Let's Wait Till It's Too Late

Let's look at two sides of a story – a completely fictional, highly unrealistic, definitely not related to Dhaka University, Curzon Hall or student politics story.

Scenario A: Two young women and their uncle, all three with some foreign recognition and education, appear in the campus of a renowned public university and take part in public displays of affection, so disgusting and so indecent that a group of righteous university students approach them and ask them to stop. Without further provocation, one of the women replies with a slap and their uncle, who doesn't appear to be an 'uncle', starts to punch the university students, and the righteous young men are forced to defend their own.

Fast forward to the end of the fight, and the young men are still unscathed. One of the women, however, has her dress ripped in places as she fell on barbed wires while the fight was going on and the uncle has been admitted to the hospital to stitch up his wounds. They file a case that day and take up legal proceedings with the university while the young men resort to voicing their side of the story, the truthful side, through social media, not bothering to take up a legal stance, because honestly, who needs that?

Some of them receive temporary suspension and this wrongful punishment only cements the unjust nature of society and how skewed it is towards the elite. Facebook posts cry out at the loss of tax money in public education, and brand the institute as a political hub of rough, barbaric youngsters.

Scenario B: Two young women and their uncle arrive at the university which happens to be the alma mater for much of their family. They are sitting by a pond, chatting, when four young men approach them and ask them who they are and whether this is a 'hangout' place. Without further explanation, they start to beat up the man and when the two women intervene, proceed to grab one, throw her to the ground and kick her viciously. There is no barbed wire around.

After a hospital visit, they file a case and take it up to the media when they realise that the administration is not likely to sufficiently punish a group of students who appear to have political ties. When rumours circulate that some of them have been temporarily suspended (a less than proportionate punishment), people find that the students suspended don't even study in the departments they are said to be studying in. Furthermore, viral internet posts are tagging and shaming the victims as 'Westernized', 'incestuous' and 'sex-driven' maniacs.
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There are more 'scenarios' of incidence of violence surrounding Mr. Beg, a renowned photographer and principal of Begart Institute for Photography, and his two nieces, Rubaiya and Saba Ahmad, a former student of IBA, University of Dhaka. When they were taking part in a peaceful protest for justice a few days later, a counter-protest of students shouted slurs at Saba and Rubaiya, and they responded with traditional Bengali songs.
Like most issues, this one is tinged with the generalisations characteristic of South Asians. In cases of violence, wherever they occur, the promiscuous person vs. the righteous people narrative is familiar, even over-done. Female scholar turned blind by husband who clawed at her eyes and bit off her nose in front of their 5-year-old daughter? Heard she was having an affair while studying abroad, she clearly deserved that. Medical student gang-raped on moving bus and left to die on the side of the road and the main question appears to be, “What was she wearing and why was she out so late?”

The fact that we find it okay to even ask questions like these is cause for concern. But maybe we should celebrate that we make any queries at all. In Zubair Ahmed's molestation and murder case, so few questions were raised at the start that he could've been buried with the secrets of his last agonising moments if it weren't for a social media movement.

But that's the thing about social media. It could be used to market any story, no matter how absurd. So many people have resorted to name-calling Mr. Beg and his nieces that the main question they should have asked has remained unspoken: even if all that the perpetrators said were true, are we as a society okay with beating people up to enforce our brand of morality?

While we fight over right and wrong, the four university students accused of the crime remain in the shade of power we have all become too used to. The elusive 'they' are tied with political strings that change colour every election while the puppets almost always remain the same. We've learned to keep quiet when they show up, to give lenience when they push and to keep our heads down when they laugh in our faces.

There are numerous other confirmed and un-confirmed incidents that have surfaced since this went viral and many bear witness to what can mildly be referred to as 'bullying'. Student politics have always been questioned, but perhaps now, when they prey on our own in times of peace, we must seek more checks and balances. Perhaps we could even be defiant.

That will be tough since we, as a people, have turned into bystanders. When Biswajit was murdered in front of our very cameras, we stood there and took closer shots of the way they hacked at him with rods. Rubaiya might have felt a shred of that helplessness when she called out to bystanders to save her sister from the young men, her juniors, who kicked her while she lay on the ground.

And yet, this isn't big news because none of them were raped or murdered. We can all pretend that the situation got a little out of hand, like a schoolyard brawl – someone yelled, someone pushed, someone fell. We can all wait till that someone is someone we love.