Bangladeshi dream: a legalis sententia
'American Dream' basically refers to the belief of American people with regard to attainment of their own version of success in an 'upward-mobility' society. Like Americans, “We, the people of Bangladesh” have our own dream. We historically term it making 'Shonar Bangla'. Our 'Bangladeshi dream' can be described and analysed from different perspectives – the one of which is the legal one presented in this piece.
In the backdrop of colonial powers, from time immemorial, the people of Bangladesh have been struggling to be the 'master of our own fate' and 'captain of our soul'. The instance of this struggle is evident in the historical fact of 1971's liberation war which reflects the legitimate exercise of the peoples' right of self-determination. One can find the legal endorsement of this right in the 1971 Proclamation of Independence and the preamble of the 1972 Constitution.
To materialise the dream of the mass people, our founding fathers, i.e. the members of the Constituent Assembly, wrote in the Preamble of Constitution that the fundamental aim of the State is “to realise through the democratic process a socialist society, free from exploitation a society in which the rule of law, fundamental human rights and freedom, equality and justice, political, economic and social, will be secured for all citizens”. This can emphatically be said to be the legal illustration of the 'Bangladeshi dream'.
Former Chief Justice of Bangladesh, Mr. Justice Latifur Rahman in his book The Constitution of the People's Republic of Bangladesh with Comments & Case-Laws has eloquently written about economic and social justice. To quote him, “economic and social justice means, to remove economic inequalities to provide a decent standard of living to the working people and to protect the interest of the weaker sections of the people in the society.” Justice Mr. Badrul Haider Chowdhury made it very clear in the Eighth Amendment Case decision that this concept of 'Rule of Law' contained in the Preamble, which is also a mandatory component of our Bangladeshi dream and constitutes the basic structure of our Constitution. According to the above mentioned case, the amendability of the Preamble is rigidly protected and it can only be done by the people at referendum. This only purports to mean that our 'Bangladeshi dream' can only be altered or amended by the direct participation of people at large.
However, we have yet to achieve the dream that we had constitutionally pledged for ourselves. Rather the realisation of human rights has become a matter of concern in fulfilling the 'Bangladeshi dream'. At different transition points of history of democracy and justice, we have been misled and as an apprehensible upshot, we are out of track. Our freedom fighters did not sacrifice their lives for this. We have time-honoured the emergence of a capitalist society to the highest extent which is exactly in opposition to our dream to build a socialist one. The upper class of the society is taking advantage of the lower class. Law and order system has been tampered in a way that it will take a lot of time to bring back everything on the right track.
During the Constituent Assembly debate, there was extensive debate on the issue of justiciability of socio-economic rights in our constitutional framework. Making the excuse of 'resource limitation', the State for many years is not making the socio-economic rights to be judicially enforceable. In many cases, after 45 years of adopting the Constitution, our State is even failing to provide its citizens with the civil and political rights such as right to fair trial, equality before law, etc. as guaranteed by our Constitution.
Undoubtedly this is not the dream we were meant to cherish and pursue. We are taking our frustrations regarding faded dreams for granted which can never be a gateway to excellence. So as to put together and build up our nation, we must all go beyond our own expectations. A better Bangladesh is possible, indeed!
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