The anatomy of Shahbagh

Each mass movement is usually triggered by a cause célèbre. The Arab Spring can be attributed to the protracted tyranny of totalitarian rule and dim economic prospects for the masses. Anna Hazare's protest movement in India was aimed at ending the chronic corruption in the country. In Pakistan, Tahir-ul-Qadri's Long March railed against continued elitist exploitation and growing religious extremism.
In contrast, the recent people's movement at Projonmo Chottor (aka the Shahbagh Roundabout) escapes a precise definition. It started out as a protest against the leniency of the court ruling for War Criminal and Jamaat-e-Islami Leader Abdul Quader Mollah (who was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty), but gradually mutated into abroad-based mass uprising espousing multiple objectives.
What is interesting is that the protesters at Shahbagh represent not only a diverse socio-economic strata, but also different age groups and a gender and ethnic mix. One thus wonders: What is it that is holding together a movement of this scale and intensity? Is it civil society's deep frustrations at the growing forces of obscurantism resulting in an erosion of trust in the prevalent system? Or is it people's anger against religious intolerance and bigotry as propagated by the Jamaat-e-Islami? Or simply a desperate demand for death sentence for Quader Mollah? It appears that all these factors are at play at the Chottor.
The events at Shahbagh seem to have created a seismic shift in the lives of all Bangladeshis; wherever they may be, they have connected to the movement. For many of us who were part of the country's freedom struggle, Shahbagh represents a rejuvenation of our hopes and aspirations. Many of the forgotten post-liberation secular and democratic ideals that were put on the back-burner are being revisited.
The most encouraging aspect is that the mass protest has been spearheaded by the post-1971 generation -- the youth of Bangladesh. Similar and divergent forces have converged to make it a people's movement untarnished by partisan politics or selfish personal motives. Whether all this will bring a real change in course remains to be seen. Despite the doubts and questions there is much to celebrate in what is happening at Shahbagh!
The most contentious issue, at the moment, seems to be the demand that war crime offender Quader Mollah be handed the severest penalty -- capital punishment. At a personal level, I am against the death penalty and the hate slogans echoing in Shahbagh make me somewhat uncomfortable. However, I must concede that war unleashes strong emotions and the resulting wounds take considerable time to heal.
It is also not unusual to express rage in issues related to war crimes. When the Nuremberg trials were proposed after World War II much of the world was outraged. Even leaders like Churchill and Stalin were of the opinion that the Nazis did not deserve a trial. It was one man alone, US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who fought against the "irrational voices" and called for a fair trial to uphold justice.
In Bangladesh, too, the War Crimes Trials have unleashed strong emotions -- emotions that need to be channeled into constructive resistance. It serves no purpose to brand the activists as "hate mongers" and those opposing capital punishment as "collaborators." The fact is everyone supporting Shahbagh is on the same side -- that of a free, secular, democratic Bangladesh. Fortunately, so far the protesters have exercised great restraint. Despite the brutal murder of one of the proponents (purportedly by Jamaat supporters), the movement has remained calm and focused. The forces guiding the protest must be applying the right checks and balances!
As I noted at the onset, mass movements spring out of deep, underlying turbulence building up over years. In Bangladesh the sharp split between the religious right and secular liberals has created a dichotomy over national identity and the system of governance (sharia versus secular democracy). Unfortunately, this polarisation of the religious and secular forces has unleashed subterranean tensions. The current unrest seems to be part of this phenomenon.
Amidst the din of controversy and attempts at derailing the Shahbagh uprising, the challenge is to stay focused on the primary objective, which is to seek justice for the victims who were raped and killed during the trying days of the Liberation War. There can be no closure to 1971 unless justice (not revenge), even delayed, is served. As Robert Jackson said in his opening statement at Nuremberg: "The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."

The writer is a renowned Rabindra Sangeet exponent and a former employee of the World Bank.