What does Kissinger have to say about Bangladesh now?

Pakistan's politics have become highly unstable, yet again.

Sri Lanka's economy and politics are spiraling down into depths that the country hasn't experienced.

India is, well, being India with the Hindutva project proceeding well and liberal democracy is slowly being extinguished.

Who would have ever imagined back in 1971 that Bangladesh would be the beacon of a stable society in South Asia in 2022?!

Last year, I blogged about the poster-child that Bangladesh was for "third world" conditions and how it has transformed itself quietly and steadily.  I wrote in that post in March 2021 that we all can learn a lot from the 50-year old Bangladesh success story.

Here it is again:
**********************

A few years ago, I met with an activist environmental lawyer from Bangladesh.  Syeda Rizwana Hasan was the first one from Bangladesh that I met since my graduate school days.

Always excited to meet with accomplished people from my old part of the world, I talked with her about her work.  And then I asked her a lot about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

In 1970, when Bangladesh was still East Pakistan, "Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a landslide victory in national elections. The Pakistani leadership was reluctant to accept the results because it did not want an East Pakistani political party heading the federal government."

West Pakistan, now Pakistan, was the center of all the economic, commercial, and military power. The West Pakistan government and its people couldn't care about the Bengali-speaking fellow-citizens who were thousands of miles away, separated by India.  The last thing they wanted to grant was autonomy to the Bengali-speaking Pakistanis.

As the demand for Bengali autonomy grew, the Pakistani government launched Operation Searchlight,“ a military operation to crush the emerging movement. According to journalist Robert Payne, it killed at least 7,000 Bengali civilians – both Hindus and Muslims – in a single night.

On March 26, Bangladesh was declared independent and the liberation war began.

The US, mad with its supremacy and in a Cold War against the USSR, sided with West Pakistan's leaders and military.  As we review history, I wonder how many times we ever sided with the good guys!

When refugees started spilling over to India in the millions, India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, decided to employ the military against the West Pakistani forces in East Pakistan.  In less than two weeks, the West Pakistani forces surrendered.  India's military chief, S.H.F.J. Manekshaw, became a household name.  We kids thought he was the greatest ever!

In no time at all, the Nixonian realpolitik Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, labeled Bangladesh as a "basket case."

Nick Kristof writes about how much Bangladesh has developed over the 50 years, and how we in the US can learn from it.

Life expectancy in Bangladesh is 72 years. That’s longer than in quite a few places in the United States, including in 10 counties in Mississippi. Bangladesh may have once epitomized hopelessness, but it now has much to teach the world about how to engineer progress.

Kristof continues:

Bangladesh invested in its most underutilized assets — its poor, with a focus on the most marginalized and least productive, because that’s where the highest returns would be. And the same could be true in America. We’re not going to squeeze much more productivity out of our billionaires, but we as a country will benefit hugely if we can help the one in seven American children who don’t even graduate from high school.

That’s what Biden’s attack on child poverty may be able to do, and why its central element, a refundable child tax credit, should be made permanent. Bangladesh reminds us that investing in marginalized children isn’t just about compassion, but about helping a nation soar.

I wonder what Kissinger has to say about Bangladesh now.  But then, who cares for Kissinger, right?

With women like Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Bangladesh is now well on its way to even surge past India.

Well, it has.

A few months ago, the IMF reported that Bangladesh had moved ahead of India in terms of per capita income.  Boy did that cause quite some issues for the Modi-toadies who believe in the superiority of Hindus!

We all can learn a lot from the 50-year old Bangladesh success story.

On Gratitude ... during Ramadan

Indian Muslim Relief and Charities, which is one of the organizations that I have donated to over the years, emailed me--as a donor--their Ramadan greetings.

It then provides this atheist to reflect on life during religious observances like Ramadan. 

To a casual reader, it might seem strange that an atheist uses such religious opportunities to think about life.  But, I have never been one of those militant atheists making a fanatical religion out of atheism.  Furthermore, I am not that different from most atheists in that we reach the conclusion not with ignorance about religions, particularly the religion with which we were raised.  Even through my agnostic teenage years, I was curious about the Hindu faith and its philosophy, which is also why I am so familiar with ideas like dukrijnkarane that I talk and blog about. 

Curiosity then made me find out at least a tiny bit about a few other religions.  Unlike most of the truly religious who are committed to only knowing about their own beliefs, many of us atheists often end up knowing at least a little bit about various religions.  And we are always curious.  Like how I asked a friend a couple of days ago about her Christian denomination not practicing the ritual of baptism.  We read, we ask questions, we try to understand the human condition.

For all the non-believer that I am, I consciously think about my existence, and worry about what it means to be human.  Perhaps I think about it too much that my words and actions piss people off. But, all I try is to stay true to the values and ideas that are important to me without trying to be evangelical about how to live one's life.

For an atheist like me, when bad things come my way, like when I get laid off in a Zoom meeting, I do not need a god to turn to.  I understand that like how good things happen in life, well, bad things happen too.  Life is like the snakes-and-ladders game that we played as kids.  We love it when ladders boost us, but curse the snakes that make lives miserable.  But, that is life and god has nothing to do with all these.  I am acutely aware that the entire cosmos does not exist only to serve me!  The cosmos is. It doesn't have feelings towards me or you or anybody else.

In my framework, whether it is Rama Navami or Ramadan, or whatever, those religious days are designated times in order to help us mortals reflect on our fleeting existence on this "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," as Carl Sagan so poetically put it.  These special religious days are intentional pauses to our everyday lives.  A forced interruption that then makes us think, for at least a few minutes, about what we want to do with the little time we have on this planet.

In fact, the disconnect between such need for introspection versus the believers merely reciting the Vishnu Sahasranaamam and the Bhaja Govindam and more was the point of departure for the young me questioning the idea of god and religion and belief.  I was convinced then, and even more convinced I am now, that living a moral life has nothing to do with god and religion.

Religious calendar events like Ramadan are wonderful opportunities to express gratitude for the lives that we lead.  For the good things that have happened.  For the bad experiences that we are now past.

Gratitude is not merely mouthing "thanks."  Not at all.  People often seem to mistake the "thanks" that is often the lubricant in social interactions with gratitude itself.  There is the etiquette of "thanks" and then there is gratitude.  Gratitude is a solid thread in the moral fabric of life itself.

When having dinner with a younger couple from an African country, I asked them about the name of their infant.  In the old traditional, pre-colonial, language, the child's name means gratitude, they said.  I pointed to the book right behind them on the dining room shelf.  Gratitude by Oliver Sacks.

One doesn't need religion, or a religious leader, to remind us about gratitude.  But, if people need such a framework, this atheist has no fight with a religious approach to life.  I will quote, again, the following:

We all begin life dependent on others, and most of us end life dependent on others. If we are lucky, in between we have roughly 60 years or so of unacknowledged dependency. The human condition is such that throughout life, not just at the beginning and end, we are profoundly dependent on other people. ... Gratitude is the truest approach to life. We did not create or fashion ourselves. We did not birth ourselves. Life is about giving, receiving, and repaying. We are receptive beings, dependent on the help of others, on their gifts and their kindness.

Ramadan Mubarak!

The goals of a newly retired professor

When rapidly absorbing all things Americana, I was struck by many American oddities.  Hockey was one of those.

In the US, when we say hockey, the image is of men chasing a puck on ice and bashing each other until one or more is dispatched to the penalty box.

In India, this game that we had read about or watched in video clips was referred to as ice hockey.

Because, hockey in India was played on gravel or grass.  In the US, this is "field hockey" and is mostly played only by girls.

Such craziness in a country that employs a phrase "same difference" in order to mean that there is no difference at all!

There was no "field hockey" in India, as much as there is no "Indian food" in India.  They are respectively only hockey and food! 

Hockey, cricket, table tennis, badminton, and football I played as a kid.  Oh, football as in soccer; same difference, I guess!

One of the scars I have in my shin is from playing hockey, back in perhaps the ninth grade.  My classmate Ravikumar swung the stick to hit the ball hard.  He did dispatch the ball.  But then he got my shin too. Blood, sweat, and tears, is how I played hockey, because I was, and am, far from athletic :)

I was way fascinated with hockey, perhaps because back in my younger days, when I had lots and lots of hair on my head and it was all black, India always had competitive and winning teams.  I keenly followed the news about India's hockey team.  In those simple days before television, I listened to the radio commentary on international hockey events.  Even now, I can recall one memorable radio commentary: "Govinda, Govinda, Govinda, Govinda, ... gooooooaaaaaallll") Govinda was one hell of a Speedy Gonzalez on the field.

There was another match, during my undergrad days, which was phenomenal for how it replayed the old tortoise and the hare fable. 

Indian hockey was already in doldrums, unable to compete against the well-trained and funded European teams, especially on artificial grass.  It was India v. West Germany. India was down four goals, and the Germans were so certain that they would win that they eased up. 

And then there was a player in the Indian team who displayed all the effort that we love to see in all the sportspeople.  Well, in everybody in every walk of life. The guy scored one goal, and then another, and another, and in a matter of a few minutes, the game was tied. Even!

Germany couldn't manufacture anything more and the match that had been overwhelmingly in their favor ended in a draw. 

Google helps me out with the name of that player: Pargat Singh. 

Since then, of course, I have wandered away, mentally and geographically. 

While I connected with baseball and football here in the US, and soon abandoned all interest in sports, there is only one reason that I know anything at all about (ice) hockey: I was a graduate student when Los Angeles went crazy with Wayne Gretzky. 

I never watched a single game of (ice) hockey though.  Same difference!