16 December

The Bangladeshi flag hangs in the living room, in what has become a December tradition.  It’s about Victory Day but nor does the red and green go astray in the Christmas season.  I’ve never thought to write about 1971.  I wasn’t here and there are people far more qualified to do it.  But strange as it may be on 16 December I feel gratitude for a victory that is not mine, for the independent Bangladesh I admire.  And it is of modern Bangladesh that I wish to write.

To do so I rely on what must be the sole advantage, and it isn’t much of one: being born elsewhere there are differences to observe and many aspects of Bangladesh would seem to have been shaped by the events of that fateful year.  Bangladesh was born in blood.  Australia was born with an Act of British Parliament.

In Bangladesh I see a belief in justice and more specifically, standing against injustice.  It’s to be found in many places: on the street when petty disputes draw in bystanders to actively partake in finding a solution, hopefully via discussion and considering the merits of each side of the argument; in the newspapers which skilfully represent the underdog, the hard done by, even when vested interests might not like it; in the courts who are rather good at pursuing their own motions and through such judicial activism demonstrate significant potential to contribute to improving society.  In Australia these things don’t happen or not to the same extent.

Australia is a developed country, wealthy in mineral resources, two and half times larger than India.  Bangladesh has few earthy resources and a small territory by comparison.

In Bangladesh there is independent thinking, from the rickshaw driver painstakingly putting his case to the policeman for some infringement to the government’s refusal to simply cave in to the whims of larger powers like India or America.  It’s refreshing because in Australia debate usually centres on how much to please America.  The recent vote on Palestine at the UN is a case in point.  Australia abstained which was considered by its government to be a strong symbol of independent views, which is sad because it was such a singular, minor thing, important symbolically but still just one vote that would not change the outcome, and it was compromise because most who voted for the ruling Labor Party in Australia would likely prefer a vote in favour of Palestine.  Australia is for America a very poor ally, as a yes-nodder inevitably is.  Meanwhile in Bangladesh the UN vote was a non-issue: there are longstanding principles.

Bangladesh will be 42 in March.  Australia turns 112 in January.

In Bangladesh there is dissent and no fear to challenge the powerful.  The negative is when it takes on the form of hartals and violence, but consider how important basic dissent is, to democracy.  Bangladeshis are not afraid to own their country and if only protests were peaceful and well-targeted they could not but be considered an asset; because the alternative is a conformist society where dissent is actively discouraged.  In Australia when Muslims protested against that movie, the Immigration Minister thought to threaten to review their immigration status if they were violent, if they were non-citizens.  In Australia after Indian students raised their voice against racial attacks on the streets the government amended citizenship laws to make it more difficult for students, post-studies, to stay.  There are many ways to control voices and it’s mostly only the new communities that still use them.

In Bangladesh like a phoenix from the ashes arose a vibrant academic and artistic community, to build upon the legacy of the martyred intellectuals.   Bangladeshis fought for and died for their language; and culture holds the place of dignity and celebration that it should.  In Australia meanwhile funding for the arts remains woeful compared to financial support for sport.  It’s reminiscent of Soviet policy that favoured sport and ballet, because spectacles of that nature are wholly apolitical and do not encourage a populace to think.  And if each Tiger was given over a million dollars, which is what was Australia spent on each Olympic gold medal, what do you imagine they could achieve?  But in the case of the Tigers it’s looking as though it’s not required.

Australia has a population of 2.2 crores.  In Bangladesh there are 16.

If we look to the cleverly drafted Constitution, there are protections there: human rights, freedom of expression.  It’s a people-centred document.  In Australia there is no protection for freedom of expression and little for human rights which are at best contained in ordinary legislation that can be and is changed by the government-of-the-day at whim.  It’s how the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act were suspended in order to intervene in remote aboriginal communities.  The government told aboriginal people how to spend their income.  And the valid point that protection of human rights is not always achieved in Bangladesh does not lessen the wisdom of the Constitution; it makes it more remarkable since human rights as a national value become the starting point of discussion.  Australia debates meanwhile whether there is need for national values, whether formal protections are at all necessary and what such values could be.  Ultimately it’s a simple matter of valuing human liberty.

And then there was the tragedy at Tazreen Fashions, which shouldn’t have happened but did.  Even with such a horrible event with Australian eyes I see, am impressed by the outpouring of grief, concern and self-reflection.  Because as you may know, the Australian government operates camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru for boat arriving asylum-seekers where inmates can expect to wait for years, where they currently live in tents, where there are suicide attempts and hunger strikes.  As you may know, the Australian government holds fifty plus human beings in indefinite detention because although refugees they have been determined by secret security assessment to be threats to the community.  Those inmates are not allowed to know the charge against them.  For the most part they are Sri Lankan Tamils who would seem unlikely threats to the Australian community, and they cannot defend themselves.  These are official policies that operate every day and can have no less cruelty to them than any potential act of negligence that led to the Tazreen fire but there is little outcry.

And of bravery and boldness I see abundance, not only in the history books but now, in all of the above aspects of Bangladesh and of course, you know it, in the very difficult struggle for daily life that too many Bangladeshis still face.  And they smile.

As a westerner on 16 December I remember Senator Edward Kennedy and George Harrison were not afraid to stand up and be counted.

I know and you know how easily this country’s challenges, shortcomings and failures can be spoken of; how many there are to choose from – free speech, it is there to a very significant degree – people can talk; journalists inform and with a degree of daring and bravery too.  But save that talk please for December 17, since Victory Day is for remembering the struggle and sacrifice that created this young nation where people live cheek by jowl in relative peace.  Victory Day is to recall that along with the many other things, good and bad, that modern Bangladesh is, it remains not less than a minor miracle.

People value the things they have to fight for.  Bangladesh was born in blood. 

There are more Bangladesh articles, mostly about culture and travel to choose from, or try something different like the end of the world in Rapa Nui or a visit to the Latvian National Academy of Science, but if you go there, mind the heavy doors on the way in.

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: 16 December






Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Write Crimes, Think Crimes

Australian culture is about constantly trying to un-invent the wheel.  That’s a paraphrase of a thought written by Australian author John Hughes.

It was at a time when I used to write a lot; I guess that is the whole of my life so it doesn't say much.  It was mostly writing from overseas and far from being tech-savvy, I used to rely on e-mail: a long list of potential readers and friends.

It was at a time when I had an Australian government job between trips and there was a colleague of mine; we used to regularly go for coffee at the local café during lunchtimes.  It was a pattern that continued for several years though I had changed as many jobs, inevitably in the public sector.

That colleague was on the whole interesting for they had travelled and it was easy to speak of distant places without achieving that puzzled and disbelieving look to be found elsewhere.  That colleague had quite a repugnant side too: that is to say they had rather a hatred for Muslims.

When I was younger, even now, there was a tendency to tolerate the intolerable to some degree, for we never really know the reasons behind the irrational beliefs people hold; and given that colleague’s background was not Australian and influenced by a part of the world all too recently in turmoil, I could only wonder how I would react if what had happened far away, in their ancestral backyard, was happening instead in mine.  We never really know that do we?

Foolishly I aimed for balance, the redress for psychological scars: in particular by speaking of Bangladesh and all the good, the trivial, the intellectual, the poetic and the inspiring: things that shaped me.  Foolishly I underestimated the extent of hatred I was dealing with or the powers behind it.  When the words became reprehensible I would close my ears in polite stupidity.

Then one day that colleague said words to the effect of: ‘autopsies are not done well in Bangladesh; when they’re finished the body’s a bit of a mess.  In Australia the corpse after an autopsy is well-restored. It makes things easier on the relatives.  You should think of your parents, to make things easier.’ I thought my colleague mad at that point.

It was at a time of writing when they said too, about Mr. John Hughes, the Australian author I had never heard of until then.  My colleague recommended I read him, said my writing had similarities with his.  He had a hard time while writing, my colleague had said, his marriage fell apart and he nearly committed suicide.  I didn’t appreciate it as a warning; I never bothered to research Mr. Hughes or read him.  Just I remembered the name.

In 2004 we met as usual, sporadic and time to time.  Just as I sat at the table my colleague said: ‘I have a friend at ASIO and he says they’re looking for good people.’  ASIO is the Australian version of the CIA and its agenda is the same.  ‘That’s nice,’ I replied dismissively and tried to change the subject.

It was a post-September 11 world and I suppose on the one hand ASIO was trying to scramble together some credible knowledge of fundamentalism, Islam in general.  They currently plan to double in size and it’s fair to say that from Australian stock there is not much to draw from, in terms of knowledge.  There can’t be if they’d thought to ask me.

At my dismissive answer my colleague’s jaw actually dropped: I’ve always found security-related people cannot fathom how that’s not the most important sector in the universe; how there are many ways to contribute as a human being.  Anyway my thoughts were more about how, after all things, I could ever walk into a tea shop in Hatiya, Bangladesh with an agenda other than adda.  That would be obscene.  Anyway, no real traveller could ever consent to approaching the big, wide world with anything other than humility and awe:  the idea is to extend oneself; the goal knowledge not power.  Travel teaches not to take with you a barrow to push.

Recovering, my colleague said, ‘what about the army?’  I made some derogatory statement.  ‘Customs?’  The Australian Customs Service: I’ve always thought they did their job well, but it wasn’t my job.  Nearly I was amused by the list of suggestions: all security-related, because to some there is nothing else.  It was so clichéd.  Then came something puzzling: ‘how about the Australian Electoral Commission?’

What a different kettle of fish that was; a true institution of democracy, at least theoretically. In the list it was the odd man out.

It was years later, 2007, when I really considered that.  Why the Australian Electoral Commission, from the perspective of security?  It certainly couldn’t be any high ideal of democracy, I mean, the Australian security sector had at best stood idly by while Australian citizens were tortured in Guantanamo Bay; they were soon to arrest the Indian, Dr. Haneef, on trivialities potentially designed to increase John Howard’s chances of re-election later that year.  ‘Tough on terror’ could have been the slogan.

So I looked at the Australian Electoral Commission’s website and found an answer.  As that organisation is responsible for elections in Australia, its employees are obliged not to be politically active or express political opinions.  Although it was a time when my then girlfriend was calling me ‘the quiet activist’ it is not something I ever considered; but it seemed to me that it really was the thing.  If I would not work for ASIO then I should be otherwise silenced:  there are many ways to smother voices.  Those were the Howard days.

It was 2007 when I had started a writing course at an Australian university.  It was odd for some of the other students tried to tell me to change courses: as a round-about warning.  One complained one day, telling me quietly in the car park after class that although they had outperformed others in the assignments they were not being allowed to progress to the second part of the course while others were.

‘Don’t you know about the War on Tolerance?’ I wanted to tell them.  For it was that student who said openly in class they had Muslim friends and had talked with them about the anti-Muslim sentiment then rather rampant in Australian society.  They had planned to write a class paper on Islamophobia.  Like me they were Anglo-Celtic Australian.  ‘If you want to progress you need to write some tripe about colonial Australia and create a few heroes where there are none,’ I would have said.  But facing my own hurdles at the time, I said nought.

Of note, there was a Muslim in that class; and it’s interesting how the approach differs.  In an ‘us’ and ‘them’ world it’s okay for the ‘them’ to take a positive approach to themselves; nobody will listen and they can be managed in other ways.  It’s when the ‘us’ make write-crimes, think-crimes about the ‘them’ that it’s all too challenging, that silence is needed; and in Bangladesh corpses after autopsies are messy, says Australia.

We opened our course materials one evening, in class, and there he was: Mr. John Hughes.  Australian culture is about un-inventing the wheel, to paraphrase, we read.  ‘I don't hear much of him now,’ the lecturer said, ‘I think now he’s teaching at a college somewhere in the Hunter Valley.’  Online it says he’s at a school in Sydney; thing is though, with due respect for education, either outcome as an author makes him sidelined.  He did win a prize for his work, so not all is wrong with the world, or perhaps it was given from guilt: his writing remains a little too honest, a little too truthful and a little too Australia-critical.  There's not enough goodthink in it.

And what do you think happens when ASIO is refused, when a choice is made to pursue freedom of expression as a citizen of a country without any meaningful protection of the right?

I’d like to take the opportunity, in this country, Bangladesh, one wise enough to have taken steps to include some protection for the voices of its citizens in its Constitution, to commit a few more write-crimes, think-crimes: ‘Bangladesh is not all bad, in fact there are many good things about it;’  ‘Australia is not all good, in fact there are many bad things about it;’  ‘Muslims are not terrorists;’ and ‘better to be a disfigured corpse in Bangladesh than a neat and clean Australian mannequin, for at least one will have lived.’

I take my hat off to you, Mr. Hughes, for your survival.



Be free. See the village the city the land.





Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Write Crimes, Think Crimes

Image: wikipedia

Australian culture is about constantly trying to un-invent the wheel.  That’s a paraphrase of a thought written by Australian author John Hughes.

It was at a time when I used to write a lot; I guess that is the whole of my life so it doesn't say much.  It was mostly writing from overseas and far from being tech-savvy, I used to rely on e-mail: a long list of potential readers and friends.

It was at a time when I had an Australian government job between trips and there was a colleague of mine; we used to regularly go for coffee at the local café during lunchtimes.  It was a pattern that continued for several years though I had changed as many jobs, inevitably in the public sector.

That colleague was on the whole interesting for they had travelled and it was easy to speak of distant places without achieving that puzzled and disbelieving look to be found elsewhere.  That colleague had quite a repugnant side too: that is to say they had rather a hatred for Muslims. 

When I was younger, even now, there was a tendency to tolerate the intolerable to some degree, for we never really know the reasons behind the irrational beliefs people hold; and given that colleague’s background was not Australian and influenced by a part of the world all too recently in turmoil, I could only wonder how I would react if what had happened far away, in their ancestral backyard, was happening instead in mine.  We never really know that do we?

Foolishly I aimed for balance, the redress for psychological scars: in particular by speaking of Bangladesh and all the good, the trivial, the intellectual, the poetic and the inspiring: things that shaped me.  Foolishly I underestimated the extent of hatred I was dealing with or the powers behind it.  When the words became reprehensible I would close my ears in polite stupidity.

Then one day that colleague said words to the effect of: ‘autopsies are not done well in Bangladesh; when they’re finished the body’s a bit of a mess.  In Australia the corpse after an autopsy is well-restored. It makes things easier on the relatives.  You should think of your parents, to make things easier.’ I thought my colleague mad at that point.

It was at a time of writing when they said too, about Mr. John Hughes, the Australian author I had never heard of until then.  My colleague recommended I read him, said my writing had similarities with his.  He had a hard time while writing, my colleague had said, his marriage fell apart and he nearly committed suicide.  I didn’t appreciate it as a warning; I never bothered to research Mr. Hughes or read him.  Just I remembered the name.

In 2004 we met as usual, sporadic and time to time.  Just as I sat at the table my colleague said: ‘I have a friend at ASIO and he says they’re looking for good people.’  ASIO is the Australian version of the CIA and its agenda is the same.  ‘That’s nice,’ I replied dismissively and tried to change the subject.

It was a post-September 11 world and I suppose on the one hand ASIO was trying to scramble together some credible knowledge of fundamentalism, Islam in general.  They currently plan to double in size and it’s fair to say that from Australian stock there is not much to draw from, in terms of knowledge.  There can’t be if they’d thought to ask me.

At my dismissive answer my colleague’s jaw actually dropped: I’ve always found security-related people cannot fathom how that’s not the most important sector in the universe; how there are many ways to contribute as a human being.  Anyway my thoughts were more about how, after all things, I could ever walk into a tea shop in Hatiya, Bangladesh with an agenda other than adda.  That would be obscene.  Anyway, no real traveller could ever consent to approaching the big, wide world with anything other than humility and awe:  the idea is to extend oneself; the goal knowledge not power.  Travel teaches not to take with you a barrow to push.

Recovering, my colleague said, ‘what about the army?’  I made some derogatory statement.  ‘Customs?’  The Australian Customs Service: I’ve always thought they did their job well, but it wasn’t my job.  Nearly I was amused by the list of suggestions: all security-related, because to some there is nothing else.  It was so clichéd.  Then came something puzzling: ‘how about the Australian Electoral Commission?’

What a different kettle of fish that was; a true institution of democracy, at least theoretically. In the list it was the odd man out.

It was years later, 2007, when I really considered that.  Why the Australian Electoral Commission, from the perspective of security?  It certainly couldn’t be any high ideal of democracy, I mean, the Australian security sector had at best stood idly by while Australian citizens were tortured in Guantanamo Bay; they were soon to arrest the Indian, Dr. Haneef, on trivialities potentially designed to increase John Howard’s chances of re-election later that year.  ‘Tough on terror’ could have been the slogan.

So I looked at the Australian Electoral Commission’s website and found an answer.  As that organisation is responsible for elections in Australia, its employees are obliged not to be politically active or express political opinions.  Although it was a time when my then girlfriend was calling me ‘the quiet activist’ it is not something I ever considered; but it seemed to me that it really was the thing.  If I would not work for ASIO then I should be otherwise silenced:  there are many ways to smother voices.  Those were the Howard days.

It was 2007 when I had started a writing course at an Australian university.  It was odd for some of the other students tried to tell me to change courses: as a round-about warning.  One complained one day, telling me quietly in the car park after class that although they had outperformed others in the assignments they were not being allowed to progress to the second part of the course while others were. 

‘Don’t you know about the War on Tolerance?’ I wanted to tell them.  For it was that student who said openly in class they had Muslim friends and had talked with them about the anti-Muslim sentiment then rather rampant in Australian society.  They had planned to write a class paper on Islamophobia.  Like me they were Anglo-Celtic Australian.  ‘If you want to progress you need to write some tripe about colonial Australia and create a few heroes where there are none,’ I would have said.  But facing my own hurdles at the time, I said nought.

Of note, there was a Muslim in that class; and it’s interesting how the approach differs.  In an ‘us’ and ‘them’ world it’s okay for the ‘them’ to take a positive approach to themselves; nobody will listen and they can be managed in other ways.  It’s when the ‘us’ make write-crimes, think-crimes about the ‘them’ that it’s all too challenging, that silence is needed; and in Bangladesh corpses after autopsies are messy, says Australia.

We opened our course materials one evening, in class, and there he was: Mr. John Hughes.  Australian culture is about un-inventing the wheel, to paraphrase, we read.  ‘I don't hear much of him now,’ the lecturer said, ‘I think now he’s teaching at a college somewhere in the Hunter Valley.’  Online it says he’s at a school in Sydney; thing is though, with due respect for education, either outcome as an author makes him sidelined.  He did win a prize for his work, so not all is wrong with the world, or perhaps it was given from guilt: his writing remains a little too honest, a little too truthful and a little too Australia-critical.  There's not enough goodthink in it.

And what do you think happens when ASIO is refused, when a choice is made to pursue freedom of expression as a citizen of a country without any meaningful protection of the right?

I’d like to take the opportunity, in this country, Bangladesh, one wise enough to have taken steps to include some protection for the voices of its citizens in its Constitution, to commit a few more write-crimes, think-crimes: ‘Bangladesh is not all bad, in fact there are many good things about it;’  ‘Australia is not all good, in fact there are many bad things about it;’  ‘Muslims are not terrorists;’ and ‘better to be a disfigured corpse in Bangladesh than a neat and clean Australian mannequin, for at least one will have lived.’

I take my hat off to you, Mr. Hughes, for your survival.



Indeed, Muslim countries like Iran or Bangladesh make for very nice holidays.

Chinese bamboo book (image from wikipedia)

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh