Those "sinners"
Iftekhar Sayeed, Dhaka
The Bengali language has an exquisite term for a corrupt intellectual: I refer to the word vigorously doing the rounds these days "gyanpapi". The word, like many a word in another language, is untranslatable, and literally would be rendered " conscious sinner". Now, what is a " conscious sinner"? A man or woman who uses his/her knowledge to do evil rather than good: that is, one who knowingly does evil. The term is applied to our intellectuals, and that is cause for hope. People have realised that it is not our politicians alone that are responsible for our present predicament, but that the active connivance of our intellectuals was required for things to come to such a pass. Indeed, over the last sixteen years, it was the intelligentsia that legitimised the two murderous groups that we call political parties, that sanctioned the edict of Washington in our affairs, that colluded in the disappearance of decency and humanity from our daily life. Now, all we have to do is to take that insight to its logical conclusion. But logic, of course, has never been our forte!
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