Perspectives on ticklish issues
Shahid Alam goes through a worthwhile read
If anyone can genuinely and productively help in decisively resolving the latent, at times turning demonstrative, contentious relations between India and Pakistan, then all those ponderous thoughts offered in the book under review for bringing about fruitful cooperation among the nations of the South Asian region will fall into place, post-facto resolution of the thorny issues between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. Regional Cooperation & Globalisation: Bangladesh, South Asia and Beyond, edited by Zillur R. Khan and Meghna Guhathakurta, longtime academics both, concentrates heavily on the South Asian region, with only a solid analytical-conceptual chapter (“Empire, Globalisation and the Political Subject†by Ranabir Samaddar) and a distinctly pedestrian one by Abul Kalam justifying the inclusion of “Beyond†in the book's sub-title. Eleven chapters make up the anthology, which has been dedicated to the memory of Ambassador Fakhruddin Ahmed, once a foreign secretary to the government of Bangladesh. As is often the case, the articles written by a variety of authors are uneven in quality, although the overall quality of the book should satisfy the average reader. In view of the book's primary focus, the otherwise run-of-the-mill (not to say somewhat skewed) article by A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed (“Bangladesh: Present State and Future Prospectsâ€) turns out to be its most significant chapter. The editors lay out a rather grand vision for the book: “…designed to epitomize the hope, expectations and aspirations about regional cooperation and trust building….†This objective can be achieved “through a process of regional cooperation generating a concerted effort to address the issues and problems facing South Asian nations…. The shared experience thus gained in problem-solving and policy-making is likely to enhance the capacity to devise innovative non-zero-sum game approaches in securing the benefits and avoiding the pit-falls of joint ventures.†It is always good to hold high hopes in the South Asian context, with its pervasive India-Pakistan imbroglio, although the authors acknowledge this sobering reality: “Bilateral issues still remain unresolved preventing normalization and improvement of relations between India and Pakistan….†Therefore, SAARC, in effect the major focus of the book, has “limited multilateral scopeâ€. Now we are talking sobering reality. The articles are littered with a number of rhetorical suggestions, many that are unlikely to come down to earth from the realm of pure pedantry, and a few others that are practical and practicable. The editors' preface contains this flip side of globalization as it urges greater regional cooperation: that such cooperation could be “the most effective way to present a united front by the non-western nations against a possible downside of globalism --- economic exploitation of the Third World by some advanced countries.†Just “possibleâ€? Really? They also call South Asia “the most dangerous subcontinent of the worldâ€. I did not know there was any other geographically recognized subcontinent in the world. A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed brings up a particularly reprehensible and inherently dangerous phenomenon that has crept in, or has been allowed to creep in, Bangladesh's traditionally tolerant Sufi-inspired Muslim society: “the backward-looking and reactionary movements like the so-called wahhabi and faraizi movements†who are “the progenitors of the present-day exponents of the fundamentalist or radical Islamist such as Jamaat-e-Islami (sic) and…militant out-fits(sic)….†On the subject of Islam and Muslims in India, he observes with deep insight: “…the coexistence of two distinct trends in Muslim thought, religious and secular, have deeply affected the subsequent development of the Muslim community. This dichotomy is noticeable in the national consciousness and political development of the community.†The process of pervasive Islamization of Bangladesh reached its climax under President H.M. Ershad with the ironic outcome that, as Ahmed constructs, Bangladesh became “more Pakistani than Pakistanâ€. Ambassador Fakhruddin Ahmed (“SAARC --- Its Evolution, Growth and Prospectsâ€) identifies President Ziaur Rahman as the author of SAARC, besides recognizing a key factor impeding the regional organization's fulfillment of its ascribed objectives: that it has not yet succeeded in removing distrust among some of its member-states. Zillur R. Khan (“Ideology and Internal Dynamics of South Asian Regional Cooperationâ€) points out a major stumbling block that has not made regional cooperation easy in Asia: such cooperation “has not been able to maintain a balance of politico-economic, and military interests of member statesâ€. This trend could also be noticed in the most successful regional cooperation body in Asia: the ASEAN. Khan also comes up with a highfalutin model (probably only of interest to purveyors of the esoteric, but not to the average interested reader) to explain the relationship between the ideologies of regional cooperation and regional stability: RCI---RA---RR---RL (1+P) = RS. A footnote spells out the abbreviations, and the reader will just have to get the details from the book. Such modular exercise may give one an added aura of great scholarship! Kamal Hossain (“Bangladesh and South Asia: Challenge of Regional Co-Operation in the Twenty-First Centuryâ€) ends his short piece with the general premise underlying the creation and operation of SAARC: “A shared commitment to the goal of sustainable development for the benefit of the peoples…could…be served through multi-layered, multi-dimensional regional co-operationâ€. Rehman Sobhan (“Mediating Political Conflict in a Confrontational Environment: The Experience of G-5â€) recounts a chastening experience in confronting an abysmal state of political culture obtaining in the country, characterized by virulent political partisanship, intolerance of opposing viewpoints, winner-take-all and winning-at-all-cost mentality, and mirror imaging of each other by the major political parties. He recalls, when acting as a mediator in 1995: “The insistence of the then PM, Begum Khaleda Zia, to have a member of her party head a caretaker government, and the refusal of the AL to accept anyone but a non-party person to hold this sensitive office were driven by (the) climate of suspicion and emerged as the principal stumbling block to an agreementâ€. Syed Anwar Husain, in the course of giving his views on Bangladesh's foreign policy endeavours (“Bangladesh Foreign Policy: A Framework for Consensus Buildingâ€), underscores the imperative of having a healthy political culture: “…there cannot be satisfactory consensus either in domestic politics or foreign policy, unless a positive change overtakes our political cultureâ€. How true! But how frustratingly far from realization! Husain makes another critical observation: “…of all the forms of government, democracy makes heaviest demand on the quality of leadershipâ€. Liberal pluralist democracy in Bangladesh is a long way from being satisfied with the returns from its demand! Ambassador Tariq Karim (“Quo Vadis, Bangladesh?â€) dwells at some length, and with much perspicacity, on the worrying rise of radical Islamism in Bangladesh. He traces its encroachment into the country's body politic from almost total obscurity courtesy outright and disguised military dictatorships that found it convenient to espouse their own right-wing ideology to distinguish themselves from the constitutionally secular country and its generally devout, but tolerant, Muslim population. Hamid H. Kizilbash (“SAARC: Security Concerns and Regional Cooperationâ€), while revealing himself to be a pacifist espousing non-violence as a way of life a la Mahatma Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, is also a pragmatist. He draws attention to what might be the key factor in South Asian inter-state relations: “…threat perception and the way in which it influences the behaviour of states in South Asia have made this region distinctly inhospitable to move for regional cooperationâ€. He is clearly skeptical about SAARC in the prevailing environment: “South Asia's profile suggests more problems than promise of regional cooperationâ€. Kizilbash ponders on one ramification of this situation: “The subcontinent continues to be open to manipulation by outside powers as long as they make intelligent use of the contradictions existing between the various members of the South Asian communityâ€. He does touch upon a rarely-identified channel that can be used to guard against the spread of misperceptions, creation of negative images, and the propagation of ethnic and religious hysteria: the media. Ranabir Samaddar (“Empire, Globalisation, and the Political Subjectâ€) offers an erudite conceptual discussion on globalization and its moving force: the United States of America. He terms the current American domination as its Empire, but asserts that it is not going to be around with that appellation for much longer: “…we can see the danger to the Empire --- a danger represented by the political subject who has seen the absence of the critical space between sovereignty and the form of political organization, and has turned the absence into its advantageâ€. Abul Kalam (“Interfacing Bangladesh-Japan in a Globalizing World: The Guiding Frameworkâ€) does not establish any coherent and meaningful interface between Bangladesh and Japan in a globalizing world, but, nonetheless, Regional Cooperation & Globalisation: Bangladesh, South Asia and Beyond is a worthwhile, if, at times, laborious, read.
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