No one can say when and if at all the interim government in Dhaka will be able to bring some normalcy to that tormented country.
Its collapsed polity, bruised economy, frenzied society, shattered judiciary, agonised minorities and inscrutable army form too great a body of challenges for any government, much less an interim one, to handle. And no one can say if a semblance of normalcy is brought about, what exactly that will be, how long it will hold, whether it will be ‘democracy minus army’ or ‘army plus democracy’, or some other alloy of brass and gold and lead.
No one can say if the student protesters who have ‘tasted’ success in forcing the resignation and exit of the former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, and the installation of an interim successor to her of their own choice, Muhammad Yunus, will want to return to their books.
Between my writing of these words, The Telegraph’s printing of them, and the readers’ reading of them, defining developments could well occur, making my reflections sound obsolete, naïve or even absurd. Such is the fickleness of a nation’s — any nation’s — fate when its leadership is overturned by its own follies.
But I wish to say in the paragraphs that follow, keeping fingers crossed, something which I trust will not be falsified by events.
I do not know Muhammad Yunus. I believe I have met him just once, in Calcutta, around 2005, when we exchanged what are called ‘pleasantries’ after an event in Raj Bhavan. He struck me as a man whose experience of human nature was deep, knowledge of the psychologies of poverty and the chemistries of destitution wide, and whose desire to make a difference to the lives of immiserated people genuine. But also a person whose distrust of politics and politicians was likely to trip his schemes because howsoever sullied it may be, politics is inextricable from society. A loan needed is about economics, a loan given is about social engineering, but the decision on how much, and over which other needy person, and the ethnicity of the loanee makes the decision at once transactional and political, fraught, even explosive. So, Yunus-sahib’s idealism was, I thought, a dolphin in a sea full of sharp jaws.
Over the years since, I heard glowing assessments of his work as a mass banker as well as scepticism about the methodologies adopted by him and the multi-branched Grameen Bank set up by him. I must also say Yunus-admirers in India were outnumbered by Yunus-sceptics. And I heard, too, the comment, ‘Oh, Yunus… he is the Anna Hazare of Bangladesh…’ which replaced the halo over his name with a question mark. The number of ‘Yunus… who cares?’ — that is the number of Indians who were too preoccupied with their own problems to worry about Bangladesh or Sheikh Hasina or Yunus would form an absolute majority. India and Indians have enough problems on their hands to think of the merits and the demerits of leaders elsewhere, even in our immediate neighbourhood, except when there is — as is the case now — a threat of an exodus of refugees coming into India or of Indian citizens or persons of Indian origin in that neighbourhood being threatened.
It is perfectly possible that Yunus-sahib’s interim adviserhood may ‘flop’, the ambiguity of power centres in Dhaka may overthrow his team and usher in, with non-State agencies outside Bangladesh, inimical to both democracy and to India, an order that is politically unethical and unlawful.
But all that being said, and being more than likely, I must say that Yunus-sahib’s revulsion at the collapse of democracy under Sheikh Hasina’s rule was only to be expected, that his name occurring to the popular agitation as an acceptable one for the transition to credible elections, wholly credible. But the agitation for Sheikh Hasina’s exit having led to mob violence against Hindus and other ethnic minorities, hearing the banker-turned-chief-advisor condemning it was a balm.
My eyes and ears are now accustomed to hate speech and ethnically provocative expletives. And, so, when Yunus-sahib described the mob attacks on Hindu minorities as “heinous”, I was relieved beyond words. And when he went further to say that he was “ashamed” by what had happened post-Hasina’s exit in terms of violence, I was almost in disbelief. These statements of his were made at a time when the dominant emotion in Bangladesh was of elation at Sheikh Hasina’s exit and of euphoria at what was being described as Bangladesh’s second liberation. Sure, he was participating in the celebratory rites and hailing the return of democracy but for him to also say in the same moment and in the same breath, as it were, that he was ashamed of what had happened by way of violence and the attacks on non-Muslims and by inference against India was, to put it simply, an act of statesmanship.
What, however, gave me the greatest comfort was his saying that Hindu citizens of the country were Bangladeshis, equal to their Muslim fellow-citizens, and that students and others should take it upon themselves to protect the besieged communities. Speaking in Rangpur on August 10, he asked rhetorically, “The minorities in this country… are they not citizens of this country? They are. They are part of our family.” To me his statement, “Prateeti manush aamader bhai, aamader bon” (Each and every one of them is our brother, our sister), is a civilisational statement of immense value today.
Yunus-sahib can draw inspiration and strength from the fact that in Noakhali in 1946, when Hindus were being butchered, no less, in what was East Bengal transiting into being East Pakistan, M.K. Gandhi was there and among the things he said to the Muslims of the region, from his unprotected solitariness, was that the Muslims in the villages of the area should take it upon themselves to protect the assailed Hindu minority. He gave the same message to Hindus in Bihar who were doing the same to the Muslim minority in that state of the new India.
Muhammad Yunus will be — and is being — asked to match his words with action and ‘show’ that he means business and bring a sense of confidence to the Hindus of Bangladesh.
He may not succeed.
He may fail.
But let us grant him this: he is tilting against the windmills of hate, prejudice and bigotry. He is doing more. In a country that has known assassinations, he is putting not just his interim position but himself at personal risk.
If his moral compass remains as alert as it is, his political range will remain clear. And if, as some fear, he may reach a point when he feels he is not being heeded or is being obstructed, he may resign, he would still have given Bangladesh in this crucial hour of turmoil just that dividend of ethics it needs.
He can do with India’s strong endorsement in his call for an end to violence and a restoration of the rule of democratic laws.
Muhammad Yunus’s role today is that of the mythical philosopher’s stone which by touching its object sublimates it. Only, he is not mythical, he is a banker! And Bangladesh is no ordinary object but a country that has been liberated from two political oppressions — the British raj and then Pakistani domination — and as Captain G.R. Gopinath, who fought in the 1971 operations, has said in a recent article in Deccan Herald, has liberated itself yet again.
Bangladesh needs, with its new leader what Tagore has described as only Tagore could: Aguner poroshmoni chnoao praane: touch my being with the voltage of the philosopher’s stone, and so doing sanctify it.
