That the news made it to the front page of a national daily was a mild surprise. No photos came along with it. Most readers, in most likelihood, looked past it. It was a small bit of news about a man who lives in Meherpur.  He wore a banner on each side of his body and was standing on the streets in Meherpur speaking against the police violence on a protest march of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports on September 02, 2009. The images of that fateful day, however, roamed freely in print, electronic and other media in the days that followed. How do we think about this absence and many others, an absence of information that did not circulate like the photographs of Anu Muhammad, a well known academic and public intellectual, being booted and beaten by the emissaries of our state?

The story has now been amply rehashed. From Facebook walls to face to face conversations, the moral tenor of the discussions around this event reached a feverish intensity. Important figures of national repute have spoken out against the shameless act. Their reactions ranged from meek apologies, sympathetic commiseration to anger and vows of continued struggle. Even widely circulating corporate media who speak volumes about their own position on national wealth and multinational capital, if through nothing else but sheer silence, could not but go ahead with the photographs. I am talking about the images of Anu Muhammad, helpless in the face of the charging batons of the police, now frozen in time in the photos, bearing testament to a well-targeted act of violence. It is the type of human interest story that makes the lead news of the day. It sells newspapers and hikes up revenue for the many TV channels and their made to order talk shows.

But what about the protests, both collective and solitary, that happened on the streets and at homes in the weeks after Anu Muhammad was injured? I was told that a man vowed to stop supporting the political party he had belonged to all his life because of what had happened during their rule. I heard of an elderly woman who was on her prayer mat praying for Anu Muhammad and others since she saw the violence being unleashed on the crowds. Organized by the National Committee and other cultural and political organizations in the days that followed the event, the protests took many forms, almost none of which made it to the popular media.

The rallies that I attended within the next few days were much the same like most other political rallies. Yet there was subtle but significant difference. There was a palpable sense of anger and anticipation that is difficult to convey in words, let alone condense in neatly bound images that sell. I overheard a young student at Muktangan confessing that she was scared to join the march towards the Prime Minister’s office because of what had happened at the protest march towards Petrobangla. The person she was talking to tried to calm her down: “The fact that you are here shows that you have enough courage. Don’t worry. Nothing will happen to you. Just stay with me.” The young woman, now reassured, vanished in the crowd.

A protest program of Banglar Sanskriti Andolon – an alternative forum for cultural activists – took place in one of the evenings.  Held in the dark, without electric light and under the ominous clouds of late monsoon hanging over the crowd, the performance offered an apt metaphor for the dark times we are collectively passing. With only the glow of a film screen behind them (where a documentary about the Phulbari anti-mining movement was later shown), the performers were visible only as silhouettes, the flickering light in the back adding an uncanny force to the words and tunes of rage and resistance. The crowd caught on the solemn yet spontaneous mood of the moment. At times it joined in with the chorus ‘chhi chhi amerika’ (“Shame on you, America”), a song that criticizes US foreign policy; at other times it greeted with loud applause the women of Phulbari cursing at the camera being shown in the documentary footage.

It was the morning of September 10, the day of the march towards the Prime Minister’s office. The hot and humid September air was heavy with the rumor of the Prime Minister signing the lease with Tallow and Conoco-Phillips. The crowd that I was a part of was angry. The presence of the riot police in full gear did not help either, the memories of their vicious but cowardly acts a week ago still fresh on everyone’s mind. After the procession came to a halt at the barricaded street near Ramna, the crowd dispersed. I was walking towards Shahbag with a friend while discussing the day’s events. ‘Sometimes a movement succeeds even in its failure’, he told me. ‘How so’, I had asked, but I thought I knew what he meant even as I blurted out the question. I have already sensed it. I have seen the crowds grow by day. I have witnessed the rising number of those who did not carry party banners walk in solidarity with die hard party activists. I would like to believe that this was not simply because a university professor was seen as a helpless victim of state violence, no matter how much the mainstream media tried to domesticate the images’ political potential. While the leaders of our country and their media allies, loyal as a His Master’s Voice dog listening intently to the broken record of ‘development’ and ‘foreign investment’, continue to frame this event around toothless sentimentality, the crowd keeps growing and I believe has already outnumbered the cowards.

The politics of national wealth management far exceeds the national event that Anu Muhammad’s humiliation has created, though it remains a potent sign of all that and more. Merely scratching the surface of the rhetoric of deep sorrow and a wounded national psyche reveals a nasty scheme that is larger than what a photo, no doubt unappetizing, evokes. This is the unholy union of capital and corruption that seems to be leasing out not just Bangladesh’s natural wealth that belongs to its people but the conscience of its leaders. Whatever remains of it, of course.

Email: nusrat@uchicago.edu

September 20, 2009