Three minutes of Shahbagh Spring

Photo: Sk Enamul Haq/Amran Hossain

The three-minute silence observed last Tuesday cut a swathe of profound introspection through the clutter of this land. Time stood still across the country for those three minutes when ministers, parliament members, bureaucrats and ordinary people joined in clockwork punctuality to create a rather absurd moment in our national history.
Absurd because never before had silence proved so eloquent in the life of this nation, and never before had this nation spoke so volubly when it didn't speak at all.
In those three minutes an entire country, save and except the pockets of dissenters, was submerged in an organised catharsis. It was a magical moment that forged more solidarity within minutes than was accomplished in almost 42 years that elapsed before it. The credit for this magnificent moment goes to Shahbagh Spring.
This moment wouldn't have happened without it. The youths who gathered in a city square to vent their frustration have created this tsunami. Imagine it hadn't happened. Imagine these youths were minding their own businesses, and their elders were still running the show. Hand on heart, how many people believe that those elders would have been motivated on their own to ask for a retrial? Would they have amended the law and gone for an appeal, if not for the roaring outrage that shook the country?
If we map the terrain of mass movements in Bangladesh from 1952 to 1971 to 1990 to 2013, roughly every twenty years on average this nation has experienced a spontaneous frenzy. Almost every twenty years people of this country have shown their exasperation against putrid politics. They have risen in collective action to tell their politicians they had enough of misguided politics.
It doesn't matter who sides with this movement and who doesn't. The growing popularity of this mass action is a moral defeat for the politicians of all denominations. Many of them are now visiting Shahbagh with the urgency of catching the last train. Many have been heckled and harassed by defiant youths. They have been repeatedly warned not to have their motivated fingers in this precious pie of national awakening.
The Shahbagh phenomenon has been dubbed as the resurgence of the 1971 spirit. For the politicians of this country, those who have expressed their solidarity with the movement and those who haven't, it should be equally shameful. Shameful because that spirit had to be revived by their children, the generation that never experienced it.
Curiously, the politicians lived through 1971 and many of them also fought in the Liberation War. No matter how much they defend their positions, they have lost that spirit like a needle in a haystack. Now that the law has been amended and the parliament is going to approve it, none of these would have been possible without the Shahbagh eruption.
It's too early to predict the outcome of this Shahbagh movement. But those three minutes of silence further validated that the leaders have followed and the followers have led. It also raised a critical question whether going forward these leaders can be trusted with the remaining leg of this journey. Will the amended law eventually flower into a fruitful action? Will it give enough assurance so that these youths can go back home?
Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky used a metaphor in The History of the Russian Revolution to describe the inherent risk of a spontaneous mass movement. He said the powerful steam can evaporate for lack of a piston that would have compressed it at the decisive moment. Trotsky went on to explain that the piston without steam remains a hollow shell, while even the most intense steam is wasted in absence of the piston.
For last ten days, we have been watching the hissing and screaming steam radiator of this nation at Shahbagh. The country's conscientious youths are voicing their protests against a court verdict that fell short of their expectation. It is the concerted expression of their concentrated anger that has infected this nation like a contagious virus.
How long can it sustain? The Arab Spring has overthrown four dictators and sparked civil uprisings in 14 other countries. The Occupy Movement that started in New York City's Zuccotti Park spread out to 951 cities in 82 countries. These movements winded down to winter like once they had the advent of spring.
The longer the Shahbagh Spring sustains its momentum, the harder will politicians try to usurp its force. True, it gives us hope. But how long will future generations fight the degenerations of their ancestors? Can they break this vicious circle?
Today's generation will form tomorrow's ancestry. The circle will be broken if their children will be proud of them, not only because they have changed one verdict.
Hidebound by the past, they must know that mistakes of their parents cannot set their children free.

The writer is Editor, First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star.
Email: [email protected]