Ekushey - Cultural synthesis in formation and evolution of political identity

Who we are? Why we are the way we are? Who we want to be? Such and other questions on identity are important. Wars are fought for one identity to prevail over the other, boundaries are drawn with the coloured pencils that a sense of identity hands us. Identities are multiple and divergent. No human is free from the million parameters that define their identity. We are Bangladeshis; we are Bengalis; we are Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Indigenous; we are man, woman; we are upper, middle, lower-income bracket; we are third world; we are human. And yet gyrations of one particular identity has shaped the atlas and rewritten history more so than any other singular sense of belonging. Political identity overrides most identities when we step out of the cosy confines of ‘I’ into the realm of ‘we’. While political identity has many currents and counter-currents shaping it, cultural practices of a society or nation-state have the most subtle yet holistic impact on how our political belief takes shape. Literature, theatre, music, film, and all the other forms of cultural expressions are the first and formative notions of identity that a group, society, or nation propels itself into. Be it the cave drawings of trance and tradition etched in the guise of hunting, or the ancient Hindu scriptures stating that ‘theatre is social action’ (‘Natyoti Lokcharitrom’), or Machiavelli’s seminal creation The Prince stating the Medici’s political vision, or the charged ganasangeet of pre-liberation Bangladesh inspiring millions and forging an idea of a nation-state of ‘us’ — they all crystallise the scattered feel of belief, vision, dreams under the flag of political belief.

II
Crisis can be personal or collective. While personal manifestations of crisis can diverge into many forms of identity seeking, collective crisis has its roots in political identity. Bewilderment in political belief can both lead to collective crisis, and be the result of it. Here is where cultural expression takes up its underlying role of both forging a complex but strong sense of political belief. Our history is chequered with times of collective crisis when, while oppression had gagged the voices of dissent, cultural expression remained the last bastion of seeking out and propagating political identity. Discussing the formation of political belief through cultural expression, novelist Selina Hossain gave her personal selection of chronological events that are milestones in the evolution of the Bengali political belief. She first mentions Somen Chanda. During the final years of the British Raj, as the Swadesi movement swung into full action, Somen Chanda gave birth to ganasahitya (people’s literature). Chanda, a workers’ union leader in the railway, felt the need to disseminate the political vision of freedom from the British by writing literature that consciously took up the cause. His attempts were answered: he was slaughtered on the streets of Dhaka. Selina also points out Zahir Raihan’s Arek Phalgun, where after street protests scores of young men are jailed and at one point even the jails are full. As the jailer gets frustrated with their sheer number, the young men yell out that there will be more. Selina feels that, like his film Jibon Theke Neya, even in stories he and other writers have consciously tried to forge political belief by giving consciousness to the masses. She draws reference to Syed Shamsul Huq’s short story Kobi from the sixties. In the story, a man who writes poems is persecuted for refusing to write anything praising a tyrannical village landlord. Selina feels that such stories are the cultural expression of dissent. Through storytelling, by showing the microcosm and the struggles that take place within it, writers and poets have constantly given forms to nascent ideas of identity.

III
Cultural expressions are not always free from persecution. But due to its all pervasive nature, it is almost impossible to ever silence such expression. A song, or even a tune, can hum from person to person, group to group, and eventually become a roar. Throughout Bangladesh’s history, pre- and post-liberation freedom to express — be it politically or culturally — has been gagged. In the forties it was the British, through the fifties and sixties it was the Pakistanis, and post-Liberation there has been tyrants and democratic posers who have tried to mute cultural expression, sometimes explicitly and mostly subtly. Cultural expressions such as music, theatre, film are the incubators where the embryo of all ‘freedoms’ are born. Enough has been said and written on how the language movement of 1952 was the first manifestation of the Bengali nation-state idea. It is not as singular as one event though. Throughout the two and a half decades of Pakistani oppression, the dream and the vision of being masters of our own destiny slowly crystallised. It was during these years that an entire generation of writers, poets, playwrights, musicians, filmmakers and actors gave birth to the idea of Bangladesh. Theatre stalwart Mamunur Rashid feels that while some mediums have done it explicitly, almost all have done it with some level of conviction. He points out his own medium, theatre, and the role it has played again and again in being consciously political and constantly engaging in critique. Be it Mamun’s own play Ora Kadam Ali ’77, where a deaf and dumb man comes to represent the silent majority and eventually engages everyone to fight back. Or Munir Chowdhury’s play Kabar, staged before the liberation, which is considered a blithering attack on the Pakistani regime. Mamun refers to the final act of Ora Kadam Ali as the perfect manifestation of how cultural expression that might engage more explicitly upon personal crisis more than collective ones has a tremendous power of showing to the individual how s/he is connected to a shared dilemma. As the police come to arrest innocent Kadam Ali, they ask the people of the village to identify who Kadam Ali is. Every man claims to be Kadam Ali. Mamun feels that theatre, and other cultural expressions, make us realise that politically we are no island, rather in the forging of that belief we are all Kadam Ali. Solidarity is attained spontaneously through cultural expressions.

IV
Consciousness is steered by multiple forces. Cultural consciousness is moulded by those who act on it. Selina feels that, while writing in its artistic expression may take up the main scope, political consciousness looms as the backdrop. In her most recent novel, Diner Roshite Gittu, the female protagonist sees a rotting city that is being eaten away from within. She sees babies being thrown away, young girls sleeping on the streets and at one point starts to see the city as another bunker, just like the Pakistani bunker where the protagonist was held during the War of Independence. Selina elaborates that, while writing the novel, she was witnessing all the decay around us and the general feeling that things are not in their right places was getting more and more engrained in her. This thought of change is what drove her to write in such a way. She points out to a pervasive sense of political consciousness that relates her stories to reality. On the same issue, Mamun gives specific instances when cultural expression has worked as reactionary agents in giving voice to political dissent. Mamun mentions two particular plays – Inspector General of Dhaka Padatik and Court Martial of Theatre Art. He feels they were both reactions to the state of affairs in the country during the military junta of the 1980s. Whenever freedom of expression has been curtailed, theatre has had a direct role in bringing it to the stage. In fact, Mamun and others like him who have led Bangladesh’s theatre movement over the years are witness and actors in a long legacy of political activism through the stage. Mamun rightly points out that Bangladesh’s theatre has always been political. Selina feels that while the pre-liberation fiction and poetry and right till the end of the 1980s political consciousness was deeply rooted, it has somewhat lost its way. But she feels that cultural resurgence is usually the outcome of a crisis. The pangs of having to find a new identity might lead to Bangladesh’s literature to seek political consciousness again. Selina sees hope in the broader cultural movement though. She feels that songs like Hyder Husyn’s Swadhinatatake Khujchi can be strong tools in pointing to the right political direction.

V
Individuals may remain disconnected from the ether of everyday political breeze, but as members of a society with shared destinies, we cannot but live in the underbelly of the political behemoth that collective consciousness gives birth to. And its eyes and ears is our subtlest of cultural nuances. How we sing our love songs, or what we read, or whether commercial jingles or poetry tickles our spirit has a lot to say about who we are. If ‘a proper formation of consciousness is mankind’s greatest accomplishment’, then through spontaneous solidarity in our cultural expressions, as individuals and as collective beings, we attain synergy between both. Fortunately, cultural expression has a near-omnipotent force in its sheer existence and dissemination. No force in history has been able to curtail it completely. Expression is almost as breathing. Its freedom can be curtailed, gagged or muted, never eliminated. And as long as that remains the formation of political consciousness, and its evolution, will prevail.