~ By Guest Writer: Md Maruf Hasan
Taslima Nasrin seems quite right at her outspoken accusations in terms of religious countries when she raised issue at her various writings about individual liberty in the pseudo-religious countries like Bangladesh. Recent media reports on prominent female actresses and women leaders can be seen major trends in Bangladeshi news and social media. Most of the young citizens find Bangladeshi news entertaining, especially when we look at the comment sections of these videos on YouTube. Young people mostly tried to see from religious perspectives leaving vulgar words full of hatred and jealousy accusing the hedonistic lifestyle of aristocrat families and government officials tend to look at it from a legal stance. Politicians look at it from a political stance. Each victim is claiming as a conspiracy against them before media while some victims are just silent in front of media like the issue of Bashundhara MD Sayem's scandal. I do not want to delve into any of these issues. The hypocrisy of these agencies and people are clearly visible as soon as we analyze these incidents using the Freudian and Marxist approach.
However, my concern is individual liberty as for recent incidents. I do not think the government is working in the right direction when it comes to the individual liberty of common citizens. Most of the reports came out in media in which the focus of video content was on alcoholic drinks and prominent women and their families. They utter as being victims and unethical, especially interview of Helena's daughter as representative of Bangladeshi upcoming young generation. The question arises in my mind should government agencies need to rectify their ethics during investigation since the salary is paid by citizens to serve citizens? For years there was no report whatsoever about any prominent figures, but recently the trend is very high. The problem is these are the aristocratic class in our society and they should deserve their liberty since Bangladesh is not a communist country and the government should not interfere with anyone's private room if she drinks Vodka or water. What they did recently it was even not allowed under the totalitarian Islamic regime led by Muhammad and his companions. As I have observed there is nothing wrong with selling and buying alcoholic drinks in Muslim tourist countries like Malaysia. In a secular state, a citizen has the right to how she or he wants to live with her and his personal beliefs. In other words, she or he can be practicing Muslim, Hindu, Buddha, atheist, agnostics or moderate Muslim, Hindu, Buddha, atheist, agnostics as long as they do not harm others being fundamentalists. The issue of Pori Moni has been diverted for sure and her liberty and right have been systematically ridiculed. The comments section of those videos on YouTube showed how she was accused of being characterless. This should not be any of their business in a secular country when it is about her body. Women must clear their stance. As a citizen, she has the right to raise her concern if she feels threaten or feels harassed. This is exactly the issue of marital rape that our women, mothers and sisters, in religious society cannot talk about. Those who accused of her being characterless are mostly saying out of jealousy and due to lack of sex as Sigmund Freud tells us. In other words, it exposes open hypocrisy by the name of religion. At the end of the day almost everyone is involved with pornographic content in internet regardless their religious status as far as recent research has shown. Anyone who does try to search about this issue can get a clear picture just by doing cursory search. Anyone who has read Kafka's "The Trial" and "The Castle" knows what's going on with these recent incidents. Yes, the accusations came in the reports saying these individuals are causing trouble to others, nobody would disagree with the government in this instance, but to investigate those accusations, you are entering someone's private room and harassing their family members in front of the nation and making them as sexual object and object of lust before young viewers as we read comments on social media.
In recent years, we have noticed Government is highly concerned to eradicate all types of drugs and pornographic content in Bangladesh to eliminate moral degradation, but the religious content in the national education curriculum is very little and corruption among bureaucrats is not a new phenomenon at all. Despite the concept War on Drugs, US could not control but country like Switzerland by legalizing drug in a systematic manner they have reduced drug consumption better than any other countries that started War on Drugs. Why do not we see this one as disease and try to cure systematically. We can learn from Switzerland. I would not comment about politicians since the nation knows their angelic characteristics regardless of Opposition and Government parties. How do you expect to build a nation with moral values when we neither teach them secular or religious values properly? We are, in fact, educated in pseudo-religious and pseudo-secular values and we tend to hate both values thinking hypocritical and meaningless.
The accusation came from opposition parties for years saying the ruling Government is working like fascists and Nazis. However, I would appreciate the massive developmental work of the ruling government across Bangladesh and we have seen how our honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina did not consider any type of corruption even if it is found among her party's leaders. The way she chose ministers after the last election is really admirable and I think despite some shortcomings as humans these people deserve to rule these ministries and they did more efficiently compared to the opposition parties. In fact, the less corruption happened ever in the history after 1971s among the current government's ministries as far as I am concerned.
My focal point for today's discussion is when we promote a country as a secular country, the government should not interfere anyone's personal bedroom or at least should have some ethics when an investigation is going on, perhaps, asking every single member should be outside of the house during an investigation and not being rude to any individual because the mental trauma can affect the person's psychology in the long run. This is a shame for the government of Bangladesh when they say to the international community saying we promote secularism in the state as far as I came across Aljazeera's interview with Mehdi in "Head to Head". Once you analyze and try to decode these recent events from Freudian and Marxist perspectives, you can realize how dubious these issues are. Same goes with recent scandals of religious leaders. Sexuality is inherently with every individual's unconscious mind. Those who are accusing others at the end of the day are not out of evolving animals. What kind of hypocrisy are you talking about then when you are one of them? All will be considered nothing but absolutely hypocrisy by the name of law and religion. If you discuss openly these issues, everything will be transparent. Even the word "hypocrisy" will be meaningless if we talk from Nietzsche's point of view in post-modern context . In short, certain acts seem right for the government when we see their various involvements with different crimes, but at the same time media, government officials should be held accountable if these activities undermine other citizen's individual liberty. At the end of the day we are in grey world since only ruling government in each country will define what's right and what's wrong instead of dead God of Nietzsche. Wherever you look at ,you would only find pure hypocrisy by the name of religion. To them, God is indeed a hungry dog in the street and it is a matter of choice if you would throw a piece of bread. That's the nature of religious people towards their personal God. What morality are you talking about then? All we see is drama by expert actors from Shakespearean perspective.
Additional Tags:
- pori moni