I am an avid reader, and one day I stumbled upon a great book written by one of the greatest scholars living in our time, Richard Dawkins ... THE ANCESTOR'S TALE. The structure of the book imitates, purpose- and skillfully, THE CANTERBURY TALES by chaucer, where people of every trade joins a pilgrimmage to canerbury. And dawkins replaced trades by species. The book starts with the journey of man, to be more precise, Homo Sapiens Sapiens towards the very point where LIFE began to evolve ... some billions of years ago ... and chapter after chapter will introduce you with an immediate ancestor, astride a point of bifurcation, along the journey to past. The book is huge, and I'm proud to finish it within a week. I read it like a zombie, I can remember ... and Dawkins is one of my most favourite authors now.
However, I would make a late start with something I came to know from Dawkins about fungi. One of the difference between me and the fungi is, I move along, and they don't. But I have to gather nutrition to survive, sustain and multiplicate, and so do the fungi. My way is to move along and stuff things up to my digestive system, and the fungi just sit there, and let their digestive system grow and spread and spread over a great area ... if I'm not mistaken.
The so called religious turmoil in Bangladesh is indeed a fungus system. Apparently it simply grows on some remote pockets of the country, but with a good look at it, we can see its roots spreading very far and deep around Bangladesh. The thing is, nurturing this poison ivy has let it take such a shape that everything becomes granted if you do it in the name of religion. Murdering people, looting and plundering, rape and riot ... almost everything.
It's easy to blame it on the Madrasseh pupils ... eventually they're the ones who are caught with their pants down (though actually they wear there pants a bit higher, so the ankles are visible) ... but everyday I see numbers of complascent faces, who approves of those acts and feel victorious in the holy war against nothing. Committing a crime is bad, supporting its continuation is aggravatingly worse.
I listen to these people saying that it has become an old story whenever it comes to our liberation war back in 1971. Accepting the fact that a defeat precedes their march towards victory is disturbing for these fellows. But was it altogether a defeat for them? Haven't we raised them up from ashes, just to stab us again? We have cultured this fungi deep into us, way around us, and many of us are now following the old but effective doctrine, if you can't beat them, join them.
Islam was never in danger in this delta before 1971. It's the year when the largest muslimocide has taken place in the face of the earth, obviously by other so called muslims, tha pakistani army and their civilian sycophants, and very vocally in the name of Islam. It's not new in the history of Islam that fratricide would eventually be popular among the muslims, the Hashimis fought against the Umayyas, the sunnis fought against the Shiites; and muslims fought against theneighbouring infidels but not in a single war could Muslims be killed in millions, and the rapist pakistani army succeeded in achieving that summit in the manslaughtering championship ... and planted their seeds before they quit. And as a nation it is a disgrace to us that not only we failed in uprooting these fungi, but also condescended to join the funguskind, and eventually let them step into the government. We have cheered for a freedom fighter and voted for war-criminals.
Now the preparation of the fungi has almost culminated. The snake coils up before biting, and I believe the eye-washing bombings and shootings will cease before the final attack, allowing a fake assurance of peace and harmony for a couple of months. Our intellectuals had been tortured to death once in 1971, and perhaps will again be in near future ... Humayun Azad is perhaps one of them test kills. As history rhymes itself (I love Mark Twain for that), I can see blood everywhere, blood-pools, blood-dripdrops, and bloodstains. That's the way the usurpers rush in.
Though I'm not much of a fan of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, but one of his famous directives was to build castles in every home against the enemies. It's too late now to do that, but the very optimism that forms the very core of Bangaliana, the spirit to be a Bengali, still makes me dream of a better Bangladesh. Joy Bangla.
