As I was waiting for Prof. Zafar Iqbal to speak, a young, stern-looking boy approached me with a leaflet. He had a look of purpose in his eyes — with steadfast determination, he extended his hand towards me holding a leaflet.

I glanced at it, and was immediately taken aback by the title, which in English translates to “Why we should boycott the Hay Festival”. Up until that point, it never occurred to me that there may be a group of young people, the next generation of this country, who view events like the Hay Festival as a threat to the integrity of our nation and our culture. I looked up just then, wanting to talk to the boy, but he was quite a distance away from me by then.

The essence of the message in the leaflet was the following: In this age, the Western powers can no longer conquer countries like ours through military might. So they have chosen to conquer through their language (by which they mean English). Event such as the Hay Festival are their “inlets of invasion”, and by attending and supporting them, we become contributors to their scheme of global hegemony.

I read the message within the leaflet and then carefully re-read it once more.  There were three implicit assumptions made by the authors of this leaflet, which I find fundamentally disturbing. First, an assumption that culture is a rigid, monolithic entity that needs to be “protected”. Second, that any literature not written in Bangla does not appropriately represent our culture and heritage. And third, a mouth-watering conspiracy theory about attempts to “invade” our nation and that cultural aggression is the newest weapon. Let me tell you why I find these assumptions fundamentally disturbing.

To me, culture is like a “moving target”, since it is essentially a reflection of the characteristics of a certain group of people, or a manifestation of collective experiences, it is natural for it to evolve over time through interaction with other cultures and belief systems. The protectors of Bengali culture a hundred years ago surely had somewhat of a different notion of what it means to be a Bengali than what its protectors see today and surely a hundred years from today, they will have yet a different notion. I understand and appreciate that our history has a lot to do with our being extra-sensitive about the issue of culture, when not so long ago, during the undivided Pakistan era, there was a need to define our identity from a cultural perspective, stemming from the political need to distinguish ourselves from Pakistanis. But even 40 years after having gained recognition as an independent nation, we still seem to be carrying that “fire”.

This brings me to my second point of “disturbance” — the notion that our culture can only be represented and reflected appropriately through Bangla. In 1972, right after having won a place on the global map through a three-decade long bloody struggle that was ignited by the language movement of 1952 (that placed the issue of language at the centre of the struggle), the new nation found itself in a situation where use of Bangla in every sphere of life, from government procedures to education, became widespread – all in the euphoria of having created a new nation born out of the blood of “language soldiers”, emphasis on competence in other languages got de-prioritized.

There is of course nothing wrong in upholding and cherishing one’s own culture and one’s language, since that is a critical part of a culture’s identity, but an ethnocentric attitude towards trying to keep it rigid and keeping its representation hinged on a language seems unrealistic and unreasonable. I believe that Bangladeshi writers increasingly writing in the English language have found new expression of our culture, history and heritage; and the Hay Festival this year has possibly been the first major global outlet for them.

I find the third assumption referred to earlier, even more problematic and wonder whether it stems from a deep-seated complex arising out of decades of oppression and subjugation by foreign powers at various stages of our history. Through decades and generations of fighting against aggressors — whether political, military, or cultural — have we forgotten that we ourselves may be “conquerors” at a global stage through our cultural footprints?

In this age of globalization and advent of fast-paced interaction between countries and cultures, it is only natural that there is an implicit race towards dominance in every sphere. We can choose to take a defensive and meek stance in this race, or we can take an aggressive and confident position like a true global player. In the area of poverty alleviation and economic empowerment, we have already established undisputed leadership — people working in the area of development come to Bangladesh almost like a holy pilgrimage. In the area of culture, there is potential for making a similar footprint on the global stage. And it is safe to say that we have already begun the process. The popularity of Lalon geeti (perhaps one of our ignored heritages of secular music) is spreading beyond the borders of South Asia with increasing numbers of foreigners visiting the Lalon akhra. Tahmima Anam’s books written in English (that speaks of our history, our views towards religion, etc.) are getting translated in almost all major languages. Examples such as these surely are enough to create confidence that we are ready to “conquer” as well.

In my humble opinion, events like the Hay Festival have opened up “outlets” for our conquest, rather than “inlets” for us being conquered. Bangla Academy has shown courageous leadership in this regard despite the threat of possible criticism. If I were ever to meet the boy who handed me the leaflet, I would only tell him that we believe in the strength of our ever-evolving culture and its ability to conquer the global stage rather than meekly take a defensive, ethnocentric position.

With full respect for the history of this land and those who have sacrificed their lives to defend our language, I write this piece in English, strongly believing that I am not losing my culture or identity in any way. We can choose to shield our culture from “pollution”, or we can embrace the process of evolution — sometimes with discomfort, sometimes with doubt, and sometimes with approval — realizing that this process of evolution does not threaten our sovereignty or our identity at a global stage. The choice is ultimately ours, and what we decide is surely bound to have far-reaching consequences.

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Mridul Chowdhury is a co-founder of non-partisan youth group named Jagoree and a member of Drishtipat Writers’ Collective.

Photo: bdnews24.com

This past Saturday (12th May) was a sad day, extremely sad day. I opened the newspaper to headlines of deaths in road accidents across the country. I opened the TV channels to numerous talk shows about what a sad state of affairs we live in. Fifteen people killed in one day – seems like a staggering number! But was it really? According to reliable non-government sources, such as Center for Injury Prevention and Research (CIPRB) and the World Health Organization (WHO), anywhere between 12,000 to 20,000 people die every year in Bangladesh – that is, 32 to 54 people per day! What was different this Saturday was that the accidents either happened in Dhaka, or killed prominent journalists and politicians. News of these accidents don’t generally make it to national headlines on other days, since they happen at local levels, they happen to the ‘masses’!

But what seems to be the underlying cause of this slow ‘genocide’?

In the newspaper reports and the talk shows, it was clear that much of the public anger was clearly directed towards the driver – did he get caught, will he get bail, will he be jailed for adequate number of years? The dominant view seems to be that if we can ‘fix the drivers’, the problem will be largely resolved – if we can catch them before escaping, if we can ensure that they are punished heavily enough, if we can ensure educated drivers with legal license, we will create a noticeably safe environment on the roads. But can we really?

What drives a driver?

Photo: bdnews24.com

Most drivers in the private bus sector are more like daily labourers with no sense of economic security and have to earn each day as much as they can since the next day, they may be without a job at the whim of the employer. The concept of a written contract between employer and employee is almost unheard of in the private bus sector. The working hours of drivers, particularly of those who drive inter-city, are unimaginably dreadful – typically, they have to do a 7 to 10 hr trip one-way and then come back – all within a 24-hour cycle only to wake up the next day with the same schedule. The issue of minimum wage for drivers is also something that I have heard very little discussion about in the ‘civil society’ circuits. The drivers generally get paid by number of trips – so the more trips they can make, the sooner they can make them, the more passengers they can take, the more money they can make. If drivers were paid by the hour, this whole perverse incentive mechanism of drivers to drive as fast as (in)humanly possible, could have been altered.

But who will negotiate with the owners, who will regulate this sector, where are those people on TV and newspapers? We scream for driver’s blood, we sometimes beat them to death, but have we ever even whispered about their rights as equal citizens of this country, who deserve a fair chance to survive honourably?

How fit is our Fitness?

Photo: bdnews24.com

The Accident Research Institute (ARI) have pointed out repeatedly that a large number of vehicles on the road do not have adequate fitness, that the entire fitness checking procedure by relevant authorities is incomplete, faulty and often riddled with scope for corruption, since there are (unbelievably) only 41 fitness inspectors for 15 lakh vehicles on the road. It has also been reported that fitness-checking machines that were bought with donor assistance are still left unused.

Right after an accident, how many reporters and investigators ask about the fitness of the vehicle? How many ask about the responsibility of the owner to ensure fit vehicles on the road? Is it not high time that we looked more holistically about why these accidents are taking place?

Slow danger in the fast lane

On the “VIP” roads and highways, we have all kinds of slow moving vehicles – ‘nosimon’ or ‘korimon’ (shallow-engine operated vehicles), rickshaws, vans, cycles and worst of them all, cows, goats and sometimes even ducks and chickens (!) makes overtaking mandatory for the driver. There are numerous cases where the slow-moving vehicles or animals have triggered accidents. On several occasions, responsible authorities of the government have made promises about banning these slow-moving vehicles or making separate lanes for them but just like a lot of other promises, there have been very little progress towards enforcement – not that enforcement is easy, given the importance of these vehicles in local-level economy.

Another slow-moving entity is the pedestrians themselves. The pedestrian attitude of ignoring foot-over bridge and crossing roads unsafely has been much talked about, but largely forgotten when we are actually on the road.

Inexcusable tragedy of Black Spots

Photo: bdnews24.com

The ARI along with other road safety experts have identified more than 200 so-called ‘black spots’ where more than three accidents per year take place due to a variety of factors such as sharp bends, obstructed views, mass gatherings etc. The ARI authorities have been shouting their lungs dry for at least a decade to fix these. What have successive governments over the years done about these? There is virtually no fixed allocation for road safety issues in the communications budget despite repeated demands from ARI and other civil society bodies.

How many citizens do you know who have come out on the streets demanding that these black spots be fixed, and how many citizens do you know who have come out on the streets in demand of a driver’s death or have taken law in their own hands when they have caught a driver red-handed? The driver who tries to desperately flee from the location of accident knows that general citizens care or know little about what condition they live their everyday life in.

Don’t get me wrong here – I am not advocating that drivers are always innocent and have no share of the responsibility. I am all for revising existing ridiculous laws that make death due to road accident a bailable offence and the highest punishment for this is three years jail or fine or both; I am all for ensuring that drivers have enough literacy to be able to read and write, I am all for legal licenses for drivers with adequate hands-on training.

But what I am basically asking is whether we, the concerned citizens, are asking the right questions when it comes to road accidents, whether we are pointing the fingers at the right places, whether we are being blind ourselves in our an-eye-for-an-eye approach each time an accident takes place, since this way we are not getting anywhere remotely close to the crux of the problem.

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Mridul Chowdhury is a co-founder of non-partisan youth group named Jagoree and a member of Drishtipat Writers’ Collective.