THE recent murder of a Bangladeshi lawmaker in Kolkata and the media attention it has drawn should be a lesson for all pondering politics, crime and the role of various institutions in Bangladesh. It is not just criminals who are taking the heat but the system as well. Like it or not, it is all too embarrassing for the ruling party to which he belonged and the opposition party as well which kick-started the political career of the dead.
He had been elected three times for the constituency. It makes him a legitimate electoral politician, a parliamentarian of the veteran variety. It also puts a question mark on the type of people 鈥� many, if not most 鈥斕� who qualify as politicians in Bangladesh. And, it begs the question as to who these people are that make up the political elite at any given time.听听 And, how people perceive them.
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Profile of mystery and popularity
THE murder, particularly taking place in another country with murderers flying in from Bangladesh and the United States, shows that it was a long-term planning issue. The murder itself was quite graphically gruesome and the way of body disposal has drawn quite a lot of attention. In fact, Indian psychologists are also discussing the matter and some are saying that the mental angle of the participants needs exploring as well and not just evidence disposal techniques.
Cruelty over money, sex and the rest of it is common and this is no exception. One supposes what is a bit odd about this murder case is the dramatis personae involved. A three-time elected lawmaker going to Kolkata in the name of treatment meets with very seedy friends, gets butchered in a flat rented by a Bangladesh-American mastermind where a team is led by a once Maoist politician with a grudge against the deceased for having his fellow extremist and relative killed some years back.
They then chopped, packaged and dropped the body parts in different parts of Kolkata city. What no one is asking and it is offensive to many is how many of our lawmakers could be in the same sports as the person so brutally killed?
While it is being openly stated by many, including the media, that he was involved in smuggling money, drugs and gold and in league with his supposed killer, it is now known that he had many cases lodged against him which were, however, later withdrawn. The Election Commission documents tell us that he is clean now and the Interpol notice no longer is there, which means that he was big enough to get attention and bigger enough to get them withdrawn as well.
It is a sign of clout and it is what politics is all about. The weeping faces of women in his constituency lamenting that they would never get a more wonderful lawmaker than him is a testament to the complex nature of politics in Bangladesh and the services it delivers 鈥� an informal needs-based society that tries to live with the dynamics of formal politics like a parliament.听听听
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The glue that keeps all together
AWAMI League leader Obaidul Quader has asked why the issue of lawmaker鈥檚 鈥榗riminal鈥� connections and court cases were not raised by the media when the election time was here. Well, actually, nobody has ever accused the media of being that efficient and our media are also a connection media like connection capitalism.
What however needs to be unpacked is the link between the three- formal/state institutions, politics of informality and the public definition of politics. The answer to the incident lies there and it is greater in significance than the crime just committed.听
People, in general, need services and goods and they are in the formal space which he cannot access as a member of the informal world. For them, the politician, lawmaker or not, is the intermediary who can negotiate both the worlds and gain and gather goods and services which they need. They know that they cannot get it for themselves, hence, the lawmaker.
Intermediaries have been part of the system since the system began; so, it is no issue, really. The problem is in imagining politicians as pious souls along with the political system.
Such issues are not going to be discussed around the crime scene just unfolding but not later either. But can the fact be ignored that just as the formal sector political constructs have no discomfort in accommodating those well-known for their underworld or financial sector scams, the informal sector/general public has no problem either. While, in reality, we have a 鈥榝lexible鈥� value judgement framework, we publicly state otherwise.
Within this kind of a reality scenario, it would be useful to recognise what really works in the world of formal politics. What we seek from both politics and politicians is obviously different from what we publicly state we do. In that case, who is best served by this dual standard is a question we should answer, if only to understand which qualifies as politics, at least in Bangladesh.
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Afsan Chowdhury is a researcher and journalist.
