Editorial Desk :
Violence is not politics but because our politics lacks intellectual content so violence is growing in the country to the concern of the whole nation.
Our election denying politics has to depend on violence to remain in power to protect groups interest. The men in power and their cohorts are having a lavish style causing increasing crisis in the national economy and ruining the future of the younger generation by using them to bolster politics of corruption and thievery.
Now violence is growing as the crisis in all sectors of public life is worsening. The government has no honest competent men around for sensible advice or doing sensible things for dealing with the rising mismanagement in public life. Their answer is violence against any protest.
Believing in the power of violence the politicians are losing their own existence as sources of thoughts and ideas for the good of the nation. Foul language used in our politics shows that even civility has gone from politics. For relying on muscle and gun power one does not have to be a politician.
Our politics is a national shame and disgrace for us. But we are not so uneducated or uncivil as a nation. Yet that is the image we are living with.
The problems of incompetence in governance cannot be answered by violence. The recent incidents of violence using young ones-students or no students-both by the party in power and opposition will lead to more violence and chaos. We do not see how that will serve the interest of the government.
Thursday’s incident of clashes between the two rival student organisations in front of the Supreme Court Bar Association building is indeed a matter of great concern. According to media reports on Friday, the ruling Awami League-backed student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) made a reckless attack on
the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party student front Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD) while the latter was on its way to DU campus from the High Court area around 12pm as part of their scheduled programme.
This violent incident occurred two days after the BCL activists beat up JCD counterparts on DU campus on Tuesday. As result of the attack, some of the JCD activists managed to enter the High Court area but the BCL activists chased them and beat them up inside the court premises. Since morning the JCD leaders and activists had been gathering in the vicinity of the High Court area to observe the programme announced earlier on DU campus in protest against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s derogatory remark about BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia. As the procession was moving towards Doel Chattar of Dhaka University, the BCL activists swooped on the JCD activists. The clashes left at least 50 JCD activists injured, one of them critically.
According to eyewitnesses, BCL leaders and activists from different halls, who had taken up positions around the Shaheed Minar, attacked them with hockey sticks, pipes, rods and sharp weapons, while gunfire was also heard.
There are allegations that leaders of different political parties have long been using students to serve their own political aggrandizement and putting their lives in total jeopardy. The student bodies are subservient to political parties, which we should have not been so. They are being exploited by leaders to control university campuses and other criminal activities. But student politics in our country has a glorious proud history of struggle and utmost sacrifice for the national interest during all crisis movements, including the language movement of 1952, six-point movement of 1966, mass upsurge of 1969, Liberation War of 1971, and the toppling of military dictatorship in 1990. Until then, student leaders were mostly ideology driven.
Unfortunately, the notion of student politics has been shifted towards the individual goal attainment instead of the national interest. Now student politics are considered as the extension of the political parties. It was always found that the activists of the ruling party student wing dominate the campus, extort shops from surrounding areas and manage good jobs. We believe that all political parties should withdraw their political backing from their respective student organisations to create an environment of co-existence of all students.
