Among the many challenges that the Asian and African countries face today, centuries of European Colonisation had the most and severe bearings on its progress and development. Although the English man had indeed left our land and rivers, and the French, Spanish for the same respectively, the mark of pain and suffering is still haunts us like a ghost in a dark and dim night.
The legacy of the colonisation does not ever end with the newly found freedom or independence, a flag or a national anthem rather it continues through a new form in a new age in order to build a new era of ‘Neo-colonisation’ by our old masters. Only the outlook had changed but the spirit still exists with its head high of the long lived Queen and ever head-down of its so called ‘Independent Subjects’.
The 21st century has been the success, albeit of our century old masters, to control the games of terms and words in the name and banner of real friendship. As former Chief Justice of Bangladesh, Mr Justice Mustafa Kamal, once said, “Independence is a state of mind; you can only have it when you realise it and can feel it in your heart”.
Hence, I ask myself and ponder how many of us, after 38 years of our great liberation war, a second time in 25 years followed by the one in 1947, of which my family was so closely connected and physically involved in, are really able to feel the taste of the great independence that we have acquired so bravely and so speedily.
I do not know the answer but I can swear that it should not be many to be counted. And here I see the biggest challenge of our nation building. So long our people will not be independent in the real term and sense, as I understand as a servant of the Lord Almighty, there would be no change beneficial to our populace, whether on an individual level or that of the collective one, the society per se.
Now the question comes to what kind of development we dream of or propose to achieve which would be of the benefit for the people from the very grass root to the top. It is primarily the position of the pre-colonial epoch which has its unique identity of independence, free from slavery of others and restitution from the imposition of the modern day slavery of our mind and soul.
A society could only be built with the long term sustainability when it has strong moral characteristics which we had but lost during the long but tough, slow but steady campaign of poisonous enslavement by the European colonialists. For Bangladesh, that morality is relatively a combination of our long standing religious values and cultural practices of generations untouched and unchallenged by the others i.e. the foreigners, until very recently.
We, as a nation of cross-breed by various race and faiths but largely homogenous at present, would not be able to discard the inherent obligations and allegiance to our ethical commitment, of whatever kinds it might be, as opposed to the Western Liberalism due to its own historical experience of religious persecution, degradation of women, extreme practice of slavery in addition to its modern day crisis of decadence and chauvinistic indulgence into the materialistic dissipation.
Given the phenomenon of the west that we have and continues to experience, after all the material success, unprecedented in the human history, the mindset of our people would not be in agreement to live by such Godless fabric of secular morality.
We, as a nation, could never underrate the necessity of material development but we want the progress to be in line with our decent fabric, or the code of common morality which is not in conflict of the other. Being a nation of the Eastern region and culture, full of natural softness and high-quality values, we would never be able to suit our need in line with the Secularism which is intrinsically counter-productive and of self-contradiction.
The proponents of the secularism should study the nature and upbringing of our new generation, to cope with the imposed secular ideas by our intellectuals, writers and mass- medias while to maintain their very self which is very much righteous, they are in dilemma and oblivious of their identity; in a word, the secularist had been successful to create a kind of identity crisis, an illusion of self, amongst our youths. For their own vested interest, they have mercilessly, and knowingly the aftermath, generated a regiment of lost soldiers who could not find the essence of their live or the liberty they pretend to have at their possession.
The recent anti-corruption drive in BD, so is the sleaze and laissez-faire practice of the Banking industry which caused the present ‘Credit Crunch’ in the world, had vigorously shown the consequence of secular ideals, one of the many expositions in the different parts of the world.
Never too late to quote the most atrocious of the wars in human history, World War I & II, happen to be at the centre of the secular world, neither to forget the horrific murders in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear bombs followed by ‘Napalm’ bomb experiment in Vietnam and the expedition is ongoing.
The more people becomes inclined to secular values and no accountability to one’s self and to some unseen divinity, the more people gets closer to the animals which in effect, tarnishes the very higher intellectual purpose of the creation of human being. The narratives become much clearer when a comparison is made between the secular countries and relatively non-secular one.
In a country of 160 million people, Bangladesh has a Police force of around one hundred thousand and a prison population of 87 thousand while in the UK the Police force is 130 thousand strong one with another 30 thousand community police man for safer neighbourhood while a prison population of 78 thousand out of its 60 million people.
What materials the United Kingdom government lacks or to say its people? More than three hundred times a man is watched by the CCTV in a single day in the UK, highest in the world, and after so many hundreds of millions of pounds are spent, why the people on the street or the commuters on the public transport do not feel safe? Why the 60% of marriages end up in divorce just in two years while the knotting the ties are all time low, more than 500 abortions are carried out in every day, most of the children are growing up in a single family, increasing sexually transmitted diseases (STD), highest teenage pregnancy and binge-drinking problem in the whole of Europe, why?
Knife crime is soaring, drugs in the schools and on the streets is getting out of control. In London alone, more than 5,000 gangs operate and more than 50 teenagers had been murdered on the streets of London last year. The UK parliament had to call a motion to discuss the severity of the gang culture, why? What went wrong in the 21st century Britain?
David Cameron, the leader of the opposition and to-be Prime Minister, had called the situation a ‘wholesale social break-down’. With the rising unemployment, nearly 2 million now following the massive job-cuts, and hopeless youth, the pundits are drugging their tongues out while the ink of the intellectual writers and academics had been dried out with new mantras but with no vale.
On the other hand, none of those above mentioned problems had yet to turn out to be a disaster. As the crisis is albeit a moral one while the solution is sought, in the secular western world, through the material one, and equation is ‘continuous and more rigorous catastrophe’.
The similar data could also be produced for every other European or North American countries, with an epidemic of human collapse, where the dominant ideals and values are secular. We cannot watch our teenagers to be grown up in a ‘genetically modified’ way in the waste of ‘Mc World’, supremely high-tech but without any kindness of soul.
We, as a nation, cannot afford to experiment the same old mistakes, in next thirty years or so as tasted in the west since the try-out of 1970’s hippies’ life style, and afterwards, to come back to where we wished to be once but that would be too late, as like the westerners. Nevertheless, among the multifarious challenges, if we can address the core of the causes, which I would say the moral one, it is not too late yet!
Writer: Bar at Law, London, email: fuad444@hotmail.com
Thank you very much Mr. Fuad for Your nice subject & contents.we should re think again again to find out the cause of our world crisis nothing but only lack of morality.
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