Will the conscience of the Bangladeshi elites ever prick them?

By Mohammad Asghar

Author’s note: Dr. Humayun Azad was a giant among the pigmies. He believed in the wellbeing of human race. He stood his ground, even when faced with severe opposition. No amount of threats and intimidations had succeeded in derailing him from his chosen path. But as he himself was a mortal, and not one of the gods who never die, he succumbed to the wishes of his foes, and breathed his last in Munich, Germany, a few days ago.

His death ended an era, the equivalent of which we may not be able to witness in a long time. With his death, we, the Freethinkers, have lost a shining beacon. Knowing not for sure if another man would ever be able to take his place, I dedicate this write up of mine to the memory of Dr. Humayun Azad).

I am not sure if the younger generation of the Bangladeshis know this story or not, but it was a common knowledge among the people of my generation that Hazrat Nizam Uddin Awlia, who has his shrine in New Delhi of India, lived by killing and robbing people before he became a saint.

One day, he realized that what he had been doing for a living was a crime. He went home and asked his mother, if she cared to know how he earned money to support her. She is reported to have said: I have given you birth. It is your responsibility now to support me. I do not care how!

Disappointed by his mother’s response, Nizam asked his wife the same question. She responded: I am your wife, and it is your responsibility to support me in any way you can. It does not matter how you do it?

Shaken by his wife’s terse answer, he posed the same question to his children. They answered: You are our father. It is your duty to support us so long as we live in your care. We are least concerned with what you do for providing us food, and all other necessities of our life.

Devastated by the responses he received from all of his family members, Nizam went back to the jungle, and lifting himself atop a tree, he began to think as to how he was going to atone for the crimes he had committed in his life.

His thoughts were broken by the chatters of a group of people. They were carrying a dead body to bury at a place that was close to the very tree he was sitting on. He alighted from it, and went to the people. They told him that it was the body of a young girl, who was deeply in love with a young man. Since she had failed to get married to her beloved, she died; her death having been hastened by the pains of separation.

The dead buried, Nizam returned to the top of the tree. Soon a young man approached the grave of the girl. It turned out later; he was the lover of the deceased girl.

He began to remove the topsoil of the grave feverishly, saying to himself: Since I could not get you in your lifetime, I am now going to quench my thirst with your dead body. Let me see who is now going to stop me from doing this!

Nizam was flabbergasted. He could never have thought that a human being could do what the young man was intending to do to the body of his dead lover. Seething with anger, he told to himself: I have killed many people in the past to earn a living; now I am going to kill this man to save the honor of a dead person. If killing him is a crime, let it be; for, as my conscience says, this crime is nothing in comparison to the one this worse man among the worst intends to commit before my eyes!

So determined, Nizam got down from the tree, and chopped off the man’s head before he could do any harm to the dead body. No sooner had he carried out the dictum of his conscience, all trees began blooming. All birds began singing with joy. All animals of the jungle began dancing with ecstasy. The entire sky turned deep blue; the sun cooler and the breeze pleasantly soothing.

From all the changes that took place around him, and before his eyes, Nizam concluded that by killing the man he had committed no crime; rather, what he had done was a duty he had to carry out to uphold the dignity and honor of a dead person. It was a duty, which, if he had not fulfilled, so he came to believe, would have pricked his conscience for so long as he would have breathed and walked the earth.

The murder of the man, we were told, changed Nizam’s life for ever. He gave up robbery, and instead, he dedicated himself to helping the causes of the suffering people. Eventually, he became a great saint. Now hundreds of thousands of people, irrespective of their religious denominations, visit his mazaar every year, for seeking, through him, the atonement of their sins and crimes with God.

Bangladesh is like the dead body of the girl whom Nizam Uddin Awlia had saved from being defiled by her lover, but with a minor difference: The man tried to rape his lover after she had died; Bangladeshi lovers have been raping their beloved country constantly, and they are not prepared to spare it from their torture even when it is about to become a complete wreck Among all its inhabitants, only a handful of them are as ferociously in love with it, as was the girl’s lover. They rape Bangladesh every second of the day. To them, it has no honor or dignity. To them, it has no one, like Nizam Uddin Awlia, to protect it from their onslaughts. They can do with it whatever they like; they can turn it into a prostitute, if it serves their purposes; they can turn it into one of the holiest places on earth, if it is likely to promote their agendas.

Many among the handful lovers of Bangladesh, who are known to us as intellectuals, politicians, scholars and economic czars can, and do change their colors like chameleons. They have no principles and no love for anyone but themselves. They pretend to be religious. Many among them pray five times a day, while a large number among them never miss their Juma prayers. To them, their prayers are more important than the wellbeing of the country, and its people. They do not pray in their local mosques, rather, they travel a long distance to be present in the largest mosque of the city, where they have the opportunity to rub elbows with those high ups in the government, who are more important and useful than is their God to them.

The next day they return to their usual way of life. Many of them would turn from being artificial pious men to actually haram eaters. They won’t move files without bribes; they would not perform honestly and diligently even those duties for which they are paid a monthly salary by the government. But “Bismillah” and “Alhamdulilah” would, nevertheless, continue to pour out of their mouths; these two words are very important, as these help them convert their haram incomes into halal ones instantaneously!

The number of these so-called lovers of Bangladesh is small. Yet, they determine the priorities of the country, and run it according to their whims and caprices. They decide who the people should elect to run the government; they plan how the electorates should be duped. In short, they are the gods, as such, they are also the arbiters of the country’s fate as well as of its people.

These handful Bangladeshi gods are the real problem of the country. They have destroyed most of its vital organs. They would destroy the remaining ones in the near future. Where they might feel that destruction of the surviving organs is not worthy of their own efforts, they would have them destroyed by their goons. The incident of August 21, 2004 is the beginning of this process. We are likely to see many more such incidences in future. These would end only after Bangladesh has become a complete pauper. And that time is not too far off, when it would have no respect or dignity left to boast itself with. It would be just ‘another’ country that the people of the affluent societies would hardly mention in their conversations. It would exist but without life; it would continue with its journey but without a destination.

Should Bangladesh be left to its few gods so that they can play havoc with its destiny? Can’t this unfortunate country be saved from the clutches of its conniving, greedy, selfish and destructive gods? Should it be allowed to lapse into oblivion just for the reason that they want it to happen?

I am hoping for a second Nizam Uddin Awlia to descend on Bangladesh’ soil soon. His arrival will infuse a new life into its dying body. He will consign the gods to where they belong. He will clean all the dirt that has accumulated over its body. He will take it out of abyss, and put on a track that would take it to the destination it needs to travel to.

Am I day dreaming? Have I gone crazy? May be. But is it not true that a drowning man catches at the straw? I am a like a drowning man, and someone like Nizam Uddin Awlia is my straw. I am pinning my hope on someone like him to save my beloved country from its occupying gods. Please wish Bangladesh a good luck and help it, where possible, so that it can rid itself of the parasitical gods who have been sucking its blood from the time it came into existence. In their elimination lies the future of my Bangladesh. Should they not be gotten rid of before they have destroyed the whole country?