It is very painful to know that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government is using brute force to suppress the students protesting in the streets and campuses of Bangladesh. Media reports detail the unlawful use of force by the state against the demonstrators. Human rights watchdogs report that several people have been killed and many others have been injured.
Images of injured protesters are being widely shared on social media platforms. These pictures evoke strong condemnation of the Sheikh Hasina regime. There are fears that the student wing of the ruling party is being encouraged to confront the protesters. The establishment is desperate to reduce the matter to a case of ‘law and order.’ The establishment-backed media are attempting to propagate the narrative of a clash between pro-quota and anti-quota student groups while defending the criminal actions of state authorities.
While more details of the police crackdown may emerge soon, and the exact number of protesters killed and injured may be ascertained, many facts are beyond doubt. First, the clash has been fuelled by the fight over limited government jobs due to massive privatization. It is a hard fact that the Bangladeshi economy cannot generate employment or address the legitimate demands of the student community due to its pro-rich economic policy. The Awami League government, led by Sheikh Hasina, has failed to provide relief to the people. As a result, it is becoming increasingly unpopular. However, the illegitimacy of the ruling establishment is evident not only in Bangladesh. Such a phenomenon is also witnessed elsewhere in South Asia.
Unfortunately, authoritarian tendencies and sectarian politics are weakening democracy from Dhaka to New Delhi. Ruling establishments across South Asia, instead of addressing the issues, are attempting to divide the people through concocted conflicts. In our region, narratives of Hindus versus Muslims and national versus anti-national are being propagated by the Hindu-right regime, while the current Bangladeshi establishment is attempting to foment polarization between freedom fighters and razakars (traitors). The term ‘razakar’ is an Urdu word that means volunteer. In Bangladesh, opponents of the Awami League were pejoratively called razakars for allegedly supporting Pakistan-backed militias.
Reviving her pet narrative, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has recently called the protesting students razakars. Instead of listening to the protestors, she chose to dismiss them and treat dissent as a crime. The world condemns the use of such divisive language in the strongest terms. Who will tell Sheikh Hasina that she is the leader of 170 million Bangladeshi citizens? She has taken an oath to treat all citizens without discrimination. She must not forget that raking up past horror would only weaken the present. Whatever happened during the Bangladesh Liberation War is a part of history and that cannot be a ground to judge a person who was not born at that moment.
Consider the example of British India. Many of the police officers and civil servants who worked for the British Raj until August 14/15, 1947, were considered freedom fighters disloyal to the Raj and criminals. However, the independent governments, headed by freedom fighters, did not attempt to take revenge on the officers. Nor was any attempt made to punish their children for the loyalty of their parents to the British Raj. Similarly, many supporters of the Congress and the Muslim League changed their loyalty after Partition and were not punished for their past associations. Similarly, the trope of the freedom fighters versus razakars can be useful for the ruling party to gain votes. But it cannot take Bangladesh as a nation to a big height. The sooner such a divisive narrative is buried, the better it will be for Bangladesh as a nation.
The reason why I cannot uphold the politics around divisive and emotive issues is because it hides the real fault lines in society. This is not to say that politics should become bereft of ideology. In fact, conflict, not cooperation, is a bigger reality of a property-based society. No one can deny that there is a fundamental conflict between the interests of the workers and the owners of all the resources. Similarly, in the South Asian context, caste, far more than religion, is the basis for the distribution of status, power, and wealth. Gender disparity, too, should also be a key factor in our analysis.
But it is also seen that the ruling party, which serves the dominant interests of society, always tries to hide the axis of inequality and discrimination. To hide them from the public discourse, imaginary issues and warring groups are created. It appears that the policy of giving 30 percent reservation to the families of the freedom fighters is a method to perpetuate the narrative of freedom fighters versus traitors discourse in Bangladesh. In this context, the protesting students are justified in opposing the 30 percent quota for the families of the freedom fighters. It is because no scientific study can show that the families of the freedom fighters are under-represented in Bangladesh and are historically, socially, and educationally marginalized.
Evidence suggests that the recent decision of the Bangladesh Court to uphold the 30 percent reservation was taken under political pressure. For, Sheikh Hasina, who is facing a big crisis of legitimacy, hopes to consolidate her support base by introducing a quota system for the family of the freedom fighters. She is quite aware of the fact that it would definitely be opposed by those who have not got the status of freedom fighters. However, she believes that the lingering controversy would create a sharp division in society. She hopes that such a polarization would draw their alienated supporters back to the Awami League. That is why it lends credence to the allegation that the student wing of the ruling party is given state protection to attack the protestors.
However, as the global community watches the brute use of power, her game plan seems to have backfired. Her statement shows that she is feeling anxious and getting nervous in the wake of the wider condemnation against her government. The use of force against the student community has dented her image of being a “liberal” face among Bangladeshi politicians.
While expressing my solidarity with the protestors against the illogical quota, let me also make it clear that I am not comfortable with the language of “meritocracy” emerging within the protesting groups. It is true that my assumption is based on media reports as I could not have access to protestors. However, I have read in the newspapers that protestors are demanding that “merit” should be followed in the allocation of jobs and that the quota should be kept to a “minimum” level. Both these arguments appear to be elitist in nature.
There should not be any confusion that the basic goal of affirmative action, including reserving seats in educational institutes and employment, is to ensure proportional and effective representation of historically, socially, and educationally marginalized communities including minorities. Merit or poverty cannot be grounds to fix a quota for any particular person or section.
The reason why I do not accept the merit logic is because merit is a trope invented by the elites and socially dominant classes and castes. The language of merit is employed to instil a sense of inferiority among the weaker sections and to deny them equal opportunities. The elite sections often repeat the term merit every day but no one has ever given a definition of merit that is acceptable to all. For example, who is considered meritorious in Bangladesh? Is he a person good at English? Or a candidate who can speak fluent Bangla? Or an Adivasi who can only speak her own language and knows very little of English or Bangla? If public examinations were conducted in the Adivasi language, all those proficient in English and Bangla would fail.
For me, only the marginalized communities, including minorities and indigenous communities, deserve to be given reservations. The marginalization can be defined by an objective study and it should not be left to the whim of any particular leader. While the principle of equal opportunity should be given to all, historically, socially, and educationally marginalized social groups can be included in decision-making by ensuring proportionate and effective representation. That is why, although some members of the dominant groups are found to be poor, they do not deserve to get reservations. This is because their social group is not underrepresented. The state, apart from the reservation, is within the ambit of the democratic Constitution to make welfare policies for economically poor people.
As is evident here, the logic of reservation is so simple to grasp, yet so much confusion has been created around it by the elites. Reservation is one of the means to achieve social justice in society. The principle of social justice is indispensable in a stratified society. Even official figures say that Bangladesh, like other countries in South Asia, is a highly unequal society. A handful of people, who are ranked higher in status and possess a large share of resources, use all kinds of unfair means to check the entry of the marginalized into the process of decision-making. That is why, seats are reserved to ensure the entry of the marginalized groups into the process of policy-making.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who was elected from Jessore and Khulna constituencies from undivided Bengal, now part of Bangladesh on the eve of Partition or the creation of Pakistan, has fought for proportionate and effective representation of minorities throughout his life. His definition of minorities was much broader as it included both religious and historically and socially marginalized groups. Speaking on the last day of India’s Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, Dr. Ambedkar, the drafting chairman of the Constitution, underscored the indispensability of representation in any democracy in the following words: “Because I feel, however good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot. However bad a Constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if those who are called to work it, happen to be a good lot. The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the Constitution. The Constitution can provide only the organs of the state such as the Legislature, the Executive, and the Judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the State depend are the people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics.”
At this critical moment, democratic forces stand in solidarity with the protestors against the illogical freedom fighter quota because such a social group is a creation of political elites desperate to gain political mileage. That is why there is no substantive evidence to show that the freedom fighter category as a social group is historically, socially, and educationally discriminated against. No doubt, they suffered a lot during the Liberation Movement. The principle of justice demands that they should be rehabilitated and properly compensated.
But such solidarity is not unconditional. Our solidarity cannot go along with those protestors who are opposing the quota in the language of merit. Similarly, the logic of a “minimum” quota coined by some protestors is also not democratic. Instead, the protestors should immediately give up such elitist tendencies and firmly uphold the proportionate and effective representation of all marginalized communities.
(Abhay Kumar was a student activist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Email: debatingissues@gmail.com)