Freitag, 31. Oktober 2008

Modern times : Smoky scenes in Bangladesh 1

There had been a lot of chaos in Bangladesh as well as in the world market in last couple of weeks. As the mob concentration goes for crisis like sculpture removal from airport road and continuous threats from the religious fundamentalists which can even cause nationwide such unrest so that there will be no elections possible on 18th of December, the world economic depression goes downwards. It is quite easy to mark correlations between the chaos caused by the fundamentalists and the uncertainty of having at last an elected parliament. But to relate it with the world crisis is not that easy. It is more empirical comment than a significant hypothesis. Being an observer of the politics since late 80's, one may go for deductions like, behind every religious fundamentalist uprising there were instabilities in world market as the key factor or almost every big crisis in the world market caused provoked religious fundamentalist chaos in Bangladesh and some other countries with similar economic and political orientations.

The chaos occurred by madrassa students was surely negligible for the government if they wanted to. But they reacted as if there was a severe fundamentalist uprising on the sculpture issue. Now almost every protest against fundamentalism is suppressed by the government. These occurrences show that the government themselves want to prolong such chaos in order to, either strengthen the fundamentalist fascism as reserve forces to be used as trained killers in "right times" or to develop some unrest to postponed parliament elections and go for a long term military regime.

The question is, can Bangladesh be treated as a country with such geopolitical importance where at the moment an independent civil government might be unpleasant for Uncle Sam & co. From my point of view yes. Bangladesh is in, at the moment, geopolitically one of the most important areas. Rise of India and China and perhaps the newly elected Maoist government in Nepal, may increase the geopolitical importance to have a strong control over Bangladesh due to the hegemonic crisis in global governance. A series of forced privatization, without creating any least alternatives, had been occurred in last 7-8 years. Selling off the natural resources began actually in marshal law regime under general Ershad, but has accelerated itself in last 11-12 years. Under democratically elected governments it is almost impossible to stop or to control criticism against this type of selling off. So, from the history, it won’t be that insignificant to see such correlations.

What is to be done? To elect one of those two corrupt parties may look meaningless and also I think which is not untrue, but having another long term military fascism would be the worst choice for Bangladesh. On the other hand if BNP/AL comes into power with the orientation they presently have, there will be definitely further massacres due to religious fundamentalism which could build stronger ground for upcoming military ruling.

There must be some way out. What we need is an elected government without having sympathy for the actual sources and beneficiaries of religious fundamentalism and communalism. Stopping these two forces will remove or at least weaken the barriers of development and stronger democracy.

Montag, 20. Oktober 2008

A brief Histroy of Bangla Blogging...At the very begining (1)

Where and how do I begin? Although the titel itself claims to be something accademic, I'm follwing only my personal observations and experiences, being one of the oldest bloggers of the Bangla Blogsphere. Before the opportunity of writing Bangla in unicode fonts came, there was actually no chance to develop a blog in Bangla. As far as I know unicode Bangla first appeared in 2004. At that time couple of bloggers with high motivation and enthusiasm began to maintain their Bangla Blog in Blogspot or Wordpress with the help of Unicode Bangla. The first ever Bangla Blogging platform http://somewhereinblog.net came in december 2005. For the first time in history they made the glorious opportunity to write Bangla either with Bijoy or Phonetic or with the help of virtual keyboard directly. Birth of http://somewhereinblog.net was somewhat a revolution for using Bangla in the virtual world. From december 2005 to June 2007 (approximately) they had almost the absolute monoply in Bangla Blogsphere. This platform developed the first blogging community in Bangla, who can be considered as the poineers of Bangla Blogging.

I personaly stuck into it on the third day of january 2006. I enrolled myself on 31 January 2006. At that time there were hardly 40 or 50 bloggers active. Some of them used to engage themselves fully with literaure and the rest were interested in current politics and polemics. Although I was in the first group, the clashes representing the historical and contemporary politics, culture and society forced me to got engaged with. The blog-conflicts of january-february and march 2006, made the first polarization in blog community.

(to be continued ;) )

Sonntag, 19. Oktober 2008

Could any hell be more horrible than now and real?



How do I supposed to react getting another reference of the underhand understanding between military regime and religious fundamentalism? The present "military-backed civil government" kept their heads down in front of so called fundamentalist protests last week.

From the histroy of South Asia, we know that the term communalism with the mask of religious fundamentalism strengtht themselves under the financing of British Empire since British colonial period. With the partition of British India with respect to the religious-group majority, left Royal Empire the upgrowing seeds of communalism in the mask of religious fundamentalism behind. Panjab and Bengal had been parted into east and west with respect to the hindu and muslim majority. As the world politics had been determind by cold war at that time and also the anti-thesis of Bengal division grew rapidly in the eastern part of former Bengal presideny, which resulted in today's Bangladesh. But as the control of the political hegemony remaind under the benificiaries of the Bengal division, the seeds of religious fundamentalism which was left behind by the british rulling class, dared to activate themselves.

So, from the very begining there had been an obvious relationship between religous fundamentalism and imperialism. We also know from the history the relationship between military regimse and imperialism, which kept continiously promoting religious groups to organize themselves safely.

The incidents last week, shows that the so called military backed civil government has no difference with the previous pure military regimes of 1975-1990. And the so called democratic forces who are preparing themselves for the upcomming parliament elections are infact got very tiny difference with the uniformed forces.

The furstration continues. I would be the happiest one to be an optimist.


news kinks:
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=58970

Sonntag, 12. Oktober 2008

Hessens upcomming Government and my predictions



Feeling a bit gloomy. A new Governtment is about to be formed in Hessen. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the leftists are going to be a part of the provincial Government of Hessen, which is one of the most decisive provinces in the Post-war era of German politics. The provincial parliament elections has been held on 27 January this Year. The present CDU Government of Hessen under Chief Minister Roland Koch could only be removed if there is a coalition between SPD, The Greens and The Left Allaience. On this puzzle, wheather the Lefts are to be taken as a coalition partner of the provincial government,delayed the formation of the government in total 9 odd monthes till last week. Now after lots of pendamoniums SPD has decided itself to make a coalition with the Left allaience. On the other hand CDU and FDP leadres keep continously accusing Andrea Yipsilanti (Chief of the SPD in Hessen) for promoting a left uprising in Hessen, which can, as the CDU Chief Minister Roland Koch mentioned, influence terrorism among the children and above all in the whole socity and the whole country.

Things are nothing unexpected, atleast for those who know the political history of the federal republic of germany. But I smell something else with the statements of Roland Koch. From the history of Germany, we know, what Hitler did in 1936 at the Parliament house in Berlin. I wasn't feeling good,like most other foreigners, under the CDU Government. But now, I dont know why I feel like, what is also influenced by the present economic depression of the world economy, something worst is going to happen here.

I will be the happiest man on earth if my predictions go wrong.

Good Day!