Bangladeshi democracy is built on a system of lies not unlike the Soviet Union, where managers would routinely cook the books to ensure that the quota dictated from the Kremlin had been fulfilled. The endless propaganda has an Orwellian feeling. Today I read in the newspaper that the American ambassador deplored our hartals and, in the same breath, congratulated us on our democracy. Frederic Temple, the ex-chief of the World Bank here, deplored our hartals as well; each day lost to hartal costs us, he said, $50 million.
How about the cost in terms of human lives? I remember a hartal a few years ago when a sixteen-year-old boy called Ripon Sikder died at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital after struggling for his life for eleven days. He was injured by a bomb. And truck driver, Fayez Ahmed (50), died when a bomb was thrown on his truck. An auto-rickshaw was burned to ashes, and when the driver, Saidul Islam Shahid (35), tried to put out the flames, he was sprinkled with petrol, and burned to death. It took him more than two days to die. And several bus-loads of people have been burnt alive by the political parties.
As for the perpetrators of these democratic acts, one must reserve some sympathy. Most of them are student politicians, and, on my reckoning, six are murdered in gang-land wars every month. The American ambassador was being economical with the truth when he congratulated us on our democracy.
Bertrand Russell wrote: "Belief in democracy, however, like any other belief, may be carried to the point where it becomes fanatical and therefore harmful". Let me revise that: "Belief in democracy, unlike any other belief today, may be carried to the point where it becomes fanatical and therefore highly profitable." The neo-conservatives, having attacked Iraq, determined to spread the gospel of democracy throughout the uncivilised world (that's us, by the way), there's plenty of lucre for the democratic Pig.
But the wild-eyed, tousle-haired Believer in democracy (such as some Arabs today) is more dangerous than the Pigs he rears: the uncorrupt lunatic is always most fearsome. No amount of cash or frustration can divert him (or her) from the 'rightful course'. No number of dead bodies -- of boys, girls, men and women, burnt alive, beaten to death, riddled with bullets -- can ever make them see the light of humanity. How many corpses would have been required to persuade Ms. N.M from America that she was wrong? Not even 1,700,000 dead Iraqi children would have done the job, let alone a few regular murders in broad daylight in Bangladesh in the name of 'democracy'.
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