and more achievable than any articulated by the pro-1/11 bloviators in the past couple of years.

The other Sep 11

Long before the planes hit the World Trade Centre, Sep 11 marked a major political event of the 1970s.  On this day in 1973, a violent military coup overthrew the government of Salvador Allende in Chile.  Allende was the first communist to rule a country with a democratic mandate.  Henry Kissinger considered him to be one of the few individuals who upset his schemes for ‘world peace’ or ‘balance of power’ or something like that, and CIA actively assisted the coupmakers.  I heard about Allende as a kid.  He was a ‘good guy’ to my left-leaning family, and Augusto Pinochet – the general who ruled Chile with an iron-fist for 17 years after the coup – was a ‘baddie’.  I also heard about parallels with Bangladesh. 

If I had to pick a side, I’d choose Allende over Pinochet anytime, but I no longer think good vs bad is quite that simple, and I don’t think parallels to Bangladesh work out that neatly.  And yet, what happened in Chile probably has pertinent lessons for Bangladesh of the near future.

We were also hurt that day

I moved into a new apartment that evening, and after setting up the basic furniture etc, was pretty tired.  I went to bed at about 10pm, which is early morning in New York.  I’m not sure why I didn’t sleep right away.  Some channel was playing a rerun of a West Wing episode.  Another channel was playing When we were Kings – the documentary on the 1974 Ali-Foreman fight.  At about 11.08pm my time, there was a newsflash – plane hits the World Trade Centre in New York.  A few minutes later there were live pictures.  Within half an hour, I was calling friends and family.

Engineer Siddique, RIP

Bangladeshis living abroad typically have rather skewed views about the state of their homeland.  Some have a rather rosy picture, particularly when there is a new government.  Thus in the first of 2007, many euphoric NRBs hailed the coup of that year to be the best thing since Liberation.  But these optimists are few, and their optimism often don’t last long.  That’s why one hears nothing will happen in this country, it is doomed to fail because … (enter some complaint here, ‘the innately corrupt nature of the people’ is a perennial favourite of the naysayers). 

The truth is obviously somewhere in the middle.  Yes, Bangladesh has many problem – inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy, politics of confrontation, ambitious generals, lack of trust in any sphere of life, the list can be very long indeed.  And yet, it is possible to achieve positive change in Bangladesh, working in its corrupt and inefficient government no less.  Engineer Quamrul Islam Siddique is a person who demonstrated this over the past three decades.  He passed away on September 1. 

May he rest in peace.

 

Manila thoughts

I was in Manila recently attending a conference.  I spent a week in the city, though part of it was spent cooped up in the hotel room.  One can never know much about a country from the little one sees in a few day, so none of what I say should be viewed as an expert analysis of the Philippines economy or society.  But what I write is based on what I saw – after all, where else but in a blog post can I ramble on?  Take all of it with a pinch of salt, sure.  But I do hope this provokes some thoughts.

Notes from a Conference

I represented Drishtipat in a conference titled ‘Changing Asia: forging partnerships, building sustainability’ held in Manila on 29-30 Aug. The Conference was held by the Asia Forum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Magsaysay Award, and more details are available here. Other representatives from Bangladesh were: the Prothom Alo editor Matiur Rahman; Father Richard Timm of Human Rights Hotline; and Sharif Kafi of another NGO.

In what follows, I summarise the Conference proceedings, and where appropriate, my take on things.

(More at UV)