Badsha's retreat and secular unity

FAZLE Hossain Badsha has proved to be a thorough gentleman. He did not need to withdraw from the mayoral race in Rajshahi, for he had been nominated by the fourteen-party alliance. He could have stuck to his guns and gone into battle with Khairuzzaman Liton on election day, if it came to that. Maybe he would have won. Perhaps he would have lost. But that he would have been on perfectly tenable ground as a candidate, as a worthy nominee of the alliance that was behind him, would never have been in doubt.
Badsha is also a man with a worldview of his own. His interests have gone beyond the parameters of normal politics. He reads, he thinks and he listens. Those are the attributes of a modern man. And they should be of any individual who means to take politics back to the people. Given all these attributes in him, he should have stayed on in the race; his alliance should have backed him to the hilt; and he should have won the election come August.
That Badsha decided to withdraw, for "personal reasons" that were not so personal, is a shame. That Khairuzzaman Liton defied the decision of the fourteen-party alliance and decided to stay on in the campaign to be mayor of Rajshahi is a bigger shame. And it is that because Liton proved to all of us, to his party and even to his fans, that ambition sometimes can get in the way of the bigger public interest and end up marring the possibility of all good ideas coming to fruition.
There is little question that Liton has been and is a popular man in Rajshahi. Over the years, he has worked assiduously for the Awami League, a party that once was glorified by the dynamic presence of his illustrious father, and he has thus earned the right and the honour to be the Awami League spokesperson in Rajshahi.
That said, Khairuzzaman Liton would have done greater good to himself and bigger service to his party and his country had he chosen to accept the nomination of Fazle Hossain Badsha for the mayoralty of Rajshahi in good grace. Both men are eminently respectable politicians; and both have the capacity in them to do good for those they wish to serve. Both represent those cherished values that we in Bangladesh have always held dear, values we associate with the War of Liberation, values that eventually shape up as secular democracy.
And yet only one of them could be the candidate for mayor. When the fourteen-party alliance opted to give the go-ahead to Badsha, a very large number of people around the country were pleased. The Awami League came in for particular appreciation because of its willingness to sacrifice its own man for an individual coming from a relatively smaller political party. More significantly, it was the feeling that the fourteen-party alliance was serious about presenting a unified position at the mayoral elections that mattered. The Almighty knows just how steep has been the decline of secular forces in this country over the years.
In this dark era we inhabit, when a freedom fighter can be kicked around (and literally at that) by the goons of an organisation notorious for the abduction and murder of Bengalis, as a cooperative endeavour with the Pakistan occupation army in 1971, one does not need to be reminded of the immense requirement for secular unity. Men like Badsha, with years of political commitment behind them in such secular organisations as the Workers' Party, are the stuff that solidifies democracy.
Badsha's presence on the national stage, as mayor of Rajshahi, as a member of Parliament, as a minister, would only strengthen our hold on democracy. It is a point the citizens' committee, so much behind Khairuzzaman Liton, ought to have borne in mind before pressing its point for Badsha's retreat.
And Khairuzzaman Liton would have gained stature as a politician if he had rallied behind Badsha in a constructive demonstration of unity, and vowed to campaign for him. That he did not do that, that he was ready to defy even his party chief and so go ahead with being a rival to Badsha, pained all of us. It is not just the Workers' Party that has been hurt.
All good men believing in the ability of promise in politics have been wounded. When a decision arrived at through consensus is flouted, when the projected unity of secular Bengali forces is undermined by a politician's inexplicable willingness to throw that consensus overboard and vow to stand for election in defiance of everything, it is democratic principles that are left with bad scratches on them.
It should have been the job of the fourteen-party alliance to rally behind Badsha, to uphold his candidacy resolutely. Precisely under what circumstances he chose to take himself out of the mayoral race are not yet clear. The cynics, of course, have something to say here. Maybe there will be compensation for Badsha, in the form of a nomination for the Jatiyo Sangsad. Maybe there will be something else. Or perhaps all these conjectures, call them insinuations if you will, are what they are . . . pointless digressions.
Whatever interpretations you come up with, the truth remains that secular politics has taken a knock in Rajshahi. The feeling just might grow that smaller political parties in the company of bigger ones do not matter, that they can be treated with cavalier fashion. Such thinking will not be misplaced. And there lies the danger, for it is all a pointer to all the good things that may not happen in the times to be.
With democracy on the ropes, with organised corruption (as demonstrated in the times of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-Jamaat-e-Islami alliance government) having led us to the precipice we now try to draw back from, with religious zealots up in arms against women, it becomes the moral responsibility of all political leaders and workers professing loyalty to the principles of the War of Liberation to come together around the core values we have always upheld as a society.
It is a job that demands an eschewing of personal ambition and of immediate party interests. In conditions where the political right has held on to its unity, for whatever personal or political reasons, cracks in the armour of democratic forces cannot but mean further regression for the country. In his moment of triumph, Khairuzzaman Liton has drawn Fazle Hossain Badsha into an embrace. The embrace should have come when Badsha was anointed the nominee of the fourteen-party alliance, with Liton conceding the ground to him. That would have added vigour to the pluralistic culture we strive to build today.
That job can yet be done. Rashed Khan Menon, Fazle Hossain Badsha and their people in the Workers' Party, overcoming their disappointment, can take politics to new heights by ensuring that Khairuzzaman Liton's message is disseminated to every household in Rajshahi. And now that he is where he has wanted to be, Liton must reassure voters, especially those who would have stumped for Badsha, that he means to be what Badsha would have been to them.
On a bigger plane, it is the political defeat of the reactionary right that must be the goal. Schism in the secular camp can only help rehabilitate the "Bangladeshi nationalists" and their fanatical cohorts. Men like Khairuzzaman Liton would do well to roll back the damage they have caused in Rajshahi.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star. E-mail: [email protected].