Doing the Bhangra Down India Gate

Where’s your bicycle? The Uber driver asked me jokingly. Yes, I had been known in photography circles and it is true that I did know a few Nobel Laureates. Given that I am a public speaker, and wear several hats, I do also come across the odd head of state, or celebrity. I’d be overstating it if I said they all knew me well. I have featured prominently in a film produced by Sharon Stone, but the long conversation on the phone, after my release, was very much an exception. But now that I have Uber drivers recognizing me, and people stopping me in the streets for selfies, I need to be careful I don’t trip over my own ego. Maybe I should be thanking the same person that everyone else thanks for everything that ever happens in Bangladesh.

I flatly deny making payments to the Bangladesh government for running a media campaign on my behalf. Neither is it true that I deliberately planted the inconsistencies in their fake news, making it appear they can’t tell a Kaffiey from a tablecloth. Let’s not get too technical. It started with me being a Mossad agent and taking money from Israel. Now I’ve been placed in the Al Qaeda farm, and definitely anti Israel. Considering that Israel is the one country that my government does not have diplomatic relationships with, and the only country my passport is not valid for, being anti Israel should theoretically make me a pal. My enemy’s enemy is my friend and all that.

Screen shot of Arundhati Roy and Shahidul Alam in Blitz taken on December 19

A Struggle for Democracy

Where will India's poor go?

?Now, we have a democratically elected totalitarian government? ? Arundhati Roy

Tahir Mehdi

Updated?about 5 hours ago

Arundhati Roy

IN Pakistan, apprehensions are rife about Narendra Modi?s flamboyant success. But fervent Modi supporters in the Indian middle classes prefer to place him in the economic governance arena. Dawn recently talked to renowned Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, in Delhi to explore what Modi?s rise means for India.
?The massive, steeply climbing GDP of India dropped rather suddenly and millions of middle-class people sitting in the aircraft, waiting for it to take off, suddenly found it freezing in mid-air,? says Ms Roy. ?Their exhilaration turned to panic and then into anger. Modi and his party have mopped up this anger.? Continue reading

We are more than our name

A Gujarati Muslim ponders life under Narendra Modi

Caf? Dissensus on February 15, 2013 :?Zahir Janmohamed?1st Ethical

Caf? Dissensus on February 15, 2013 :?Zahir Janmohamed Continue reading “We are more than our name”

Government?s self-publicity with public money

by ?Taj Hashmi in The Daily Star

It is time to protest the ruling Awami League?s self-publicity through billboards at a staggering cost of more than Tk.3 crore (one senior minister would possibly say taxpayers? Tk.3 crore is ?rubbish? as he ?rubbished? the 4,000 crore stolen by Hall-Mark). I am really shocked and saddened by the government?s overwhelming ?billboard campaign? ? whose impact will be grossly under-whelming though ? and the deafening silence of our civil society, intellectuals, politicians and youths over this scandalous act of the ruling party. The removal of commercial billboards to the detriment of commercial firms by the government is also shockingly unwarranted.

Billboards extolling the virtues of Awami League. Rokeya Sarani. Dhaka. Photo: Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

To Barack Obama

by Babui/Arjun

You have tried to be appeaser,
You have tried to kiss their feet,
You’ve turned your back on backers,
And so, you’ve known defeat.
Perhaps it’s how you’d risen,
Ascending far too fast.
You’ve catered to the Powers,
But Powers never last.
You fought the fight for healthcare,
In which you did believe,
But prudence was your tactic,
Which little did achieve. Continue reading “To Barack Obama”

March 12 Rally

Khaleda Zia at March 2012 rally 4646 — We were, we are, we'll stay, was the slogan on recent Awami League posters. BNP haven't quite gotten to three generations yet, but the dynasty game is certainly one both parties want to play. ??Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

The government was hell bent on preventing the opposition rally. Trains, buses and launches were all stopped. Ordinary passengers were beaten up and prevented from off loading at stations and ferrys. The police were out in full force in the city, checking on people to make sure they were not opposition supporters heading for the rally.
Continue reading

Part VI Military-installed caretaker govt, or a 'consortium' govt?

by rahnuma ahmed

Yesterday, I had ended with the words, “there is still hope.”
But, of course, hoping doesn’t mean that one daydreams, or fantasises. Or, becomes cynical when things don’t turn out the way one had wished.
“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” — words attributed to Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, imprisoned by Mussolini. To see the world as it really is, underpinned by the will that humans have the courage to change it. One thus needs to dispassionately examine what occurred later. But before doing so, let me turn to the cat- out-of-the-bag story.
The ‘minus two plan’ was officially confirmed by the World Bank South Asia vice-president Praful C. Patel. While visiting Dhaka, at the end of 2007, he said, “What [had] looked possible before, like the minus-two approach, does not seem possible today, because the two ladies have [a] very strong and powerful power base.” Continue reading “Part VI Military-installed caretaker govt, or a 'consortium' govt?”

Part III Military-installed caretaker govt, or a 'consortium' govt?

by rahnuma ahmed

The incongruencies were many. They helped to sow suspicion among members of the public. The general relief felt in the early period of the caretaker government’s takeover, gradually slipped away.
Having failed to gain legitimacy, the consortium government finally relinquished power on January 6, 2009, after the December 2008 electoral results declared Awami League the winner, that too, with a landslide victory.
I was reminded of Pakistan’s president Parvez Musharraf because the US government (which headed the ‘western bloc,’ the third constitutive element of the consortium government) had learnt a lesson from Musharraf’s regime. The latter had suffered from a legitimacy crisis (some say, Musharraf had used it at times to stave off some of the demands made by the Bush administration); the lesson which the American administration had learnt was that a government voted to power, albeit, under conditions favorable to imperial policies and interests, is not similarly encumbered. Continue reading “Part III Military-installed caretaker govt, or a 'consortium' govt?”

Part I Military-installed caretaker govt, or a 'consortium' govt?

By Rahnuma Ahmed

As I’d explained in my column published on February 13, 2012, I’d disappeared from these pages to work on three manuscripts intended for Boi Mela 2012. While they missed the bus — more work needs to be done for them to see the light of day — but what did make it to the Mela is a collection edited by Udisa Islam, for which I’d written the foreword.
Bikkhobh Shonkolon: Joruri Obosthay Bisshobiddaloy 2007 (Dhaka: Shrabon, 2012) is an archival collection, in print, of the student protests which broke out in August 2007, when army personnel stationed in an army camp on Dhaka University grounds beat up university students who were watching a football match. Dubbed a “trivial incident” (tuccho ghotona) by the then chief of general staff Sina Ibn Jamali, student protests mushroomed, enveloping other public university campuses, and college campuses as well. Protests spilled out on to the streets of Dhaka and other major cities, expressing growing popular discontentment and resentment at the military-installed caretaker government’s rule. The so-called “trivial incident” proved to be a resounding nail in the caretaker government’s coffin. Continue reading “Part I Military-installed caretaker govt, or a 'consortium' govt?”