1. Significance Of The Upheaval In Bangladesh
NEW DELHI 14 FEBRUARY 2016 EDITORIAL6
With which is incorporated THE ENGLISHMAN ~ Founded 1821. Printed from New Delhi, Kolkata, Siliguri and Bhubaneswar
A member of the Asia News Network
Vol. CXXXXVII 7 (S)
SAUDI SIGNAL
Islamic coalition of the willing
THERE was a fairly resonant beating of war drums in the
NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday when Saudi Arabia
unveiled its plan to intervene in the Syrian conflict. The signal of
intent follows the desert kingdom’s operations against the Iran-
backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Fears that the powers in the Arab
region ~ across the Shia-Sunni divide ~ could be drawn into the
vortex of what has been described as the war without end are not
wholly unfounded. The US Defence Secretary, Ashton Carter, has
welcomed the offer ~ “We welcome the move. The Saudis are
serious, they are leading this coalition.” At another remove, the
Russian Prime Minister has raised the spectre of a “permanent or
a world war” if the Gulf nations sent troops and if the world pow-
ers failed to negotiate peace. On the fifth anniversary of the Arab
Spring, Syria exemplifies that failure. Unmistakable is the clear
distinction in the praxis of geostrategy. “All sides must be com-
pelled to sit at the negotiating table instead of unleashing a new
world war,” was Dmitry Medvedev’s chilling warning, clothed in
expressions reminiscent of the Cold War. Decidedly defensive has
been the US response to Riyadh’s contemplated adventurism ~
“Saudi Arabia and its partners have a clear stake in this fight. In
the weeks to come there will be opportunities to follow up on the
offers made today.” The theatre of relentless conflict that is Syria
is set to expand not least in the context of the Saudi announce-
ment that they will lead a force drawn from an Islamic coalition
of the willing. Markedly, representatives of the United Arab
Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait were also present at
Thursday’s meeting. Small wonder that both Washington and the
Kremlin are chewing over the upshot of the confabulations.
Markedly once more, the Saudi delegation, led by Prince
Mohammed bin Salman, the Defence Minister and heir apparent
to the throne, dominated the proceedings.
Saudi Arabia’s express objective is to tackle ISIS, but consider-
ing that the region is on the boil, the intervention ~ coupled
with the Russian one ~ is bound to escalate the vicious sectarian
strife. There are fears that troops from the Sunni Gulf states will
provide support for Syria’s Sunni rebels who are losing ground
and this will bring them into conflict with the Shia enemies ~
Iranian “volunteers” and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters backing the
regime of Bashar al-Assad. That regime is also backed by Russian
air strikes. The war clouds become still more dense with Mr
Carter’s announcement ~ “This marks the beginning of a new
stage in the campaign against ISIS. We will all look back after vic-
tory and remember who took part in the fight.” The plot thickens.
INITIATIVE HALTED
Legal setback for Obama
THEUS Supreme Court has put a stop to President Obama’s
Climate Initiative; the ruling comes amidst increasing demands in
the US and other western nations to act on limiting green house
gas emissions. The US Court’s ruling has put an invariable halt at
the climate plan that had set itself substantial targets; to cut
American emissions over 30 per cent by 2032. Obama’s Clean
Power Plan was introduced last August and set achievable targets
for fifty states. With flexible options inbuilt in the plan, it gave the
states full authority on coming up with individualised local pro-
posals on how best to decrease their emissions. But not all states
were with President Obama; 27 states along with electricity com-
panies and a group of coal miners sought to block the climate
plan as they presumed it to be discourteous infringement on
states’ rights. It is unlikely now that the fifty states would meet
their target of submitting a proposal by September. With unnec-
essary politicking over an important and urgent issue like climate
action, US states have shown utter disregard for the changing cli-
mate and responsible action that ought to follow. If the divisive-
ness over the issue continues, the US Supreme Court may render
the plan null and thus make it useless. This is President Obama’s
last year in the Oval office and the new President in all likelihood
will be required to forge new partnerships and fight undecided
battles; the US Court ruling had an ideological divide, and was
voted 5-4. The Supreme Court has a conservative majority and
thus last year in June it halted another Obama proposal which if
implemented would have regulated the levels of mercury and
reduced toxic pollutants. The US Court’s five conservative judges
voted against; the Court is ideologically divided along the lines of
liberalism and conservatism. The former puts excessive onus on
the federal government’s action and the latter zealously tries to
limit what it describes as federal over-reach. Although US emis-
sions standards and targets are measured and planned by its
Environmental Protection Agency and should be non-partisan in
nature, just as climate action ought to be non-partisan. It is essen-
tial Americans realise that action delayed is as good as action
denied when it comes to climate change. The present moment is
fearfully reminiscent of the US refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol,
once again led by the American conservative movement.
President Bush was accused of taking a soft law stand on climate
action, and President Obama takes the apposite hard law posi-
tions on regulating sources of greenhouse gases. The US
Supreme Court should be above ideological partisanship on mat-
ters that not only concern human beings but have the fate of the
planet tied to them.
A DIVIDED PEOPLE
Nagas must forget tribalism
NAGALAND’STuensang district is on the boil again fol-
lowing the killing on 6 February of a couple by unidentified gun-
men. The district had been tense since February last year after a
15-year-old boy was killed in a village clash and the abduction of
a woman and her child. They were freed after an apex body inter-
vened. But the situation took an ugly turn when a policeman was
attacked in Tuensang town and even as he was being taken to hos-
pital an irate crowd pounced on him and hacked him to death.
Prohibitory orders and imposition of curfew came after much
damage was caused. At that point of time chief minister TR
Zeliang was reportedly preoccupied protecting his seat following
dissident activities. Kohima showed belated concern by sending
the state’s home minister to Tuensang. After meeting a cross-sec-
tion of people he concluded that it was a mere village clash and
not a tribal conflict. Tuensang is home to tribes like Chang,
Yimchunger and Sangtam, whose ancestors indulged in head-
hunting. Despite changed economic conditions and social trans-
formation tribalism still runs deep in every Naga psyche. The
Eastern Naga People’s Organisation, the apex court society of
Eastern Nagaland, said in a release after last year’s clash that the
two tribes involved ~ Chang and Yimchunger ~ have decided
there will be no more violence, confrontation and killing of each
other. Given this there seems to a mysterious hand behind the
recent killings. The ENPO’s hands must be strengthened by form-
ing peace committees. Tribalism has no place in modern
Nagaland. Else, the prognosis is too terrifying to think about.
THE Shahbag uprising in Bangladesh had
been one of the most important developments
that marked the country’s socio-political sce-
nario. The popular movement in Dhaka’s
Shahbag Square had started on 5 February
2013, demanding capital punishment for the
war criminals of the 1971 struggle for libera-
tion. It began with considerable enthusiasm,
reminiscent of the Arab Spring in 2011. It was
marked by significant popular participation and
activism of a kind that the nation had never
seen. Given the apparent similarities with the
Jasmine Revolution or the mass upsurge for
the occupation of Wall Street
in New York or for that matter
Anna Hazare’s crusade against
corruption, the mass protests
at Shahbag Square ~ the
intersection in the capital city
of Dhaka ~ stirred the democ-
ratic conscience of the people.
Regrettably, within a short
span of time, the spirit of the
upheaval started to fade. It
would be no exaggeration to
suggest that it is a ‘vanished
movement’ in Bangladesh
today. After a brief and spirited
start, it seems to have been rel-
egated to the footnotes and is
unlikely to be revived as a con-
certed, well-sustained and
prolonged upsurge ~ to iden-
tify the ‘means’ to reach a
proper ‘end’. Those who
spearheaded the movement
did manage to provide some
solace to the martyrs of the lib-
eration war by putting the war
criminals on trial. However,
the demand for legal justice
alone was not perhaps what
the people of Bangladesh had
wanted. The moral obligation
of the Shahbag movement got
stretched to address some of
the dormant issues in the poli-
ty. It led the nation to deal with
such issues as extreme political
polarisation, scathing religious
intolerance, and declining
social cohesiveness which
undermine the nation’s democ-
ratic structure. The subsequent
developments on the socio-political front, in
the immediate aftermath of the Shahbag upris-
ing, perhaps provide an explanation why the
popular upheaval stopped short of becoming a
‘movement’ per se and met its eclipse as a pas-
sionate ‘moment’.
Did the significance of the Shahbag move-
ment get undermined by its sheer momentous-
ness? Or is it the momentousness which signi-
fies the movement’s importance? These ques-
tions call for reflection. The post-Shahbag peri-
od provides a clue to trace the movement’s
eventual stagnation. Politicisation or eventual
political intervention was one of the major fac-
tors that had a negative influence on the move-
ment. Shahbag started as a civilian protest
with an apolitical tenor. It did influence the
common people, the student community, the
youth, the bloggers, a large number of women
as well as noted personnel from the academic
circuit, the media, the social sector and from
other higher professional rungs. It could
mobilise the populace which was by and large
internally divided and less cohesive. And the
people were mobilised not only at the local and
national levels, but at the international level as
well.
The movement became a victim of political
inroads by the major parties. The ruling Awami
League and its main opposition, the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) through
their respective student wings tried to manoeu-
vre the popular will, in every possible way, to
fulfil their own political agendas. For instance,
the landmark decision of de-registering the
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI) ~ the largest
Islamist political party of Bangladesh ~ from
the national electoral roll by the Bangladesh
High Court on August 1, 2013 did not miss the
cynic’s ire. It was a calculated measure by the
AL government to increase its political clout
prior to the elections. Similarly, the BNP’s open
support for the fanatical Jamaat and Hefazat-e-
Islam which had organised violence against the
protesting masses, was evidently interpreted as
its strategy to retain its Islamist vote-bank in the
upcoming general elections. Thus tacit political
power-play, in the guise of allegations and
counter-allegations by the propagators of two
opposing camps, frustrated the common peo-
ple. Furthermore, politicisation of the move-
ment led to organised violence with frequent
clashes between the Jamaat Shibir, whose top
leaders were among the prime accused of war
crimes, and the state forces.
The worst sufferers of such political violence
were none other than the common people as
the country suffered severe political violence
during 2013-14. According to the annual
human rights reports of Odhikar, 506 people
were killed and some 24,176 injured in 2013;
while in 2014 an estimated 190 people were
killed, 9429 injured, and 1321 arrested. All this
indicates how the movement took an unfortu-
nate turn, much different from what it had
aspired for.
The second challenge was the movement’s
religious dimension. The six-point demands
that were raised by the Shahbag protestors
from the Gonojagaran Manch (‘Platform for
Popular Uprising’) buttressed the need for
something beyond mere trials. They wanted the
separation of religion from politics and to
strike at the roots of religious fundamentalism.
Accordingly demands were made for systematic
investigation into the activities of the organiza-
tions that finance the Jamaat-e-
Islami; strict enforcement of law
and order to root out terror
hideouts; and publishing facts
about the terror activities of the
fundamentalists on national and
international media. In essence,
the movement tried to buttress
the principles of secularism but
stopped short of effectively real-
ising the same. This is because it
failed to gauge the mindset of
its people. It was essentially
city-centric and driven by the
middle class. It failed to influ-
ence the vast majority of the
Bangladeshi populace who live
on the outskirts of the urban
centres, in rural areas and are
religious by nature. For most of
them ‘secularism’ ~ a compli-
cated term with multiple con-
notations ~ was at odds.
One could interpret the
gruesome murders of the blog-
gers (Ahmed Rajiv Haider, Avijit
Roy, Oyasiqur Rahman, Ananta
Bijoy Das, Niloy Neel and Faisal
Arefin Dipan) to the attempted
imposition of secularism in the
name of democracy, for which
the nation is not perhaps pre-
pared quite yet. Have all the
efforts gone to waste? Perhaps
not. Its significance lies in its
momentary intensity. Despite
the shortcomings, it could high-
light the gaps that still exist in
the polity such as polarisation
along strict party lines and reli-
gious intolerance. It energised a
stagnant democracy which was repeatedly
stumbling amidst a bitter power struggle. It
successfully brought to the fore the assertive
voice of the ‘people’, and that too, over their
chosen political representatives. The spirit of a
true democracy was reinforced when the unit-
ed voice of the people was accorded prece-
dence and necessary recognition, however
temporarily. Above all, it charted a viable alter-
native to realise democracy... not merely
through conventional means such as elections
but also through ‘popular social movements’.
The upheaval was indeed a significant flash-
point in the history of social movements in
Bangladesh. Its significance, nevertheless, lay
in its momentousness, as it could successfully
indicate the country’s forward march towards
democracy.
srimanti sarkar
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The writer is a doctoral candidate in
the Department of Political Science,
University of Calcutta. She can be
contacted at s.srimanti@gmail.com
A brave heart and a great warrior
SIR, ~ The world waited with bated breath when the Indian
army relentlessly searched for survivors against daunting
odds and brought alive a bright soldier. Fate had saved Lance
Naik Hanumanthappa Koppad for six days. For one brief
shining moment, we had thought a miracle had happened.
The sole survivor of the avalanche on the Siachen glacier,
who has emerged as an icon of patriotism and human
endurance, fought for his life like a true soldier and then left
for his heavenly abode. Even doctors, who marvelled at his
endurance, were worried about his survival.
Across the nation, prayers were conducted in schools, tem-
ples, mosques and churches. Many had come forward vol-
untarily to donate kidney and blood as the condition of the
brave heart deteriorated. He was rejected thrice by the army
but kept coming back to the recruitment centre until he final-
ly made it. He has been described as highly motivated and a
born fighter. In his 13 years of service he had displayed a
high degree of initiative and had worked in challenging areas
through his indomitable courage.
He was involved in counter-insurgency operations in
Jammu and Kashmir and the North-east. Prime Minister
Narendra Modi has described him as an “outstanding sol-
dier” whose “endurance and indomitable spirit” cannot be
described in words. On the world’s highest battlefield,
Nature has seemingly handpicked her victims. For almost
three decades, soldiers have felt the pangs of frostbite or
have almost lost their mental balance after spending months
in the vista of snow. Many have simply vanished, swallowed
by crevasses, or engulfed in blizzards. The Indian Army has
over the years lost over 850 soldiers in the glacier.
The latest disaster has spurred calls for India and Pakistan
to end the 31-year stand-off in Siachen ~ one of the worst
military follies of the 20th century and a parable on the fail-
ure of two nuclear-armed rivals to make peace.
Hats off to a great warrior who defeated the fury of the
avalanche in Siachen. He epitomises the spirit of mankind
and the energy that spurs the Indian army. A brave heart and
a true gladiator who made us proud. Jai Hind.
yours, etc., javvadi lakshmana rao, visakhapatnam, 12 february.
Battle against glaciers
SIR, ~ This is with reference to your editorial, ‘Salute of the
Nation’ (13 February). Civilians are not in a position to fath-
om the challenge and the danger that the troops in Siachen
have to countenance in the icy terrain. You have rightly
pointed out that, “Nature has been at its cruellest and any
obituary reference must acknowledge that Koppad and the
others have lost the battle against glaciers.”
I am sure that all right-thinking and peace-loving people in
India and Pakistan will readily endorse your suggestion ~
“Both India and Pakistan must reflect on demilitarization.”
Thanks to The Statesman for the proposal.
yours, etc., rupam guha, kolkata, 13 february.
Need for demilitarisation
SIR, ~ This refers to the news item, ‘Pak pitches for
mutual demilitarisation of Siachen ‘. The Karakoram
Range, covering Saltora and Siachen, is the defensive and
geographical boundary of the northern part of the sub-
continent. In the past, there was no need for patrolling on
this inhospitable ridge.
There is now a massive mobilisation of military might by
both India and Pakistan. Lance Naik Koppad is not the
only victim of cruel Nature.
A large number of soldiers of both countries have per-
ished in the region. Both countries must reflect on the
need for demilitarisation.
yours, etc., samir das gupta, kolkata, 12 february.
Gems and jewels
SIR, ~ A nationwide strike was observed by the All-
India Gem and Jewellery Trade Federation on 10
February in protest against the Centre’s order to men-
tion the PAN whenever any customer makes a purchase
valued at Rs. 2 lakh and above.
The reluctance on the part of any customer to quote the
PAN can in turn be attributed to his reluctance to disclose
his unearned money, i.e. bribes or the siphoning of excess
profit from his declared business to reduce his income-tax
burden.
The bullion market thrives on black money which is often
stashed inside the bank lockers.
yours, etc., n k das gupta, kolkata, 11 february.
The Shahbag Fizzle
The post-Shahbag period provides a clue
to trace the movement’s eventual
stagnation. Politicisation or eventual
political intervention was one of the
major factors that had a negative
influence on the movement
Malaysia To Issue Health
Cards, Monitor Travellers
From Zika Countries
TRAVELLERS from Zika-hit countries
will be given a health alert card, with the
Health Ministry closely screening interna-
tional arrival gates to prevent the spread
of the virus to Malaysia. In a statement
Friday, the Ministry’s director-general Dr
Noor Hisham Abdullah said “Zika Alert
and Administrative Orders to Monitor
and Manage the Zika Virus” guide was
also distributed to all state health depart-
ments, agencies and professional bodies
that represent private medical practition-
ers to prevent occurrences of the mosqui-
to-borne virus. From Jun 2015 to Feb 10
this year, 393 blood samples from
patients who tested negative for dengue
antigen NS1, were also tested in an ongo-
ing lab surveillance by the National Public
Health Laboratory (MKAK) and the
Institute for Medical Research (IMR) to
detect the Zika virus. So far, all test results
have been negative. According to the
World Health Organisation, 33 countries
have reported Zika virus infections from
January 2014 to February 5 this year. At
this time, there is no vaccine to prevent
infections and no specific medicine to
treat the Zika disease. star / ann
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Hold hands and set a amazing
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Valentine’s favourite Duck and Crab at
Waldorf Restaurant, 13D, Russell
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(BPL558)
The combined magic of Candle Light
Dinner and romantic music will
bring a closer to your Valentine to
share your love. Special mocktails
and cocktails flower and goodies at
Magnolia Restaurant.
(BPL559)
PERSONAL TRADE
St. Thomas’ School, 4, Diamond
Harbour Road, Kolkata-700023 —
Applications for Bursary Scholarships
as Boarders for the Academic Year
2016-2017, are invited from indigent
Anglo-Indians in West Bengal and
other States. The Scholarships are
available to children between the ages
of 6 and 12 years only. Applications by
post will also be attended to for out-
station candidates. Prescribed Forms
are available from the Principal / Lady
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respectively from Monday, February
15 to Friday, February 26, 2016 from
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PERSONAL