The most horrific way to destroy a country, community, or their beliefs, customs, or culture is to annihilate it directly. However, this method is primitive. This path carries significant risks—facing resistance, retaliation, widespread destruction, and bloodshed. If unsuccessful, it may lead to one’s own downfall.
An alternative path is the path of grandeur. This method is far more subtle, modern, and exponentially more effective. It can be said that after World War II, the world entered an era of such grandeur. Since then, the destruction of “independent” countries like Bangladesh has primarily been achieved through this grand path.
The politics that have shaped this grand path can be termed the politics of positivity. This politics is constructed from positive phenomena. Within the folds of these positive phenomena lie their associated terminologies or jargons, which are preemptively crafted and stored for deployment as needed, depending on time and circumstances.
Currently, except for the controlling nations of global development politics, all follower countries, their governments, and almost all types of institutions are driven by this politics of positivity. However, in extremely chaotic countries like Bangladesh, the state or its institutions cannot exclusively dominate the construction or implementation of these positive phenomena. As a result, numerous factions within society—based on religion, ethnicity, profession, region, gender, etc.—adopt and adapt these phenomena according to their interests. They either construct their own versions of positivity or attempt to do so.
Moreover, they often find themselves in extreme opposition to each other based on the progress or regression of their respective phenomena. The collective outcome of these endeavors is that people, amidst their desperate cries for light, sink deeper into the darkness of suffering.
So, what are positive phenomena? At any given time, as humans, we have certain material and immaterial needs, or develop interests, aspirations, and preferences. Upon closer observation, it becomes evident that a general consensus gradually forms around these needs. When a society, tribe, or state adopts a positive outlook toward such a consensus, it becomes a positive phenomenon for that particular society, tribe, or state at that specific time.
A positive phenomenon for a particular community may be unique, or it may be universal across the world at a given time—such as education, job creation, or increased production. There is hardly any society or community in the world that does not desire these. Therefore, considering their acceptability and universality, all societies or states take various initiatives to fulfill them. This is where politics begins.
Sometimes, for the sake of a country or society’s progress, or even political interests, various positive phenomena are constructed. To achieve this, different strategies are employed, and various schemes of propaganda and incentives are designed—such as democracy, human rights, women’s rights, etc. Politics becomes even more pronounced in such constructed phenomena. In other words, the nature of positive phenomena arising from spontaneous human needs differs from those created by inducing needs. Although the line between these two types of phenomena is not always clear—a phenomenon can be spontaneous in one context and induced in another—its nature can often be discerned through certain hints and activities within the relevant society. Regardless, the politics surrounding these two types of phenomena differ. Notably, in this discussion, politics itself is a negative phenomenon.
Since there is a general consensus around spontaneous positive phenomena, those who take initiatives to implement them remain confident that, despite minor obstacles, their efforts will progress. Therefore, understanding this social assurance, certain powers, societies, or states often use these phenomena to advance distant political agendas or fulfill sinister interests.
What is even more terrifying is that if a phenomenon holds such a dominant positive position in society, denying people access to it can cause immense harm, while providing it can be used to inflict even greater damage and fulfill ulterior motives. In countries like Bangladesh, education is one such monstrous phenomenon. Here, education refers to formal and institutional education.
We have already understood that education is a positive phenomenon for any society or state, and its position is almost universally dominant. However, when we hear the term “politics of education,” the first thing that comes to mind is the British colonial strategy of designing an education system to aid governance—where we retained our Bengali identity in appearance but aspired to be British in behavior and mindset, learning to despise everything about ourselves.
The second thing that comes to mind is creating divisions within the education system so that these divisions aid governance without harming the ruling class. This includes creating multiple streams like English medium, Bengali medium, school medium, kindergarten, madrasa, etc., and further dividing each stream to ensure that no unity can ever emerge among the generations growing up under these systems. This has been effectively implemented in Bangladesh since independence.
There is considerable writing and research on these two types of politics surrounding education, and discussions on them are frequently heard. However, this discussion attempts to shed light on a third type of politics.
Education is not only a dominant positive phenomenon in any society but also commands a long-standing reverence. At the same time, education sometimes challenges prevailing beliefs, customs, and values, creating a certain level of fear across different strata of society. But overall, it is a phenomenon that, even when opposed out of fear, weakens the opponents from within due to societal disapproval.
Education is not only a dominant positive phenomenon in any society but also commands a long-standing reverence. At the same time, education sometimes challenges prevailing beliefs, customs, and values, creating a certain level of fear across different strata of society. But overall, it is a phenomenon that, even when opposed out of fear, weakens the opponents from within due to societal disapproval.
As a result, the expansion of education often becomes isolated from the expansion of other positive phenomena and assumes a singularly authoritative role. It reaches a point where it is said: “If you have no work, get an education! If you have no health, get an education! Even if you have no food, get an education!”
In other words, no matter what the problem is, education is presented as the solution. At this stage, education becomes the dominant positive phenomenon, where denying people access to it can cause immense harm, while providing it can be used to inflict even greater damage and fulfill ulterior motives, as previously mentioned.
But how is this achieved? The absence of education in a society is a problem, but the haphazard expansion of education can become the source of numerous problems. Moreover, if such expansion is not accompanied by corresponding socio-economic-cultural changes, or if these changes are deliberately reversed, irreparable damage can be inflicted. Not only that, but the benefits of this damage can then be used to create and implement other destructive positive phenomena across all sectors of society or the state.
Any positive phenomenon, whether spontaneous or constructed, requires terminology or jargons to be effective. Not only that, but the terminology must also be continuously transformed to suit the needs of time, place, and context.
In reality, terminologies function like incantations in constructing phenomena—their power lies in their novelty and obscurity. When a society, state, government, or authority presents these terminologies with grand displays, dazzling individuals, and elaborate theories, people are left dazzled and bewildered, unable to comprehend their obscurity. They do not get the opportunity to question what will be better in the future, why it will be better, or how it will be better. Their fate becomes a continuous cycle of walking blindly and falling repeatedly.
Another significant reason for people’s helplessness is that the political institutions in such states are relatively weak and immature. They are so preoccupied with the festering wounds of society and the pressing material needs of the people that they are in no position to consider immaterial resources or understand the politics surrounding them. They generally fail to grasp how the politics of immaterial resources can push the possibility of material gain further away.
Instead, they often fall prey to the politics of phenomena and terminologies themselves. In this context, a note can be added: the ongoing implementation of the new curriculum-2021 at the primary and secondary levels in Bangladesh presents an excellent opportunity to understand the politics of phenomena and terminologies.
In fact, the successful politics of the dominant positive phenomenon “education” has enabled the politics of positivity to effectively infiltrate all sectors in Bangladesh today. Health, agriculture, communication, technology, science, medicine, children, environment, women, employment—all sectors are now dominated by such phenomena. Even beliefs, culture, religion, history, and tradition have been affected. Through long-term nurturing, they have achieved this. For a long time, they have been causing severe human destruction and fulfilling monstrous interests, benefiting numerous octopus-like entities—state and non-state, family, and group—both domestic and foreign.
The politics of phenomena and terminologies are masterminded by various states and powers worldwide, directly or indirectly, under different names. In jungle states like ours, whether the government and ruling class are elected, unelected, or usurpers, their opportunities to deviate from these master plans are limited, as are their chances of gaining greater benefits by doing so.
They are thus perpetually eager to continuously reap the growing benefits of this politics. Their eagerness is such that they are unwilling to share even the slightest portion with their own class, unless forced. On the other hand, since ordinary people generally lack the strength to understand or reject the authority of positive phenomena, they sink deeper into suffocation under the weight of their own aspirations.
Bangladesh is now in that terrifying state of suffocation. Even in a sick society, there is a minimal balance of its illnesses. The society limps along, maintaining this balance. But the politics of positivity has shattered even this balance of illnesses in congenitally disabled state – Bangladesh, where education has been its primary weapon. In fact, the destruction of education has crippled the state of Bangladesh and all its institutions. Without putting education on trial and scrutinising all state-led educational initiatives with a suspicious eye, the progress of Bangladesh is impossible.
Rakhal Raha, Education Activist
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