POLITICAL LEFT AND ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM

 (FOR PUBLICATION ON SUNDAY THE 11^TH MARCH 2007)

By Kazi Anwarul Masud (former Secretary and ambassador)

With the end of the cold war and the demise of the Soviet Union the appeal for communist ideology has diminished the world over. Even China practicing capitalism in its economy would be called revisionist if the “purists” among the practicetioners of communism had their way. It would, however, be a hasty conclusion that the wave of left philosophy, defined as “that current of thought, politics and policy that stresses social improvements over macroeconomic orthodoxy, egalitarian distribution of wealth over its creation, sovereignty over international cooperation, democracy over governmental effectiveness”, has lost its appeal completely in the world. Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda   discerns two types of left in Latin America today: the first being modern, open minded, reformist and internationalist while the other is nationalist, strident and close-minded. In his view the disappearance of the USSR has led to a surge of leftism in Latin America because its supporters could no longer be accused by the United States as being lackeys of the Soviet Union. Extreme inequality, poverty, dispossession of power gave the majority of the poor people their voting right as the only instrument left to register protest and also to regain some role in the process of decision making. Brazil’s Lula, Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega are examples of growing leftist power in America’s backyard. It would be erroneous to lump them together as cohabitants of Castro-Chavez trail of the left strand in the region. But nonetheless they all represent a no-confidence vote against the unrestrained capitalism raging in the globalized world ruled by the West whose power lies, according to political analyst  Ziauddin Sardar, not “in its economic muscle and technological might (but) in its power to define what is, for example, freedom, progress, civil behavior... The non-Western civilization has simply to accept   these definitions or be defined out of existence”.

The silent revolution taking place in many countries of the East, once described by late Edward Said as the colonies of the West yet its cultural contestant, can be compared with those taking place in Latin America. The reason for this opposition to the Western model of economic development while embracing its open and pluralistic political system is because the benefits from economic progress have eluded the great majority of the people, barring some vertical movement of fortunate few from destitution to opulence giving rise to debate on the immorality of their acquisition of wealth, remain mired in ultra-poverty with little light at the end of the tunnel. Low growth rates, writes Castaneda, have meant the persistence of dismal poverty, inequality, and high unemployment. “Democracy” he continues, “although welcomed and supported by broad swaths of Latin American societies did little to eradicate the region’s secular plagues: corruption, a weak or nonexistent rule of law, ineffective governance, and concentration of power in the hands of the few”.  This kind of scenery, common in the Third World, is no exception to Bangladesh where the ferocious rapacity of the four party alliance government in plundering the wealth of the people and the Orwellian tyranny let loose on the opposition and the minority community have induced in the people a craving for a government which yet remains to be given a proper constitutional form. But the people are happy that the extremely high possibility of the now displaced gang of politicians’ coming back to power through a manipulated election has become an impossibility and the corrupt who felt themselves to be above the law are being brought to account.

Democracy without the rule of law and more importantly without food on the table is meaningless. One has to decide whether the privilege of casting one’s vote once every five years while remaining ill-fed and ill-clad for the entire period carries the full meaning of democracy. But then again the fourth surge of democratization in former Eastern Europe following the disappearance of the Soviet empire strengthens anew the premise that deep down people, however poor they may be, is averse to be governed by an authority not of their own choosing.   Consequently we, in Bangladesh, are in a quandary. We do not know whether to press for an early election and risk electing a group of politicians, some of whom are likely to be corrupt, or to wait for a longer period for the Augean stable to be cleared up and then go for an election through which we can elect people who we can believe to deliver the goods.  

In this race, whenever it may take place, the political left has aligned itself with the progressive and secular elements in the country. If neighboring West Bengal is any example to be held aloft then one can safely say that unlike the Islamists who believe in one man- one vote- one time the political left is unlikely to abandon pluralism. But the stark reality is that the political left could not gain enough votes in elections to become a credible voice in the country’s politics. The reasons are not difficult to find.  While India after partition in 1947 chose to be non-aligned Pakistan in search of security against a powerful India chose to bind itself to US led military pacts (SEATO, CENTO etc) and consequently blindly followed American cold war dictates including ban on left political parties and persecution of left party leaders. In addition the rightists were able to convince the people that the left, particularly the Communists, were Godless people and should be abjured. Only after the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 that the left political parties were allowed free participation in the political process. Jamat-e-Islami, the standard bearer of the fundamentalists, on the other hand, except for a brief period of ban due to their collaboration with the occupying Pakistani army, had a free hand in politics and through religious schools, now thought to number sixty four thousand, continued to profess political Islam aimed at establishing an Islamist nation  to be ruled according to the dictates of the Holy Quran and Sunnah. Under the present global context Bangladeshis would have to be careful while casting votes that they do not mix the professed benefits of the post-death world with the assuredly disadvantages that go with an Islamist rule in the present day world.