Tea stalls still remain a great place for people to chitchat. PHOTO: advocacynet ovg

Be modest in your gait and soft in your speech
Surely the loudest voice (you hear) is the braying of an ass--(Sura Luqman, Ayat 19)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …
--John 1:1
I gotta use words when I talk to you
But if you understand, or if you don't
That's nothing to me and nothing to you
We all gotta do what we all gotta do--T.S. Eliot, Sweeney Agonistes
Apparently, as far as their love of the spoken word is concerned, Bangladeshis are more inspired by Biblical abstraction and Eliot's doggerel than by Quranic stipulation. The passion for speech and utterance is rooted in our oral tradition and explains the salience of plays, poetry, debate, mobile phones and, of course, the quintessential Bengali indulgence of adda, in our lives. As Amartya Sen has pointed out in his "The Argumentative Indian" the "most terrible" aspect of death for Raja Ram Mohan Roy, a Bengali, is that "others will go on speaking, but you will not be able to argue back."
But over the years there has developed a national epidemic of "talk" that has been infectious and unprecedented. It is no longer restricted to small circles of friends and family, colleagues and cohorts, peer groups and tearoom clusters. It is now approximated at the national level.
Several factors have contributed to this gab-fest -- the proliferation of private TV channels which allow for ubiquitous and energetic discussion programs; the emergence of an elite chattering class with members who have acquired the status of celebrities and who, therefore, feel free to hold forth on matters personal and public; and the growing presence of a civil society that has helped to move "talk" to the centrepiece of our political dynamic, equating it with issues of transparency, accountability and civic mindedness.
To "talk" is, presumably, to question, reason, mediate, provoke, share and challenge, and is supposed to facilitate individual empowerment and foster social engagement. It is held up as an indispensable part, indeed as evidence, of our democratic temper and progress. Thus we succumb enthusiastically, and with seeming noble intent, to the seductions of the camera and the podium. Like Haroun in Rushdie's famous fable, we all yearn for, and want to be part of, the exuberant land of "gup" rather than the oppressive world of "chup" where all our stories have been silenced. Confounding Descartes, Marx and Sartre (i.e. denying reason, or labour, or essence, as markers of identity), Bangladeshis stoutly declare: "To talk is to be."
However, there are reasons to believe that this enthusiasm for "talk" can be counter-productive, and perhaps damaging.
First, it supplants any serious, meaningful, informed analysis for the chatty, transient and cursory. It trivialises the written word (indeed Bangladeshis are notorious for not reading each other's work, unless they are popular novels where the text merely replicates "talk" in a more organised format), and smothers research, reflection and judgment.
For example, we can all agree that the Liberation War was the watershed moment in the life of Bangladeshis living today. But, there are only a few academic efforts that have addressed relevant questions with any commitment to empirical, theoretical or methodological rigour. We have essentially turned our liberation war into a mythic narrative, part morality play, part romance, that may help to inspire, but not seek to enlighten. We have sentimentalised our past through "talk" but have not tried to know it through evidence. (The Liberation War Museum is an exception since it has moved from its initial preoccupation with preserving history as artifact to its current agenda of presenting history as education).
Most of the books published on the war (all well meaning, engaging, honest) are usually self-referential, often "golpo" oriented, typically written in an informal style. These memoirists are doing a commendable service, and more should be encouraged. But, while such accounts can serve as rich sources of raw materials, the building blocks of history, they should not be mistaken for the edifice itself. Even the pursuit of oral history as a valid method in historiography has been attempted only fitfully. We are left with history that is fragmented, diffuse, and casual, rather than history that is objective, verifiable and coherent (or in Popper's terms, entailing a formulation that is capable of disproof).
It is awkward to admit that even after 36 years of independence we have little consensus about some basic information relating to those turbulent times. Some of the figures popularly bandied about are considered "soft" at best (based on political/emotional claims rather than scholarly/academic estimates), and distract from, and sometimes even cloud, the real calculus of suffering and sacrifice that the people had to endure. It is a telling commentary on our intellectual condition that one of the few issues about our liberation that has exercised our minds and passions, at least publicly, has dealt with the question about who actually declared independence (note again, the concern with the spoken word, and hence with the people that have uttered them).
Second, this devotion to "talk" also indicates an obsession with personalities, and privileges those who can use manipulative and frothy language to advance their political interests. Thinkers, activists, visionaries and idealists not given to oratorical flamboyance are usually ignored and marginalised. When politics becomes "performance" defined by verbal gymnastics, it ensures that some of our most brilliant and dedicated individuals will be condemned to struggle in the political wilderness, while glib sophists will command national attention.
It should also be pointed out that political leadership, alliances, and programs are so freighted with "talk" and so devoid of "substance," that there is an ephemeral and unreal quality to our political system. Instead of being driven by ideology, conviction or long-term vision, politics gives way to the slippery, contingent and conspiracy-laden world of speculation and rumours; allows our politicians to seamlessly, and apparently without embarrassment, shift positions and parties with cynical opportunism and short-term expediency (no principles are at stake, and their rhetorical tropes need only minor adjustments); and generates a numbing cacophony of platitude and self-serving bluster. Perhaps we need a little child who will someday simply point out: "Look, behind their mumbo jumbo, they are all the same, and they are all naked."
Third, "talk" generates an enormous wastage of time and energy, and provides the illusion of addressing an issue without doing anything about it. Consider the number of meetings, seminars, conferences, symposia, conclaves, workshops, forums, discussion sessions, conventions, summits, roundtables, and public events through which opinions on various issues are vociferously presented. The resources in terms of the number of people/days that go into organising them must be formidable, the consequences, except in a few instances, perhaps less so. During the Pakistani regime (which took its cue from British colonial traditions), the answer to most problems was to form a committee that would, in due course, issue a report that nobody would read. Today, our answer is a public forum or a television show that nobody will remember.
Some of these programs may indeed be relevant and provocative with scholars and professionals addressing questions over which they have some experience and authority. One wishes that there could be more of these presentations. However, and unfortunately, most of these events tend to resonate with a cliché-ridden script that is predictable and eminently banal; many become obligatory exercises in political correctness with no follow up; and some depend on contributors (the overly extended high mandarins of our "talkocracy" who are, with a few notable and genuine exceptions, tend to be public personalities rather than public intellectuals) coveted more for their perceived power and social eminence than the expertise and knowledge they can bring to an issue.
Even foreigners in the country, particularly those representing Western countries, interests or institutions, get in on the act. They are prize catches for these public platforms or for TV interviews and, reeking of "Orientalist" otherness, they take advantage of our economic vulnerabilities and colonised mentalities to dispense praise, advice and warnings with a patronising swagger in their tone. It is possible that their willing participation in this milieu of noise and posture is simply a response to the old dictum "when in Rome …" However, what is striking, and decidedly unusual, is that even foreign diplomats, who are normally expected to ply their craft in discreet reticence, enjoy a bustling and voluble presence in the political and cultural landscape of the country.
So pervasive is this dependence on "talk" that even our print media buttresses this self-perpetuating cycle and tends to feature these public "talk" events prominently as its main "news" stories. It should be noted, in some amusement if not irony, that print journalists are so affected by this verbal mode of communication, and are so convinced that what they write will not be read, that they, in fact, interview each other on television in incestuous self-validation. In effect, they become complicit in their own professional devaluation.
There is no doubt that talk liberates, but it can also suffocate, and while it may be a necessary condition of democracy, the more of a good thing does not necessarily make it better. What we are getting in quantity and volume, we are probably losing in quality and depth. In fact the reckless abandon with which "talk" is practiced actually serves to cheapen the national discourse rather than elevate it, provokes a public idiom that is simplistic and narcissistic, and sustains a political culture fraught with exaggeration, ambiguity and vocalised clutter. (It should also be pointed out that this poses a post-modernist's nightmare because, after all, how would one deconstruct a text, or explore its semiotics, when it is essentially composed of hot air?).
Is it possible to have just one day when our "power elite" will shy away from the podium and the camera (courtship of the media is one thing, promiscuity is another), one day when no public sessions will be organised, no leaders will be interviewed, no press conferences will be covered, no speeches will be reported, and no participants will sit around long rectangular tables in solemn devotion to an empty ritual?
Well, let's talk.
Ahrar Ahmad is a professor of political science, currently in Bangladesh.