Mahfuz Anam and the internal class war he sparked

Mahfuz Anam confessed to publishing a DGFI report without verification seven years after doing so. He did it on TV, so he clearly wanted everyone to know. But his detractors are asking why he needed to wait seven years.

Yet the same question can be asked of those who are now baying for his blood. Where have they been all these years?

While a section of Dhaka elites are defending him, saying that he should be given credit for his admission – he should – the non-metropolitan elite now in power through a wider alliance of other groups are lambasting him and filing cases no doubt inspired from the powers that be.

Meanwhile, the army, the elite group that was responsible for the entire matter since it was in power, is not even being discussed, as the consequences for doing that are well known.

There are three streams of elite which run Bangladesh.

The non-metropolitan elite are the politicians who are in alliance with the RMG and manpower exporters and other wealth-making groups, who largely emerged after 1971.

They speak in – ahem –slightly flawed English without accents and send their kids to the West. They feel slightly nervous in front of foreign dignitaries. But they control the parliament and the maidan and the muscle and the courts etc.

Not sure if they are Dhaka University graduates.

They are rooted in the nationalist movements but their parents rarely saw Kolkata and this generation is still slightly uncomfortable in Dhaka, no matter how spacious their Dhaka housing.

Many own media outlets. Let's call them Group 1 or G1.

The second group comprises the old elite who are highly educated, intellectually Westernised, comfortable in English, and get invited to private parties hosted by foreigners. They were eminent from before 1971 in a variety of ways, are well off from business or professions, but not in parliamentary politics.

It's a mixed group who don't usually go to the villages for Eid. They make up the "civil society" mostly, and in a non-rule of law society, their power is less visible. They have influence and networks, and are in a state of non-confrontational conflict with G1.

Their many friends also are members of the bureaucratic elite which also keeps links with G1. Just follow a bureaucrat's life after retirement to understand this.

The third group is the one that is the most powerful but least visible – the armed forces. They can never be bullied, asked questions about what they do, are given privileges, and have a big say about who comes and stays in political power.

Group 1 and 2 resent them but can do nothing about G3.

Poor Mahfuz bhai has fallen in the middle of this in-fighting between G1 and G2, though it was G3 that initiated the conflict. It's not about him at all or the date of his admission.

It's about managing livelihood threats to the first group by the second. The fake documents supplier of course is above the fray. The Star Editor is actually a representative for all the members of G2.

Which is why G1 is so angry.

I have received a lot of flak from my G2 friends for writing in bdnews24.com, which is considered a principled opponent of G2 and close to G1. It is accused of running false stories against many G2 leaders by them.

But bdnews24.com doesn't censor me, and for a journalist who has been sliced by everyone including the Star, this is a great opportunity. I plan to use it.

Even when the attack against Professor Yunus was at its peak, often led by bdnews24.com, I defended him strongly as the archives of bdnews24.com will show.

Not a line was deleted, so I can't complain.

Sheikh Hasina is very angry at the Star and Prothom Alo, but not for supporting the military regime of 2007-8, which many of her opponents claim she benefited most from through the elections and the fact that she remains in power.

The AL doesn't mind an ML regime too much because any regime that ousts the BNP would be welcome to the AL (actually a part of G1).

Who wants to share the pie?

BNP got knocked out twice – Ershad and Moeen – while AL was on the unhappy end of the stick once in 1975. But there is no sense getting mad at the military as they are not part of the game and have their own playground anyway.

What the Star group did was support the idea that an alternative to the BNP-AL combo was possible. They tried to do their bit in promoting this move. They were very lukewarm in facing down the regime as Asif Saleh's piece – written at that time will show.

But others did more than Star, and a look at the politicians list of the "Reformists" would be very illuminating along with that of other Editors to show where such transient things as political loyalties lie.

It's all about the threat to dal-bhaat, the Bengali mind's only link with history.

If revenge for siding with the military mattered, Sheikh Selim and many others would be shot by now, but Sheikh Hasina has been very forgiving of her G1 crowd and in this she is a lot like her father.

Selim is also from her own group, but Mahfuz Anam and Matiur Rahman are not. Their acts were a direct threat to the livelihoods of the politicians and that is why it hurt so much.

The sub-class elite (G2) was about to submerge the main class elite (G1), the only replaceable class in politics. Millions depend on politics – right from the cabinet minister to the local mastan – to survive, and the grammar of who gets what is complex and long.

A successful Professor Yunus may have meant the rise of a new group who would have made many G1 members pack up and go home or make new friends but without the clout.

Something more fundamental than politics was involved in the matter and that is why it goes on and on.

But a new anxiety of the non-metropolitan group has risen. What happens if Hillary Clinton, a close friend of Yunus and a friend of G2 wins the US election?

It can have an impact because the Star group and Hillary have remained Yunus's loyal friends throughout, and there could be payback. Sheikh Hasina has also threatened to try the Padma Bridge conspirators which include Yunus.

G1 has been vicious with G2, so will G2 strike back?

A lot of prayers and duas are on for various candidates in the US elections depending on which group one belongs to.

How interesting that American voting is beginning to look like an election which is as significant for us as it is for the people of the USA.