1) Create an enemy, no matter how fictitious;
2) Promise utopia;
3) Give stem-winder speeches arousing hatred and hope;
4) Disappoint.
Indeed, 4 follows logically and inevitably from 2. Sheikh Mujib promised a Golden Bengal, or Sonar Bangla, and the voters listened, and repented at leisure.
Grievance is not a fact. It has to be articulated, stimulated and directed by a leader. This is not rational. "Politics makes us hate each other, even when it shouldn't" concludes Jason Brennan. "We tend to divide the world into good and bad guys. We tend to view political debate not as reasonable disputes about how best to achieve our shared aims but rather as a battle between the forces of light and darkness." He observes that voters are "ignorant, irrational, misinformed nationalists".
Indeed, linguistic nationalism was the bedrock of our hatred. Voters in the east felt the West Pakistanis were a homogeneous lot, 'the enemy' who did not speak our language. A civil war followed, and East Pakistan broke away to form Bangladesh.
"Your language is closer to you than your jugular vein".
Insert English, French, German, Italian, Russian in place of "your language" and you have the recipe for the First World War. Substitute 'God', and you have a Koranic verse (50:16). So, in essence, Bengali nationalism, like all nationalism, is a religion. I have fleshed out my arguments in The Two Religions of Bangladesh, so I won't go into them here. The two hostile religions were Bengalism and Islam - because Pakistan was born a Muslim country, and they - the Urdu-speaking minority - were our oppressors.
But before we continue, let us look into the psychology of hatred, and why politics makes us hate each other, even when it shouldn't.
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