The People’s Republic of Bangladesh is the result of a long and arduous struggle to establish a country based on the principles of equality and social justice, which started long before the liberation war of 1971. The liberation war and the glorious struggle that the nation went through during that time gave us the republic as a gift.
However, the hasty constitution of 1972 failed to fulfil all the promises of our freedom struggle and needed serious reconsideration and amendments. For that purpose, the interim government has created a Constitutional Reform Commission to propose reforms to the constitution.
The Commission has outlined some reforms in a recently released report. This article concerns two of the recommendations proposed in that report: The name of the republic and the name of the system that will govern it.
You may think that these reforms have been initiated only for decorum and don’t matter much in terms of determining how the state will function. However, my belief is in the contrary. I believe that it is important to have an appropriate and powerful name for the republic because a strong name is the foundation of the social contract that the country will operate on.
While the term ‘People’s Republic’ has widely been accepted as the most appropriate term for our country in English, the contention lies in its Bangla translation. The current constitution uses the term ‘Gonoprojatontro’ as the Bangla term for ‘People’s Republic’. The problem is the use of the term ‘Proja’, which translates to English as ‘Subjects’.
We must realise that we don’t live in a monarchy and the days of the empire or sultanate is long gone. This is the era of self-rule and popular sovereignty, and the term ‘Projatontro’ is no longer acceptable. We must recreate a concept of ourselves that does not denigrate us as subjects of the state but as equal stakeholders and establishes politically powerful people as public servants, not rulers with a royal decree and decorum.
Keeping this in mind, the Constitution Reform Commission has come up with the term ‘Janaganatantrik’ which, in English, loosely translates as a ‘People’s Democracy’ or a ‘People’s Republic’. While it is true that this term is a little bit of a mouthful and cumbersome and has an odd Indian-ish connotation (As the national anthem of India starts with the phrase ‘Janaganama’), I still believe it is an appropriate name for our country to be known as.
In no circumstances should we continue with ‘Prajatantra’. If needed, literary experts can come up with a new word that can replace the current name and the newly proposed one, but the spirit of the July Revolution does not allow us to call ourselves ‘Subjects’.
July has shown us that we all are equal stakeholders of the country because we came to the streets and stared at the bullets just to confirm our rights as citizens. As stated before, the social contract in our country needs to be one between equals, and a People’s Republic needs to be the basis of it. The Bangla term should reflect this commitment and get rid of the pejorative term ‘Proja’.
The second important change that the commission has proposed is replacing ‘Projatontro’ as a translation of the Republic with ‘Nagoriktontro’. Here the commission takes a commendable step to replace the Bangla term ‘Subject’ with ‘Citizen’. This creates a possibility to reconfigure our social contract in a way that doesn’t view the people as subjects but as citizens, which is the right way forward.
But at the same time, this term is also a little awkward as it is not usually used in a regular parlance. But an introduction of this word to the constitution can be an original contribution and we can learn to use it in time.
However, just like the term citizen, the translation ‘Nagorik’ also has some problems. The term is too urban-centric. Citizen is related to the word ‘City’, just like the word ‘Nagorik’ comes from ‘Nogor’. The use of this term may further the rural-urban divide and, at least in the wording of the constitution and its enforcement, put at least a theoretical preference to those living in towns and cities and disregard people living in the rural areas.
A better term would be ‘Loktantra’ as a translation of ‘Republic’, which uses the term ‘Lok’, generally meaning the public or the people and does not distinguish between rural or urban populace. But this word is commonly used in India to mean the same thing and using the same word as India may be objectionable to some people. But I would still like to maintain that this is a better translation than ‘Nagoriktantra’.
The name matters. It matters not because it has directly to do with the daily livelihoods of the people of the country, but because it is philosophically important to distinguish what sort of state we are living in.
The name matters. It matters not because it has directly to do with the daily livelihoods of the people of the country, but because it is philosophically important to distinguish what sort of state we are living in.
Just imagine that the new child which will be born after a new constitution is adopted will no longer be a subject but a citizen or part of a people. This child will grow up in a country where people are regarded as equals to one another and has, at least in theory, no special place for those who hold positions of power but views them simply as servants appointed to fulfil a role to serve the ultimate power holders in the country—the people.
I don’t want my child to be born in the world as a subject of a royal state, I want her to be born as a citizen of a proud people’s republic, where she can speak for her rights as freely as anybody and can access any services or resources she may need in order to live and prosper with dignity.
This is the state we should aim for. And we shall not veer from that aim if we are to start that journey with the right names and terms, right now.
Anupam Debashis Roy is a PhD student at the University of Oxford. He can be reached at anupam.roy@sociology.ox.ac.uk
Leave A Reply