Publications
BY BOBBY HAJJAJ
প্রেসিডেন্টের লুঙ্গি নাই
‘প্রেসিডেন্টের লুঙ্গি নাই’ উপন্যাসটি তৃতীয় বিশ্বের প্রেক্ষাপটে লেখা অ্যাবসার্ডিস্ট এক রূপকথাভিত্তিক কল্পকাহিনি। এটা সম্পূর্ণ কাল্পনিক এবং কোনো ব্যক্তি, গোষ্ঠী বা শ্রেণি, পেশার সাথে এই গল্পের কোনো মিল থেকে থাকলে সেটা পুরোপুরি কাতালীয়। লেখকের কোনো উদ্দেশ্য নেই জীবিত বা মৃত কোনো ব্যক্তি বা গোষ্ঠীকে এই আলোচনায় তুলে ধরার। তবে নব্য উপনিবেশিকতার কারণে তৃতীয় বিশ্বের দেশগুলোতে প্রতিনিয়ত রাজনীতির বাইরে থেকে রাজনৈতিক ব্যক্তিদের আবির্ভাব হয় এবং তারা রাতারাতি পৌঁছে যায় ক্ষমতার কেন্দ্রবিন্দুতে। এই ধরনেরই এক প্রেক্ষাপট আমলে নিয়ে জাদুবাস্তববাদ ধারায় এই উপন্যাসটির রচনা। আর সেই কারণে লেখক মনে করেন যে, গত ১০০ বছরের ইতিহাসে আকস্মিকভাবে কোনো স্বৈরাশাসকের সাথে অল্প কোনো মিল পাওয়া অসম্ভব নয়।
এই উপন্যাসটির মূল লক্ষ্য মজার একটা গল্প বলা এবং পাঠকদের মাঝে সেই গল্পের মাধ্যমে কিছু চিন্তার বীজ বপন করা।
BY BOBBY HAJJAJ
Just a thought a compllation
JUST A THOUGHT gives us glimpses of the underlying nature of society, economics, and politics in Bangladesh. It is audacious in its approach, and focuses on the nuances that most other observers fail to detect. Covering a vast array of topics, it takes us on a journey towards a more insightful understanding of the nation and its people. Compiled as a collection of columns originally published in The Independent, each of the essays are impeccably researched and passionately argued: a celebration of both reason and erudition. The topics covered range from poetry and linguistics to science and international relations, each more gripping and convincing than the next. It is an ambitious and provocative book crammed with original ideas, and humorous accounts, that are a testament to the author’s polymathic knowledge and creative genius.
BY BOBBY HAJJAJ
The nature of identity formation is complex. The production of identity in South Asia, with its colonial past, has been largely dependent on the region’s colonial history. In this article we chart the process of political identity formation in Bangladesh. We identify the various historical causes that led to the creation of each of the two types of identity prevalent today. These two divisive identities based on language and religion, one pitted against the other, each became the central platform of each of the two major political parties, the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). This disquisition shows clear patterns of political distress that resulted in the bifurcation of these two divisive political identities that ossified by the late 20th century due chiefly to the actions of the colonial government of the Raj.
BY BOBBY HAJJAJ
Identity formation is a complex process and has been discussed by post-structuralist discourse theorist Ernesto Laclau. This paper focuses on Laclau’s proposed ideas on the means of identity production and populism and studies the popular independence movement for Bangladesh under that rubric. It locates charismatic leadership as a necessary condition for populism and identifies Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the charismat suturing the various chains of equivalence that rose to become the populist movement that resulted in the nation’s struggle for independence in 1971. This paper also looks at the transformational leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and acknowledges it as a necessary condition for the patterns of identity creation in East Bengal in the late 1960s.
BY BOBBY HAJJAJ
In keeping with the topic of the volume, this chapter shall attempt at an elucidation of the future of nationalism in a non-Western nation. Nationalism is inherently a socio-political phenomenon and as such, ever-changing. This chapter shall focus on the nature of national identities and nationalist ideologies that preponderate in Bangladesh, and attempt at identifying future changes that might become manifest, with specific emphasis on the impact of global media and technological trends, development of political Islam, and South Asian regional politics.
The foundations of any nationalism are based on a set of core myths and traditions, which are malleable over time. This chapter shows the critical links between new global trends including (i) algorithms, filter bubbles, and media consumption in the age of the internet, (ii) global media perceptions and the flowering of political Islam, and (iii) the interconnections between these two and regional South Asian politics, that is changing the core foundational myths of nationalism in Bangladesh. Thus, elucidating some possible futures of nationalism in Bangladesh.
BY BOBBY HAJJAJ
In November 2020, the government of Bangladesh announced plans to erect a 25-foot-tall sculpture of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the national memorial located in the country’s capital, Dhaka. This announcement caused a massive uproar among the religious ulema and quickly turned into a quasi-mass scale movement, sparking a torrent of political and religious rhetoric from both sides. This article argues that behind the religious rhetoric, the true cause underlying this fracas was purely political in nature, and tied to the clash of two contrasting nationalist dogmas. The country’s Islamic political parties and the Qawmi madrasas leaders face a clear and perceived threat from the nationalist narratives expounded by the ruling political party, the Bangladesh Awami League, and this movement was a retaliatory attempt and will not be the last.
BY BOBBY HAJJAJ
A variety of Islamic political parties proliferate the South and South-East Asian nations, most of which advocate a sharia-based form of government. This paper articulates the political participation of Islamic parties in Bangladesh and attempts to delineate the nature of their participation in more recent times. While Islamic political parties in Bangladesh fall between a range of political ideologies, their activities, especially their nature of participation in the 2018 general elections, were far removed from those stated ideologies and fell more in-line with exploitative rent-seeking models of politics.
BY BOBBY HAJJAJ
Between 1979 and 2013, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami was the largest Islamist political party in the country and the only one that ever played a prominent role in government. In 2013, the party had its registration revoked, effectively banning it from running in elections, and has since been stigmatized as a terrorist, or at the very least a terror-sympathizing, organization. This paper looks at the nature of the party and the roles it has played historically in Bangladesh politics. It also investigates the party’s alleged links with religious extremism and terrorist activities in the country, and the roles the party has played in perpetuating religious nationalism.