When The Police Became Music ‘Vigilantes’

SALEEM SAMAD

I did not know when the police were given responsibility for ensuring singers sing to the proper tune of the song, especially ‘Rabindra Sangeet’ (Tagore Songs).

Tomorrow, they will haul singers singing ‘Nazrul Geeti’ or band (or pop) music for not strictly following the music grammar.

Remember, the police arrested folk singers and send them to prison for singing folk songs, which they said had hurt the feeling of the Muslims.

During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, two Baul (mystic) singers—Rita Dewan and Shariat Sarker were arrested separately under the repressive Digital Security Act, for allegedly “hurting the religious sentiments of Muslims.”

Social media is flooded with protests and satire posts by academics, journalists, social justice advocates, human rights defenders and of course the netizens.

Police recently harassed a nondescript Youtuber and video-blogger Hero Alom, who was born and lives in Bograand was summoned to the office of the Detective Police.

He was not charged after he signed an apology on a piece of paper stating that he will never sing Tagore Songs in distorted tune and proper pronunciation. It is understood that some aggrieved persons had complained against Alom to the police. Is it a crime to sing inappropriately?

How do the law enforcement officers understand Hero Alom’ssongs on the YouTube channel were distorted? Are they certified by a musical institute or themselves graduates from a music college or an institute – likeChhayanaut, Bangladesh Academy of Fine Arts (BAFA), Government Music College or any recognised music institutions in the country?

If they are not certified music experts, have they consulted with a music connoisseur or teacher of RabindraSangeet? Unfortunately, they have not!

The nation has not forgotten that songs and poetry penned by Rabindranath Tagore were banned from broadcast by the Dhaka station of Radio Pakistan in 1967 during the military junta of General Ayub Khan.

Tagore is considered taboo in Pakistan since the partition in 1947. Finally, all works of Tagore were officially banned in government media (Radio Pakistan, PTV, government-owned newspapers) by the orders of powerful information and broadcasting ministerKhwajaShahabuddin and vetted by East Pakistan governor Monem Khan in 1967.

One reason is that he is an Indian. Secondly, he was dubbed as a Hindu – which fortunately he was not. His family practised Brahmmo – believing in One God, singing the Upanishad’s ‘ekeshwar’ and distanced themselves from idolatry. His father, Debendranath Tagore, adopted the Brahmofaith and does away with the rituals of Sanatan Dharma (faith).

Rabindranath Tagore is a poet of Bengal, India, and the world. Songs of Nobel laureate Rabindranath are national anthems in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and of course,in the minds and hearts of the Bangalee diaspora (from both sides of Bengal) living abroad.

The Islamists in Bangladesh for decades have been demanding of the government to trash the national anthem written by Tagore, who is dubbed a Hindu and an Indian.

Scores of Mullahs in Waz-Mehfil(Islamic rallies) uploaded videos on YouTubethreatening to forcibly change the national anthem, which they explain compromises the culture, language and spirit of majoritarian Sunni Muslims.

Well, the Islamist has not only called to get rid of the national anthem but also dared to speak nonsense against the national flag, and state constitution. They debunkedPahelaBaishak (Bangla New Year), Ekushey February (International Mother’s Language Day) and the rich cultural heritage of Bengal.

They taunt at independence war which created Bangladesh, after a humiliating surrender of marauding Pakistan military at Dhaka on 16th December 1971. They challenge the figures of 3 million victims of genocide and said Muslim soldiers cannot kill Muslims.

In the Waz, they speak foul regarding women’s education, women’s empowerment and women in leadership.

Islamist hate-speech does attack Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and Adivasis. They warn them that the land they are born among the majoritarian Muslims. Even, they provoke the government to ban Ahmadiyya – whom they say are not Muslims.

This does not end here!

The Islamists coerced the authorities to change the school textbooks in Bangladesh. The authority deleted several pieces of literature and poetry written by Hindu litterateurs. Even the sketches in the textbooks have been replaced by girls and women in headcovers and men wearing ‘Tupi’ (cap). The boys in half-pants or shorts have been replaced with pyjama and panjabi.

Well, to conclude the police and civil administration have turned a blind eye to the Waz-Mefils spitting hate-speech against the state authority, the spirit of the liberation war, and the religious and ethnic minorities.

Not to be surprised, none of the Islamic evangelists has been prosecuted under the controversial Digital Security Act, nor faced music of justice.

Is it not true that the draconian cyber law is only used against critics of the government, opposition, journalists, netizens, cultural activists and human rights defenders and not the Islamist hate-speech mongers?

First published in The News Times, 30 July 2022

Saleem Samad, is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He can be reached at: saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter @saleemsamad

Bangladesh’s Rotten-Mango Crisis

TAHMINA ANAM

As an apprentice anthropologist, I once had the misfortune of attempting to converse with the Indian critical theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Professor Spivak, who translated the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida and wrote the famous essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” was visiting Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I went to meet her. After patiently listening while I asked a series of dumb questions about discursive practice, she turned and said, cryptically, “I came for the mangoes.”

Ah, the mango. It may be a cliché pitfall for the South Asian writer, but for this academic, famous for her impenetrable prose, the mango brought the esoteric down to earth. Ms. Spivak is regarded as one of the great minds of her generation, but in Dhaka, she was, like everyone else, there for the mangoes.

In Bangladesh, the obsession with the mango comes from its evanescence. The fruit’s intense seasonality means that even the more prosaic varieties are available for only a few weeks of the summer. The most prized is the langra: Its floral, slightly sour flavor is more complex than the overly sweet chaunsa or Alphonso mangoes. Aficionados love the langra in part because it is almost impossible to catch at its peak — too green and your tongue will swell and itch; a few hours late and its flesh turns to mush.

But this year, the langra is nowhere to be found. The markets are empty of the sought-after mango.

On the roads that lead into Dhaka, the precious fruit lies rotting by the truckload. The reason: chemical poisoning. The langras are said to be contaminated with formalin, a strong solution of formaldehyde that is sprayed on the fruit in an effort to extend its life. The government responded by setting up checkpoints on the roads to the city.

It isn't just the mangoes. Earlier this year, the Institute of Public Health found that 47 of 50 food items tested were adulterated. Formalin is used to preserve both fruit and fish. Turmeric has been found tainted with lead. Since June 18, the police have set up mobile formalin-detection units, confiscating thousands of tons of locally produced and imported fruit.

The fruit industry is up in arms, claiming that the police are using faulty devices and crippling the industry. Last week, the fruit sellers’ association went on strike, and their produce rotted in the warehouses of the port city of Chittagong. In the weeks leading up to the month of Ramadan, the tussle has been fierce, with demonstrations and counter-demonstrations taking place across Dhaka. And the langra has vanished.

The practice of spraying fruit with formalin is one problem, but more worrying is that the entire food chain is compromised — the soil itself contaminated by toxins that are almost impossible to eradicate. Bangladesh was born in the shadow of famine, and since independence in 1971, a series of government measures have put increasing pressure on farmers to keep the rice yields increasing every year. This has meant exploiting the land to its limits: intensive farming, extensive irrigation and the unchecked use of groundwater.

A result is that Bangladesh has made great strides in becoming self-sufficient in food, tripling rice yields in 40 years: In 1970, the rice crop was 0.76 tons per acre; in 2012, it was 1.9 tons. The increase is the result of using high-yield, short-duration varieties, which require the greater application of fertilizers and a huge increase in irrigation. In the last 30 years, the use of fertilizers has grown by 400 percent, and pesticides have been widely overused. And as the water table gets lower, the salinity increases and contaminants like arsenic leach into wells that provide drinking water. The land has borne the cost of our need to climb out of famine.

Dhaka’s brouhaha over contaminated fruit speaks to a growing chasm between the urban and the rural. This broken, congested city is where we have placed all our hopes for a better Bangladesh. The capital is where you will find the budding start-ups, the English-speaking college graduates, the cellphone users, the social networkers — all the engines of economic growth. And as we become more removed from the traditional modes of food production, the agricultural hinterland is being treated as nothing more than the food source for a hungry city.

The great irony here is that Bangladeshis romanticize the rural. The greatest compliment you can pay a Bangladeshi is to say she is “matir manush,” a person of the earth. The country, as the American anthropologist James Ferguson put it, provides “alternative moral images,” a counterpoint to the complexities — the allure, as well as the danger — of rapid urbanization. The rural continues to act as a repository of our fantasies about national identity; it is a favorite subject of every cultural artifact, from poetry to contemporary art. Our touchstone is Rabindranath Tagore, the great bard of the pastoral in Bengali literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But when we place checkpoints on the roads into our city, we are saying that we care only if urban citizens are poisoned; we couldn’t care less if the contaminated fruit is consumed outside of Dhaka. Ms. Spivak may have used the mango as a way to express her rootedness, but a taste for mangoes reveals a person to be among the few who can afford to consume them.

The truth is, the fruit is grown by the rural poor and fed to the urban rich. To keep the city sated with mangoes, the crop must be abundant and it must be beautiful. And for that to happen, formalin must be involved.

As Ramadan approached and the langra disappeared, the fruit sellers and the state came to an agreement. The fruit sellers would end their strike so that the population could sit down to its dates and apples after a long day of fasting; the police agreed to look into obtaining new devices to test the levels of formalin in fruit.

Unless, however, we think critically about the moral economy of food, about sustainability as well as growth, our food will remain tainted. If the rationality of urbanism — the city as the treasured engine of growth, the country merely its fodder — continues to dominate, we will merely be polishing the surface of a slowly rotting core.

First published in The International New York Times, July 2, 2014

Tahmima Anam, a writer and anthropologist, is the author of the novel “A Golden Age.”