I never knew Nasreen

Saydia Gulrukh first told me over the phone from Vancouver, Canada about Nasreen's death. The tragedy, with its suddenness, with the impacts that it left on the people's lives she touched in multiplicity of ways, was intensely moving. My sense of sorrow was exacerbated by a personal empathy for Zafrullah Bhai. Tragedy has this extraordinary ability to bring people, who have drifted apart for years, together.

A few days after that, I happened to call Dr Ahmed Kamal, the professor of history at Dhaka University. Kamal Bhai and Bhabi were visiting their daughter Shithi, in California. The first thing Kamal Bhai mentioned was how traumatised they were on the news of Nasreen's death. They could not sleep for a few nights thinking about Nasreen, Kamal Bhai said. The whole phone conversation, intended to be a routine social call, ended up being a reminiscence on Nasreen, her personality, her work, her memory.

There are speculations surrounding Nasreen's death. Questions are emerging from human rights activists. Was it a homicide? Did some individuals or groups wanted to obliterate her voice because of the threats she posed to the power that be? Because of her desire to speak truth to power? That concern was re-articulated in a recent meeting of Bangladesh Mohila Porishod, Ubinig, Naripakkha, along with a group of lawyers, human rights activists, and researchers. It was suggested that Nasreen's position against the coal extraction plan by Asia Energy, her part in the movement against the plundering of our oil and gas resources, her stance against immunity offered to the World Bank may have something to do with her untimely death. Claims were made that she had stumbled across some important documents in regard to Asia Energy's questionable coal dealings. Death may be the price she had to pay for her access to this forbidden knowledge (Jugantar, May 26).

Are these claims symptomatic of a conspiracy theory? Is there any empirical validity to these arguments? Did the driver act out of any individual malicious intent, or worked on behalf of some powerful interests? Or was it merely an unintentional episode of a momentary lapse? I do not know the answer to these questions. Knowing how things tend to unfold (or not to unfold) in Bangladesh, it is likely that we will never have any definitive answer.

Conspiracy theories are anchored in plurality of social, psychological, epistemological, anthropological terrains. Among other things, it helps us deal with a messy, camera obscura reality that cannot be explicated through intersubjectively available empirical means. Conspiracy theories, in that sense, may also be forms of resistance -- resistance against a system that thrives on its determination and ability to shut the members of society out of the knowledge base that makes concrete differences in their lives.

But then again, the line of demarcation between conspiracy theory and critical appropriation of reality is often fuzzy, shifting. They may constantly, sometimes explicitly, sometimes unannounced, creep into each other's space. Assumptions of conspiracy, be it about global capitalism, transnational corporations, or authoritarian state, may very well be validated by real life. Critical theorisation, on the other hand, may gather its life blood from the narratives of conspiracy in everyday life. As W I Thomas once reminded us, if you define a situation as real, it becomes real in its consequences.

There is an abundance of reasons, in relation to issues of life and death, why foul play is often suspected in Bangladesh. Investigations barely reach their logical, legitimate conclusions whether it is about the killing of Kazi Arif, Shah AMS Kibria, or garments workers, bombings in Udichi function, Bangla Nababarsha celebration, or CPB and Awami League meetings. Justice is obscured and defeated by layers of self-serving vested interests. Our state acts and speaks in the language of RAB, our political rhetoric is constantly impregnated by Orwellian doublespeak, our citizenry is deprived of basic material rights, justice, access to knowledge. The speculations about Nasreen's death needs to be read in that larger context. We often have to take recourse to speculations because we are almost never on a solid ground of democratically accessible information.

In the mean time, the police will perhaps continue to interrogate the driver of that fateful car, a member of the working class, a husband, a father of two children. Knowing how police interrogation works in our country, it is likely that his legal rights will be transgressed every now and then. Confessions will be sought through intimidation and torture. It is also not beyond the realm of rational speculation that scapegoats will be sought to camouflage the real movers and shakers. And someday, perhaps we will stop talking about Nasreen, as we have ceased talking about many others before her. Life will continue to go on, with its day in day out crises, defeats, and struggles.

I never knew Nasreen personally. Our personal worlds only intersected through our location in a common slice of history, a common membership in a snippet of collective social existence. Our paths overlapped only through common friends and acquaintances. But I know definitely, in my bones, that while Nasreen's death is a tragedy for her family, for the people who came to know her, it is also symptomatic of the tragedy of our political life. It is an epiphenomenon of the legitimation crisis of our state apparatus.

The task of nurturing Nasreen's memory is thus a task of retrieving the truth. The battle for seeking justice is thus a battle for a transparent democracy.

Piash Karim is Professor of Sociology and Political Science, Culver-Stockton College, USA.