Living in an authoritarian political and social system for a long time is changing our social relationships in the public sphere in various ways. The long-term effects of this remain in our social and political backdrop. German sociologist Jürgen Habermas describes the public sphere as that social and cultural space where citizens can freely express their opinions, debate, and discuss.
Newspapers, television talk shows, social media, universities, and literary-cultural gatherings are important parts of the public sphere. Authoritarian systems limit the public sphere of the people and constrain social relationships in various ways, which has been our experience over the past decade.
When people live in an authoritarian system for a long period, an exploitative system emerges around the ruling class, continuously working to uphold that authoritarian system. The privileged civil society is a class that primarily creates various narratives to sustain the authoritarian regime and establishes the social and political legitimacy of those narratives, through which the authoritarian regime gradually transforms into a monster.
As an important part of this process, various societal classes and professional groups actively work to sustain this regime. As a result, over the past decade, we have not seen significant or protest voices against the authoritarian regime in society. Due to the culture of fear from political polarisation and repression, how risky it was to express dissent in the past is in our experience. As freedom of expression is ultimately curtailed, people in society subconsciously apply a kind of self-censorship in the public sphere, a tendency we see in all platforms of expression, from writing to speaking.
Such social and political practices slowly begin to spread throughout every level of society, where the privileged population attempts to establish the authoritarian regime as a permanent and desirable system for us in the public sphere. By being privileged, they assume that there is no alternative system available to us. Perhaps that is why, when we realised from the July mass uprising that the fall of the Awami authoritarian regime was imminent, the privileged section could not accept it.
As a result, they did not hesitate to cut ties with people holding different political ideologies, which has brought a significant change to our social relationships. This shift is visible everywhere—from altered friendships to a certain hesitation among colleagues at workplaces. People are no longer primarily considered as “good friends” or “good coworkers”; instead, they are evaluated based on their political beliefs or their allegiance to a particular party.
Even after a year of the mass uprising, standing before an election, we see a different situation. In contrast to the past, a new influential group has emerged due to the politics of revenge, whose thoughts and behaviours seem to follow those of the authoritarians. As a result, we do not see any effort to include dissenters in our society. Our political culture is changing the current public sphere in this way, and through this, our public sphere is gradually contracting.
We notice these negative impacts on our everyday relationships. We also observe long-standing friendships breaking up because of a single post or comment on social media. A kind of silent enmity seems to start from political differences in daily life, which used to be confined to the political realm, but now we see it in our social and public spaces.
As a result, political dissent or ideology is no longer seen as an intellectual difference; it is seen as a kind of moral division, which is marked as success for the powerful and failure for the powerless. Thus, a process of ''othering'' those outside the influential opinion is ongoing and visible. Through this, the ''others'' are deemed morally untrustworthy, as we have seen in the past. But it is regrettable that this process of othering still remains in this post-uprising ''new Bangladesh,'' which was neither desirable nor is desirable.
At one time, everyone was steadfast in a single goal to escape the authoritarian system, forgetting their ideological differences. Just after the mass uprising, we see various interest groups expressing their ideological positions. Along with this, we also see how they distanced themselves from the unity of the mass uprising to implement their respective ideals. When we needed more unity, we became more divided based on the ideological positions of various parties. Considering ideological political division as extremely negative may not be entirely correct.
Through various divisions, we can reach a position, which we can see as a process of dialectical development within society. But problems arise when, in trying to establish this ideological political philosophy, we enter a kind of retaliatory political practice. Where we see a lack of tolerance and mutual trust and faith, this lack of tolerance and trust does not only remain confined to the political sphere but also affects our daily interactions indirectly, it causes negative changes in our social relationships.
As a result, a lack of trust in each other forces us to be suspicious of each other, which we begin to practice unknowingly in our minds. Consequently, the lack of mutual trust and belief is more visible nowadays than ever before. Above all, political differences of opinion seem to become the source of daily divisions, which are turning into enmity.
Even after a year of the mass uprising, standing before an election, we see a different situation. In contrast to the past, a new influential group has emerged due to the politics of revenge, whose thoughts and behaviours seem to follow those of the authoritarians.
As a result, we do not see any effort to include dissenters in our society. Our political culture is changing the current public sphere in this way, and through this, our public sphere is gradually contracting. When the public sphere is supposed to practice reasoned debate and tolerance, it often turns into an area of control for the powerful, which is a deep crisis precursor for democracy.
Democracy survives on an active and liberal public sphere, where citizens can engage in various dialogues in their daily lives. Thus, when politics enters the heart of social relationship deterioration through the breakdown of the public sphere, the politics of revenge also becomes exemplary in daily life. If the state and society do not take necessary legal and awareness measures for the inclusion of dissenters, this division will become an unimaginable problem for us.
Therefore, we hope that the post-election government will come out of this politics of revenge. We call upon the major political parties, particularly the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, to understand the essence of the July mass uprising and create a positive political culture, which will give sustainable form to our democratic progress.
#Bulbul Siddiqi Professor, Department of Politics and Sociology, North South University
*The opinions are the writer’s own.
#This article, originally published in Prothom Alo online edition, has been rewritten in English by Rabiul Islam