Ideas and Bangladeshi political allignment

…the ideas of … philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. … I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval … the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

That’s how John Maynard Keynes finishes his General Theory.  Seven decades after its publication, ideas from that book are once again being applied by governments of all hue and calling across the world.  But this post is not about the nasty, brutish and long slump we are heading towards.  Instead of that depressing topic, I am going to write about ideas that have shaped political allignments in Bangladesh in the past few decades. 

Some might scoff at the very notion that ideas have shaped our politics.  There are, after all, ample examples of the basest, most opportunistic political maneuverings devoid of any ideas other than the naked pursuit of money and power.  I accept this.  But following Keynes, I contend that underlying all else, key differences of ideas have shaped our political allignments.  I contend that Gen Zia built his majority coalition in the late 1970s on a set of ideas, and another set of ideas provided the basis to the political opposition to his rule.  A lot of water has flown under the Hardinge Bridge in the past three decades, but these ideas are still relevant for our politics.  I contend that regardless of what happens in December, it is these ideas that will determine our politics into the next decade.

Differences of ideas that are the easiest to exploit politically are those around ethnic, religious or cultural identity -rallying a group against some ‘other’ group on the basis of identity politics can often trump all else.  Bengal’s Hindus and Muslims rallied against each other under communal banners in the 1940s because each perceived grave threats from the other.  East Pakistanis rallied under the Bengali identity in the 1960s.  And a Bangladeshi identity has gathered ground since the 1970s.  Does identity politics have a role in present Bangladesh?

As most Bangladeshis are Bengali Muslims, wedge politics along ethnic or communal lines probably won’t sway the average voter in today’s Bangladesh.  However, ethnic or religious minorities may mobilise to a degree not seen in the past because, a a result of education and increased awareness, these groups have become much more assertive against their past marginalisation.

The politics of culture is more complicated.  Culture is always evolving, often in unexpected and contradictory ways.  The generation that supported the two‑nation theory is also the generation that accepted Tagore as our own.  In our own time, Bollywood looms large over the popular culture, and through satellite television and the internet global trends affect us now more than ever before.  There was once a debate about our ‘traditional culture’.  That debate may not have been resolved, but it has probably been bypassed.  As a result of regional and global developments, our culture has evolved in ways unimaginable a generation ago.  Consider two very popular songs from the middle part of this decade — Mumtaz’s laagba baazi compares the beloved with doi from Bogra, koi from Thailand, Banalata Sen of Natore and Diana of London, while Habib’s Krishna mixes electronic music with lyrics about Radha-Krishna.  To use Rushdie’s phrase, we live in a chutneyfied world where cultural purity is a difficult, if not unsustainable, concept.  

This chutneyfication is a result of globalisation.  Globalisation — freer flows of goods, people, finance and ideas across international borders — has lifted material standards of living of millions of people around the world.  The garments sector and remittances from the émigrés are examples of two benefits of globalisation for Bangladesh.  But globalisation, and market economy as such, do not benefit everyone equally.  Globalisation also means that crises are also global, as we have been finding out in recent days.  And for many, no amount of material gains can compensate for the loss of traditional values and ideals — the chutneyfication — caused by globalisation.

These criticisms of globalisation are, however, not new.  An earlier era of globalisation led to Marx and his revolutionary ideology.  Traditionalists in Europe and elsewhere eschewed liberalism, the ideology behind market economy and globalisation, for extreme nationalism that ended in Fascism.  In our own time, reactions against globalisation have led to the election of socialist or social democratic parties to power in Latin America and India.  And the whole capitalist project has come into question, again, in the past few months. 

Bangladesh doesn’t have any socialist party to speak of, but one can imagine that there are many sceptics of the market economy.  Can they mobilise politically?  Further, different regions of Bangladesh have not grown evenly in the past quarter century, and if such trends continue, regional disparity can play a major role.

 

In today’s Bangladesh, globalisation makes economic integration with India immensely productive.  There has been many, particularly in the corporate sector, supporting a ‘tilt towards India’.  But there are many for whom anything Indian is anathema.  A reflexive antipathy towards our neighbour remains a rallying force for them.  Therefore, attitude towards India will continue to be a major factor, as it has been in the past.