Published in the Daily Star Forum on 5 September 2011.

This piece asks whether Bangladesh could have done better.

To a casual observer, the $1 billion loan from India to Bangladesh agreed by the countries’ prime ministers in January 2010 might appear to be a major issue. If the observer is sympathetic to the government’s India policy, or has a favourable view of India, this loan is likely to be seen as the latest evidence of Indian beneficence to Bangladesh. To those more sceptic of the government, or India, there are all sorts of cynical suggestions about this being a debt trap, the latest in a long line of perfidious attempts to subjugate Bangladesh.

How big a deal is this billion, really?

***

One way to answer that question is to consider the amount. This is quite easy, and the answer is — the loan is probably not as big a deal as one might think. In 2010, Bangladesh’s economy was measured at about $105 billion. And that economy is growing by 6-7% a year.

Meanwhile, in 2009, the outstanding stock of Bangladesh government’s foreign debt amounted to about $22 billion.

To put it simply, suppose you had a daily income of 105 taka (rising steadily over time), stock of debt of 22 taka, and someone lent you another taka — would you be excited? No, I didn’t think so either.

But beyond the amount, we should consider the nature of this loan — what is the loan for, what are the terms and conditions, the fine prints?

The actual agreement signed with the Exim Bank of India allows Bangladesh to borrow the $1 billion with a fixed interest of 1.8%. The loan is repayable in 20 years, with a grace period of another five years. Insofar as the interest and repayment time is concerned, this is rather pedestrian — not as concessionary as loans from multilateral development banks, but on better terms than what prevails in the global money markets.

But there is more. The loan comes with strings attached to how the money is to be spent. It is to be spent on projects related to ‘connectivity’. The primary source of procurement has to be Indian businesses. And any unutilised amount will attract a commitment fee at a rate of 0.5% a year.

This piece is not about the connectivity issue. The relevant point here is that this kind of loan — suppliers’ credit — is not usually considered the most flexible option that a country like Bangladesh can avail. In the development literature, this kind of loan is criticised as favouring the lender in terms of procurement conditions and repayment schedule.

As of 2008-09, only about $2 billion were disbursed under suppliers’ credit. However, since the current government came to power, as much as $7 billion of suppliers’ credit has been agreed with, not just India but also China, Korea and Turkey. Whereas traditionally this kind of loan was only considered for priority projects where other options were not available, the current government has sought these loans for 45 infrastructure, power and water projects.

One cannot help but wonder whether easier options were sought? Multilateral development banks would definitely not have discriminatory procurement conditions, even though they might have insisted on tougher transparency requirement. One cannot help but wonder about the political economy why these suppliers’ credits were negotiated.

Thus, the issue is not whether the $1 billion borrowed from India is a big deal. It isn’t. It’s not particularly generous. It’s not special — other countries are also lending Bangladesh. And they are not lending in any more deleterious manner than the Indians.

The issue really is, could Bangladesh have done better?

***

Let’s leave the reader to ponder that question and consider something else. Is the government saddling the country with a high debt burden? Are we falling into a debt trap?

One way to answer this question is to compare Bangladesh’s debt burden with our neighbours.

Chart 1 shows that the stock of external debt, expressed as a percentage of gross national income, has been low and falling in Bangladesh during the past decade relative to our neighbours. Chart 1, showing debt service as a percentage of gross national income, paints an even more favourable picture.

Does Bangladesh face an external debt problem? It would appear not.

And this informal conclusion is actually backed up by a 2009 joint analysis by the IMF and the World Bank. Their analysis suggests that external debt is likely to decline from about 20% to less than 10% in the next couple of decades — a ratio of about 40% is considered alarming. Debt service ratio is slated to halve from current 6 per cent — 20 per cent is the threshold.

That Bangladesh is reasonably creditworthy given its non-economic (that is, political and environmental) circumstances is further evidenced by the credit ratings accorded by Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor.

The apparent creditworthiness, however, only deepens the puzzle about the government’s preference for unfavourable loans such as suppliers’ credit.

***

Since we can’t really explain why the government prefers suppliers’ credit, let’s consider a different issue. The government doesn’t have an external debt problem, but what about domestic debt? The government consistently runs budget deficits, so public debt must be going up. Who finances this deficit, and what are the consequences?

If the deficit is financed primarily by the Bangladesh Bank, then the result is an acceleration in money supply growth, which eventually fuels inflation. Fortunately, the stock of government debt owed to the Bangladesh Bank has remained broadly unchanged between 100 and 300 billion taka in the past decade.

A different picture emerges when we consider the stock of debt owed to the banking sector. During the third BNP government, the stock averaged around 100 billion taka. The 1/11 regime saw the stock rising to over 250 billion taka. Under the current government, public debt to the banking sector has topped 400 billion taka.

Not only does excessive borrowing from the banking sector crowd out loans to private entrepreneurs, but the rising interest burden crowds out the government’s ability to spend on development programmes. In 2000-01, the government spent 42 billion taka on interest payments, about a fifth of the amount spent on development programmes. A decade later, about 146 billion taka was paid on interest, which was two-fifths of the development expenditure in 2010-11.

The government has been very vocal about the debt trap that microcredit can impose on poor households. Ironic that the government may be imposing a debt trap on the entire nation through its macroeconomic mismanagement.

***

Contrary to the hypes, the $1 billion that Bangladesh has borrowed from India is not particularly special. And excessive focus on that loan crowds out two other important issues: the government has an unhealthy preference for suppliers’ credit; and its borrowing too much from domestic banks.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

Lord Polonius thus counsels his son Laertes in Hamlet. Well, modern economists would disagree. Loans are perfectly fine if they are obtained from the best available source with the best possible term, and used for purposes with the highest pay offs.

It’s not at all clear that the government is meeting any of the criteria that would meet with the economists’ approval. As such, might we be better off heeding Polonius?

Published in the Daily Star Forum on 5 September 2011.

This piece elaborates on the concept of indigenousness in the context of Bangladesh.

The recent debate on ‘indigenousness’ in the context of Bangladesh has thrown up many questions on the appropriateness of the ‘indigenous’ identity of the peoples of Bangladesh, particularly the Pahari (hill) peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The government line is that the Paharis are not indigenous to Bangladesh, while Bengalis are. On the other hand, the Jumma peoples and the Plains Adibashis insist that they are indigenous peoples.

Who is right? Who are the Indigenous — the Adibashis or the Bengalis? Or are they both indigenous?

WASFIA NAZREEN

Context of indigenousness: Human rights vs. etymology
An informed discussion on the subject will not be possible unless we clarify the context of our discussion. The relevant context here is human rights and the framework necessarily has to be the one ascribed by that premier club of the world’s sovereign states: the United Nations. Although our esteemed foreign minister is known to have cited dictionary meaning(s) of the term, ‘indigenous’, quoting them to be those who “belong to a particular place rather than coming to it from somewhere else”, the debate cannot be settled by referring to dictionaries, but by looking at the term’s meaning as understood in the relevant UN instruments and processes and other international human-rights mechanisms, while paying appropriate attention to the political and legal contexts of Bangladesh.

And, of course, we must not ignore history. Let us therefore explore the history of settlements in Bangladesh, and the implications of the recent amendments of the constitution.

Ancestral backgrounds of the Adibashis
The most pertinent question in this respect is, were there peoples living in different parts of Bangladesh – and not necessarily spread over all parts of Bangladesh – before the arrival of the currently dominant groups (the Bengalis) in those parts of the country?

Citing the Government of Bangladesh’s communication to him, the UN Special Rapporteur Martinez Cobo wrote that the government regarded members of tribal and semi-tribal populations as indigenous on account of their descent from populations which are settled in specified geographical areas of the country (emphasis added).

Thus the question is, were the different Adibashi peoples settled in the different parts of the country such as the CHT (e.g., Chakma, Marma, Tripura), the Barind tract (e.g., Santal, Munda, Oroan), the Madhupur tract (Garo, Hajong) and so forth, before the Bengalis settled there?

Indigenousness of the CHT Adibashis (Jummas)
Historical records of the Portugese, Mughals and British, and oral and written accounts of the Jummas themselves clearly attest to the fact that all the 11 Jumma peoples were in existence in the CHT-Chittagong-Feni-Noakhali-Comilla region, not just in the hills but also in the plainlands, prior to conquest (in 1666, by the Mughals of a part of Chittagong, Feni-Noakhali, Comilla, etc., but excluding the present-day CHT). Suniti Bhushan Qanungo writes: “In prehistoric times Chittagong was inhabited successively by the Austro-Asiatic and the Mongoloid groups of peoples”. He writes further, “The Mughal conquest of Chittagong drove the Arakanese beyond the hill ranges, and vacated places were occupied by new settlers from within or outside the district. The Mughal government encouraged the colonization in northwestern Chittagong, which had been depopulated during the Arakanese regime. The new colonizers, mostly the inhabitants of Noakhali-Tripura-Comilla region were the latest settlers in the district”.

Portuguese accounts refer to “Chacomas”, separately from Bengal, Arakan and Tripura in the mid-16th century. Migration of Jummas to and from present-day Bangladesh, the Indian states of Tripura and Mizoram, and Myanmar happened for centuries. It was not a one-off event. Thus it is understandable why the CHT Regulation of 1900 defined an indigenous person of the CHT as “Chakma, [Marma] or a member of any Hill tribe indigenous to the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the Lushai Hills, Arakan Hill Tracts, or the State of Tripura”.

In contrast, Bengalis were the last to settle in the CHT.

Most importantly, the CHT was not part of Bengal until after British advent. Eminent historians and sociologists therefore have noted the following: “In 1860 the British occupied the hills to the east of Chittagong and annexed them to their colonial empire. For the first time in their history, the Chittagong hills were administered from Bengal. Before that time, political power in the hills had been dispersed among many chiefs.”

Indigenousness of the Plains Adibashis
As in the case of the CHT, in the plains region as well, there is no record of Adibashis having displaced Bengalis and settled in their present locations. The Santal and Oraon made the Barind tract inhabitable and converted harsh terrain into paddy lands. Similar settlements were made by Rakhaing (Patuakhali-Barguna), Garo and Khasi (Mymensingh-Sylhet), but not by conquering and displacing Bengalis!

As in the case of the CHT, the plains Adibashis were also present in Bangladesh from before there were written histories, imperial conquests and colonisation.

Even today, despite the de-recognition, and subsequent non-recognition by the state, it is the traditional institutions that these peoples turn to for resolving their internal disputes and for carrying out other cultural activities (Manjhi: Santall, Nokma: Garo, Myntri: Khasi). They do not turn to the mainstream state-centric institutions, unlike the Bengali peoples.

Indigenousness of Bengalis
Of course, Bengalis have also lived in different parts of the plains and delta areas for centuries. Bengalis, however, have not ventured into the hill and forest areas until relatively recently. And going back to the earliest history of Bengal, prior to the arrival of the Indo-European and Dravidian-speaking peoples, the inhabitants of Bengal included several of the peoples who are claiming indigenous identity.

But the crucial point here is that by having assimilated into the dominant groups and adopting the dominant identity (regardless of the religious and nationalist aspects of that identity) Bengalis can no longer claim the indigenous mantle as it is understood in the human rights context. The indigenous concept only makes sense when the peoples are “non-dominant” in statecraft and otherwise.

Contrary to the popular belief portrayed in the media, having an ‘indigenous’ status does not give anyone privileges of any sort over and above that of other citizens. Essentially, it means the recognition of their full participatory rights as citizens, keeping in mind the exclusion and discrimination historically meted out to them in the process of state-formation, nation building and development, which Bengalis have enjoyed from the formation of the State. It also means the creation of an enabling environment, in which they may preserve their distinctive cultural identities, which are threatened on account of their marginal situations from the beginning of State formation.

The Debate at the UN Permanent Forum and Economic and Social Council
After the decision was taken at the ECOSOC to adopt the report of the 10th session of UNPFII, GoB was quick to put up a face-saving diplomatic response, with only China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia showing sympathy for GoB’s position. Never mind the human-rights records of the above-mentioned countries!

The Foreign Ministry’s PR campaign also reported that Russia had leaned towards GoB’s concern, but in fact, the position taken by Russia is just a known cautious position on IP related matters — nothing new, and they say something like this at ECOSOC every year. What GoB, quite understandably suppressed in the media — is the overwhelming rejection of GoB’s views by states at ECOSOC of it’s two major requests: 1) to agree that PFII had no mandate to discuss the CHT Accord, on the ground that the CHT Jummas were not indigenous peoples; and 2) to delete two paragraphs from the PFII’s report concerning human rights violation by GoB security personnel and prevention of peacekeeping duties by HR violators.

Several news sources have referred that “Raja Devasish Roy ‘led’ a 12-strong team to UNPFII” — which is factually incorrect. Raja Devasish Roy is one of the 16 Expert Members at the PFII, and it is not one of those Climate or Biodiversity conferences where he ‘led’ a team from Bangladesh (including Government officials) to represent our country. As an expert member at the Permanent Forum, he is a voice of entire Asia, appointed by the ECOSOC after securing an overwhelming number of votes from Indigenous organisations across the continent.

At the UNPFII, the participants from Bangladesh represented several independent organisations of our country. I was one of those 12 participants at the 10th session of UNPFII, and my organisation presented its statement on the status of the implementation of the CHT Accord, and the state of human-rights in CHT as a result of the delay in the implementation of the Peace Accord. With all due respect to Raja Devasish, I or the other Bangladeshi civil society members did not attend the PFII under his leadership. We were each sent by individual, independent organisations to participate, in my particular case, an ECOSOC-accredited member, the Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK). When the media portrays such absurd connection to his leadership roles and those who attended the PFII in our individual capacity and merits, it is feeding into an already convoluted situation fed by racist and communalist misinformation campaign.

WASFIA NAZREEN

Indigenousness in UN instruments and practices
Definition
According to the UN the most fruitful approach is to identify, rather than formally define indigenous peoples and hence there is no set definition of indigenous peoples in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, International laws do not define minorities either. The “working definition” of indigenous peoples by José R Martínez Cobo has attained the status of a near-formal definition in the context of UN and International human rights jurisprudence. Cobo writes: “Indigenous communities, peopless and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peopless, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.” (My emphasis added)

The ILO Conventions 107 (ratified by GoB)
We should be examining first and foremost the concept in relation to the ILO Convention on Indigenous & Tribal Populations (Convention No. 107) of 1957, which Bangladesh ratified in June, 1972, under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, about six months before the Constitution of Bangladesh was adopted.

2.1. Pre-colonisation or pre-conquest social, cultural and economic institutions
As a collective entity, Bengalis live less in conformity with the “social, economic and cultural institutions” of the time of their pre-colonisation or pre-conquest period ancestors, and more in conformity with “the institutions of the nation to which they belong”, and hence they cannot be regarded as indigenous within the meaning of Convention 107.

In contrast, hill communities of the CHT, and Adibashi groups of the plains, “irrespective of their legal status” are quite the opposite. Traditional institutions in the CHT are formally recognized by law, and while those in the plains are not — still conform to their ancestral institutions’ traditions norms and mores.

In the case of “economic institutions”, Bengalis clearly do not retain very many practices of the pre-colonial or pre-conquest period, unlike Pahari groups, for example collective forest management, subsistence-oriented jum or “shifting” cultivation, etc.

2.2. Indigenous are tribal
It is clear from the wording of ILO Convention No. 107 that ‘indigenous’ and ‘tribal’ population groups are both referred to as “tribal or semi-tribal” populations. Therefore, indigenous populations are those among the tribal and semi-tribal population groups who “[are descended] from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization and which, irrespective of their legal status, live more in conformity with the social, economic and cultural institutions of that time than with the institutions of the nation to which they belong”.

2.3. Social, economic and other position of disadvantage
The concept of tribal and semi-tribal population groups has been related in this convention with “social and economic conditions [that] are at a less advanced [read disadvantaged] stage than the stage reached by the other sections of the national community”, and a “status [that] is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations”.

The concept of indigenous peoples is meaningless in the case of Bengalis from a human rights perspective because Bengalis are at the helm of state power, while the Adibashis were, and still are, substantively, the ‘excluded’ citizens, marginalised and disadvantaged.

GoB at the UN in the past
From the final report on the Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations submitted on June 20, 1982 to the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations by Mr. José Martínez Cobo, a Special Rapporteur, it is documented that the then Bangladesh Government clearly recognised the existence of the Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh. The report looked at a number of criteria in defining Indigenous Peoples, and reported how different governments define the Indigenous Peoples in their countries.

Let’s look at how the then Bangladesh Government defined and recognised the Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh. Under the Ancestry criteria: “In Bangladesh, the Government states that the members of Tribal or Semi-tribal populations are regarded as indigenous “on account of their descent from the populations which are settled in specified geographical areas of the country.” (Emphasis added).” Under the Culture and Language criteria: “In Bangladesh some of these isolated or marginal groups are said to “speak a language of their own, have their own dances, music and love songs and a uniform style of home, dress, food and customs distinct from the other tribes”, in some cases also including religions which may be “a mixture of Buddhism and totemism”. Several of these groups are described as “small communities leading a life undisturbed by alien influences” for a very long time “because of the heavy monsoon that cuts off their area from the outside world for much of the year.”” Several similar recognitions by the GoB can be found in the historic document in the link provided.

The 15th Amendment terminology and why it does not work?
- Upajati
Anyone who is fluent in English and Bengali will find it humorous that the terms ‘tribe/tribal’ can even remotely be translated to the word ‘Upa-jati’ — literally meaning ‘sub-nation’ or ‘sub-ethnic groups.’ Who is the sub-group here and who is the larger ethnic group? Are we calling the Adibashis the sub-groups of Bengalis?

-Khudro jatishotta
The term ‘khudro jati-shotta’ may seem more respectable towards the separate cultural entity of the non-Bengali peoples, but it is nevertheless, problematic, as there is a clear distinction of hierarchical division of peoples (smaller and greater!).

-Khudro nrigoshthi
“Khudro nri-goshthi” or small ethnic groups is also problematic. In the first place, the indigenous peoples and the Bengali peoples are both ethnic groups or ethnic communities, and the ‘smallness’ of the population of the indigenous peoples should not be the basis to distinguish between the different ethnic groups.

WASFIA NAZREEN

-Khudro shomprodai
Our honourable FM, Dipu Moni mentioned that when the Indigenous peoples are only 1.2% of the total population, giving them a special and ‘elevated’ identity cannot be in the national interest of our country. By this point, one must see how the Government is clearly stuck on the word “Khudro” — potent in power and paralysed by fear. Khudro shomprodai is also problematic on account of the reference to smallness. Without the khudro, this term is not disparaging.

Nevertheless, khudro (small) or brihot (large), the constitution refers to jatishotta. Jatishotta is surely either a peoples or nation, in English. And jatishottahood, peoplehood or nationhood has nothing to do with the size or population of the group concerned and of their indigenous or other status. At the same time, deleting ‘indigenous’ and all related phrases from Government documents will neither erase the consciousness of those who are Indigenous, nor affect the conscience of those who have been fighting with them.

The spirit of the CHT Regulation and customary laws are embedded in the customs of Bangladesh, which cannot be uprooted merely by a change of terms. In an important case before the Supreme Court on the succession of the Bohmong chieftain-ship, the court stated that neither the GoB nor the Court had the right to interfere with customary laws. Thus the Customary laws of the Indigenous Peoples of Bangladesh are now part of the customs of the Republic and cannot arbitrarily be revoked through mere legislation, particularly where that contravenes the constitutional tenets of non-discrimination.

Having said that, the entire exercise smacks of crass and feudal times discriminatory acts. It would be equivalent to legislation in Europe and America — or this country for that matter — to overturn the positive legal developments regarding non-discrimination on race, gender and so forth. If GoB wants to continue to be the laughing-stock in the world podium of progressiveness — the curtains are raised, refreshments have sold-out… all are queuing up for some good laughs, at the expense of our national image.

1. Ethnic minority, not indigenous people, FM tells diplomats, editors, Daily Star, July 27, 2011.
2. Commission on Human Rights, Study of the problem of discrimination against Indigenous Populations, Jose R. Martinez Cobo (1982: paragraph 61).
3. Suniti Bhushan Qanungo, A History of Chittagong, Vol 1, published by Dipankar Qanungo, Chittagong, 1988, p. 20.
4. Ibid, p. 21.
5. S. N. H. Rizvi (ed), East Pakistan District Gazetteers: Chittagong, Government of East Pakistan, Services and General Administration Department, East Pakistan Government Press, Dacca, 1970, p. 75.
6. Willem van Schendel, Wolfgang Mey & Aditya Kumar Dewan, The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland, White Lotus Press, Bangkok, 2000, p. 25.
7. Chakma Raja decries non-recognition, Sun, 29/05/2011 by priyodesk; News Source: The New Age
8. Article 1(1)(b), ILO Convention No. 107.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Article 1(1)(a), ILO Convention No. 107.
13. The URL address of the report is http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/spdaip.html
14. Page 15 of E/CN.4/Sub.2/1982/2/Add.6, No: 61.
15. Page 18 of E/CN.4/Sub.2/1982/2/Add.6, No: 86.
16. Aung Shwe Prue Chowdhury v. Kyaw Sain Prue Chowdhury & Others (50 DLR AD (1998) 73)

Published in the Daily Star Forum on 5 September 2011.

This piece revisits the lessons learnt from two exceptional boundary disputes to highlight some policy priorities.

The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s official visit to Dhaka is expected to address some of the long-standing multi-faceted disputes between Bangladesh and India. The dispute over land and maritime boundaries remains one such unsettled issue that the officials of both the countries are trying hard to work out during this visit. More than six decades after the partition and four decades after the independence of Bangladesh, the two countries have finally signed the border maps to officially recognise their international boundary and end a lingering dispute over the issue.

The countries even intend to address the much more complicated issues regarding enclave-exchange and maritime boundaries. This is not the first time the two countries came close to solving such problems, but regrettably, at least twice it was India that failed to implement bilateral agreements on border issues.

As the two prime ministers address these issues, this article revisits the lessons learnt from two exceptional boundary disputes to highlight some policy priorities.

Disputes over enclaves/exclaves
An enclave is a territory within or surrounded by another territory. When an enclave belongs to another sovereign country, it’s called an exclave of that sovereign country. In this part of the world, we call it a ‘chitmahal’. These are the scattered pieces of lands — some of them belong to Bangladesh but are within Indian territory; and others belong to India, but are inside Bangladesh’s territorial boundaries.

Some of the boundaries of these enclaves are very complicated (see Figure 1). There are counter-enclaves which belong to Bangladesh, but are within an Indian territory that is also surrounded by Bangladesh, and vice versa. Interestingly, there is also a counter-counter-enclave, a piece of land, which belongs to India that is within Bangladesh within India within Bangladesh.

Confusing, right?

Figure 1: Enclaves and Counter-enclaves within Bangladesh and India

As Figure 1 illustrates, part of Indian and Bangladeshi land are not only inside each-other’s territory, there are small pockets within those adversely situated lands that belong to other country.

There are alternative hypotheses that tried to explain the origin of these sheer bizarreness that otherwise defy any reasonable explanation.

Whyte (2002) offered a detailed history that tells how these enclaves originated during the pre-colonial era when Mughal expansion faced pockets of resistance by the chieftains of Cooch Bihar and resulted in enclaves (that belonged to Cooch Bihar) within Mughal controlled Rangpur region. Alternative hypothesis suggests that the Maharaja of Cooch Bihar and Foujdar of Rangpur used to gamble or play chess wagering villages on the win. As they won and lost villages to each other, many enclaves emerged in their territories. Another unlikely hypothesis suggests that Cyril Radcliffe — who drew the India-Pakistan border in 1947 — was in a hurry (and drunk too, in some telling of the story) and he accidentally dropped some ink dots on the map, creating these enclaves.

However, there is no denying the fact that Radcliffe had no knowledge in geographical map setting and had only few days to complete the demarcation process on the basis of the now-discredited two-nation doctrine. During the British rule, Cooch Bihar remained as a Princely state. An exchange of these enclaves, initiated by the British rulers during the 1930s, was abandoned when the residents of the enclaves wished to retain their status quo. During partition, Radcliffe ultimately drew the boundaries without exchanging these enclaves between Cooch Bihar and Rangpur. The demarcation decision was kept as a top secret until two days after the separation. When Cooch Bihar and Rangpur became part of India and East Pakistan respectively, the enclaves became a permanent problem.

Both Pakistan and India tried to exchange the enclaves and signed a treaty in 1958. However, India never implemented the treaty. After liberation, Bangladesh also signed a treaty with India in 1974, but India never ratified this treaty either. Furthermore, Bangladesh offered its Berubari exclave within India in exchange for a narrow tin-bigha corridor to get connected with its own exclave of Dahogram-Angorpota. Instead of handing over the corridor, India came up with all sorts of alternative approaches, including hourly opening of the corridor or even building a flyover to the exclave!

And yet, Mr Singh had to hypothesise Bangladesh’s so-called anti-India sentiment with some pro-Pakistan conspiracy theories (Sobhan, 2011)!

Now that the Indian Prime Minister’s visit is due, both the countries are working hard to solve the enclave issue once and for all. The Joint Boundary Working Group (JBWG) conducted series of meetings and carried out surveys to exchange the exclaves. However, based on our historical experience with these enclaves, we need to address some technical dilemmas first.

The first and foremost issue is the access to information. Remember, it is this absolute secrecy of Radcliff’s partition process that prevented an early solution in the first place. The governments should publish the results of the survey conducted by the JBWG, before signing the treaty. It has been reported that there are 111 Indian exclaves within Bangladesh, while 51 Bangladesh’s exclaves are in India (Daily Star, 2011). However, previous reports suggested that there are 106 Indian enclaves occupying some 20,000 acres within Bangladesh, while 92 Bangladeshi enclaves occupying about 12,000 acres within Indian territory (Times of India, 2011). It is to be mentioned that, some Bangladeshi enclaves are within Bangladeshi territory and vice-versa. But however these enclaves are defined and exchanged, people also have the right to know as to how these enclaves are being exchanged.

The second concern is to ensure that India does not pull back after signing the treaty, as it did twice in the past. India probably assumes that they are in a weaker position on this bargain as Bangladesh will gain some land if all the enclaves are merged into their respective host countries. This is one reason that’s presumably stopped India from solving the issue. As the Indian media reported, India will end up losing some 8,000 acres after both the countries exchange each other’s enclaves. However, India fails to understand that most of these Indian exclaves are inaccessible by them and will remain within Bangladesh’s sovereign territory. Moreover, Bangladesh has already handed over a very significant piece of its exclaves (Berubari), though in return India failed to hand over a tiny corridor to Bangladesh.

Keeping in mind India’s previous failures in implementing bilateral treaties, Bangladesh should insist on legally binding treaties and if necessary, special clauses in the treaty whereby both sides will have to
hand over the promised exclaves to enjoy their sovereignty over the enclaves they receive. Besides, this time it’s only fair that Bangladesh waits for India to ratify the treaty first. Also, to legally strengthen the deal, the enclaves should be treated as ‘exchanged’ not ‘handed over’.

Finally, given the fact that these enclaves are not individual sovereign entities, rather a part of a larger sovereign state; can the international law accept the decisions taken by the states over their respective enclaves? Otherwise, if people of the enclaves are allowed to have their say in the re-demarcation process, what will happen if they want to maintain their status quo? Nonetheless, the residents should be allowed to remain where they are or migrate to other country. Any chance of forced migration by the opportunists of both sides must be prevented at any cost.

Disputes over maritime boundaries
The disputes over the territorial boundaries amongst Bangladesh-India-Myanmar are based on two fundamental disagreements among the three countries on the methods of delineating these maritime boundaries.

According to international law, the first 12 nautical miles from the sea baseline is called the ‘territorial sea’ where a country has its absolute sovereignty. The next 200 nautical miles are called the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) where a country has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources.

But, from which baseline and to which direction do they measure these distances? Well, Bangladesh, India and Myanmar beg to differ on that question.

India and Myanmar prefer a ‘low water’ sea baseline — that closely follows the curves of the vertical coastlines for their maritime boundaries (see Figure 2). But Bangladesh prefers a ‘straight baseline’ anchored in different coastal landmarks (e.g. islands, low-water points, etc.) since it has a very uneven coastline, and it’s difficult to measure ‘low-water sea baseline’ where so many rivers unite with the sea. India and Myanmar, however, insist that Bangladesh should not follow a straight baseline

Figure 2: Territorial Sea Baselines

Source: Nahar, 2009

On the other hand, India and Myanmar have delineated their maritime boundaries based on ‘equal distance’ from their respective coastlines at West and East shore of the Bay of Bengal. Given the triangular shape of the Bay of Bengal, such demarcation not only deprives Bangladesh from sea resources, it also makes it a ‘zone-locked’ country (see Figure 3). Following international examples, Bangladesh proposed ‘equity’ method to delineate the boundaries for just and equitable shares of the deep-sea territory.

Figure 3: Zone-locked Bangladesh

Source: Nahar, 2009

Myanmar has further complicated the conflict by re-demarcating its maritime boundary using ‘straight’ baseline, though its geological nature does not permit such delineation.

Without solving the boundary dispute, India and Myanmar then announced their offshore blocks for exploration and extraction of oil and gas in the deep sea. Their deep-sea blocks overlapped with Bangladesh’s deep-sea territory. In 2008, Bangladesh even had to show up its naval force to stop Myanmar from exploring natural resources inside Bangladesh’s deep sea block. Meanwhile, India also began exploration of gas close to the disputed territory. In response, Bangladesh hurriedly appointed ConocoPhillips to explore gas in that disputed block. Both the countries however agreed not to carry out exploration in the disputed part of the overlapping blocks. But the dispute continued.

In the end, Bangladesh had to request an UN intervention. Bangladesh has already lodged a complaint against Myanmar at the UN, and in response, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) has initiated the arbitration process.

Meanwhile, it was assumed that Bangladesh will take the Indian case to ITLOS as well. Hence, no bilateral agreement was pursued during the Bangladeshi Prime Minister’s visit to India in 2010.

In a similar case in 1969, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected Denmark and Netherland’s claims for equidistance territory, considering Germany’s special location. Also, after the 1951 Anglo-Norwegian Fisheries Case, demarcation of straight baseline for countries with especial coastlines has become a lawful practice. While Bangladesh awaits a legal verdict on the matter by the first quarter of 2012, experts suggested that Bangladesh has a better chance of winning the case against Myanmar.

At this point, Bangladesh should not hurry to reach any unfavourable agreement with India. When the arbitration was initiated, Myanmar suddenly became enthusiastic about carrying on bilateral talks with Bangladesh. Myanmar has already toned down its previously-inflexible position after 36 years and has finally admitted to consider a combination of equity and equal distance approach.

At this moment, India might insist that Bangladesh solves the maritime boundary dispute in bilateral talks, instead of seeking ITLOS intervention. If that happens, Bangladesh should use Myanmar’s changing position as leverage in its negotiation with India. Unless India agrees to some legally binding decisions on equity and straight baseline demarcations, Bangladesh should keep the ITLOS option open.

***

If Bangladesh and India are to address the long list of disputed issues in this meeting, solving the boundary dispute should be a priority. While Robert Frost is right in arguing that — ‘something there is that doesn’t love a wall’, in case of sovereign states, ‘good fences do make good neighbours’.

Nahar, S. 2009. “UN to arbitrate maritime boundary disputes among Bangladesh, India and Myanmar: The last but not the least alternative”. Paper submitted to the Department of International Relations, La Trobe University. Melbourne: La Trobe University.

Sobhan, Z. 2011. What does ‘anti-Indian’ mean?. The Sunday Guardian. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/what-does-anti-indian-mean

The Daily Star. 2011 (20 July) Census in all enclaves done. URL: http://bit.ly/mSuBUF
Times of India. 2011 (29 July). Border issue to top Chidambaram’s Dhaka agenda. URL: http://bit.ly/qWYOdQ

Whyte, B. R. 2002. Waiting for the Esquimo: An historical and documentary study of the Cooch Behar enclaves of India and Bangladesh. Research Paper 8. Melbourne: School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies. University of Melbourne.

Published in BDnews24 on 30 August.

This piece considers the impact of Anna Hazare’s campaign on Bangladeshi politics.

The arrival of Anna bhai and his ‘Gandhigiri’, ironically copying a Bollywood storyline of Munna bhai and his embracing of Gandhi in dealing with national problem, has undoubtedly captured the imagination of the world. But not everybody is a fan. Arundhati Roy has almost called him a fake and the people who are seething in anger are just staying quiet for the right time to criticise him. But Anna Hazare definitely has arrived with Indian media and the middle-class hailing him as the new Messiah.

My prediction: this jubilation will be short lived and Team Anna will regularly venture into territories which will become problematic for democratic governance. However, even though I think his solutions are not well thought through (such sweeping power to an unelected body can never be good for democracy), he deserves a huge bow. At the least, the movement has made certain section of the citizens feel empowered and created a huge demand for change from the way business is being done. That is no small feat.

Sure, the most vocal supporter of his are the elite middle-class but that is also the group who are the most disaffected, risk averse and indifferent but if moved into action, this is the group that can make the most impact. Anna’s team seems to have emboldened this group and forced them into taking part in the movement.

In the meantime, in facebook chatters and iftar parties, Bangladeshi middle-class is clamouring for Bangladeshi Anna and some of our civil society leaders are feeling emboldened by Anna’s success. Ilias Kanchan will go for fasting for safer roads after Eid. So will Tarana Halim if the corrupt practise of giving unauthorised license does not stop. Syed Abul Maqsud, who never wears Western clothes protesting the Iraq invasion, will spend his Eid at the Shaheed Minar demanding resignation of the communication minister.

Regardless of the success or failure of Bangladeshi Annas, Anna Hazare has set an example that in a democracy, outside the partisan circle, citizens can truly be a force to reckon with in issue oriented politics.

In Bangladesh, the political circle regularly dismisses this group or those who are perceived to be leaders of this group as out of touch with the mainstream. Anna, whose career in public sector, is marked with hands on service in rural India, is a remarkable exception and as a result could not be so easily dismissed by the political class in India.

All in all, a good sign — anything that takes the civil society out of the roundtable scene cannot be bad. But getting acceptability among the people will be a long journey. Do they have the stomach for this arduous task? Or will they go for shortcuts like they have in the past which damaged their credibility for which they are still paying for?

But are we ready to mobilise our very own Anna? Before any change takes place, the demand for change has to be there. We have to believe that we can make a change before the real mobilisation starts. We also have to believe that business as usual is simply not acceptable. But how does one start?

There is no accurate answer to that. But may be too often we confuse our rights as citizens as our right to vote only. However, this is rather a continuous process. Before asserting one’s rights in a constituency, one has to establish the ownership first – ownership to this state and its people. Voting or owning a passport does not create that ownership. Rather paying taxes does. As soon as we realise that as taxpayers we are paying for the services, we will start demanding better services. As long as we continue to believe it’s a freebie, we force ourselves for the kind of services or the lack of it, we get.

If my last year’s tax fair experience is any indication to go by, we are surely heading that way. To my surprise, I saw long queues of ordinary citizens happily waiting to pay taxes. When I enquired inside with the officials, they told me that the majority of this group are first time taxpayers and their average returns were for Tk 2000-3000 from very average earning groups. This to me seemed like a welcome change and also seeing the kind of pride associated in their faces while paying taxes also told me that the ownership is being established. With such ownership, the assertion as citizens will begin and mobilisation will follow.  As for leadership?

This won’t just depend on leadership. This will depend on the ecosystem for democracy as well of which a critical component is the media. In the team Anna movement, the media played almost a cheerleading role giving the movement a national face. The traditional media in Bangladesh, however, is going through a bit of an identity crisis.

The electronic media lacks any imagination or investment on content. One cannot distinguish one channel from the other. 10 years after the start of the first private television channel, one cannot name any new journalists other than the early Ekushey TV stars such as Munni Saha and J E Mamun. There are blips of hope, flashes of brilliance here and there but the industry flushed with corporate money is too much under rocky terrain to be perceived very dependable. New initiatives also seem to peter away without explanation. The Daily Star started the opinion poll on government’s performance only to stop after a year.

Changes, however, are happening in the social media scene. Recently, there has been encouraging signs of development in the new media scene. Due to the government’s reduction in broadband pricing, the spread of Internet is dizzying. Bangladesh now has almost eight million internet users – an astounding 1300 percent increase in just two years. If you consider that facebook alone has 1.4 million users in Bangladesh and the highest circulating daily has a circulation of 500 thousand, you can safely conclude that more and more people are consuming news from new media than the traditional media. The Arun Chowdhury scandal and the police involvement in killing of a boy in Companyganj were captured in mobile phone camera before it made it to the traditional media. Beyond camera reporting, citizens seem to be mobilising around more specific issues in Bangladesh. Particularly the one surrounding bad medical practice in Bangladesh has taken a momentum.

And as for leadership — sometimes, leadership comes from unexpected corner, but when it does and it crosses the tipping point in that ecosystem, like it did for Anna, powerful things can happen. Undoubtedly enough, the assertion of taxpayers’ civic rights is starting to happen in South Asia. In the Indian version of ‘Anna and the King’, the king was too late to recognise it. In the Bangladeshi version, however, the script is yet to be written.

Published in BDnews24 on 17 August 2011.

This piece calls to bring into account the vested interests that defend the status quo in our transport sector.

I grew up in this country accepting road accidents to be a fact of life — something you read about, something you hear of, something that sometimes comes close to home but never quite hits it. You just learn to live with it and hope for the best.

I also grew up knowing that it is a problem too hard to solve because I am too powerless and ‘they’ are too powerful.

The bus drivers who drive these vehicles are just too powerful. You warn them, you sweet-talk with them, sometimes even scold them if you dare, but they have the wheels and all I have is my big mouth and my weak heart. So I stop talking.

The contractors who make the roads and culverts are just too powerful. They decide the ratio of constituents of the road, how much cement to mix with sand and water for the culvert, how long before it will need fixing so that they can be called in again. You see their workers, you call them names when angry, but never get to know who employ them. Their power comes from their ability to be invisible. So I stop looking.

The bus owners who hire the drivers are just too powerful. They control the transportation networks, control livelihoods, control votes, they know the right people. Accidents kill, drivers sometimes get caught, get jailed for a few years (if the media decides to follow it up), but the bus owners who employed the drivers are left unscathed since there is no law that can make them accountable. They know the people who decide who is to blame for what. So I stop demanding justice.

The bureaucrats who approve the highway design and give the licenses to the drivers are just too powerful. They decide who can drive and who not, who can pay for a license and who not, and who cannot drive but still can pay or get politicians to vouch for their ‘driving skills’ (or rather manoeuvring skills). They decide which plots should be touched when making highways, which will have two lanes and which will not. Political parties come and go but they stay. So I stop waiting for change.

The politicians who make the laws are just too powerful. They pick the winners and the losers. They make the rules of the game with enough scope for exceptions for those who know how to play. They decide the punishment rules, the accountability structures — all the while keeping in mind which players are on their side, and who they can afford to punish in case there is too much demand from the public. They fuel the system and legitimise it every five years. So I stop voting.

I think to myself, why pick a battle that you know you will lose. I was taught early to choose my battles. So I stop fighting.

So I kept on hoping that road accidents would be something I would read about, hear of, and that sometimes would swoosh me by but would never quite hit home. But when Tareque Masud and Mishuk Munier died, it finally hit home. As I saw the picture of the wrecked microbus, it finally hit home. It really finally hit home. And I felt ashamed. It took the lives of two of the greatest talents of this generation to finally hit it home – two of the most committed patriots, two of our heroes, two of our very few role models.

And I am finally asking the question that I should have asked a long time ago — are ‘they’ really that powerful? If you add them up, they would probably add up to 1500 key people. And we are a nation of 150 million people who are shutting our mouths and closing our eyes thinking they are just too powerful.

Are you ashamed? I am.

Published in BDnews24 on 2 August 2011.

Yet another death row inmate, AHM Biplob, has been granted clemency by the president. This is not the first time though. In 2010, 20 death row inmates convicted in the controversial Gama killing case were pardoned by the president.

There is an official explanation — according to article 49 of the Bangladesh constitution President Zillur Rahman has the absolute power to offer mercy to any convicted person. The prime minister also defended the president’s action arguing that the case against Biplob was false and politically motivated.

Before we try to make sense of this clemency decision, let’s revisit two other events of punishment and clemency that took place during the same time in two different parts of the world.

* * *
On 18 July, few students, aged between 16 and 22, went to Aminbazar — allegedly to look for drugs. Little did they know, the local villagers were fed up with the ever growing robberies and extortions in the area. When the students were roaming around Keblarchar in the middle of the night, the villagers mistook them for robbers and soon they found themselves in the middle of an angry mob.

Within hours, six students were beaten to death by hundreds of villagers in medieval execution style.

The students sought their innocence, but their requests fell on deaf ears. Their plea for clemency, for crimes they did not commit in the first place, was denied by the merciless mob.

* * *
The other event took place in America. After the 9/11 terror attack, a vindictive Texan man named Mark Stronman went on a shooting spree targeting people of Arab descent. Before he was arrested by the police, two of his victims died. A Bangladeshi immigrant, Rais Bhuiyan, survived with shot in the face and was left blind in his right eye. When Stronman was convicted of the attack and was sentenced to death, Bhuiyan launched an extraordinary campaign called ‘World without Hate’ to save his attacker’s life. In a desperate attempt, Bhuiyan appealed and then filed suit against the state of Texas and its governor to stop Stronman’s execution on grounds of clemency.

In the last moment telephone conversation, Stronman thanked Bhuiyan for his campaign. In his final moments, Stronman said, “hate is going on in this world and it has to stop.”

On 20 July, Stronman was executed by the state of Texas. Bhuiyan’s plea for clemency was denied.

* * *
Lynching by mob is nothing new in this part of the world. Every month some criminals or innocent suspects are getting beaten to death by angry mobs in one district or the other. Other than simply saying that we are too angry a nation, one possible reason for such behaviour would be the lack of justice in our society. When rise in criminal activities is not matched with exemplary punishments, people tend to take the law into own hands.

From that perspective, frequent clemency by the president may not be a good thing for us.

But what if the president is just being kind? When we applaud Rais Bhuiyan for his anti-death sentence campaign, can we really criticise the president for sparing one’s life? Well, the debate could be very difficult if it was for and against death penalty. After all, how many of us would really support death penalty if the killer is our brother? Or, how many will really oppose death penalty if the victim is our father? Well, don’t answer that since this is not such a debate. At least the president has not taken a public stance against death penalty by granting clemency for the killer of his wife. Our president is not Rais Bhuiyan.

Besides, for such a stance to be materialised, the nation will have to abolish death penalty altogether. But that’s another debate. Here, it seems that the president picked and chose the clemency cases. Constitutionally, however, the president can do that. But we can also expect better judgement from him. When only members of ruling political party get wholesale clemency, general people lose hope in the system.

But what if the convict is actually a victim of a biased political system, as the prime minister has argued? After all, we have seen how the legal system gets influenced by the successive political regimes. We still remember how an innocent slum dweller George Miah was forced to make confessional statement on August 21 grenade attack during the past BNP regime. Over the past decades, we have also heard several incidents of innocent victims serving prison times. It is in this setting that the ruling party has argued that both Gama and Nurul Islam murder cases were pursued hurriedly in Speedy Trial Tribunals and the convicts were wrongly accused.

For argument’s sake, let’s ponder on this position and explore the Gama killing case. When the nephew of former BNP deputy minister Ruhul Quddus Talukdar Dulu was murdered, the political cadres of the then ruling party BNP wreak havoc in the area for months. The Speedy Trial Tribunal of Dhaka sentenced 21 persons to death for the killing, of which 13 members were from a single family. Since AL came to power in 2009, they had a long time to find out the real killers and expose the perpetrators of the kangaroo court. But they didn’t.

If the biased political system is to blame for the verdict, then why didn’t the current government let the law take its own course during its own tenure? When the case was pending before the High Court, why didn’t the government allow the issue to be settled in the court of law? Why the president had to order clemency to save them? Does this mean that the court is unreliable under the current regime as well?

When the younger son of the current opposition leader was convicted in a money-laundering case, the general secretary of the ruling party, Syed Ashraful Islam, said that “the judgment proves we have to suffer dire consequences if we fail to make our children good human beings”. But the way the presidential clemency is being exercised, people may think that such dire consequence is true only for the opposition, not for the children of ruling political leaders.

I beg your pardon Mr President, but only something wicked this way comes.

Published in BDnews24 on 28 July 2011.

This piece challenges Bangladesh government’s position on the constitutional recognition for the indigenous peoples.

Once upon a time, the British called us ‘blacks’, and then later the Pakistani Army called us ‘inferior race.’ Time passes, it is 2011. As International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples approaches again this year, Bangladesh is stuck in a quicksand ditch trying to figure out ‘who’ the Adibashis or indigenous of our land really are in the first place! This goes back to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party era, when ministers were first heard saying “Bangladesh has no indigenous people”, but somehow that ideology has leaked into a few heads in the Awami League as well (we hope they are the minority within the party).

The past year saw an intense amount of debate on this issue, with its finale being delivered at the 10th session of the UNPFII (United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues), when the First Secretary of the Government of Bangladesh, Iqbal Ahmed, declared in his speech, surely vetted and pre-approved by the home and foreign ministry in Dhaka: “There are no indigenous people in Bangladesh.”

And as the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the parent body of UNPFII, gathers in Geneva as I type, certain government officials are again raising this issue. On 26th of July, our honourable foreign minister Dr Dipu Moni, held back-to-back meetings with senior diplomats and media editors to “deal with ‘misperceptions’ both at home and abroad about the ethnic minorities.”

“The ethnic minorities in the CHT region have been clearly termed as ‘Tribal’ in the 1997 peace accord, but there are attempts by some vested quarters to establish them as ‘Indigenous’ in some international and UN forums. This is solely aimed at securing a privileged status for an established and legally-accepted entity, at the expense of national identity, image and territorial integrity of Bangladesh.” She said.

Promises and reality

Here is a question for our honourable foreign minister. If this is truly what she believes, why did she accept an invitation as the ‘Special Guest’ to World Indigenous Day, both in 2008 and 2009 (see picture)? Let us extend the question wider than our foreign minister, and ask the same question to our honourable prime minister as well.

Madam prime minister, did you forget the promise, in the 20-points Awami League election manifesto of 2008 (1), based on which the indigenous people and their Bengali supporters put their trust on you on the election day?

That manifesto included the following declaration: (Under “Our Promise, Work Programme and Declaration,” number 18.): “Terrorism, discriminatory treatment and human rights violations against religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous people must come to an end permanently.” The manifesto further stated: “Their entitlement to equal opportunity in all spheres of state and social life will be ensured. Special measures will be taken to secure their original ownership on land, water bodies, and their age-old rights on forest areas.”

The 2008 Awami League manifesto further stated: “All laws and other arrangements discriminatory to minorities, indigenous people and ethnic groups will be repealed. Special privileges will be made available in educational institutions for religious minorities and indigenous people. Such special privileges will also apply for their employment.”

And reading further in the same manifesto, we see: “The 1997 Chittagong Hill Tract Peace Accord will be fully implemented.”

“Thakur ghorey key rey? Ami kola khaini!”

It is, of course, no secret that Bangladesh government’s requests have been ongoing since the UNPFII in May, to remove some portions of the report published by the UNPFII, which called on the government, among others, to undertake a ‘phased withdrawal’ of temporary army camps from the CHT, declare a timeframe for implementation of the peace accord, and establish an independent commission to inquire into ‘human rights violations perpetrated against indigenous peoples’ as per the 1997 CHT Accord that this government signed. We would understand all these steps if it was a BNP government in power, but why are these actions coming from the same party that signed the Accord?

Furthermore, the UNPFII recommended that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO) review the military personnel and units who are being sent on UN missions (a source of great pride to all of us as Bangladeshis) to make sure no personnel or units are taken from any that are accused by indigenous Jumma people of violating human rights in the CHT (2).

According to an email I received from one official contacted by GoB, we hear that our government, after having challenged and questioned the locus standi or legal standing of the UNPFII to deal with issues related to the CHT Accord of 1997 on the ground that the peoples of the CHT are “not indigenous”, is reportedly going to request the UN ECOSOC  (i) to “delete paragraphs 102(a) and 103 of the report of the tenth session of the UNPFII”; (ii) to “drop mentioning of the term ‘indigenous peoples’ from Para 102(c) and (d) as they are not indigenous peoples’”; (iii)  to “scrutinize the procedural aspects of (asking for such a study) the Report by PFII as well as the contents of the report; and (iv) to refrain from “adopting” and/or “endorsing” the report of the UNPFII. And thus we understand the timing of our foreign minister’s session with journalists and foreign missions.

Let me remind our readers that out of the 16 independent experts at the UNPFII, eight are government-nominated and eight are indigenous-nominated. The members nominated by governments are elected by ECOSOC based on the five regional groupings of states normally used at the United Nations (Africa; Asia; Eastern Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean; and Western Europe and other states) (3). When one is questioning the Permanent Forum’s work, it is also questioning direct Government Representative’s work, as expert members! The country representatives, or Permanent Forum members that are government-nominated for this term, represent the following countries: Estonia, Iran, Australia, Russia, Congo, Guatemala, Guyana and Finland. So the GoB has challenged the above-mentioned governments of the countries involved, in addition to the expert mechanism of UNPFII!

What does the UN term as “indigenous?”

The UN system has developed a modern understanding of the term indigenous (4), the first clause of which says: “Self- identification as indigenous peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member.” Aside from this, ‘Historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies,’ ‘Distinct social, economic or political systems,’ ‘Distinct language, culture and beliefs,’ ‘Form non-dominant groups of society,’ are just some highlights — all of which apply to the inhabitants of CHT as well as the Adibashis of the plain lands of Bangladesh.

According to the UN the most fruitful approach is to identify, rather than define indigenous peoples and hence there is no set definition of indigenous peoples in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Similarly, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to Ethnic, Linguistic or Religious Minorities contains no definition of “minorities” groups. This is the usual custom and practice of the UN when dealing with such population groups. This is based on the fundamental criterion of self-identification as underlined in a number of human rights documents.

The aforesaid UN declaration is also based on the premise that “the term “indigenous” has prevailed as a generic term for many years. In some countries, there may be preference for other terms including tribes, first peoples/nations, aboriginals, ethnic groups, Adivasi, janajati. Occupational and geographical terms like hunter-gatherers, nomads, peasants, hill people, etc. also exist and for all practical purposes can be used interchangeably with “indigenous peoples.”” Tribal and indigenous are often used interchangeably, although in current discourses the term ‘indigenous’ is clearly favoured on account of disparaging connotations of ‘tribal’ in many cultures and contexts, Bangladesh included.

Our foreign minister was quoted as saying “Giving a special and elevated identity to enfranchise only 1.2 percent of the total population of 150 million by disentitling the 98.8 percent cannot be in the national interest of Bangladesh.” We, the Bengalis, the so-called intellectual, ‘superior race’, the MAJORITY and overwhelming politically, socially and economically dominant elite, are afraid of giving the just title to 1 percent of the population?

So what the foreign minister is saying is that by addressing the ‘historic wrong’ of NOT including the excluded, by recognising indigenous status, would ‘elevate’ their status? Actually, such an exercise would not ‘elevate’ their status, but merely draw attention to their historic and current exclusion and marginalisation. The international understanding of the term, ‘Indigenous peoples’, does not provide any status to indigenous peoples, that is superior to that of other peoples. Such a status merely outlines the context of providing citizens of indigenous descent with true equality and non-discrimination in context-specific ways.

We find it derogatory that an honourable minister of a country can say about indigenous people: “They came here as asylum seekers and economic migrants. The original inhabitants or first nationals of Bangladesh are the ethnic Bengalees by descent that constitute nearly 99 percent of the country’s 150 million people.” The above stand of the GoB is discriminatory.

Irrespective of the terminology used in the laws of Bangladesh to refer to the indigenous peoples of the CHT, it is established beyond doubt that the peoples of the CHT are indigenous in accordance with the provisions of the ILO Convention No. 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Populations, which was ratified by Bangladesh in June, 1972, the ILO Convention No 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

As a Bangladeshi, a Bengali, I protest against such statements. As a Bangladeshi working for this country, I protest on behalf of all my Adibashi sisters and brothers, and other friends and colleagues, who continue to work for and with Adibashis towards the development of our Motherland.

On reflection, the government’s attempts to belittle the term “indigenous,” is helping the Adibashi cause in the bigger picture. At the end of the day, the UN (and all its relevant bodies) will still uphold its progressive understanding of indigenous peoples, but now every Jodhu, Modhu, Ram & Shaam is getting to know about the cause – of discrimination and exclusion of Adibashis and acute human rights violation perpetrated against them – that received very scant attention in the last 40 years or so in the international arena!

Now the average citizen of Bangladesh is getting to know about the cause. When the average citizen looks deeply into this issue, I am confident they will reach a conclusion that is very different from that of our foreign minister and our government.

* The author is indebted to research & e-debates amongst IP and progressive Bengali circles.

———————————–

Footnotes:
(1) Election Manifesto of Bangladesh Awami League-2008 http://www.albd.org/autoalbd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=367&Itemid=1

(2) http://jummacommunity.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/unpfii-10th-session-recommendations-on-bangladesh/

(3) Members of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/members.html

(4) Who are the Indigenous? www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf

Published in the Daily Star Forum on 4 July 2011.

This piece argues that the case of Rumana Monzur and others will simply fade in and out of newspaper headlines and civil society interest.

(Friday Afternoon 3-ish, before the rally for justice for Rumana Monzur)
The pictures are everywhere. The battered nose. The eyes gouged out behind the black glasses. Everyone is talking about it. Everyone is suddenly aware, upset, horrified, shocked.

This case, unlike the hundreds every year, is a little different, at least to our Dhaka civil society. This case hit home. Sumon can be any of our educated, self-congratulating civil society brothers, fathers, husbands. BUET educated, good family. The question on everyone’s lips and minds – ekta shikkhitoh chhele erokomtah korte parlo? Suddenly the beast is not in some remote area of Bangladesh. Suddenly he is not the rickshawallah or our house help’s good for nothing,bangla-mod drinking abusive husband who lives off her salary.

No, he is one of us. English reading, car riding, parents’ dream come true engineer son that you all wanted your daughters to find and settle down with. It’s shocking to you, to us, because he destroys all of our fragile constructions of class. Just when we thought we are above it all, this Sumon character appears and makes us a little uncomfortable. Degrees from renowned institutions do not necessarily educate, and bhalo paribar are not so bhalo after all.

It shook us somewhere at the core. My fellow Drishtipat writers sprang quickly. The men wrote about the poison that breed violence, the women wrote about the silence of it all that allows for men to violate us. It was quite heartwarming to see especially the DWC men react so vigilantly, so passionately against the violence of this case. But I also understand why they reacted so vehemently: as the blogger Jyoti Rahman wrote — the animal lives inside us all.

Photo: MAHMUDUL HOQUE MONI

For me, a survivor myself, this was just too personal. Came in front of the computer at least thrice — three different drafts at three different times. Could not seem to finish anything. First it was just anger. Raw anger that just wanted to hunt Sumon down like the animal he is and take a bat to his head. The animal lives inside of me too. Just tamed it over the years.

Then a day or two later, I attempted again but the article still stayed unfinished, words just wouldn’t fill up the blank pages. This time it wasn’t rage stopping the flow — it was the tears. I don’t know Rumana. I never met her but I grieved for her the way I did for a close friend in an abusive relationship, or the way I grieved for myself at the realisation of innocence lost. This grief is beyond anything I can explain with words. It is a deep pain that comes from the bitter realisation that goddammit I am not alone in this. It comes from a head against the wall frustration that this keeps happening over and over again and nothing is stopping it.

It is a gut wrenching fear that my son can one day be a perpetrator and my daughter a victim.

And speaking of children, I wonder how their little girl, Anusheh, is doing. How will this affect her? How unbelievably horrible it must be for a little girl to witness this nightmare. And to think, Rumana thought she needed to stay on in this relationship for Anusheh’s sake. How we delude ourselves into thinking our men will love us, hold us, care for us despite the abuse, the harm, the insults. Relationships are filled with ups and downs, egulo ektu hoy, we are taught. Compromise. Bear it. Once you have a child, we are made to think that it is it, no matter what, make the relationship work. He will change, he will be a better father, husband, provider, protector.

But the truth is, once the arm is raised, the insults hurled, once you have been kicked, once the pushing and the shoving happens, the protective bubble is broken. They don’t change. The more you compromise, the more they grow stronger. But no one will ever teach you that.
No one.

That’s why I am taken aback, almost amused by comments of why didn’t Rumana leave the abusive relationship. Especially, why did a highly educated, financially independent woman stay on in an abusive marriage?

As if it is so easy to just get up and leave a decade-long relationship. As if we have made it socially acceptable for Rumanas to just get up and leave. As if being financially independent has anything to do with being free from social norms and prejudice.

Photo: PICCERELLA/GETTY IMAGES

Honestly, tell me, how many of you told your sisters, cousins, daughters, friends to stay on a little longer in a bad marriage, abusive or not? How many of you advised to compromise at least for the sake of the child(ren)?

Look around you — we have made a society that does not permit women, no matter how financially independent, to lead a life of her own choice and accord.

The few of us who do, we become social pariahs, subject of high-tea gossip. We are the ones you will keep your men at an arms length, but run to for legal advice the minute things aren’t going too well in your Facebook picture perfect lives. How fantastic we are at doling out free advice and giving an illusion that we are each other’s safety nets. The naked truth is Rumana didn’t leave Sumon because we, the society in all our glory and civility, did not create a space for her to walk out.

It has been over three weeks of high-strung drama — the abuse, the horror, the hiding, the arrest, the surgeries, the protests and rallies. I am getting ready to go to one in a bit. While the optimist/activist in me is determined to stand up and shout and protest, believing that every little action against abuse and violence is needed, the realist/survivor inside of me just knows nothing will change quickly, if at all. Things may improve at the margins, but not dramatically, institutionally, or structurally. Rumana, myself, and the millions and millions of more women and children will continue to be statistics of different forms of violence and abuse, reported or unreported.

(Friday night, around 11ish after coming home from the protest a couple of hours ago)
Hour and a half on the road, shoppers’ traffic, picking up a friend, traffic detouring by police, and short rickshaw ride later, we arrived at Shahid Minar. I brought my son along — I may not be able to change the entire patriarchal society, but at least I can start with my own offspring, right?

Though we were late, I could figure out in less than five minutes of being there that it has been more or less the same as the current speaker — a self righteous, atel lot, saying something only he can understand in an over dramatised voice and elaborate gestures. It gets better — a poetry recitation and that too Rabindranath’s. Because how can we be civil Bengali society without Tagore? (My son had his hands over his ears — that reaction summed it up quite well!) What was the point of the poetry is still beyond me!

Just when I thought it could not get any more irrelevant, up comes a vivacious speaker with hands everywhere, whole body shaking, narrating the gruesome story of Sumon’s attacks on Rumana as if she was there while it was happening! (My son’s vocabulary is not strong enough to understand the narrative — all he could fathom was that the woman was shouting!) If you could look beyond the unnecessary dramatic booming voice, the speaker was making sense about women thinking they can avoid abuse by playing by the book. Rumana played by the books but she was still violated. “Bhalo thekeo jodi nirajaton’r shikar hote hoy, tahole amra bhalo thakbo na, amra noshto hoye jabo” … and right around that, she lost me! And the loudness kept rising, and the politician like ranting kept going on. Right after she ended, my son asked, Maa, amaderke boka dilo?

A media personality at one point made it into her little theatre space for a monologue. A baul sang and Rumana’s university colleagues made some more comments on what a wonderful person she is and how she should come back to teach (thank you all for the character certification!). In the one hour we were there, no one mentioned what was the status of the case.

Photo: SHAWKAT JAMIL

Who was pressing charges against Sumon? Who were helping Sumon hide for almost 10 days? Has anyone even checked if Sumon is mentally stable?

And those are just my questions on Sumon. What about Rumana and her family? Why did her family not do anything about the abusive husband earlier? Even after this horrific abuse took place, why did they not want media to cover it? Is the threat of some political stronghold so much more than one’s daughter’s life?

Maybe we missed the information session — perhaps something was said about the status of the case earlier, but surely an hour into the programme, someone could have updated the audience again?

But all of that seemed inconsequential. What was important was to make broad, generalised comments of empowerment, rights, stand up against violence and women break free from your shackles. What was important was to have yet another soap box to publicly show how concerned we are, how horrified we are, how aware we are. What was important was to keep the appearance of being a civil society member alive. We came, we spoke, we displayed how progressive we are.

So yes, I go back to what I wrote at 4:30 pm before going to the rally: Rumana, myself, and the millions and millions of more women and children will continue to be statistics of different forms of violence and abuse, reported or unreported (and the object for civil society to have a cause, a drama, a show.)

Published in the Daily Star Forum on 4 July 2011.

This piece argues that we are all accomplices to the violence carried out against women in our society.

When Zobaida Nasreen called me up to tell me what had happened to Rumana, I was on a busy street in Dhanmondi and I thought I had heard her wrong. I kept asking her to repeat. She must be talking about someone else, I thought.
But she wasn’t.

It was Rumana Monzur Hema, one of my childhood friends with whom I had intermittent interactions after we grew up and finally reunited last year when her daughter was admitted to the same school as my son.

When I heard about what her husband did to her I was in disbelief and shock.

We had looked up to her as the girl who always came out either first or second in her class. She had come out First in her Masters finals from the International Relations department of Dhaka University and had started teaching right away. Last year she was elated when she won a scholarship to the University of British Columbia. She had been unsure whether to take her four-year-old daughter Anushe with her. In the end she decided to leave her daughter with her mother.

She never discussed what was going on between Sumon and her. He was a graduate engineer who was involved in some business, that’s all we knew.

And that’s why the brutality of the story along with the identity of the victim seemed overwhelmingly unbelievable.

Photo: SAMI SARKIS/GETTY IMAGES

Eyes gouged out. Nose bitten off. Lip bitten off. Dragged by the hair and attempted to be strangled. Saved by maids with an extra key to the room. Of course we presume that if a so-called ‘emancipated’ woman is threatened with abuse, she would have the support mechanism to walk out of that marriage, that she would not care what her family and relatives or those meddlesome people in our society say, that if she is financially independent she did not have to worry about her and her children’s future.

All those assumptions and presumptions fell apart when we heard the sadistic brutality of what happened in Rumana’s room on June 5, 2011.

I couldn’t understand why someone like Rumana, with whom I had a discussion about Barbie dolls and feminism on her daughter’s birthday last year, had put up with assaults from her own husband for so long. Now I look at those birthday photos and shiver when I see the face of Sumon behind his daughter and all the other children, knowing what was going on behind the scenes.

Then, as the media discussions spilled out into the open, I slowly began to realise why Rumana had still not left the monster that was her husband for so very long.

The reasons are visible on Facebook, on the blogs, in the distasteful innuendos poured out of the inks of journalists’ pens, in the subject lines of emails filling up my inbox through various mailing lists and as mass spam to Rumana’s Dhaka University colleagues.

The realisation surprisingly also came from what was said from between the lines of the ‘character certificate statements’ from her well-meaning friends from British Columbia, Canada.

Sumon’s fraternity group
When the story first broke, the media reported the facts of the attack, the brutality and the family’s reaction and her educational and family background. But as soon as Sumon ‘briefed’ the press about what he described as ‘the torture done on him’, some in the media turned around and started giving frustratingly large spaces to allegations made by Sumon about how he had been ‘wronged’. And of course the Internet, apart from its milieu of advantages also provided an excellent platform, through Facebook, for the one too many insecure misogynists, very much like Sumon, to unleash their anger at the loss of control over ‘their’ women through a much-feared word called ‘emancipation’.

Some bloggers aired their concern about how everyone was so ‘one-sided’ about the incident. There is a reason behind everything that takes place, someone said in an e-group. Can anyone honestly say that they have never done anything wrong in their lives, asked another commenter in a discussion group? Discussions revolved around how ‘too much freedom’ for women always ended up in such tragedies and that ‘western dresses and attitudes’ always caused problems for women. Women needed to maintain their ‘modesty’, some pointed out. And if they didn’t, the men should not be blamed for going around on a rampage of harassment, acid attack, rape and domestic violence. Another spammer who claimed to know Rumana ‘very well’ sent a mass-mail to many university teachers complaining about some women teachers, mainly those who teach feminist studies, at the university, and threatened that “either the women-kind will preserve our values or we man-kind will start exercising our rights” and asked that “every man-kind should come forward and let Sayed talk openly”. The anonymous hate-mailer was trying to form a misogynists’ solidarity group, a group that many men were openly happy to join.

The press conference where Rumana bravely faced the media to demand justice for herself and her family invited some members of this ‘solidarity’ group. One TV journalist walked off in a huff muttering, loudly enough for everyone to hear, that these kinds of incidents don’t just occur out of the blue and there must be more to this. Another, whose appetite for gossip needed to be whet, asked Rumana what she had to say about the allegations of extra-marital affair made by her husband. That’s right Mr Journalist — it’s so much more important to write about the gossip that make your papers sell than to write about a brutal crime that has blinded a woman forever.

The “good girl”, “pobitro bondhon” and why Rumanas really stay
And it was not only the misogynists but Rumana’s well-meaning friends from British Columbia who sent a disturbing ‘character certificate’ about Rumana. Disturbing not because of what it said but because of what the underlying assumptions were. What it said was that they were extremely impressed with the way Rumana was leading her life in Canada, which included saying her prayers five times a day, eating halal food and opening the door with her head covered among other things. One friend said, “Rumana is a pious woman.” Another pointed out that she “was surrounded by her female friends all the time.” Another ‘testified’ on her “flawless reputation”.

So she was a wonderful person and did not ‘deserve’ to be attacked was the argument they were implicitly making.

But what if she had not been the embodiment of what some believe is ‘good’, would she then have ‘deserved’ to be tortured by her husband? Are women who deviate from the norm not deserving of the safety and security as a human being?

As long as we continue to use the ‘good’, ‘pious’ and ‘modest’ arguments to certify women, it will cripple them into staying in abusive relationships and marriages. As long as divorce remains a scandal-word, even ‘emancipated’ women like Rumana will hide from their family and friends what they are going through. As long as ‘character certificates’ are needed to debunk justification of attacks on women, we will only let the misogynists’ fraternity group grow and defend their agenda, their so-called ‘right’ to control, injure and kill women.

Photo: SK ENAMUL HAQ

The ‘holy’ union that ends in blood
According to Ain O Salish Kendra, in the period of January to March 2011 there were already 104 reported cases of domestic violence throughout the country. There were 116 dowry-related attacks during this time (which included those perpetrated by husbands and/or in-laws), 18 acid attacks (some by close partners), and seven fatwa-related violence (some on the pretext of extra-marital affair by a woman). In 2010, out of the 397 cases of domestic violence, 225 women were killed by their husbands. Out of the 395 reported dowry-related violence cases, 224 were killed by their husbands and/or in-laws and 18 took their own lives after torture. Bangladesh ranks one of the highest in the world with respect to violence against women and, in terms of domestic violence, 50-70% of women in the country report being abused by their male partners.

The Domestic Violence (Resistance and Protection) Bill-2010 was passed recently but perhaps it’s time to take a look at how its implementation is going to be ensured. Also, a more holistic approach needs to be taken to prevent domestic violence and all other violence against women. Laws are inadequate where the society plays such a big part in ‘allowing’ violence against women to take place until it’s too late.

***

Rumana stayed because she was afraid of Sumon’s revenge on her and her child.

She stayed because people would tell her to forgive Sumon, they would tell her that marriage was a pobitro bondhon (‘holy union’) and women had to sacrifice a lot of things to maintain that holy union.

She stayed because some people would not believe she was being physically abused.

She stayed because there had been so much gossip about divorced, single women, she did not want to be part of that gossip and bring ‘shame’ to her family.

She stayed because people would call her a ‘bad mother’ who did not think of the trauma to her child for being from a ‘broken’ home.

She stayed because Sumon would splatter the media with tall tales about her and with all parts of her body intact they would write about her to their hearts’ content and bring her teaching career to ‘shame’ and become a source of gossip for her students.

It is not only Sumon, but all of us who are part of her social fabric that are accomplice to this and the thousands of other violence against women by their husbands and their families every day.

Published in the Daily Star Forum on 4 July 2011.

This piece examines the issue of women’s bodies as sites of violence.

Life, they say, and death, for sure, are beyond our control. Just like my worth. “Ajke tumi 100,000 taka, kalke 50,000, porshu 25,000, aar tar porer din … NAI!” is what he said to me when I told him I am in my twenties and not interested in getting married at the moment. “Boyosh toh are kom holona!” he said, “Taar upor dekhteo eto bhalona. Kaalo. Shomoy thakte thakte biyeta kore felo. Eto porashuna-ghuraghuri-chakri-bakri diye ki hobe?” (You’re not getting younger! On top of that you’re not that good-looking. Dark-skinned. Tie the knot while you still have time. What are you going to do with all this education-travelling-work?)

A couple of years back, I had gone to this monk with flowery expectations — spiritual detoxification, carnal detachment, cathartic solace … blah blah blah. Clearly, I got none. And if you’re thinking he stopped with the spiel on my age, looks and depreciating market value, you are mistaken. He ended with a death threat.

He gloated about how he has Jinns; how an elephant once bowed down to him; how someone was once rude to him and he broke that guy’s neck just by lightly stroking it and immediately healed it with another stroke; how a recovering alcoholic once promised him he’d never touch liquor again, but did, and died. Yes, he told me the guy died solely because he broke his promise. I lost my attention somewhere around him telling me how he cured his own “purushali okkhomota” with his special powers.

Photo: LAURENT HAMELS/GETTY IMAGES

I do a pretty neat job of zoning out while making a person think I am paying attention. So I launched my tried and tested method of staring and nodding at skewed frequencies. All of a sudden I snapped out of my daze when he said “Shotti toh?” I just smiled not knowing what he was talking about. He continued, “Ei chaar deyaler moddhe bole jokhon diso, tomar agami bochhorer jonmodiner moddhe biye na korle kintu tumi moray jaba. Aami chaina tumi moro, kintu amar kacche je protiggya bhange, shey moray jaye.” (Since you have made a promise within these four walls, you will die if you don’t get married by your next birthday. I don’t want you to die, but whoever breaks a promise made to me, does.)

But I didn’t say a word! He said my nod was my proxy for a verbal promise. Talk about backfire! It has, however, been a couple of years since this encounter. Birthdays have come and gone, you still haven’t received a wedding invitation from me (I promise biriyani at my funeral), and I am still around. As is the unenlightened, inhuman and adamant malice this man represented — a contrived, persistent and rampant value index of a woman’s worth.

My experience with the monk is nothing out of the ordinary. He is like those aunties you meet during the wedding season, which is like a series of Black Fridays for the meat/marriage market. “Haate bhalo chhele ase.” Please aunty, keep your Tom Thumb in your purse. I’m no Thumbelina.

His forecast of my value being on a slippery slope runs parallel with the general practice of the commodification of women — that same bhanga record reminder of women’s diminishing marginal utility — the inversely proportional relationship between maturity and desirability. The only deviation from the norm in this case is that it came from a monk. But he is afterall, a product of this society. What this really was, was a reassertion of an abominable normalcy. Whether we have cut across all classes, religions, ethnicities in other ways or not, in terms of disseminating vulnerability and objectification of women, we have.

Normalcy as reminder that our bodies are not wine and don’t get better with age; that flawed skin, vintage uterus, active and assertive vocal chords don’t make quality potpourri. It is the same normalcy that insists that women remain useful yet docile — functional, maternal, absorbent (popular as ‘tolerant’ in misogynist vernacular), obedient (“feminine”), subservient (‘soft type er‘), silent; that asserts that we are at the disposal of others and it is alright for us to be treated however they want; that our bodies are something to be ashamed of, and that body parts are hierarchical; that normalcy kneads us into dough — play and edible.

***

What is alarming is how unalarmed we often are. It is most pronounced in our dealings with children. I remember this conversation I witnessed when I was around eight or nine years old. A three-year-old boy had said “aami amar bouke fan er shathe jhulaye dibo,” (I will hang my wife from the ceiling fan) when one of his parents asked him “tomar bou jodi shoitan hoy ki korba?” (What will you do if your wife turns out to be evil?) “Kintu bou jodi shundor hoy, taile ki korba?” (But what will you do if your wife is pretty?) He had said, “taile ekta thappor marbo” (in that case, I will slap her). I think I remember this conversation still because I found it disturbing then, but did not know why. Now, I am constantly reminded of it when I witness similar cutesy, seemingly harmless backdoor entrance to subconscious-building — othering the (female) partner, insisting on heteronormativity and most horrifyingly, normalising violence.

On a popular talk show on NDTV, there was a debate on attire. One participant claimed that women should dress “modestly” and wear the hijab since they would otherwise be inviting trouble. She said, “When you walk by a bakery and you see all those pastries lined up, you say to yourself ‘I want that pastry! I want that pastry!’ So it only makes sense that if your body is revealed men will want it.” If I was on the show I would have asked her if I see a pastry, salivate, break into the shop, rob some and run off, how long the shopkeeper should be imprisoned for? Minus the fallacious and degrading logic of the argument, what is striking here, as is in most metaphorical conversations on women’s bodies, is how it is consistently equated with consumable items. When I was discussing this with a friend sometime back, she mentioned that during the anti-rape movement at Jahangirnagar University, a professor had remarked, “mangsher tukra shamne thakle kukur toh mukh dibei.”

***

The same sentiment comes through when a woman complains about a lewd remark made about her sleeveless top or when a rape victim is asked what she was wearing at the time of the incident. All these lean towards holding women as consumable items and provocateurs of that consumption, especially if they display no guilt about having a body.

I’m sorry I have arms, I really didn’t mean to. And if you can find it in your generous heart to ignore my ankles today, I promise I will put them away tomorrow.

What this also brings me to is how problematic the language we use is. Let’s take “eve-teasing” as an example. A word that dilutes the gravity of an act that infringes on basic human rights — right to education, right to independence, right to mobility, right to life; that leads to self-mutilation, suicide and murder — is harassment. It’s torture. It’s violence. Similarly, “street Romeo” imbues a playful, almost romantic accent to the harassers. As far as I know, Eve was tempted not teased and Romeo was a lover. Calling harassers street Romeos is like calling Oedipus a momma’s boy.

Earlier last year, there was a fairly regular influx of reports on suicides and murders associated with sexual harassment. Elora (Madhya Nandipara) and Reshma (Sherpur) took their lives with pesticides when they could no longer tolerate the torture. Chand Moni (Kishoreganj) hung herself from the ceiling fan from the same reason. Iti (Kalachandpur) quit school a year ago for the same reason, and then lost her parents to murder when they did not consent to marrying her off to her harasser. This form of harassment and the fatal eventualities that often accompany them aren’t new to us. In fact, I would also call the suicides murder, because the way I look at it, the social infrastructure provoked and enabled their deaths.

Once in Pabna, I met with a group of young girls who were compelled to change their courses of life to avoid harassment. Some quit school, some were married off soon after they hit puberty, and some before. All 25 girls in the room, regardless of age, were burkha and hijab-clad. Not only that, but of the very few girls and women that were actually visible on the streets, not a single one had an uncovered head. Conversation with the girls and locals revealed that their mobility is restricted by the Nakshal and Bahini goon-squads, as well as individuals who notoriously harass girls, especially in public spaces. The area’s low literacy rate and high rate of childhood marriage were attributed to “teasing.”

We haven’t come across as many stories on “eve-teasing” recently. Maybe it’s not the fad anymore. Tenacity can make something bland and I suspect, we won’t read about Rumana or domestic violence after a while. It would probably become oh-so-five-minutes-ago five days later. We don’t really talk about the 13-year-old girl who was gang-raped and has still not recuperated socially and emotionally. We probably don’t even remember her. Just the same way, Rumana will take a backseat in our zeitgeist very soon. Something else will come up and we will roar and howl for a while.

Our collective voices do a Mexican wave as if in a stadium. Fluid and rotational. Ebbing and tiding across galleries. It is of course not just ignorance or negligence. While a part of it is time and other constraints, another part of it is a culture of denial and a deviation from nuanced thinking. We believe in the arithmetic of visible fatal eventualities you see. No gore = no malady. No rape + no out-of-wedlock pregnancy = no problem.

It reminds me of that arts and craft show artist Mostofa Manowar used to host. In one episode he drew a line on a piece of paper and asked a participant to make it shorter without touching it. After the participant gave up, Manowar drew a longer line under it. I often feel, in evaluating our social circumstances, we play a similar game of relativity.

***

I find flickers of self-gratifying, uninformed and unrefined “progressive thinking”, simultaneously amusing and unnerving. Especially, when the “kintu/tobe” arrives after a declaration of how wonderful it is to see women doing well for themselves, as a reminder to continue mollycoddling our male counterparts — our heroes and our babies: “…tobe jotoi modernity fodernity’r kotha bolo na keno, ekta kotha aami bolbo, meyeder khub smart hote hoy. Bujhte hobe chhelera alladi. Raag kore, distracted hoy. Meyeder dayitto manaye chola, bujhaye nawa.” (“…but no matter how much you talk about modernity, I want to say one thing; women need to be really smart. They need to understand men need to be pampered. They get angry and distracted. It is the responsibility of women to adjust themselves accordingly and comfort them). In a similar vein you hear “jedi meyeder borkot hoy na,” “jei shob meyera beshi golabaji kore, oder bhalo hoy na,” “meyeder beshi ambition bhalo na,” etc. And then there is my all-time favourite ‘olokkhi.’

The Rumana Monzur case is an excruciating example of this mindset. Let’s do a little exercise. We will insert some of these adjectives into this story and try to find a happy ever-after:

It was really good to see independent Rumana pursue her academic ambitions with thesupport/permission of her liberal-minded husband Sumon. When Sumon, in a vein of alladiasked Rumana to discontinue, jedi/teji/beshi ambitious Rumana refused. Naturally then, raager mathaye adhkaana (one of Sumon’s excuses is he does not see well without his glasses, so he “might have” hurt her eyes), Sumon made Rumana full-kaana. Olokkhi Rumana was unable tomanaye chola. We hear this wasn’t Sumon’s debut into physical expression of alladi. Rumana must have been jedi/teji/olokkhi for 10 years.

(I could also insert the “affair cholchhilo” bit into this, but even sardonically, I can’t develop an appetite to accommodate it.)

The Canadian Bangladeshi community came in with a dilution plan in support of Rumana Monzur, complete with a character certificate. This testimonial is a reassertion of parameters and possibilities. Since she has managed to comply with an acceptable code of conduct, this incident is condemnable.

But what if Rumana wore short skirts, was an atheist and drank wine? What if she was loud, laughed too much and did not have that “childlike simplicity and innocence”? What if she was rude and ill-tempered? Would that make her less of a woman, mother, daughter, person? Would that make this crime less of a crime? If she did not abide by the said parameters, would/should there be a possibility to justify what happened?

What if she wasn’t Rumana? What if she was Romela, a village home-maker or Rozina, a domestic aid or Rahela, a slum-dweller? Would there even be a conversation?

They are venomous, these “buts.” They insinuate invitation and prohibit victims from reaching out and escaping abuse/harassment/torture. “But… she asked for it.”

I remember last year, when a 13-year old girl was gang-raped in Faridpur and escaped being married to the main perpetrator at the very last minute. The incident was recorded on a phone, along with an earlier recording of her conversing with one of the men. Smiling. When the story hit the papers, the OC of the area claimed, “kintu agey theke toh porichoy chhilo. Amra dekhsi ok ei loker shathe heshe kotha bolte” (but they knew each other from before. We have seen her speak to them amicably).

***

There have been girls and women like the ones I mentioned before, and there will be more like them after. Not all of them will make it to the newspapers. Maybe we won’t know about the wife who is being tortured by her husband as I write this. We may not hear about the girl who is being molested as you read this. We probably will never know of the girl who stood by the doorstep, when you sent your last SMS, afraid to walk to school because of the eyes that will devour her on the way and the lecherous voice(s) that will haunt her for a very long time.

But we do know that we can’t rely on a constant supply of losses and losses of lives to shake up our zeitgeist. What good would it do if this attention is only a temporary and impulsive reaction to the moment’s malleability?

We know that women’s bodies are sites of violence and we need to shatter the foundations and tamper with the architecture of misogyny and patriarchy; of cosmetics of progress and half-hearted consolation.

We know when we are wronged, we are wronged; and there is no “but.” We don’t ask to be beaten. We don’t ask to be harassed. We don’t ask to be raped. We don’t ask to be blinded. We don’t ask to be burnt. We don’t ask to be afraid. We don’t ask to be silenced. We don’t ask to be murdered (even if it is called suicide).

We don’t ask for any of it.