THE EGO, THE STATE AND POLITICAL PARTIES

 “Who thinks abstractly?” asks Hegel. “The uneducated, not the educated,” he replies.

As if to confirm the German idealist’s paradox, a nation of illiterates recently exhibited a weird spectacle; a careful analysis of the results of the United States primaries. And the same nation, simultaneously, hung on every word uttered by the wife and daughter of two previous (and dead) rulers – Sheikh Hasina, current prime minister and leader of the Awami League, and Khaleda Zia, leader of the opposition and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

How is it, I asked myself, that a nation astute enough to differentiate between Tony Blair and William Hague, clever enough to follow the details of the Bush campaign and smart enough to connect the vicissitudes of the dollar with the oracular musings of Alan Greenspan, how is it, I wondered, that the same nation has to choose between the House of Sheikh Mujib and the house of Zia-ur Rahman?

THE SATE AS FAMILY IN ASIA
Country	Dynasty Founded By	Heir(s)	Relationship With Founder
Bangladesh	General Ziaur Rahman	Khaleda Zia	Wife
Bangladesh	Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman	Sheikh Hasina	Daughter
Pakistan	Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto	Benazir Bhutto	Daughter
Sri Lanka	S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike	Sirimavo Bandaranaike	Wife
		Chandrika Kumaratunga	Daughter
India	Jawaharlal Nehru	Indira Gandhi	Daughter
		Rajiv Gandhi	Grandson
Indonesia	Sukarno	Megawati Sukarnoputri	Daughter
Myanmar	Aung San	Aung San Suu Kyi	Daughter
Singapore	Lee Kuan Yew	Lee Hsien Loong	Son

Thanks, partly, to Hegel, I realised that it was not the same nation.

And, in part, thanks to a cinema hall in a small town called Mymensingh. A year ago, in that same hall, I’d watched a commercial ‘hit’ film – and the house had been full of  rickshaw-pullers, smoke and cat-calls, and devoid of any bhodrolok (gentleman), bar, possibly, one . Now, in that very hall, I was watching an art-film – and only the dress-circle was full (of bhodrolok), the rear and front-stalls empty. The educated watched, while the uneducated stayed away. I seized on Plato’s two-nation theory – a nation of rich and poor – and appreciated that our national imagination was similarly split in twain. Though the bhodrolok may stay away from the cinema theatres, they may not stay away from the country. The nation has to meet somewhere, however much the educated may contemn the intellectual fodder of the uneducated. And they were meeting with a vengeance in the Battle of the Begums* – a latter-day War of the Roses.

From 1994 to 1996, the opposition abstained from Parliament and took to the streets in a bloody and devastating confrontation with the government. And, for the last two years, the present opposition headed by the then Prime Minister has been staying out of Parliament and trying its best to bring down the present government with the same methods. Eye for eye.

The following newspaper report will give a fairly good picture of the unconscionable means employed by political activists in Bangladesh: “The condition of Zakir, helper of Nasu Mia who was killed on November 25, is critical, hospital sources said.

“Zakir is now under treatment at the burn unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH).

“Nasu Mia was burnt alive when a petrol bomb was hurled on it [the truck] in the city’s Shahjahanpur area at about 5 p.m. during hartal hours on November 25.” (Hartal is the method by which the opposition exert pressure on the government by forcing all traffic off the roads – using very violent tactics). Both the mentality and the methods of Bangladeshi politicians are equally mediaeval.

The uneducated have to think abstractly, because they cannot think at all – they cannot go beyond a white rose and a red rose, the House of York and the House of Lancaster, the House of Sheikh Mujib and the House of Zia. And the reasoning can be safely extended to the West, where the black-and-white choice appears as a choice between tax-and-spend and its obverse (Tony Blair’s Third Way notwithstanding). Whether the electorate chooses between Republicans and Democrats in America, or says ‘Ja’ or ‘Nei’ to Europe, the choices have been already prepared for them by the thinking educated. In fact, it would not be too much to say that ‘unthinking educated’ would almost be a contradiction in terms.

A superb example of the thinking educated devising an abstract choice for the unthinking uneducated is the vision of the European Union summed up by  Jean Monnet in the ‘50s when he wrote: “the States of Europe must from a federation”. With the memory of  two world wars behind them , and the prospect of  two superpowers outmaneuvering the isolated nation-states of Europe ahead, European thinkers, under the influence of the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, went back to the Carolingian Empire of Charlemagne (768-814), when Western Europe was one, unified State , with the denarius circulating as a single currency. On January 1^st, 1994, Europe achieved a single market, whose contours approximately fit the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne. And, on January 1^st 1999, Europe acquired its denarius.

And the masses were only consulted when the infrastructure was firmly in place. And when they said “No” in a referendum, they were asked again and again. And the European reaction to the recent elections in Austria show the contempt for the masses that the European elite have come to feel. Louis Michel, the foreign minister of Belgium, says that voters can be “naive” and “simple”. Of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party, he says that to be a democratic party “you must work by democratic rules, you must accept not to play on the worst feelings each human being has inside himself”. The italics are mine, but the words are telling. After all, even Hitler was elected by the people. The people must be taught that a vote for a far-right party is not like a vote for a mainstream party. And presumably there must be an elite – the Platonic guardians – who will save us from the worst feelings each human being has inside himself. I’m sure Nasu Mia, the truck driver burnt alive by a petrol bomb, would have agreed.

Today’s Europeans are being asked to think of the United States of Europe whenever they think of their own ego. At one time, a Spaniard or a French peasant was asked to identify his ego with the House of Castille and the House of Valois. Loyalty to the State essentially means identifying one’s ego with the State.

Loyalty to the State, in Bangladesh, has taken the shape of loyalty to two contending families. No amount of logic can force the supporter of one to see things from the other’s point of view: it is a question of ego, pure and simple, not reason. How did the State become incarnated in two houses?

Before I answer the question, I’d like to share an amusing experience with the reader in the from of a letter in a daily paper which had appeared in the winter of 1994 – when the opposition Awami League was out on the streets to bring the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party down. The writer is responding to a previous letter that had characterised some of Sheikh Hasina’s remarks as ‘irresponsible’. Here are some excerpts: “Let us first discuss about Hasina’s statements as cited by Ahmed. First one is that Hasina told that the British Parliamentary delegation was brought to give ruling party a good character certificate. Well, this is a simple statement. There is no threat, nor will anyone find any irresponsibility in it... Now let us cite examples of Khaleda Zia’s irresponsible statements and analyse them...In her early days in power she spoke at a public meeting in Rangpur that no development work will be done in the areas that do not cast their vote in favour of BNP candidates. As if the country’s exchequer was ‘her’ property.”

The reason the State has become incarnated in two families, is that the educated have not been able to give the people the idea of the State at all. And the reason for that, in turn, is that in Bangladesh we encounter the oxymoron of the unthinking educated. Our educated, in turn, have been given a black-and-white choice by foreign thinkers in terms of democracy-versus-autocracy. This was most apparent when the unthinking educated were congratulating themselves on overthrowing General Ershad with the help of students and the donors, not realising  that they were committing the nation to a dynastic democracy – another oxymoron. Congratulated by the West at the time as well, they’re reaping the bitter fruits today. They should have realised that the 700-year old Parliamentary tradition of Europe is absent, and has always been absent, in Asia. No Asian king has ever had to seek the consent of a Parliament, or Estates-General, or Cortes in order to levy taxes, and no Asian king has ever been brought to his knees by a refusal to pay tax.

Consequently, when the educated and uneducated think with one mind – as they are forced to do on the national stage – they opt for a dynastic democracy: dynastic, because that is the only from of government the people will understand, and democracy because that is the only form of government the West would approve. Result: the Battle of the Begums. The individual ego, having chosen to identify with one family, identifies that family with the State, since the ego must be loyal to the State – and yet when that family treats the State as its personal fief, the supporters of the other family revolt against the government.

Our letter-writer, mentioned above, gives more insight into the process at work when he adds: “The fourth allegation of irresponsible remark by Hasina is a serious one. Ansaruddin Ahmed alleged that Sheikh Hasina threatened to cripple the country in December. There lies the basic problem with him and may be the likes of him. Like BNP and its leaders Ansaruddin Ahmed also failed to differentiate between the government and the country. Sheikh Hasina threatened to cripple the BNP government if demands are not met. But the feeling that BNP owns the country might have led to this confusion in his mind.” Subtle analyst, our writer!

One Tigress to a Hill
Media Coverage of Political Parties in Bangladesh
1993  Ruling Party : BNP
Party	Seats in Parliament	Expected Coverage* %	Coverage Received %
BNP	174	54	93
Awami League	92	29	4
Jatiya Party	35	11	1
Jammat-e-Islami	20	6	1
1999  Ruling Party : Awami League
Awami League	181	55	94
BNP	110	34	4
Jatiya Party	30	9	1
Jammat-e-Islami	8	2	1
*as percentage of total seats
Source : local weekly Jaijaidin

Due to the absence of the parliamentary tradition in Asia, the ruling party must see the country as its personal fief, like the absolutist monarchs of Renaissance Europe. Unlike them, Asian parties will brook no opposition, since opposition is alien to Asia (see table). (The British, when they rule in Asia, tolerate no opposition, either: recall John Patton’s constipated attempts at depositing a last-minute democracy in Hong Kong before China took over!)

ANOTHER LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Sir, The other day I was watching our Prime Minister’s address to the nation on BTV [Bangladesh Television] on the occasion of her completion of four years in the office. The address was repeated the following day, i.e., 24^th June, 2000.

While listening to the speech, I was intrigued by its striking similarity with the speeches that were made by our former PM about five years ago. The then PM stated the very many good things that her government had done and how inconsiderate and irresponsible the opposition party’s activities were at that time – in that not only the latter offered total non-cooperation but also were taking recourse to disruptive manoeuvres. Looking solemn and sombre, Sheikh Hasina carried on exactly in the same way as did Khaleda Zia five years ago.

Every time different parties in the power game happen to swap their place, they seem to say and do the same things as their predecessors. Are we going to see another PM delivering the same old speech five years from now? Is anything ever going to change in our country? Or perhaps things are changing to some extent and every time for the worse than the previous regime!

- The Daily Star, 5^th July, 2000

Instead of the Western choice dictated by its media – conflict versus command – we should be able to choose between command and consensus. Command and conflict are not our only options, although the absence of parliamentary tradition would incline the balance in favour of the former: our choice lies between two types of authoritarianism, not between authoritarianism and democracy. A little thought will reveal that consensual authoritarianism, rather than conflictual democracy, gives successful Asian countries the edge over the less happy democracies. Even though the Liberal Democratic Party has been in power in Japan for 50 years, it always sought consensus in the Diet before passing legislation. Besides historical limitations, there exist the problems of ethnicity. In a multi-racial society, conflictual democracy becomes the tyranny of the majority – notice the American blacks and the history of Protestant oppression in Catholic Ireland. Israel is a massive testimony to the failure of democracy  in the West , even before the rise of Nazism (Herzl’s The Jewish State appeared in 1896). Thanks to democracy, Sri Lanka is a divided nation. Pakistan splintered along linguistic lines. Decades ago Malaysia and Indonesia witnessed massive anti-Chinese riots; yet, today, it is democratic India and Indonesia that are threatened with communalism and secessionism. The lesson has not been lost on South Africa, another part of the world lacking a parliamentary tradition. Indeed, the first multi-racial election was rigged to ensure stability: the ANC won 62.7%, not 67%, of the vote, otherwise it would have been able to write a permanent constitution all by itself; the ruling National Party 20.4%, a little over the 20% needed to secure four cabinet posts; and Inkatha 10.5% to secure two cabinet positions (and a 50.3% majority in Kwazulu- Natal). Disgruntled parties were won over behind closed doors, and the counting continued. David Welsh, a political scientist at the University of Cape Town, wrote in an essay in Election 94 South Africa: “South Africans have been required to subscribe to the latest national myth, namely that the elections were ‘substantially free and fair’. They were nothing of the kind....” No doubt the South Africans had learnt from neighbouring Angola and Mozambique what losing at the polls means in a society split along ego-lines – ‘do-a-Savimbi’ has become an expression for the ego’s loyalty to another ego confused with the ego’s loyalty to the State. It is small wonder, then, that the no-party state of Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has proved so popular – to locals as well as to donors.

The alien concept of loyal opposition has been imported by the unthinking educated, hungry for the approval of the foreign media. However, ideas do not die, people do: a younger generation of thinkers (if we may use the term) are being brought up on the success stories of Asian authoritarianism. Even after the fall of General Ershad, Mr. Rehman Sobhan, an economist, published an article pointing out that the Asian successes were not democracies. However, the older generation that has been brought up on the aesthetical superiority of democracy, whatever its material uselessness, is now in their sixties, and will die out in five years’ time, which means, by the end of the next term. By then, a new generation will have taken charge, and they’ll be more intent on development, than democracy. (William Harvey observed that not a man over forty accepted his theory, and Keynes noticed that novelties in economic and political philosophy repel those above twenty-five or thirty!)

All of which brings us to a major question: which of the two Houses will rule the nation after the next five years? If we don’t get our political philosophy sorted out now, we’ll be faced with a civil war later. Meanwhile, what’s left of our education system will disappear, as more students are armed by the two Houses. There isn’t even the possibility – many would use the word ‘hope’ - of the army stepping in to keep the two Houses from murdering people in broad daylight. The United States, as Bill Clinton’s recent visit made clear, wants to see a ‘democratic Bangladesh’, even if it claims a thousand roasted Nasu Mias. Yet unless we sort out our political philosophy now, we’ll have a devilishly difficult time sorting out our rulers from among the Houses of Sheikh Mujib and Zia.

For the victor’s prize is immense: the whole nation as its personal fief, to be developed with a view to collecting the economic rent accruing to a monopolist. Such a magnificent reward will be fought over, tooth and nail, as two men fight over a woman until only one lover emerges – for the ego’s identification, or latching on, to one House is a lot like a lover’s choice. Just as a lover will tolerate no criticism about his beloved, so partly loyalty demands unquestioning allegiance.

            ‘Politicians are not human.’

            Such was the pronouncement of the brother of Salahuddin (33), a fisherman, who was killed in a skirmish between the two student wings of the political parties in the latest hartal. Two rickshawpullers – one of them unidentified, the other Badaruddin (32) - were bombed while they were pulling their rickshaws during hartal hours. It took them 24 to 48 hours  to die. 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. Truck driver, Fayez Ahmed (50), died when a bomb was thrown on his truck. And Ripon Sikder, a sixteen-year-old injured by a bomb, died on 4^th May 2001 at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital after struggling for his life for eleven days.

About Japan’s change of government in the mid-90s, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew had said: ‘I do not see them becoming a fractious, contentious society like America, always debating and knocking each other down. That is not their culture. They want growth and they want to get on with life. They are not interested in ideology as such, or in the theory of good government. They just know a good government and want a good government.

“Americans believe that out of contention, out of the clash of different ideas and ideals, you get good government. That view is not shared in Asia.”

For such views, Mr. Lee is ridiculed by the Western media, and he doesn’t care. He is, after all, of the thinking educated.

As more of the unthinking educated of Bangladesh have their black-and-white choices determined in favour of consensual-versus-command authoritarianism by the likes of Mr. Lee, the question looms: will we emerge a bruised and broken nation, or in one piece?               

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* Battle of the Ladies