US Congressmen and minorities
Ahmed Mohiuddin, Dhaka
After reading the letter of Mr. Bijan Kumar Nath published in The Daily Star on January 28, the accusation of a black student in a foreign Institute came to my mind. When the inebriated student from an African country was charged by police for making bizarre noise on the corridor of a hostel at night, he accused the police of discriminating a black, an African and so on. Likewise, Mr. Nath has dismayed me by drawing attention of the US Congressmen and some other organisations to his fictitious allegations that the minorities are discriminated against in Bangladesh. I think Mr. Nath needs to think about the word discrimination more carefully than he did. I would like to point out that people like Mr. Nath have an edge on us because they have the luxury to appeal to some, converting an injustice perpetrated against them to a discrimination, while we, the so called majority, cannot appeal to anyone when faced with injustice. Can the examples cited by Mr. Nath be termed as discrimination or are those commonplace injustice? Can Mr. Nath answer to the following questions that are whacking my mind: 1) what is the basis of defining majority and minority? 2) If I as a Muslim and as an ethnic Bengali, is selected for a membership of the majority, can Mr. Nath guarantee an effective safeguard for me against the examples of discriminations he cited land-grabbing, antagonism by the political opponents when the party I vote for loses the election and so on? If you can, please render me your contacts through The Daily Star so that I can fulfil my dream of getting that guarantee in exchange of a befitting reward for you. I would ardently request Mr. Nath not to mix up migration or immigration (economic or voluntary) with political asylum. We people have a trend to be the majority that is one of the supreme causes of immigration. Why the Jews around the world tend to come to the state of Israel? Are they being discriminated against in Ethiopia, former Soviet Union or in the United States? Why have my millionaire Bangladeshi Hindu friend living abroad built a luxurious house at Salt Lake, Kolkata? He could have easily lived in an elite locality of Dhaka where religion or ethnicity could have never been a matter of one's query. The feeling of being a member of the majority is just like the feeling of wearing ornaments by a woman. It strengthens the interior of a person more than it can beatify the exterior. And not only that ! Democracy also heralds the infliction of the opinion of the majority on the minority if there is no such complex procedure of elections as for the president of the United States (Mr. Gore got more votes than Mr. Bush in 2000). And even the most powerful and advanced country, from which the Congressmen are, has not been able to prevent the hate-crimes despite sincere efforts.
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