Counterpoint BD

A saltwater crocodile, nearly ten feet long, dark and ancient-looking, is trussed in coarse rope on the bank of the Thakur Dighi. Its jaws are bound shut. Its legs are lashed against its body. It thrashes, a great muscular twisting against the cords, and the crowd of thousands presses in with phone cameras raised.

Fire service personnel in orange vests heave the creature onto a truck. A snake rescuer directs the operation. Somewhere, watching, is the Deputy Commissioner of Bagerhat. This is not a rescue. This is an expulsion. This is the end of a 600-year-old dream.

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A conventional political reading of today's circumstances would provide ample evidence for a relatively straightforward conclusion that a BNP government led by Tarique Rahman is likely to complete a full five-year term and may even secure re-election. Jyoti bhai identifies many of the reasons.

Jamaat-e-Islami has little incentive to destabilize a government from which it benefits ‘politically’ (need another piece for proper explanations). The continued absence -- or constrained presence -- of the Awami League, still operating under severe restrictions, leaves the BNP confronting opponents that appear comparatively weak.

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Pakistan is consistently drawn into regional backchannels because it occupies an irreplaceable geographic pivot point. Sharing a 900-kilometer border with Iran, maintaining deep-rooted institutional security ties with Saudi Arabia, and acting as a critical corridor for Chinese strategic capital, Islamabad is a structural necessity.

The world engages with Pakistan because it has to, not because it seeks to litigate its domestic politics. In fact, it was Pakistan that arranged the backchannel diplomacy between the US and China in the 70s.

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It was during President Ziaur Rahman’s brief tenure that the country experienced a measure of discipline, governance, and democratic revival. He inspired students and young people to envision themselves as future leaders, and was grooming them accordingly. Unfortunately, after his assassination, that momentum faded, and the youth once again became absorbed in the toxic culture of traditional politics.

Following the July 2024 revolution, I felt renewed hope. Young leaders such as Nahid Islam, Hasnat Abdullah, Sarjis Alam, Mahfuz Alam, and Zara Tasnim appeared to embody patriotism, courage, and a new political consciousness. Their speeches and activism reignited public hope that a new generation might finally rescue the nation from decades of decay.

Unfortunately, those hopes were quickly shaken.

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Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed’s attempt at playing down the killing of Bangladeshi civilians by Indian border guards amounts to a rather ta**ry attempt, to put it mildly, at jurisprudential reasoning.

That Ahmed is woefully unapprised about the laws of India, Bangladesh and the international system, not to mention his ignorance about his own duties of his office, could not be more adequately demonstrated than by his response to reporters at the Secretariat on June 2, where he said people not killed at the Zero Point of Bangladesh’s border is a matter for India’s domestic law and effectively not his problem as Home Minister for Bangladeshis.

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In Episode 2 of Cultural Bourgeoisie, Jyoti Rahman sits down with Ehteshamul Haque to explore the fascinating intersection of literature, history, and political memory.

Drawing on classic political thrillers, African revolutionary history, and Bangladesh's own turbulent past, the conversation examines how coups, assassinations, and struggles for power have inspired some of the most compelling works of fiction. From Frederick Forsyth's tales of mercenaries and regime change to narratives surrounding Thomas Sankara and the dramatic events following the assassination of Ziaur Rahman, the discussion reveals how history can often be stranger -- and more gripping -- than fiction.

📚 A wide-ranging conversation on political fiction, historical memory, coups, revolution, and the stories we tell about power.

Watch now and join the conversation.

Cultural Bourgeoisie | Episode 2 | When History Reads Like a Thriller In Episode 2 of Cultural Bourgeoisie, Jyoti Rahman sits down with E...

BNP’s electoral dominance might be explained by the fact that it sits well within the ‘invisible triangle of Bangladeshi politics’ posited by Faham Abdus Salam -- that no political party in Bangladesh is electorally viable if it can be portrayed as against the Liberation War, or subservient to Indian hegemony, or is insensitive to Muslim values.

It is very difficult to convincingly paint BNP as an anti-1971 or a pro-Indian or an anti-Muslim party.

Indeed, Ziaur Rahman’s articulation of Bangladeshi nationalism alluded to these very elements, and more, when he used the terms ‘absorption power’ and ‘elbow room’ to accommodate multiple threads of our identity.

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Repeated incidents of child abuse reflect a degradation of the social compact itself: The basic promise a society makes to its children that they will be protected and cared for, and the obligation to cultivate enabling conditions in which they can grow up in security.

But there is a parallel truth: The state has a sacrosanct duty to enforce the law in accordance with both the letter and the spirit of the law. Society writ large can be emotional. The state, by contrast, cannot act on emotion or be influenced by it.

A rule-of-law-based criminal justice system requires any case, including cases involving crimes that shock the conscience of a nation and test the underlying social compact, to move through arrest, investigation, prosecution, trial, conviction, and sentencing.

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We say these names -- Hepburn, Garbo, Suchitra -- like deities. But what are we really saying? French philosopher Jean Baudrillard argued that in our hyperreal world, the image has consumed the original object entirely.

The real Audrey Hepburn was a woman: She had arguments, she wore worn-out socks, she broke down in the middle of the night like the rest of us. But that messy, breathing creature has been erased. What remains is a pure sign -- a constellation of graceful gestures, a specific tilt of the jaw, the silhouette of a black dress against a blank slate.

In loving this image, am I loving a human? Or am I loving a beautifully rendered, impossible perfection -- a shimmering sign of grace?

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