Banshkhali: A burning shame for the nation

It is hardly believable that the gangsters of Banshkhali came with the motive of committing dacoity in a not so affluent house. In the ground floor of the two storied mud house of Tejendra Lal Shil, the marauders did not break open the steel almirah that might have contained the valuables. The burning to death of Tejendra Lal Shil's family in a rural outback, 30 km away from Chittagong was an act of such horror, such barbarism, that there is almost no Bangladeshi who does not feel personally shamed. To lock a family inside a house and burn them to death is barbaric.

A stunned nation reeled under the sheer audacity of the attack and ferocity of the revenge killing or hatred, presumably the handiwork of some disgruntled and deviant groups operating without resistance.

Let us not delude ourselves by thinking that the attack either in Banshkhali, Jhalakathi or Pabna was some isolated incident. It demonstrated much more forcefully that the country has been a "soft target" for criminals and the law enforcement agencies are hardly capable of challenging their might. The Muhuri murder in Chittagong, the raping and killing of teenage girls at Bagerhat and Dinajpur and, in recent times, two cases of burning in Jhalakathi and Pabna are grim reminders of our softness and the shoddiness of police investigation.

In a pathetic bid to be liberal and apathetic to all such cases of violence in the country, the political class has been gently nudged along the path of appeasement. Several weeks after the atrocity, only a local sub-inspector has been suspended for neglect of duty. There is no point pinning the entire blame on the authorities or the police. As for the police, apart from normal problems like corruption and overwork, it is hamstrung by familiar political pressures and there is no denying the fact that either the authorities or administration are paralysed by the lack of political will.

Charred beyond recognition and reduced to a fragile frame of ashes at Banshkhali, the 11 bodies in Tejendra Lal Shil's house lay scattered without anyone reaching for help.. Amazingly, after breaking open the door of the house forcibly, the murderous gang set the house ablaze without looting or touching anything. Even in a country where life is so easily extinguished, either on the road or river, every man, woman and child in the country has been united as rarely before by a collective sense of revulsion. In fact, the country has betrayed itself. The beastly act done, the mauraders melted away in the darkness of the night as the flames that had leapt skywards simmered. But the heat generated by the senseless killings in Banshkhali, Pabna and Jhalakathi, and the outrage stoked are far from ebbing even weeks after the incident.

People wonder if the state has revealed itself to be completely incapable of fighting the forces of violence and gangsterism. What happened at Banshkhali was an evil and would perhaps not have happened at the first place if the earlier murders in the Chittagong region had been properly investigated and the actual culprit or culprits booked. What we have seen is that some groups, regardless of the communities or religion they belong to, are carrying a political agenda whose entire basis is factionalism, sectarianism and, in most cases, communalism of the most vicious kind. It is the sort of political agenda that ends up harming its proponents as much as its victims because its very essence is destructive. This is now beginning to happen in many extremist groups who are getting eliminated by fighting with each other. Unfortunately, the administration, for reasons best known to itself, did not root out the evil forces at the outset and now they have spawned in many places.

The PM, performing Umrah at the Holy Kaba Sharif, was shocked beyond measure, and instructed the home minister and other ministers belonging to the Chittagong region to personally visit the site of carnage. But the PM could have done something more, as the Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee did to put all criticism to rest in the sensational Staines murder case at Orissa in 1999 (Staines and his two young sons were burnt alive while on missionary work in a jungle region of Orissa). When the needle of suspicion in the murder of Christian missionary Staines and his two sons was being pointed at the Bajrang Dal, an outfit linked to both the RSS and the ruling BJP, the Indian prime minister, besides sending three important cabinet ministers to the remotest Manoharpur village of Orissa, announced a judicial probe headed by a Supreme Court judge.

Before the horror, shock and grief of Banshkhali could die down, the nation learnt with stunned disbelief of two more attempts of burning to death by setting ablaze three houses at Jhalakathi and Pabna, the first one relating to a previous conflict and the last two totally clueless. In the burning case that shook Pabna, two innocent housewives and one child, fast asleep in their thatched houses, were burnt to death, while the father of the child, a day labourer, was away in Rajshahi.

In the Rampura area of Dhaka, Rahmat Ali, a businessman was shot by some extortionists in the area. The extortionist group then swooped on him again while he was recuperating in the post operative ward of the Mahakhali lung diseases hospital, and shot him to death in the presence of his wife and daughter, the next day.

Not even the harshest words could measure up to the indignation felt either at the Banshkhali killing or the killing of Rahmat Ali at the hospital at Mahakhali. Banshkhali has again surfaced in the news headlines for another atrocious incident. On the night of Eid, a teenage girl Rafeza was tortured to death after she was gang raped by four hoodlums. The gaping injury on her body and the brutality perpetrated on her remind us that barbarians are now living in Bangladesh. This is the sort of killing that belongs to the world's inventory of black deeds. One might call it a monumental aberration of the time-tested tolerance and harmony of rural life in this country.

The spate of violence, arson and killing relating to partisan politics and religious extremism is more than alarming. Once known as the most resilient of countries, that has weathered many crises like liberation struggle, famines, sleazy politicians, and insensitive administration, discord of the type we are witnessing now terrifies us the most. It is the only thing that can tear this country apart.

The country does have people belonging to many faiths, sects and communities, and they are spread all over this land. But when sectarian vengeance, communal discord, or partisan conflicts become major issues and politicians gain by fanning such discord, civil society as we know it, begins to unravel. We have seen this in the violence and ruthless elimination tactics of an entire nation resorted to by the Pakistani army in 1971, violence against the Sikhs in India in 1984, and the riots that followed the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in 1992. Now there is a feeling of uneasiness in the air in our country.

As the cycle of violence and killing continues in Chittagong and some other targeted regions in the country, the reason put forward for the Banshkhali massacre -- something related to dacoity -- is far from convincing. Overwhelmed by poverty, illiteracy, loss of farmland, drought, erosion and natural ravages, Chittagong and some other regions in the country are low on general expectations and high on religious fervour. People want to know for certain the reason that triggered the massacre either at Banshkhali or Jhalakathi or Pabna.

Undeniably true, all these horrific incidents appear to be only the logical culmination of years of apathy which has totally discredited the administration and allowed criminals and armed gangs to hold sway in the country. The recent killings have deepened the religio-political divide and hatred in the country more than ever and that's a dangerous symptom for the nation. As the country waits for the harsh truth to emerge, it can only rue the fact that differences are still resolved in this country by roasting people to death or cutting them into pieces.

Md Asadullah Khan, a former teacher of physics, is Controller of Examinations, BUET.