THE title of this essay could be puzzling. Readers might think I am bothered about the sudden “disappearance” of Molotov cocktails that terrorists hurled at innocent people and killed scores of them — mostly poor working class people — in the couple of months before the farcical Parliamentary elections of Jan 5.

This piece is about the alarmingly growing indifference and unresponsive nature of the average Bangladeshi to selective and indiscriminate killing of innocent people by law-enforcers as well as by law-breakers and terrorists. The people have become so indifferent and unresponsive to violent deaths of innocent people that they do not bother to question the government version of the story, which our experience tells us, has hardly ever been true since our liberation.

People seem to be resigned to their miserable fate to such an extent that they no longer bother to ask who were they who killed innocent people with Molotov cocktails, and why did they suddenly stop using them soon after the elections? The crux of the problem is that the already depoliticised and of late de-enfranchised people have become desensitised to violent deaths. Thus, potentially many of them are not averse to using Molotov cocktails or other deadly weapons.

One wonders if the “Jamaati terrorists” (as Awami League leaders want us believe) were behind the Molotov cocktail attacks, they have no reason to discontinue its use in the wake of the elections. The government's tireless effort in projecting the Jamaat-BNP men as “pro-Pakistani Islamist terrorists” who, it alleges, are hell-bent to stop the trial and execution of the war criminals through indiscriminate killing of people, may be mentioned in this regard.

We believe killing innocent people with Molotov cocktails is either madness or a terrorist act. Since there is no room for the assumption that there was a collective convulsion or sudden madness among sections of the people — allegedly among members of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and among sections of the BNP — who started firebombing people right and left, weeks before the controversial elections, we need some other explanations. Were these terror attacks the handiwork of some killing squads? And we know, as there are terrorists who are basically non-state actors, so are there terrorists — members of death-squads — who are state-sponsored. The stories about the so-called “crossfire” or “gun battle with Rab and police” are the fig leaves for the government, which it knows nobody at home and abroad takes seriously.

It is time that Bangladeshis at home and abroad start calling a spade a spade. We must make the government explain why “crossfire” deaths should not be considered state-sponsored killing by death-squads, and not different from how Hitler, Franco, Pinochet and Saddam Hussein (among others) used to eliminate their political adversaries. Interestingly, neither the BNP nor the AL governments produced any credible evidence to justify extrajudicial killing of criminals and innocent people through “cross fire” or “encounters.” The present government has failed miserably to nab any Molotov cocktail thrower, while these terrorists killed people in broad daylight in presence of hundreds of people. Does this in any way mean that the terrorists did not belong to the Jamaat or BNP but to some other party having a vested interest in terrorising the people to gain some political leverage?

Whatever may be the truth, the distressing fact is that, of late, Bangladeshis in general have become so insensitive to violence that a dozen or so violent deaths of people a day in a city or across the country — at the hands of law-enforcers or political activists — do not perturb them at all. This is what was never normative throughout the history of Bangladesh. People never accepted the killing of innocent men and women by Pakistani marauders during the nine-month-long Liberation War, when the country virtually turned into a killing field. As this writer can tell from his own experience of living through the bloody days and nights of 1971, Bengalis in general did not accept the violent death of an innocent civilian at the hands of Pakistani troops or their collaborators as customary, routine, regular, let alone acceptable.

Throughout history, to the average Bangladeshi, one violent death of an innocent person was too many to mourn, condone and forget about. People still mourn the deaths of Khudi Ram, Surya Sen, Salam, Barkat, Jabbar, Assad, Motiur, and tens of thousands of other martyrs, who died for a cause at the hands of our enemy. Why the same people have become so insensitive to political murders, selective and indiscriminate killing of innocent people is a disturbing question today.

While three deaths of Dhaka University students in 1952 and a couple more in 1969 at the hands of law-enforcers led to the independence of Bangladesh, one wonders, why so many brutal deaths after liberation have gone almost unlamented. While Nurul Amin remained a pariah for his role in the killing of Feb 21 — ultimately he had to leave Bangladesh and die in Pakistan — one wonders why the killer of Nur Hossain and many other innocent people is still around as an important leader!

In sum, Bangladesh is going through a dreadful period, pregnant with ominous developments, which could cost the nation dearly in the near future. While India, with its hegemonic designs, is trying hard to befriend the government by bypassing the people, the disillusioned and angry people can take some drastic measures, which can destabilise the country for decades. Unless the country adopts democratic methods to run its government, desensitised people may be lured into adopting Molotov cocktails and even more deadly weapons as their only means to live with dignity and honour. As India should not take Bangladesh for a ride, the government should not consider the people too stupid to understand its cry wolf jingles, “Islamists are coming” and “After us the deluge.” Sooner the government comes to its senses, the better. — Taj Hashmi

The writer teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee.

— By arrangement with The Daily Star/ANN