Towards a confrontation

Facing-off! Photo: Brett Lamb

Where there is no imagina-tion there is no horror," writes Arthur Conan Doyle Sr., the famous creator of the detective Sherlock Holmes. There was imagination when the cadres of one political party hacked to death the local boss of another political party in Natore. There was imagination even when an angry mob of BNP activists set fire to a train in Sirajgonj after it had mowed down six of them and wounded many more. The horror came much later though, when politicians exchanged invectives instead of being sorry that lives were lost.
The imagination part is easy to understand. The idea was to intimidate the opposition or maybe to exact some kind of retribution. These days it is difficult to distinguish between runaway trains and carried-away people because neither has any consideration for human lives anymore. In older days, political rivals would have gone fisticuff, at best hurling obscenities at each other and at worst stabbing a few opponents. Then came guns, shots fired from a distance by assassins hiding in the shuffling crowd.
Now things happen in broad daylight, in the presence of observant eyes, television cameras, reporters, and, of course, directly under the nose of policemen. Now people gather on rail tracks under the illusion that their huddled bodies could build a wall strong enough to decelerate a speeding train. Politics has transformed. From ideological fervour that it used to be, idiotic frenzy is what it has become.
But the horror part is still horrible. The politicians blamed each other, spoke of conspiracies, and vowed to seek revenge over the dead bodies of fallen victims. Not a single word was uttered to regret the incidents, which cost human lives as precious, might not be as successful, as their own. Perhaps deaths in their line of business is as natural as breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.
French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte once said: "A leader is a dealer in hope." The question is what hope have the leaders inspired in us through those nefarious deaths. A man was hacked to death with the excitement of killing a rodent. In another incident nobody is taking responsibility for a train that sped through a crowd, which spilled over the rail track to hear an address from a leader of choice.
It's possible that things went out of hand both times. It often does. Party workers in their inordinate zeal tend to take things to their logical conclusion. But one would wish to get more sensible response from their leaders. That is the least one could expect from them because such decency helps restore the hope fractured by unfortunate events.
Instead, that hope was diminished when one leader blamed the train tragedy on "the agency," whatever it means. Another leader claimed it was a plot hatched by her opponent from the comfort of a luxury resort, however it sounded. Frankly, it was shocking that atrocities were condoned under the haze of angry expletives. Politics has divided us so much that we even refuse to mourn deaths should offer us the opportunity to sock it to the opponent.
If anything, it was yet another example of confrontational politics. Rest assured, similar incidents, if not worse, are going to be repeated. Rest assured the same politicians are going to repeat the same attitude. Another man will be chopped to death. Another train will be burned somewhere. May be houses will be looted. May be neighbourhoods will be gutted. Our politicians will come up with even more ridiculous responses. They will still busy themselves with throwing explosives into each other's tents.
Crocodiles have a chemical in their blood that heals their wounds. Likewise, national politics is expected to exude hope that can help overcome national ordeals. That's not how it works for us though. Our politics aggravates the wound, and makes a crisis even more critical. It is the actual manifestation of the Doylean dilemma. There is no imagination unless there is also horror.
Why does it happen? Everybody knows the answer, but nobody likes to ask the question. The answer is our politicians never learned the difference between a foreman and a statesman. What is the difference? A foreman leads an operation, but a statesman leads a nation. A foreman will abandon his operation if it proves risky for his men. A statesman is expected to do what is best for his country, even if that means he has to ignore his own party men.
This difference has been made pronounced twice in a row, once in Natore and again in Sirajgonj. Leaders of both parties have failed to show that the country comes before the party, not the other way around. Two more milestones yet that eloquently explain what is pushing this country and its politicians towards a confrontation.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is Editor, First News and a columnist for The Daily Star. E-mail: [email protected]