Their extra-rational loyalty to their respective leaders stems from the same madness as inspired the European armies: nationalism. (Notice that the people never participate in hartals: nationalism, unlike in Europe, never reached the masses here. It is an elite phenomenon, and thereby a contradiction. That should not be a surprise: the meaning of a word, as we have seen, cannot be transferred to another way of life. But that's not the only contradiction: Mujib and his daughter's nationalism is Bengali nationalism - Bengalism - and is anti-Islam, pro-India and strongly flavoured by Hinduism; Zia and his widow's nationalism is Bangladeshi nationalism, pro-Islam, anti-Indian, pro-Pakistan. Thus, two rival nationalisms coexist, though the former is usually classed as more nationalist. But both claim extraterritorial loyalty to foreign countries, yet another contradiction. However, an ersatz nationalism is just as heady - and toxic - as the real McCoy.)
These are not revelations: everyone knows about the use of student thugs in politics. Quondam president and chief justice Shahabuddin Ahmed observed that "students are getting guns instead of education." "He reiterated his stand against the 'political use of students and urged the students to sever connections with the political parties' (The Daily Star, July 11, 2000)" He became enormously popular for his ineffective jeremiads. Another former president, A. Q. M. Badruddoza Chowdhury, thundered, "Students are armed to punish the opposition and we strongly condemn such acts" (The Bangladesh Observer , March 30, 2005).
When the Colombian FARC pressed children into military service, right-thinking people were appalled. When our political parties press children into thuggery, everybody turns a blind eye. Donor-financed NGOs, which routinely publish the number of murders and rapes every year, never mention these young rogues, and their fate (their rational motives for ignoring the demise of student thugs have been detailed in The Freedom Industry).
These young boys (always boys) are filled with what the Greeks called 'thumos' - spiritedness. They are a lot like animals - lightly instructed, highly motivated, savagely instinctive.
"Do you think, said I, that there is any difference between the nature of a well-bred hound for this watchdog's work and that of a well-born lad (Plato, The Republic 374e - 375a, trans. Paul Shorey, Plato: The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)?"
Further: "And will a creature be ready to be brave that is not high-spirited, whether horse or dog or anything else? Have you never observed what an irresistible and invincible thing is spirit, the presence of which makes every soul in the face of everything fearless and unconquerable?
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