Repairing the state

by Parvez Alam

‘I SEE the golden image, and then it’s gone again’, perhaps this verse from Jasimuddin’s famous song, ‘The Shoreless River’ (‘Nodir kul nai, kinar naire’), perfectly captures the experience of the July Uprising 2024 for the majority of Bangladeshi people. The revolutionary moment and the unprecedented national unity that the uprising was associated with have long disappeared. The uprising did more than just overthrow Hasina, it was also a flashing manifestation of the constituent power of the people, which is the ground of all democratic juridico-political structures, such as the state. It brought forth a ‘real state of exception’, in which the law had crossed its boundary to the extent that it had become void, and people had to judge the law itself — a condition that can be aptly described by the famous song verse ‘Bicharpoti tomar bichar korbe jara, aj jegechhe shei janata’ (The people who will judge the Judge have awaken now). It was a moment of revelation of the voice of the people that was long negated under Hasina’s regime, an enaction of the classical democratic article of faith: Vox populi, vox dei — the voice of the people is the voice of God.

While Jasimuddin’s ‘The Shoreless River’ depicts the condition of human existence by utilising archaic images that have existed in Bengali spiritual and philosophical songs and literature since the time of Charyapada, in which the boatman is the metaphor of a bodhisattva, it becomes possible to read the song as an allegory of our present historical condition. The same narrative devices — metaphors, tropes and similes — are often utilised in depicting the historical condition of the nation or nation-state in modern Bengali poetry, in which the nation is often imagined as a boat. Whether it is in the songs of Charaypada, or in the songs of Lalon, the boat is the image of the body. In Lalon’s songs, it is often a broken boat. In his own words: ‘In life, all I have is this broken boat, and I wasted my energy by bailing water’. The boat that is the body, and is broken, is an image of human life or existence. The individualistic, ontological experience depicted in such songs is surpassed in modern poetry, such as in Kazi Nazrul Islam’s ‘Kandari Hushiar’ and Farrukh Ahmed’s ‘Panjeri’, as they are sublated to the horizon of national history. In the context of such a modern morphing of the image of the past, it becomes possible for us to also read Jasimuddin’s song as an allegory of our present historical condition. Jasimuddin’s boat sails in a river in turmoil that can be seen as a parallel to our political reality. With the flashing golden image on its horizon, this otherwise apolitical song provides us with an ontological vision that would otherwise be impossible by overtly political poems.

In July 2024, we saw the flashing image of a people that disappeared soon after its appearance, akin to the flash that appears and disappears in Jasimuddin’s song. Bangladesh is now back to the perpetual state of emergency which was the paradigm of Hasina’s rule. If July is a revolution (which I believe it is), then it is already a hijacked one, it is ‘behat biplob’. The democratic force that negated Hasina’s power has already been negated by the technocratic-military regime that we call the interim government. The dreams of July now hinge upon the technocratic rearrangements that have been given the name of state reformation. The dream of state repair that was ignited in July is now covered by a process of technocratic reforms in which only the major democratic parties have some sort of agency. It is a process in which the majority of Bangladeshi people have no voice. The facts that there was no constituent assembly after July and that the task of state reform was led by a technocratic interim government will forever colour the history of the (hijacked) July Revolution.The idea of ‘repairing’ that became popular within the Bangladeshi political community long before July 2024 cannot be reduced to what is now being called ‘reform’. Although both terms are interchangeable in our contemporary political discourses, the term ‘reform’ is more often utilised to denote constitutional changes and transformation in political practices. The metaphor of repairing, on the other hand, has political and philosophical potentialities that have yet to be properly articulated in the context of Bangladesh. Understanding this is especially necessary, because the demands or the concrete wishes and hopes, expressed in the forms of posters and graffiti, of state reform are one of the most important flashing images of July, which have also somewhat disappeared in the post-July Uprising political horizon. Yet, it was one of the most recurring dreams or concrete wish images that emerged in several mass movements that occurred during Hasina’s era. During the final years of Hasina’s rule, the desire for state repair became so powerful that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party declared its 32-point demand for state repairs in 2023.

The origin of the phrase ‘state repair’ in the context of the recent history of Bangladesh is somewhat obscure. Nonetheless, it is a fact that the wish, as a simple handwritten poster, momentarily appeared during the early days of the Shahbagh Movement in 2013, before it disappeared under the veil of the Awami Legue-friendly narrative of the movement. ‘Sorry for the temporary inconvenience, we are repairing a 42-year-old road’ was written on this poster, according to a Facebook post I wrote in 2014. On the flap of my book, Shahbager Rashtroprokolpo (2014), written by Baki Billah, the phrase ‘rasta meramat’ (repairing the road) morphed into ‘rastra shangskar’ (reforming the state). While the state of Bangladesh remained implicit in the poster, the sentiment was made explicit by Baki Billah, though I am not sure whether it was a conscious decision. This particular wish-image that I recorded would have been forgotten if it had not reappeared during the Road Safety Movement in 2018, both as graffiti on the streets and in posters. It was the Road Safety Movement that ignited the popular demand for state repair. Farhad Mazhar, inspired by the slogan during the movement, wrote an essay on it. Rastrachinta, which became Rasthro Shonskar Andolon later, was formed with the very goal of state reformation and, more than any other organisation, it dedicated itself to the actualisation of its goal. During the July Uprising, the wish-image of state repairs appeared in many forms, with its contents more or less intact. More importantly, the dream of repairing the state also became the goal of many of the students who led the uprising.

People walk towards the Shaheed Minar  on August 2, 2024. —New Age/Md Saurav

My goal here is not to depict the history of a demand that has acquired a discursive force through its recurrence in mass movements but to draw attention to the fact that the slogan of state repairing, which is without an author, has multiple origins and has flashed several times only to disappear soon after, contains the political potentialities and utopian dreams of Bangladeshi people that have yet to be actualised. The phrase, and the wish for, ‘repairing the state’ can unveil a fundamental dimension of our life and politics, without any relation to which all attempts of technocratic reforms are at risk of becoming meaningless. It declares that the nation-state of Bangladesh is broken, that it has become so disconnected from the constitutive moment — 1971 in the empirical history — and from the people that it is no longer possible for us to reach the state that was dreamt in 1971, unless we repair the road towards it. The alienation from the state and the collective wish to return to the origin have become visible in the return of the three fundamental values — equality, human dignity and social justice — from the Proclamation of Independence in contemporary politics. However, without an explicit and vigilant recognition of the brokenness that lies in the foundation of the state of Bangladesh, the fundamental values of the liberation war are also at risk of becoming meaningless, a fate already suffered by the four fundamental values of the constitution of 1972.

The broken relationship between the state and the people is not a condition unique to the nation-state of Bangladesh. According to The Coming Insurrection (2007), written by The Invisible Committee, the human life of late capitalism is separated from its reality and its own self by seven circles of alienation. The alienation from the state is the seventh and final alienation. Giorgio Agamben claims that the alienation between people and the state has become so acute in our time that it is no longer possible to mend it. This knowledge is so crucial that, without it, all attempts at state repairing or rebuilding or even newly constituting it are bound to end up in failure and frustration. Whether it is in Farhad Majhar’s theory of reconstituting the state, or in the state-reform policies led by the interim government or in the student leaders’ willingness to participate in a technocratic government, we encounter a fateful positivism — of transforming constituent power into constitutional power — that was destined to be drowned in the void that is the ‘perpetual state of exception’, which has become the main paradigm of governance in Bangladesh. The blindness that results from such positivism prevents one from seeing the alienation that, according to Agamben, has become unmendable. Yet, precisely the knowledge of this unmendable brokenness can provide us with the opportunity of establishing some sort of new relation to the state.

The alienation between the state and the people became visible to perhaps every Bangladeshi citizen, apart from hardcore supporters of the past regime, in July 2024. However, it was also a moment in which they transcended ideological divisions and group interests by uniting as a people against the government. In other words, the recognition (brought forth by the massacre done by Hasina’s forces that spared no one) of the alienation from the state played a crucial role in constituting the image of a united people that flashed in July 2024. It was a people constituted by ‘bare lives’ — an Agambenian term, more famously known as the ‘homo sacer’, that can be denoted by the term ‘hatya-jagya’ (‘killable’) in present Bangladesh. The people of July came together on a negative ground, because they had no positive legal foundation to stand on. Their unity was formed in a negative space in relation to the juridico-political regime of the time. There is a fundamental brokenness that lies at the foundation of this people. But they could stand together perfectly, comfortably on that negative ground. It was a singularity formed by a shared alienation from the state, which found its ground in groundlessness. Like the boatman in Jasimuddin’s song, it was contended with the shoreless shore. Only the regular remembrance of such an image of the people can salvage whatever potentiality the otherwise technocratic reforms manage to inscribe in the constitution or in policy suggestions.

It is far more important to mend the fracture between the people (or, at least, to make sure of its recurring appearance in various forms) of July that appeared in the post-July Bangladesh, than to reform the state and the constitution.The boat that should be at the centre of our concern is not the state but the people without a solid, positive ground beneath their feet. In that case, however, we will also be met with a paradox, because the boatman and the boat are one and the same. It may not appear as much paradoxical if we can also imagine the people as the carpenter, who can mend the alienation between the subject and the object. The metaphor of the broken boat in Lalon’s songs addresses a fundamental alienation of human beings, a creature with language and time, and the carpenter who can mend its brokenness has the form of the boat itself. This carpenter, the ‘shohoj manush’, is not exactly the ‘universal man’ of Neoplatonism or a mere metaphysical idea. Rather, it is the other human creatures in our society, with whom we share a common alienation. The people of July were formed on the negative ground of alienation. Only by recognising this truth and by holding on to the idea of such a united people can we, perhaps, manage to form a political community that can establish a new, meaningful relationship to the state, in the now.

Parvez Alam is a writer and activist. He is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam.