Baishey February: The Ekushey Hangover and the Dawning of Fuller Futures

It is the 22nd of February, and  Ami chetonar gaan gayna,  is the refrain from a growing number of maturing deshi activists and observers, openly rejecting the out of tune Ekushey Murti Puja (21st Idol Worship) of the Bengali Nationalists.

The people who died and were injured in the police firing of 1952 would be disgusted at what blood capitalism, intellectual lobotomy and middle class danda fikir has been prosecuted in their names, again and again and again. Its about  an epistemic equality and pluralism, not Banglawash. Idiots.

This time last year, the hypernationalist Shahbag was in full delusion in . It had began openly lying about what was occurring in front of its very nose. The government, which it is now accepted, had planned the Shahbag from the onset, fired on Friday prayer protesters, who were voicing their opposition to deeply insulting statements coming out of bloggers involved with the Shahbag movement. Corrupt journalists belonging to the CPJ crying wolf to the international gallery, making out like the events were all about them.

We know what this was gearing up for.

• Mass firings on Jamaat e Islami processions on 28th February 2013 protesting the verdict against arguably their most innocent leader, Delwar Hussain Sayeedee. See JI supporter's feb28.info  movement website for more.
• Unprecedented government brutality upon unarmed protesters during 5th and 6th May 2013. See the Motijheel Massacre Archives for more
• An IDF style attack on Jamaat stronghold Satkhira district in December 2013 . 
• The immoral and illegitimate electoral coup of 5th January 2014

Below is a blog post from last year, this date and significance needs to be raised in a dynamic way.


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This is hard to explain, but important that you understand, at least slightly.

Today (friday) after Jummah in Bangladesh there were a lot of demonstrations flowing out of mosques in Bangladesh.  A day after the exploitative commemoration of students shot and killed by government forces in 1952, four people are reportedly killed by the police and scores if not hundreds injured.

Protestors were objecting to insulting antiIslamic writings on the web somewhere, from authors quite close to the centre of the Shahbag movement. The Shahbag movement consists of a large trendy mob demanding executions of prominent leaders of political Islam accused of war crimes, and the exclusion of political Islam from the body politic. The Awami League government is broadly aligned and supportive of this movement. One of its student leaders, Dr Imran H Sarkar in fact is one of Shahbag's defacto spokesperson.

The picture below shows police firing at people in Baitul Mukkarram, the national mosque. Maybe you've prayed there or seen it in your namaz time calenders, or visited the Islamic Foundation on a trip to Dhaka. There are other pictures, of brothers bloodied and lying motionless, other cowering as police fired indiscriminantly at them.

It is the kind of image we are used to seeing coming out of Palestine or Chechnya, not an independant Muslim majority country.

My thinking is now that the wheels are starting to come of the Shahbag Bandwagon more sensible heads will prevail. We hear this as more reasonable figures for fromm inside the awami camp distance themselves from the offending bloggers and Shahbag. 

The religious establishment is a lot larger than jamat, and the party has pissed a lot of people off in its history.The processions across the country today were not pro jamat but more an alliance against a common threat, the autocratic awami league. 

Decolonial duas for all who live and die.