Editorial
Hartal violence
A drastic change in political culture needed
Yesterday's hartal was no different from the scores of others called over the last two decades except vandalism and violence the night before. The politicians, their activists and the police took the field, while the people looked on, with mostly indifference and some fear.
Despite claims by BNP leaders of the strike being 'spontaneous' on the part of the people, it is obvious that it was only the violence of the preceding night that intimidated people into 'observing' the strike. National property such as public buses have always borne the brunt of the violence of picketers and the fires of this last hartal too were ignited by the 10 buses set alight the night before in the capital. Neither is private property safe, not only on the streets but even in one's own home. This became glaringly obvious in the television news footage which showed several anti-hartal activists vandalising an opposition party member's house while the police looked on with a passivity characteristic of them regardless of the party in power. Indeed, the political parties themselves become indistinguishable when it comes to hartals. What they preach when in power is directly contradictory to what they practise in the opposition and vice versa.
Nothing short of a drastic change in our political culture can foster political engagement of the people. Their apathy -- akin to the calm before a storm -- should be heeded as a warning by our politicians and not seen as a sign of consent. The indifference towards a democracy for which they had fought and which had promised them so much, can hardly be healthy. How much have we grown as a democracy in the last 20 years, we may ask. Judging from our hartal culture, little good and a lot of violence is all that is achieved from such exercises of our so-called democratic right.
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