A RETURN TO ROOTS

Bangladesh is reeling under the Dhaka Terror Attack. Over the last three years this country, which won its independence in 1971 on the basis of the language movement (Bhasha Andolon), has been suffering from extreme Islamic violence. Rabindranath Tagore played a seminal role in inspiring the Bangladeshis to liberation with his inspirational writing although the poet was no more then in earthly coil. Today, when the Bengali people out there are enduring the terrible fate of cultural degradation whose noxious symptom is Islamic fanaticism which has literally held liberal thinking to ransom and reduced civic life to a travesty of what democracy aspires it to be, once more may the voice of Bangladesh seek utterance in the works of Tagore! So also the great revolutionary poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam whose vigorous poetry and fervent music sent the Bengali youth to the jaws of death to snatch for their motherland freedom. May the leonine patriot-poet once more invigorate the hearts and minds of millions of Bangladeshis with sublime love for their motherland and unity of spirit among citizens so that an integrated nation may overcome the challenges of the times and emerge triumphant to uphold the banner of democracy, freedom and civilisation! Taslima Nasreen, that fearless crusader for truth and justice, whose supreme sincerity of spirit does not allow her to be an apologist for extreme Islam but who, despite enduring personal persecution at the hands of the Bangladesh government leading to her banishment from her motherland, continues to expose the fault-lines in her home-society, may her countrymen restore her to her habitat and may they have the sanity to lend her a sympathetic ear! In so doing will Bangladesh be on track once more and instead of senselessly pursuing her ruin through divisive sectarian politics, she should emphasise the original principles of her national life which gave her a distinctive character in the world of Muslim-majority nations, a secular nation built on the basis of supreme love for the Bengali language which then defined her status and must define her status even today when the meter seems to have been lost in the melee of the rabblement. Jai Bangla!