Real Meaning of Shahbag

With ‘choppergate’—that is, the Rs 350-crore kickbacks allegedly involved in the Rs 3546-crore contract for the purchase of 12 VVIP Augusta-Westland helicopters from the Italian aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica—assuming a disproportionately large dimension with every passing day, Defence Minister A.K. Antony has moved fast to cancel the deal thereby causing much consternation among his Cabinet colleagues.

In this setting the Budget session of Parliament has opened today and the mounting confrontation between the Opposition and Treasury Benches is expected to take a far more serious form than has been witnessed till date.

President Pranab Mukherjee’s first address to the joint sitting of the two Houses in Parliament’s Central Hall on the opening day of the session naturally acquired significance for various reasons. This was his first address as the President on the occasion and he did stress on his government’s “commitment to ushering in reforms for greater transparency, probity, integrity and accountability in governance”. But what he said at the conclusion of the address attracted maximum attention. Quite bluntly he asserted that our liberal and plural democracy needs to be strengthened, not weakened because “only if we constantly renew and defend the democratic values” defining our nationhood can we “be able to face the great challenges that lie before us”.

If democracy has to be strengthened and the people’s aspirations translated into reality one has to build bridges with the masses on the move. The broad success of the nationwide strike called by all the 11 major national trade union centres yesterday and today to register vociferous protest against the Central Government’s meek acceptance of the globalisation agenda as well as anti-people economic policies resulting in incessant price rise and rampant violation of the toiling masses’ democratic rights only shows that the public alienation from the ruling circles is widening by the day. This is where the President’s words carry substantive value.

Of course democracy is at a discount in our neighbourhood, notably Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, as the latest events show. Yet there is something refreshingly new in Bangladesh—the massive mobilisation of the present generation of Bangladesh’s youth in Dhaka’s Shahbag demanding death to the killers of leading intellectuals just before the dawn of that country’s emancipation from the Pak military brasshats. One is instantly reminded of the uprising in the city way back in 1969 when Sheikh Mujib was at the helm. Shahbag today is indeed showing the way towards the consolidation of democracy and preservation of secular values and pluralist ethos that blossomed with the burial of the two-nation theory 51 years ago when a new nation was born through unstinted Indian assistance and support.

This real meaning of the Shahbag upsurge must not be lost amidst all the murky goings-on in the corridors of our power structure. All of us in the region have much to learn from Shahbag.

February 21 S.C.