MAILBOX

Are women not revolutionaries?

This is a very valid question asked by Star Weekend in its article published on November 17, 2017. Although Bangladesh's two main political parties are led by women, male dominance in the political arena is quite prominent. Female politicians are often considered as weaker counterparts as they participate in the parliament mostly through reserved seats. Even in the global scale, women's representation as political heroes is extremely rare. In the article published in Star Weekend, two photographs of celebrating hundred years anniversary of the great October revolution was published. The two photographs showed the left wing political parties celebrated the day with photographs of Karl Marx, Vladimir Y Lenin and Mao Zedong. However, nobody paid any tribute to the contributions of the leaders of Communist Women's International. Contribution of the female communist leaders such as Inessa Armand, Clara Zetkin have largely been forgotten. How can we call these parties as progressive ones when they too practice male chauvinism in their political structure? On the other hand, we also do not pay proper respect to our national heroines. For many years we did not pay tribute to biranganas as they would be ostracised from their own societies had they got recognised as victim women. The fact is our education system, our society teaches us to think of women just as and chaste, obedient housewives. It is really unfortunate that we cannot think of them in a leading or commanding role, such as soldiers or the leaders of a revolution.

Shumon Paul

Narinda, Dhaka

Politics and public life

Whenever political parties celebrate their occasions or carry out their programmes and rallies, city dwellers have to pay heavy price. Traffic gridlocks paralyse the entire city. Billions of takas worth of working hours goes into total wastage. People who have emergency needs such as patients heading for hospitals, examinees and workers on emergency duties have to go through living nightmares. Unfortunately, we have taken these sufferings for granted. Nobody dares to protest when ruling political parties occupy the city centres to arrange their rallies blocking all the important streets. Ironically, the law enforcing agencies also collaborate with the party workers and advise the citizens to avoid those streets. Due to our indifference towards our own sufferings, political programmes involving street-blockades have become a common practice in Bangladesh. Any aggrieved group, whether political or non-political, which wants public and government attention blocks streets nowadays without any care for public sufferings. Ganajagoron Mancha blocked Shahbagh avenue, one of the main intersections of Dhaka's streets, for several months. Students of Eden College and Dhaka College blocked Nilkhet intersection for several days creating havoc in several major avenues. The situation worsens when the over-enthusiastic party workers force all the city dwellers to listen to their hocus pocus by installing loud speakers all over the city without any regard for hospitals, educational institutions or religious buildings. Such disregard for time and public sufferings cannot be allowed in a nation of civilised people. 

Rafid Alam

Mohammadpur, Dhaka