The Sun Rising Over Bengal
Today is Bangladeshi Independence Day. I know this thanks only to a good-humoured and educational chat I had with a chap in a Subway in Leytonstone a few months back. A conversation about how spicy we like our toppings quickly gave way to the richer and more interesting topic of our countries of origin. Not for him the affected wincing at being asked about his homeland (who knew that in 2020 curiosity about your fellow human beings would be classed as offensive?); he jumped at the chance to share a little about his country's proud and traumatic transition from 'East Pakistan' to independent Bangladesh.
He told me about the annulled 1970 election in which 'East Pakistan' returned a huge majority for the nationalists, the following Pakistani military campaign to take out well known nationalists and the resulting (and successful) Bangladeshi Liberation War of 1971, concluding the potted history lesson with the playful postscript that today's Bangladesh continually beats Pakistan for GDP per capita - and a twinkle in the eye. There was something in this man's refreshingly unabashed enthusiasm for his topic that - aided by the gentle coincidence that Greek Independence Day happens to be the 25th March - that struck me about how universal it is to identify with one's country, how natural to want to nail your colours to the totem of your tribe.
Yes this powerful instinct can be dangerous when not kept in check, but everything has a shadow. We have yet to see how dangerous - in its own way - a project that fails or refuses to acknowledge this fact of human life will fully prove to be (though I would say the signs are already there). It may be all the rage right now (and I do mean all the *rage*) to denigrate those who care about dusty old concepts like 'sovereignty' and 'the nation state' as backward, nostalgic or resembling certain varieties of cured pork, and to presume that lunging towards the supranational is the only answer to the undoubted scourges of bigotry and conflict. As Dame Judi Dench says in Tea with Mussolini, "I wouldn't be quite so sure of that."
We'll come back to that one again and again I'm sure. But for now it remains only to say:
Bangladesh Zindabad!
Hi Jason, interesting post! As someone who hails from a bengali background (from the Indian side), I well remember the 1971 war and how proud my parents were that the dream of an independent bengali state (the golden bengal that the poets and musicians had dreamt and sung about for centuries) had finally been achieved. They were all in favour of the Indian state of west bengal being allowed to secede from India and join up with Bangladesh to create the great new bengali state. In retrospect one can look at Bangladesh's history - poverty, famine, coups, the murder of its founder sheikh mujib, and finally a form of stability offset by regular natural disasters. In many ways rather than West bengal joining up with Bangladesh (which if course never happened, bengal remains divided) what would have been better would have been for East Pakistan to have become part of India. Obviously that will never happen now - India's current rulers would never permit an extra 100 million+ Muslims to join the state, in fact keeping illegal Bangladeshi immigrants out is India's main policy towards its Eastern neighbour. It does make you think about the whole subject of the partition of India. The way that independence and partition were rushed through in 6 weeks just seems incredible now (cf 6 years+ for brexit, whose complexity pales in comparison). The state of Pakistan split into East and west just seems to have been doomed to failure. It makes you wonder how a united undivided india might have fared? Perhaps it would have been a huge success or maybe it would have ended in civil war, unrest, turmoil etc. Who knows?
ReplyDelete