Bigotry indeed!

As our judiciary, especially the lower section, is still tied down by the executive, serious questions regarding such treatments are also being raised regularly, and rightly so. Our technocratic energy advisor and BoI (Board of Investment) chairman Mahmudur Rahman's unexpected invectives against prominent citizens of the country and his dragging them to the dock of a court on a very non-specific and flimsy ground and that, too, in rather an abject fashionentangling them in a criminal case which is rather rare against prominent citizensdefinitely laid bare the immaturity, as well as insanity, on the part of a so-called responsible incumbent.

Meanwhile, did Mr. Rahman really knowprior to rushing to the court to file a defamation suitwhat the principal accused in his suit, Manzur Elahi, said in that meeting and did he (Elahi) really implicate the BoI chairman in his comment? TV footage has given a different account whichmany sayhas weakened the ground of the lawsuit. Maybe, that gentleman is now biting his fingers. Anyway, his act might have done the damage already and, I believe, his act of insanity has also pierced the conscience of the nation in no small measure.

In fact, he not only took resort to the law, which is his democratic right, he also sat in on judgment of people's rights to citizenship. How to explain this queer desire of an official incumbent? He invariably claims that he is not under obligation to satisfy anybody other than his government and the prime minister. By the same token, can it not be asked: which free person is under obligation to toe the line of BoI, and who has given him the right to say: such and such person should not be allowed to stay in the country? Is this country a property of any person or for that matter any government?

It is a simple fact that governments come and go, but the country belongs to all the people of the country. In passing, ministers belonging to the government have made a variety of remarks previously but none was reported to have made such an audacious and, of course, ludicrous remark. Meanwhile, I wonder how a person can have the desire to drag a person like Rehman Sobhan to the dock. I am sure the person that has tried implicating Rehman Sobhan is totally ignorant of his contributions to the cause of rationality, as well as knowledge-dissemination, in this region of the globe and beyond.

It can be said, quite confidently, that the incriminations against the five prominent and well-established persons are highly questionable and highly uncalled-for. While talking to a private TV channel Suranjit Sen Gupta reminded us of an age-old axiom which says: A little learning is a dangerous thing. Did he really go too far in depicting the antics of our precocious energy advisor?

In this regard, I also take the opportunity to quote from the Bangladesh Observer editorial of August 10,which, in all likelihood, puts him in his rightful place: "The energy advisor is not a public representative nor is he a reputed man in his profession. One wonders what his source of power is. If such upstarts start dictating the terms of public discourse in the country, it is indeed a bad trend. As a so-called technocrat, Rahman should lie low and try to justify his position by delivering the services for which he has been hired. Unfortunately, he is behaving as if he owns the country."

For quite a long time, some ministers have shown their acrimonious attitude towards the research bodies: TIB and CPD. It, however, baffles me what damage the research bodies are doing to the country. Are they not serving the common people by truly putting the development and corruption scenario in the right perspective? Is it a crime to keep people updated and conscious? A section of the ministers has many a complaint against TIB and CPD. But, do the conscious people corroborate the ministers' claims?

The bottom line is that free thinking, freedom of expression and the like are the core issues which have traveled this long to stay. Efforts to curb them were there, are there and, perhaps, will be there. The society we now live in is purely a knowledge-based one where information is power. Bigotry is thus simply ludicrous. One can at best lament one's ignorance but taking recourse to coercive measures to cover up one's ignorance is bound to rebound on the doer. Hopefully, the concerned bears this in mind and acts accordingly to remain immune from unnecessary and, of course, unmanageable fuss.

Kazi SM Khasrul Alam Quddusi is Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, University of Chittagong.