The New Class

THE NEW CLASS Bangladesh appeared as a distinct geographical unit comprising 4,00,000 square meter area in 1201 at the advent of Muslim rule under Shamsuddin Ilias Shah who even being an alien Muslim identified himself with this land by assuming the little if Shah-e-Bangla. Before him the political landscape of this part of South Asia was dotted with a multitude of small states. King Sasanka and the Pala rulers made abortive attempt to unite these small states. Unlike the Vedic Hindu and Buddhist predecessors the Muslim rulers treated the lower caste (though brought under the fold of Hindu religion by the invader Aryans, these hapless people belonged to the Dravidians and were made slaves by the Aryan idolater preachers and the ruler invaders) with compassion and social equality giving them a sense of social up liftment. This unique treatment of the lower caste resulted in their mass conversion to Islam. Thus a bond of union was established and the Muslims adopted many of the cultural norms of this soil. Till then the Vedic Hindus vehemently opposed Bengali language despising it as impure and evil. The Bengali literateures were killed. Many of them fled for life. The Muslim rulers brought them back and encouraged and patronized them for its development and free entry into social life and in government offices. The Muslim rulers and elites in the court and in government services understood the language of the heart of the downtrodden people who finding liberty, equality and fraternity in Islam joined hands and heart and head to develop the Bengali nationalism. Three unique identity-Islam, Liberalism and Bengali nationalism blended into one to form the great Bengali Nationalism, whose people are most intelligent and benevolent rulers, diligent, social and courageous and enterprising. The people of this part of South Asian subcontinent had for centuries nursed and harmoniously blended the conflicting pulls and push of globalism and nationalism and practiced three great sentiments of Islam as universal faith, liberalism as the great Asian political, economic, social and civil culture and the Bengali nationalism most consciously. So great was this force of inter religious harmony and unity achieved by this unique

blend that they enjoyed de-facto independence till the treacherous and conspirator British defeated and became the ruler of Bengal and unleashed their reign of terror, plundering and looting, raping and killing and all that a satanic monster can contemplate. To carry on their evil design of perpetuating their rule they fixed the Muslim rulers and elite as their main targets to eliminate or make cripple by confiscating their properties and dishonoring them. They knew that it would not be an easy job, so they extended their hands of friendship to the Vedic Hindus showering on them booties and other gratifications. The Vedic Hindus to avenge the dishonor that they had suffered in 12th country onwards by the Muslim rulers, snatched off their right to exploit the lower caste most eagerly and readily joined hands. Thus two evils forces one of them the British who were defeated in war by the Muslims at different periods of history and nursed in their heart hatred against the Muslims and the other is Vedic Hindus who felt wounded at the liberty of the lower caste, made a satanic oath to disjoin the unity of the Muslims and the lower caste. Thus the British most successfully raised suspicion and hatred between two brotherly communities that lived in peace, harmony and unity for hundreds of years. When the British had to live finally in 1947 they hammered the last nail in the coffin of unity to give their design the lasting shape by hastily drawn arbitrary boundary cutting across the distinct and legitimate geographical, linguistic, cultural and historical unit of Bangladesh. This cross cutting was the most evil handwork of the united conspiracy of the British and the Vedic Hindus. It was designed to leave the Bangladeshi people to be the victims of Vedic Hindu ruled Indian hegemony by imbuing the spirit of nationalism in the Banglees which will result in the independence and make it easy for India to exploit it both politically and economically. The sprit of nationalism eloved by the British broke the Muslim ottoman Empire into pieces and later in 1947 being afraid that a greater Bengal with some sort of industrial and rich agricultural base and the unity of Muslim and lower caste would make Bangladesh a strong and mighty nation, broke it once for all. Thus the evil breath of the British fueled by the Vedic Hindus burnt to ashes the hopes and aspirations of the people of this part of South Asia. The partition of

1947 was so unnatural that a renown social thinker and litérateur ruefully described it “an orgy of division and destruction. The emergence of Bangladesh runs counter to conventional linguistic or cultural nationalism based on ‘one nation theory’ nor conform to religious nationalism enunciated in ‘two nation theory’. Bangladesh was a continuous old nation broken to pieces to fulfill an evil design to keep her always under unscrupulous challenge.”

The political elites who claim to bring Bangladesh into existence did not create a new nation out of nothing. These political elites educated and neo-cultured by the British legitimized their power and authority by befooling the people and imparting in them a strange and incongruous convergence of aspirations. The British education taught them to rule and exploit and to throw away the great ideal of Bengal i.e. liberalism, the practice and tradition that existed in pre British South Asian political culture. Practically the emergence of Bangladesh may be contributed to-

The origin of nationalism is based on two dominant theories: (I)

(II)

Premedical view: ‘the essence of a nation is a psychological bond that joins a people and differentiates it in their subconscious conviction of its members, from all other people in an attachment that stems from the culture and is inevitably invaded in such matters of social existence, contiguity and kin connection and being born in a particular social practice.’ Thus nationalism is rooted in non-rational foundation of personality. It is not a historical consequence as history is not evidence on which theory are tested or a charter drawn up to justify present decisions. It is the principal way to apprehend the spirit of a community; it is the only way of learning the language of the heart of a particular society. The instrumental view: It challenges the view that nations are inscribed into nature and nationality is the ultimate destiny of ethnic and cultural groups and nationalism arises from the transition from agro-literate society to industrial imposition of a high culture on a society. Nationalism originates in a threatened or underdeveloped societies where the intelligentsias mobilize the masses around development goals and political elitist drums up the faction to legitimize their power. Despite the constraints of pre-existing cultures or religious practices, particular elite groups manipulate peoples sentiment to create political identities. Thus nations are artifacts and imagined political communities.

(i) British policy to divide and create everlasting suspicion, mistrust between the two communities of a nation. (ii) The Vedic Hindu conspiracy to cripple the Muslim liberal Banglee identity of the people in this part of greater Bengal and to dominant them. (iii)The provoked reaction of the people aroused by unscrupulous intelligentsia and political elite. (iv)Reaction of a marginalized community in quest of its due share in economic and political milieu. (v) An elite conflict and finally (vi)Failure in national integration. No body can deny the fact that Bangladesh both politically and culturally is an integral part of greater South Asian civilization. During the last centuries’ cultural point of view, Bengal postulates the consciousness of a common culture in South Asia and provides the source for the harmonious and peacefully communication between people of different segments bound by great cultural tradition, formed world view, value of systems and personality-all the characteristics of civilization as a whole in spite of a few internal differences and change of South Asian sub continental civilization. The Bangladeshi masses who had paid for victory with their blood their honour, their lives, lives of their near and dear ones were hoping to liberate themselves from both the old and the new form of subjugation. The western developed countries and the Indian ruler class Vedic Hindu hegemonies were seeking a new system of domination, geo-economics

along with geo-politics in the hope that it would allow them to maintain their dominating presence in order to continue to exploit the natural resources and the poor manpower as well as to use them as markets for their ever expanding economies or bases of their geopolitical ambition organized and run by the antinational pro hegemonic reactionary civil society. Culturally the great tradition of Bengali civilization embodied in social behavior derived from scriptures form the core of an indigenous civilization and its sources consciously examined for defining its social, political, moral, ethical, legal, economic and aesthetic values. The great Bengali tradition depicts a way of life and as such is a vehicle of and standard for those who share it to identify with one another as members of a common civilization. The preponderance of religion in Bengal since 1200 A.D. further improved and purified the culture by weakening the Vedic norms of creating groups and sub groups of lower castes and enslaving folding them into the Hindu culture. The ancient culture of liberalism promoted the purge of folk elements drawn from Vedic Hindu Aryan mythology. Liberalism got a great boost in the revivalist approach that provides the bedrock of Bengali nationalism, surfaced in 194Os under Abul Hashem and Sarat Bose axis, which was most vicious and conspiratically out done by Aryan Brahminist Nehru Kripalani, Patel, Gandhi and British evil nexus. The key to understanding of society in Bangladesh lies in proper appreciation of the dynamics of her rural settlement where the communities were a simple from of local governments under which the inhabitants of the country lived for time immemorial. Those were little republics, having nearly every thing that they wanted independent of any foreign relations. They lasted where nothing else last. These ideal communities had always been the solid foundation of oriental liberalism. Even Karl Mark had to conclude that ‘the simple from of rural community in South Asia is a quite exceptional one’. The rural areas of greater Bengal was remarkable for its single man governing institution and it was customary for rural inhabitants to pay some sort of respect to certain individual usually the oldest resident tenant and to obey his orders implicitly in all matters.

Then came to the invader Aryans who enslaved the people, took over the possession of the land and become master rulers. These Aryan rulers formed joint villages as administrative and production unit. They created a tiny booty seeker leisure group in control of the village resources by few families and their domination was more social than economic in nature. Their interrelated characteristics dominated the rural scene having several attributes. First, (i)A rural area was a distinct administrative unity. (ii) It was an economic isolate and (iii) It was a social entity. (As an administrative unit it preformed three main functions) (i) A typical village government was responsible for collection of land revenue and for management of wasteland (ii) It had its own mechanism for maintaining law and order and for settlement of internal as well as intra village disputes and (iii) It under took public works. The headman had judiciary and policing power and protection. His actual influence depended on his personal abilities, social status and intelligence and an earnest desire to do well for the village. Secondly, Economic self-sufficiency was another stylized characteristic of rural areas. The people had conception of an ideal society comprising categories of people and they tried to make the rural area as close as possible to that ideal. Each village attracted to itself a body of resident craftsmen and menials, who were not paid in cash but were employed by the headman on non fixed remuneration in the from if a bit of rent free land or in the form of crop payment at the time of harvest. A typical rural society was based on domestic industry and agriculture, which gave them self-supporting power. There were sufficient inter village trade which was conducted through weekly markets and occasional fairs. Third, A rural area was a fundamental social unit. Though the lower caste were not allowed access to temples the groups secluded in

religious context played important role in other activities but were economical exploited and were ignored in social activities yet village solidarity found expression when challenged by other villages. The village headman, the mosques and the temple maintained inter relationship between the villagers. During the Muslim rule the lower castes enmass took refuge in Islam and were incorporated in the society on the equal footing and even gathered social strength. Traditional interpretation of South Asian history reveals that rural areas in Bengal were an idealized form existed for 550 years before the nasty British rule. The rural communities were destabilized by the monetization of the rural economy in the wake of innovations introduced by the rogue ruthless British imperialist which seriously undercut the selfsufficiency of the rural areas. The only drawback was that in rural areas the communities existed with a given scale of convenience without intercourse with other areas, without the desire and efforts indispensable for social advance. Even before the Muslim conquest of Bengal the spread of Islam in Bengal was a rational reaction of the lower caste against the oppression of Brahmin the highest caste Aryan by birth. The exclusive cast system of the Hindus had reduced the Dravidians- the sons the soil whom the Aryans called semi-amphibious aborigins and turned them into merely the hewers of wood and drawer of water for a set of masters-the Aryan higher castes, in whose eyes they were unclean beasts and altogether abominable. So, they naturally accepted Islam that emphasized and practiced the equality of men in the sight of God and presented to a despised and wretched population the concept of equality. This conversion of lower castes to Islam was never forced upon them. Had it been that, the entire India that had been under Muslim rule for 600 years, there would be no Hindus at all whether low or high caste. The distribution of Muslim in different regions of South Asia clearly contradicts the hypothesis that the Muslim political power was the most crucial variable in the spread of Islam. The fact that Muslim remained in insignificant minority in Delhi region where Muslim rule for more than 600 years clearly suggest that Islam in South Asia was not imposed from above. The Muslim rulers

of Bengal most gladly adopted in Bengal society intermingling with other races or communities and accepted food habit, modes of life. Not only that, the Muslim employed many Hindu higher castes also in higher government positions and even as generals in army. They adopted a policy of rapprochement of Hindus and Muslims. Mughal rulers in Bengal were altogether indifferent to Islam. There were frequent complaints that Hindus revenue functionaries exploited converted Muslim peasants during Muslim rule only because they have embraced Islam. The dominance of Brahmin and other castes over the lower casts was viewed not as exploitation but of divine order. To the lower castes the Brahmins were described as ‘a priest by appearance but a butcher at heart’. The Brahmins were equated with lice and bugs that suck the blood of human beings. Islam’s egalitarianism vis a vis the Aryan Brahminical oppression of the low castes and their employment in high position and even in the army checked the spree of conversion to a great extent. These high ranking Hindu officer and the army generals threatened the lower castes of dire consequences if they embraced Islam and there were many instances that they persecuted a good number of lower castes and even raped their women in front of their parents, husbands and children and hushed up the incident most ruthlessly so that those are not reported to Muslim rulers. History reveals the preponderance of Islam in Bengal to mass conversion of even-Buddhists to Islam to save their lives from the oppression of the Hindu rulers. Thus, a famous historian observes ‘the inhabitants were under the influence of a crude form of Buddhism and despised as they were by the proud Brahmin Aryan rulers who held them in disdain, they apparently welcomed the Muslim missionaries most gladly. Bad blood between Hindu Aryan rulers and Buddhists conceivably had favored conversion to Islam. When the Buddhist were being mercilessly persecuted by the Sena and Pala kings it is Islamic missionaries that saved them from being totaling annihilated. The early British rules in Bengal unleashed a reign of terror in the socio-economic sphere, “The conduct of the company’s servants upon these, furnished one of the most remarkable instances upon record of the power of interest to extinguish all sense of justice, and even of shame” (James Mill). The sea change in economic structure of Bengal under

British rule deprived the Muslims of all political and social and economic rights. History for so long has accommodated co-existence of systems, which needed each other to prevent, or at least control conflict of interest. During these long periods anti human rights and democratic forces through their worldwide propaganda machinery camouflaged themselves as champions of human rights and democracy. The last decade has witness their swift and decisive moves. Threats to democracy are now very much real rather them mere ideological shadows. Being protected by military might they created new socioeconomic forces and has panoply of people around them without whom they would not exit. They gave rise to a new class, a set of interests that gather those who stand to gain by letting their patrons free access in their national democratic affairs, this new class are trained to be cosmopolitans in nature and by their mindset. They are rich in there intangible assets, three “C”s that translate into preeminence and power in a global economy: concepts- the best and latest knowledge of ideas; competence- the ability to operate at the highest standard irrespective of person, place and period; and connections- the best relationships which provide access to the resources of other people and organizations around the world. As all new dominant classes were at lest initially rather small this new class is also a rather small category comprising not more them .001% percent of the population of a country. Then there are those who have not yet quite made it but feel or want to feel, a part of the new class. They even imitate its ways in so far as they have the wherewithal to de so. Dominant new classes do not now run everything directly or even indirectly, but they set the tone. Their values become prevailing values and preferences inform the aspirations of many. In some way they provide the standard, which many others adopt. Setting the tone in an underrated social phenomenon. This has always existed. The Bangladeshi middle class though numerically nondominant for a quarter of a century adopted the tone of much smaller upper class and ultimately a portion of them blew away the mist

around the old class that had gradually lost strength to set the tone. The three “C”s-concept, competences and connection led this new class to get established and the trained administrative elites- the bureaucracy were drawn to them with the evil design to exploit those non-trained ambitious new class for their personal and class benefit. These new class created a “risk society”, not one which offer them new opportunities. The world to them is one of chances, of encouragement to do things, take risk and seek liberation from the dependency culture. The praise of entrepreneurship is praise of innovation, initiative and creativity. Meritocracy, the availability of opportunities to all who seek and merit them is class-consciousness. So is the construction of life that satisfies personal generation even at the cost of the next generations. To retain their social and economic and political position they agree to a manageable level of public expenditure and even to manage that introduces a new combination of taxation and public and private commitments. This becomes an attractive package of values. It forms the basis of a strand of political philosophy- a mere political language. The politics of the new predicament is as confused and confusing as politics of the old ages when the old groups lost their strength and the emerging new nationalists had not yet formed any clear pattern. All rising classes worry about their survival and if not in money or status which can be ensured for future generation, technology based education fit the bill perfectly. Even it sounds egalitarian while in fact it differentiates as much earlier instruments of the self-perpetuation of class. In the other side of the picture there rest all the disadvantages; lower incomes, higher unemployment, a worse health status, greater exposure to mishaps, less investment, civic and political pressure and not the least more educational problems among the children of the lower class. The mass education in Bangladesh is divided into five categories: (I) Technology (II) Cadet schools run by top military brasses with quality education (III) Governments schools that provide quality education with much lower cost (IV) Private schools with no quality education but high cost and (V) the religious schools neglected by all and run by philanthropists and small donations from the locality. It is not just

earning that mark the difference, sociopolitical status is the main difference. The resulting problem of cumulative disadvantages is not just one of inequality. All human societies are stratified. More significant is the fact that the lines drawn in meritocratic structures are stark and for many, final selection favourong minority with the means. The result is emergency of two worlds one of a wider range of life chances for a very few and one of exclusion with the vast majority. This is exactly what is happening in Bangladesh in which the new class sets the tone. Those inside the skyscraper of opportunity may not make it all the way to the top; the top is very far away these days for the majority, who cannot realistically hope to join the exclusive club of billionaires, even if its membership has tripled in the last decade. A similar case is there for the new inequality between those who have made it or may make it, and those who do not. The new class is particularly acqunimous about the absolute inequalities. They create an uncomfortable life for all with a widespread sense of social dislocation and moral corrosion. This is where one further faction introduced for the growing conflict between the new class and the new aspirants, not the mass people. The new class can do without the work of many. There are numerous hangers on, some of them unskilled and low paid, but large portions without higher education remain not needed. Capital and labour should be locked in a common destiny. Capitals have power, but labour is not without leverage. But the new class does not need all the work which is available. There is, therefore, something wanton, almost spurious about the work that has to be found for many. The expensive programs provide few jobs at high cost. Some have caught on to education, and found a way out of their sense of uselessness, but many have dropped out because they could not reach the point of the effort. Employment not only provides a living for people; it gives people self-esteem, even meaning for their lives. For that to happen, however, work itself has to have some meaning. At least it has to appear important to those who do it. This has become a real issue for many, whereas the new class never stops surfing the net and filling their bank accounts. Those outside, live

an unintended portfolio life of occasional jobs, occasional crime and occasional fun. One has to work to live and work means going to a factory or an office in the morning, back home in the evening, sometimes at night, sometimes falling off with no proper medical attendances, eventually being retired to a small pension, more often not. The non availability of normal employment for a great majority leads to the temptations of dependency on political mafias- a new kind of self employment providing arms, drugs and access to every antisocial works. Social control thus has become weaker for most and absent for many. The weakening of social control is the biggest single social problem. First, religion lost its strength due to misinterpretation and inactivity against socio-political anti-humanity, then local community due to inactivity of the good people against social disrupting activities and then the family due to allowing free access to arrogant, obscene and inhuman culture. Societies moved from status of righteousness to status of power and money. A dangerous void opens up and dissolves the solid foundation of the society. The language of solidarity and community has to be revived to enforce law and order by consent. The new class has to face two major conflicts (i) Modernization (ii) Conservatism. They are scientific and technological revolutionaries but political and institutional conservationists. Though the moral, ethical, cultural conservationists could not resist free for all and free from all modernization, the major line of conflict aroused alarming new inequality that has become a acute, chronic and educing feature of modern societies. The new class being jealous of its own freedom gave away traditional constitutional liberty- that is democracy. Thus they face little or no resistance against their implicit authoritarianism. Since the disadvantaged vast majority is already disinclined to participate in association either political or socio-cultural, they land towards apathy, and the apathy of many is always the other side of the unchecked power of the few-the new class. No analysis can invalidate the struggle for freedom. The task of enhancing the life chances of the vast majority towards liberty cannot be over emphasized. It is paradoxical that the weakening of the liberal

democratic order is taking place when its opponents are disappearing fast. There is yet a little group of sensible men who are aware of the stupendous change that have taken place in the national and international spheres. The nation and the world encounters grouping complexities with the forces of reaction baring their fangs to the utter frustration of the hopelessly fragmented liberals. Looking round, thirty years ago, one only not help being dismayed at the acrimony and antipathy, squabbles and disputation that kept apart those, whose credentials enjoined upon them to provide the leadership for the struggle for strengthening political democracy and ensuring economic democracy for the liquidation of all vestiges of obscurantism and conservation that divide our society and obstruct the flow of ideas that could help to build a new social order of equity and justice. The objective of building a new socio-political economic order is still intact but people are fully aware and conscious of the worsening domestic and international situation that make the task much difficult. In the national scenario the depredations of the new class against the liberal progressive in general keeps on mounting, while freedom of expression becomes the target of the unholy alliance of the fifth columnists, simultaneously engaged in overhauling education and culture along the path of western education and culture that have the potentiality of tearing apart the fabric of national identity and dreams of liberal democracy. An allout united offensive against the people now occupying seats of power, people are forced to pass through a critical phase in the midst of curtailment of democracy and freedom. The international scenario is once again marked by might is right syndrome with the global super cop repeatedly violating the political and economic sovereignty of third world counties and raining on it most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction which it wants to see eliminated in its own boundary. And it does so with utter impunity trampling under feet international norms, legality and the UN charter, while the rest of the international community including United Nations and a large group of third world countries adopts by and large the stance of a passive by stander. In the realm of the economy problems continue to raise with the mass people subjected to unbearable hardship, they are

being drawn into the trap of IMF, WB and WTO with all their attendant conditional ties detrimental to national interests. The liberals in Bangladesh have no illusion about the strength of its appeal and its belief that the final end of the state is to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They value liberty both as an end and as a means. They believe liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believe to think as one wills and to speak as one think, are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth, that the greatest menace to freedom is an people, that public discussion is a political duty. Notwithstanding the dark clouds of aggressive fifth columnist, antirational politicians and so called intellectual civil society forces and uncertainty hovering over the horizon as the liberals are being ignored by the liberal world who are pouring their money and technology and services for the advancement of the anti-liberal new class, people are making headway and are promise bound to build an edifice of equity and justice for one hundred and thirty million of their fellow brothers and sisters of this great land-Bangladesh. God willing, they will overcome someday.