Violence and response
THERE is no denying that Bangladesh in recent years has experienced the politics of violence, which in practical terms means resorting to physical violence to promote a political objective. At the same time, we have also seen violence of politics built into the institutional structure of politics despite the ideal that liberal democracy abjures violence of politics.
The rule of law, though a civilising factor, has often led to violence for purposes of governance without ensuring to check indiscriminate use of power in our polity. We have also not seen any serious policy discussion on the phenomenon of violence.
Political violence should call for a political response from the state authorities rather than a police response. The latter may be necessary, but not sufficient. In a situation of large scale institutional malfunctioning, as is feared in our case, politics acquires an appetite for all spaces, both public and private.
Under circumstances as above, all violence becomes political and our state authority relies largely on the police machinery, not only for information gathering pertaining to social conflict and violence but also for the analysis and interpretation of the phenomena of violence in terms of their nature, causes and solutions. As such, the colonially derived significance of the police machinery on such a crucial matter, and its influence in determining the state response to violence, has not been seriously looked into.
It is an unfortunate facet of our political existence that the political class has quite often shifted to the police the burden of providing a response to many socio-political movements, which are essentially an expression of people's aspiration for a life of dignity and self-respect. The Kansat tragedy of the not-too-distant past is a glaring case in point.
Terms such as "law and order," "public order," or "security of state" are often used in Bangladesh to deploy state violence with impunity. The police in our situation tend to make indiscriminate use of the provisions of Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code to disperse unlawful assemblies even when the demands made by such assemblies are legitimate and lawful. No effective guidelines in law are provided for the use of force to deal with such assemblies, except the general specification that minimum force be used. Such use of force often leads to loss of life and liberty.
A degree of militancy on the part of the poor and the disadvantaged in pressing for their constitutionally guaranteed minimum human, social and legal rights is understandable in a developing democracy, but at the district level development and police officials are often indifferent to such concerns.
It is a sad fact that our state has quite often remained a mute witness to the non-state violence inflicted by the politically powerful class against marginalised adversaries. Unfortunately, the independence in 1971 and democratic struggles thereafter have not resulted in any basic administrative changes in the structure of governance. Under such circumstances, shall one assume that the basic features of our republican constitution, parliamentary democracy and development administration are in conflict with the inherited political-organisational characteristics of our administrative structure?
It needs to be noted that the police administration continues to be a more centralised paramilitary organisation and still functions as it did during the colonial rule. A large number of human rights violations, including extra-judicial executions, are the consequence.
We have to address the issue of inaction vis-à-vis political violence that is at the heart of our political system. While security of the state is important, it must not exceed the limits of legitimacy and indulge in unacceptable levels of violence.
We need to examine the real and potential political violence in view of the currently charged situation, and determine the policy and response to it in the context of the overall challenge of "humane governance." The institutional mechanisms for policy analysis and action at government level need to be freed from the colonial attributes and restructured to address the challenge. There is, admittedly, a need for far-reaching administrative and police reforms, which has been neglected for too long.
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