The Only Way Out For Bangladesh: The Army
By way of reflection and anticipation, recall Eric Hoffer’s predicted demise in 1951 of the Soviet Union: “It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt. A popular upheaval in Soviet Russia is hardly likely before the people get a real taste of the good life. The most dangerous moment for the regime of the Politburo will be when a considerable improvement in the economic conditions of the Russian masses has been achieved and the iron totalitarian rule somewhat relaxed…..When people revolt in a totalitarian society, they rise not against the wickedness of the regime but its weakness (The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Perennial Classics, 2002), pp 29, 43).” David Reynolds today vindicates the stevedore’s crystal-gazing: “Looser political controls allowed elements of a civil society to emerge outside the state, particularly student and intellectual groups. Their growing audacity was encouraged by evident splits within the party leadership over the nature and limits of reform. In China, as in the Soviet Block, in short, pressure from below could erupt because of rifts at the top (One World Divisible: A Global History Since 1945 (New York: W.W.Norton and Co., 2000), p 576).”
In which case, the prospects for a liberal society - with its three separate branches of government - must appear chimerical for Bangladesh, lest wiser heads look back, not in anger, but hope at the happy military periods in our tragic history when the tripartition had not been a fantasy.
