Interview: Farhad Mazhar
The basic seed of our spirit has been sown
Given our long journey of struggle, what future do you see for Bangladesh?Let’s put the question differently. No matter what system of state we put in place by means of rebuilding and reforms, this will be run by the political parties. How can we prevent them from becoming despotic? They talk about state reforms, but not about reforming themselves.Farhad Mazhar is a poet, thinker as well as environment and human rights activist. He has spent quite a few decades delving into politics, society, culture and religion. He is the editor of ‘Chinta’, a journal on politics and philosophy, and the literary magazine ‘Pratipakkhya’. He is also involved in two reading circles ‘Chinta’ and ‘Bhabboithaki’. In an interview with Prothom Alo’s Sajjad Sharif and Rafsan Galib, he speaks about the country’s new political reality before and after the July mass uprising, as well as about culture and religion.
Where political parties failed, how did the students unite the people all around the country and topple Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic government? How was it possible to emerge from outside our known political forces and bring about such an incident?
Farhad Mazhar: Many say that Sheikh Hasina was an autocrat or an authoritarian, but she was not. We always had fascist propensities in our country, and through that Awami League, Chhatra League or other organisations became fascist forces. They amended the constitution and said it would be considered sedition if anyone spoke against this. They created a law like the Digital Security Act. All of this culminated in their creating a fascist state system. The people would feel this, but the students grasped it faster.
Did BNP not understand this? It did. But BNP is simply another looting, mafia stream of politics. I am not saying it as a criticism. Political parties inevitably merge as parties of the looter and mafia ilk in the neo-liberal economic system of free economy. But even so, Khaleda Zia did well in not joining the election. She understood that contesting in an election under a fascist regime means lending it legitimacy. This stand of hers contributed to paving the way for political change.
The people, particularly the middle class intellectuals, were unable to speak. People were being abducted and taken to the menacing Aynaghar(detention/torture cells). RAB was being used to kill people. That was why Bangladesh was ripe for a mass uprising. When the students began the quota reform movement, I was apprehensive about whether that would actually sow the seeds to a larger movement. When they changed the movement into a movement of students against discrimination, I told them that you have now moved from being ‘particular’ to being ‘universal’. The movement for a particular demand became national movement. And in no time at all it became a mass uprising. Many have had a role to play in this. The left, right, BNP, Islamic forces, everyone was part of this movement.
It is the tendency of a fascist government to use the constitution and the law in their own interests. During the mass uprising, the people rose above the law. They were the law…
Farhad Mazhar: Indeed. That is the easy and legal political message of a mass uprising. That is why philosophers say that people make themselves relevant by means of a mass uprising. If any constitution suppresses the people, the people rise up and discard that constitution, to come to the fore themselves. Philosophers call this popular sovereignty. And that is democracy.
What is the responsibility of the people in this new reality then?
Farhad Mazhar: Bangladesh must be built anew. That is the battle cry of the people. Everyone must turn their attention to this. This will control our future history.
But what had happened? After the mass uprising, this was placed under the old fascist state. An interim government equipped with all power means it must declare that we have taken power and not under any fascist constitution. Our singular historic responsibility is to give written form to the unwritten aspirations of the people expressed through the mass uprising. During this period they will function under the prevailing laws. Only the laws contradictory to international human rights will be revoked. Things will continue in this manner until we have a new constitution. We must create a constitution that is in keeping with civil and human rights recognised internationally. Post colonial aspirations must be added to this. We have to move towards building an economy free of the domination of certain multinational companies in the free market system.
We have a number of tasks. The power of the people must be consolidated. The government that can create this structure must be formed. We must resolve our cultural, literary and religious debates.
It has been three months since the mass uprising and there have been many incidents in this span of time.
Farhad Mazhar: I see it simply – the mass uprising means that people have gained the right to express their aspirations. That is extremely positive. People must be allowed to speak. Those who led the mass uprising must now extract some of the demands from all of the demands being made. For example, those of the Hindu faith have come up with an eight-point demand. If full-fledged citizens’ rights can be established, all their demands will be met. There will be no need to do anything separately. This is essential. After all, each and every temple is a temple of Bangladesh. These are important archeologically, historically, culturally and for the tourism industry too. These are centres of economic development too. If the civil rights and human rights of the followers of the Hindu religion are ensured and a political population is built up in the true sense, what will that mean? Bangladesh will become a powerful state of the subcontinent free of religious fundamentalism. This has no relation to religion, but with modern nationalism as developed in the West. We should be able to display what a truly democratic state should be, not the religious form of extremist modern nationalism. It is not only about those of the Hindu faith. The Buddhist history is an inseparable part of our culture. Similarly, so is Islam. When we will be able to shrug off religious extremism and nationalism, to internalise the cultural heritage of religion, then Bangladesh will be able to lead the entire subcontinent in change. We will be able to resist extreme religious fundamentalism.
No government in Bangladesh has ever bothered about the state’s contract with the people. They simply took over the state and kept in under their feet. If you create a good constitution, how can it be guaranteed that the future governments will not violate it?
Farhad Mazhar: The constitution can’t be imposed from above. The constitution I am thinking of comprises only a few pages. It is concise, simple, understandable by the people, but comprehensive. There can be no law that curbs anyone’s independence, dignity and rights, or destroys lives, nature and the environment. The constitution must cover divisions of the state, whether we want a government system of president or prime minister, whether the parliament will be bicameral or unicameral, if it is unicameral will there be decentralised districts without which economic policies cannot be adopted, how the character of the local government will be, if decentralised, what will be divisions be called and so on. You will have to go to the villages and the unions to listen to the people whose rivers, haors, wetlands have been grabbed. These must be kept with the people with a local government system capable to managing these. Yet the government once again is imposing the constitution from above. I have nothing against Ali Riaz. At least he is talking about rewriting the constitution. Badiul Alam Majumdar may also have some good ideas. But everything is being imposed from above. A white paper on corruption has been drawn up. That is a very good piece of work. But if you read it, it seems as if it has been written for the Anti-Corruption Commission. They are still in the old neo-classical economics of market and demand. That is where my problem lies.
Our economy cannot flourish because our state is controlled by multinational companies of the international market. We are unable to increase our resources. We are unable to collect taxes. We have to come up with a different economic plan. This white paper is very good, but is of no use in state building. Policies and strategies based on people’s sovereignty, to stand up against the free market system.
Let’s put the question differently. No matter what system of state we put in place by means of rebuilding and reforms, this will be run by the political parties. How can we prevent them from becoming despotic?
Farhad Mazhar: Let the political parties give full recognition to the mass uprising. Let them give full authority to the interim government formed though the uprising. Then you would see how the political parties would be tackled. The political parties have kept the interim government weak. They say that this can’t be done or that can’t be done without an elected government. I say that Dr Yunus’ government is an elected government. Our youth elected him by becoming martyrs. We will certainly criticise the government. He is running the government which is not an institution like Grameen. There may be weaknesses there, but we will not heed the political parties’ contentions that he is not elected. He has been elected by blood. It is we who have not given him full power. If he had full power, he could have destroyed the syndicates. The wetlands, rivers, canals, all could have been recovered. It wouldn’t take so long to take action against BNP’s forceful occupation all over. The main task now is to form a fully empowered interim government. If that can be done, solving the other problems would be easy.
We will fix things through a new constitution. Is it the Representation of People Order that will determine which is a political party and which is not? The new constitution will determine which is a political party and which is not. Then you start. There is the question of whether a fascist party like Awami League should be allowed to practice politics or not. Or whether the party which stood against the entire population in 1971, should be allowed to do politics under this name? Islam is important. It is a part of our history. But there is need for discussion on this. Forming an Islamic state will not usher in Islam. Islam is can play a role in our everyday reality, ethics, culture. That has to be internalized. That is why I say constitution.
The reality that prevailed during the mass uprising is no longer in place. How realistic are the proposals that you are putting forward? Should I call you a dreamer, an idealist?
Farhad Mazhar: In 2023 I wrote the book ‘Gono-Obhyuthan O Gothon: Bangladeshe Gonorajnoitik Dharar Bikash Proshongo’ wherein I hinted at a mass uprising. In order to explain things to all political parties, I created a human rights platform and said there must be a mass uprising. There has been a mass uprising. That has given me a huge shot of self-confidence. Bangladesh will be the centre of transforming the entire subcontinent. Our youth must give lead. I am certain that these words will materialise.
Let’s turn to another issue. Sheikh Hasina’s government lent legitimacy to corruption, injustices and wrongdoing by using a narrow narrative of the liberation war. So after their fall, there are apprehensions about the very liberation war falling into question.
Farhad Mazhar: What was the fight for in 1947? The landowners and moneylenders would exploit us. The city of Kolkata is built upon the blood and sweat of those who lost their land. That is history. We didn’t want partition in 1947, we wanted a united Bengal nation. If there can be a United States of India, why not a United Bengal? Suhrawardy, Sharat Bose and others wanted that and Jinnah gave his assent. We did not want partition. We have been taught that the Muslims wanted partition. Now, the research of historians proves that this was carried out by the upper caste ‘babus’. What happened after partition? We formed a religion-based state. India was religion-based too, which now has been built up as a Hindutva state.
When our land problem was settled, then in 1952 we fought on the issue of culture and language. We have shed blood to be Bangali. We are not Indian or West Bengal Indian. We had to be martyrs to be Bangali. We had to shed blood to speak in Bangla, to sing Rabindranath’s songs. So the liberation war is above all question. So if anyone says that we are negating 1971 with the 2024 uprising, that is rubbish. What has happened? We won an independent territory in 1971, but we failed to sort out many ideological questions. That is why we got a government like that of the fascist Sheikh Hasina. It is to sort out those ideological questions that the 2024 uprising took place.
The culture of Bangali nationalism failed to resolve the question of religion here. Instead we saw a rise of religion-oriented politics. Are we yet again falling into the majority trap?
Farhad Mazhar: Religion as we still see it, is defined by the West. When we discuss religion, we discuss western modernity. We have to overcome this first level of ignorance. Speaking about religion does not mean establishing a religious state. If we look at it from that angle, then the western countries are actually Christian states. The very concept of state sovereignty is a Christian concept. Sovereignty was with Allah. Then it went to Jesus, the church, the king and then to the people. So there naturally can’t be anything such as an Islamic state. Islam is about doing away with sovereignty, to surrender to Him. The duty in this world is to fight against the oppressor for the struggling class. That is Islam. There can be nothing called an Islamic state because the state itself can become the oppressor. It becomes a duty to fight against a state if it became an oppressor and that is what we did. Our problem is that we did not study Islam or the Quran Sharif as a philosophy. Allah sent people to this world as khalifas with conscience, intelligence, reasoning and imagination. Using these to study, means to study philosophically. If we could develop our thinking in this manner, we could discard western cultural and intellectual dominance and come up with a new type of populace.
Our riverine Bengal is also replete with its own religious schools of thought – Nath, Vaisnab, Shakto, Baul, Marfeti schools of thought and so on.
Farhad Mazhar: Absolutely. These schools of thought are within us -- Fakir Lalon Shai, Jalauddin Khan, Radha Ballav, Khaleque Dewan. This has come though the likes of Abdul Halim, fakirs, dervishes, bayati. There were the sufis. There were the Buddhist tantrics before that. And amazingly, all this was in East Bengal. Bengal has always dealt with religion through cultural movement. There are prayers and there are side by the side the songs, “manush thuiya khoda bhojo, e montrona ke diyechhe?” (who gave the sermon to worship God, leaving man aside?)
It was the initiative of the west to bring forward religion in the form of philosophy and law. In Islam, Allah is always showing a spiritual way. No persons can claim the truth, because man is limited by death, by time and place. You are destructible. In his victory at Makkah, the prophet (SM) proved that people cannot have any identity centered on blood, cast or nation. The only identity of mankind is that they are the offspring Adam and Hawa, basically one nation. Creating various nations and languages in an anthropological sense, Allah said that they should get to know each other. A world community must be established. What difference if there between this and communism? Marx didn’t call communism any ideology or religion. He meant the journey of human history towards building a world community, right?
Given our long journey of struggle, what future do you see for Bangladesh?
Farhad Mazhar: I think we have done extremely well as Bangladesh. Just think how many centuries it took the West to arrive here! We have reached this point in just 50 years. We now have the guts to sit in Dhaka and tackle the West. In 1952 Rafiq, Jabbar and the others became martyrs. “Amar bhaiyer rokte rangano Ekushey February, ami ki bhulite pari?” (Can I ever forget 21 February stained in the blood of my brothers?) The seed of spirit sowed by these words led us to the liberation war and Bangladesh. We have sown another vital seed in 2024. This will grow into a great tree. The next 50 years are nothing to this. The youth of today have amazing thoughts, amazing visions. This Bangladesh cannot be defeated. You can fight and stir up a civil war, but Bangladesh will never be another Syria.
Thank you.
Farhad Mazhar: Thank you.
* This report appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir