Turning Forty

Sirajul Islam

One reason why I love history is that from the past you can always cite examples to illuminate your viewpoints, your ideas. In this attempt, my plan is to dig in history and make a comparative analysis between two great events of mankind -- Bangladesh's War of Liberation and the American War of Liberation, though the two events are apparently incomparable in terms of time and space. But since the essence of the two events is the same -- freedom, I venture to have a comparative look at what they did in the first forty years of their independence in terms of material developments. I resort to parallelism on the premise that the behavioural history of mankind is not as diverse and complex as we imagine. Human kind has diversity certainly, but unity as well. What one people achieve can be achieved by others, of course, may be with a variance of degree. This is the main mark of history of the modern world. However, my plan in this exercise is not to repeat the sacrifices made by our heroes, but to make a comparative presentation of Bangladesh's achievements through the first forty years of its independence. To sharpen the idea, the achievements in the first forty years of American independence have been imported. Why? Precept is more powerful than preaching. The motto of both American and Bangladesh Revolutions was to achieve political and economic freedom through independence. Let us take the case of American independence first.

America was totally an agricultural country at independence (1783). Money economy was minimal or absent. Goods were exchanged against goods in the day-to-day transactions. Industry was at collage level. Thus, urbanisation was virtually absent. Housing was mostly of logs and straw. But, people had enough to eat and enjoy. Literacy level was very high, as high as 70% at independence, while literacy in Britain did not reach 35% yet. Religiously, people were divided into Catholics and Protestants, who are again divided into not hundreds but thousands of denominations. According to one count, there were over seventeen thousand Christian denominations at independence, which is a low mark, according to a Christian history of denominations.

Then what did the Americans do with their independence? The people's representatives met and made a constitution based on the spirit of the War of Independence. The spirit was to establish people's 'natural rights' first. A long debate took place in the Congress on the natural rights of the people. To them, the real person to enjoy freedom was the individual, not the people whom you cannot see really. If the individual can be made free, the freedom of the people takes its own course. So, making the individual free became the main concern of the Continental Congress. Furthermore, emphasis was given on making the individual free and to bind the government with obligations, so that the government could not interfere with the individual's natural rights. The constitutional obligations imposed on the government were to honour always the natural rights of the people. The government functions were limited to giving security from external aggression and nothing else. People would enjoy their natural rights, including possessing guns. The spirit of the debate on constitutionality was making the individual the focal figure in the state and federal system. To the individual, government would have only obligations, and over him, no power. The purpose of War of Independence was to make the individual free. The individual would expect nothing from government other than security.

The political thought behind the 'least governance idea' advocated that the best government is the least government. The delegates maintained that the people were naturally good and they tended to become nasty only when government control interfered with their ways of life in the form of religion, rules and regulations, central institutions, taxations, policing, banking, directives and so on. The delegates supported the least government theory. They did not allow the government to establish regular army and navy and introduce central banking, which they considered to be a mechanism to interfere with people's freedom and equitable relations. Barter-based agricultural economy based on physiocratic theory, that is, agriculture based polity and economy, was made an official policy. Earlier, the congress gave a thought on making the constitution based on the political ideas of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, but the idea was abandoned later.

The US Constitution incorporating in it the agriculture-based economy was adopted on September 17, 1787. The post-Revolution America became the first and last country in the modern world to support and practice the least government theory, maintain the barter economy predominantly, discourage industrialisation and allowing people to enjoy maximum natural rights. Introducing such a political system, when strong central governments were established in Europe, was indeed a revolution by itself.

After forty years of the operation of the constitution, that means by late 1820s, we find a new America built by the people themselves without any support from the government. The growth of foreign trade, shipping, industrial revolution, urbanisation, railways and high ways, urban water supplies, etc. was spectacular. The rise of universities and cultural institutions, rise of a literary and philosophical class, and rapid growth of arts, sciences and technologies made America parallel to Great Britain. All these were within just four decades! All these developments were the sole achievements of the private investors and entrepreneurs. The government had no role in this revolutionary transformation. The constitution barred the government from doing things beyond defence and internal security. The constitution even barred the government from introducing central banking and currency. The successful war against Britain (1812-14) was fought more by the private shipping entrepreneurs than by the government navy, which was then too small to fight a naval war.

Thus, the theory of the founding fathers that best government was the least government proved to be correct. The people developed so much confidence and respect for the private initiatives that President John Quincy Adams (1825-29), son of the founding father and President John Adams (1797-1801) lost the Presidential elections for the second term mainly for his declaration that if re-elected, he would give support to the private sector initiatives. The private sector stakeholders felt threatened at the possibility of the government's intervention and did not vote for him. He failed.

Now let us come down to the case of Bangladesh as a new state established just in the manner the USA was established. Our theoreticians and pamphleteers and political leaders of the Bangladesh Revolution also advocated for people's rights and people's supremacy in state affairs. But what they promised while organizing the Revolution could not be delivered. Revolution remained unfinished. Institutionally, there is no difference between the states of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Instead of establishing revitalizing free institutions as it happened to post-Revolution America, Bangladesh inherited the colonial and Pakistani institutions and thus the old days of domination and subordination in political and social spheres remained unchanged. The Bangladesh Revolution was reduced to a toothless tiger. Keeping intact the colonial supremacy of bureaucracy and armed forces; keeping the old executive and judicial rules and regulations unhurt- which were all instruments of the colonial system, meant the total negation of the War of Liberation.

War ended victoriously in the battle field, but sorrowfully in the political field. The political demands remained ever unresolved. If not followed by necessary reforms and reconstructions, mere military victory is a massive waste and eventual degeneration. No state propaganda in the name of Independence or Liberation Day can hide the failure of the Revolution. Thus, while a barter economy like America with a population of hardly three million (1780) could turn into a strong modern nation politically, economically, culturally and scientifically within forty years of her independence in early modern times, Bangladesh with a huge resourceful humanity endowed prospectively with all international cooperation failed to rise up and swim with the flow of the time. In the march of development, even the most recent starters have overtaken Bangladesh. Examples not necessary. Under the circumstances, the civil society does have the responsibility to give a serious thought to the problem. Our task, at this moment, is not to fix the blame for the past regimes, which is unproductive, but to fix the course for the future. One who does it will be Washington, Lenin, Maotse Tung, Ho Chi Min of Bangladesh. Here I recall a famous saying of JF Kennedy. who once remarked, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution possible”.

The writer is a Historian and Fellow of Royal Historical Society.