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Of saints and sinners
Mufleh Osmany
Vices and virtues add up to a reality (a virtual reality?) called human being. Saints pile up relatively more virtues, and sinners dwell in a world largely characterised by vices. But then the concept of virtues and vices become contested in a world where everything is in a state of flux.
There was a time when the line dividing virtue and vice was quite clear and evident. The politics of venality has for all practical purposes obliterated the moral (and spiritual) distinction between saints and sinners (and black and white). All pervasive grey seems to have come to define life today. Perhaps shades of grey better delineate the line separating saints and sinners in the contemporary world. Perception of an entirely black and white world no more seems to be realistic.
Temptations of vices
Dross, they say, has to be mixed with gold to make ornaments. Any goldsmith will swear that 24-carat gold does not lend itself to be shaped into durable ornaments and artifacts. The same philosophy, if you will, is alluded to by the politicians allured by the temptations of vices. Now we have all dross and precious little gold. The world of politics, they assert, is not populated by saints. Sinister sinners hold nothing as sacrosanct as they sacrifice all virtues at the alter of sanguinary battle for the heart and mind of the unwary voters. That was politics in Bangladesh. And hopefully it will resurrect after the current interregnum. May be the phoenix of vile politics will emerge once again from the ashes of discredit, disgrace. Or will it?
The patron saints have long left the desolate mountains and forbidding deserts of Afghanistan having successfully installed the sinners, of their making, in place of godless invaders. The creator of monster remained a saint (or at least loudly claimed to be so) and the label of sinner stayed stuck on the creation. Tons of money and hardware of destruction got poured in.
Madrasas were created by the hundreds to train and motivate Zihadists. The saints did the hard part of providing plans, resource persons and wherewithal. Sinners were trained and successfully launched. The infidels were humbled. What the saints forgot to do was to make a decent winding up of the evil created by them. Harried by their own sins the saints beat a hurried retreat. Fortress psychosis got the better of the patron saints. Happy and secure, they returned to their homeland. The sinner followed the patron saints into the citadel of saints and let loose hell. The saints are still haunted by those sins and sinners.
Orgy of vice
The evil left behind by the saints is now spreading all over the world, creating a new kind of warfare. Bangladesh is also at the receiving end of that mindless orgy of vice. The dreadful harvest of the scandalous mess left behind by the saints is being reaped by the world at large despite the global war on terror. Flickers of religious sentiments have metamorphosed into a fury of arrogant yearnings for political power and glory in the garb of religion. The spillover effect of the abandoned sinners is now manifesting in political tsunamis around the globe. Thanks to the patron saints and their political wisdom or lack of it. The spectre of collateral sins committed by the saints in Afghanistan is haunting South-Asia. As usual the traditional politics of blame-game of South-Asia continues. Beggar thy neighbour policy gathers a fresh momentum. Accusing fingers are pointed at neighbours to distract attention from own failure to scotch home-grown terrorists inspired by returning sinners from Afghanistan and such other places.
Violence, criminalisation
Bangladesh has been rent asunder by politics of violence, vengeance and vendetta. The nation is now expiating for the achievements (or failures) of the sinners. The polity of Bangladesh is paying dearly for the criminalisation of politics and marginalisation of the saner elements of the society. Politics is not the sole abode of the sinners. Every segment of the society has been overwhelmed by the ascendancy of the sinners, of one kind or the other. One wonders whether virtue will ever surface or survive in this overpowering sea of vices. The tide seems to be turning. Is it?
The Augean stable cannot be cleansed overnight, so counsels the faint voice of reason. But a beginning had to be made. A serious initiative had to be launched. The sinners had a consensus -not on public good but on private greed and gluttony.
Election manifestos were always very pious and impressive. Forget and forgive the past sins. There will be a new brand of politics once our party gets the hold of the levers of state power. Electoral promises have been broken too often and too fast. The loot and plunder start even before the oath of office is taken.. The defeated sinners become spoilers par excellence. Being rejected they become dejected and desperate.
Hartal and Aborodh
Strikes, hartals and the new innovation of "seize" or Aborodh programme dominates the politics of denial and destruction. Parliament becomes a desolate and desultory irrelevance. The majority party members remain too busy with unseemly pursuit of personal greed at public cost. The losers play out the game of politics on the public roads. No decent role of opposition has evolved. The role of party in government remains defined by arrogance of power and the winner takes all kind of psychology. Can we find a balance?
We started with a poser as to whether human beings are realities or virtual realities. For a believer like myself, the only Reality in the Universe is the Creator. All the rest are created beings and things. But then there are some who do not subscribe to faith and are seduced by the arrogance of human rationality and imperfect knowledge. Finite human mind cannot perceive the Infinite. Only a heart full of faith can recognise the Lord. Every created thing shall perish. Human beings die and disappear. All they leave behind are some memories and some material objects. The Pharaos are long gone. The pyramids are still struggling to overcome the ravages of time. Where these memories and objects will be in another millenium or two no one knows. Such is the nature of human durability. To meet the definition of reality -- human beings and their creations should endure the depredation of time. From this perspective virtual reality could be a more apt description of human existence. Saints and sinners - all will be destroyed by the eternal tide of time.
Human beings - sinners or saints are all imperfect and transient. Noah the prophet, lived for almost a thousand years. None of us are expecting to live that long. A life span of one hundred years is considered exceptional today. Anyone living beyond 60 years in Bangladesh today is on borrowed time or on extension as per bureaucratic parlance.
Richest sovereign
The mad rush for power, glory and material possessions makes all forget that not a bit of these can be taken to the grave. The sinners and the saints - all will end up in the grave alone, bare and empty-handed.
When prophet Solomon was approaching the end of his mortal life, he asked his people to place his hands outside the shroud. Why did the wealthiest king that ever lived want his hands to be left outside the funeral shroud? That question agitated the minds of the nobles and courtiers. Solomon explained: "Let all the world see, the richest sovereign is leaving the world empty-handed."
Many of the sinners are behind the bars today. They are as empty-handed today as they will be on the day they will be carried to the grave. One can make a safe bet that the politics of 'kleptocracy' will once again be the name of the game. Either they themselves (if they can slip out from present state of incarceration) or their protégé and colleagues will relish once again the game of plunder of public assets and resources if they get their hands on the levers of state power. Today or tomorrow there will be election and the similar sinners will play the same game of kleptocracy again under the usual cover of democracy. The sinners will be oblivious once again of human or divine accountability. For a few moments of hedonistic pleasure the sinners will forfeit the eternal peace and salvation.
Easy come easy go. The ill-gotten wealth of the sinners will be squandered away by their Yaba addict or Ice-pill addict progeny. Some of them are already in custody. The rest are hiding. The godfathers of illicit trade are being ferreted out by law-enforcing agencies.
Law sans order
The sinners brought the country to a stage that there was law but no order. There was government but no governance. The country earned the notoriety for highest level of corruption. Social values and moral principles -- all were thrown to the winds. The sinners seem to have come to believe that they will take their ill-gotten wealth to the grave. All -- sinners and saints alike -- will end up in the grave empty-handed. Only a few yards (or meters) of white fabric will endure with them for some time in the forlorn darkness of grave till every material aspect of their existence disappear into the emptiness of grave.
WB, IMF, ADB, UN's sermons
The saints in World Bank (WB), IMF, ADB, and UN sermonise everyone about the need for eliminating vices of corruption, graft and extortion. The true nature and acts of these saints (self-proclaimed?) are gradually getting exposed. The question is who is calling whom a sinner. The kettle calling the pot black. Who is the saint and who is the sinner? It all depends who is in a position to call the shots.
Private banking is a special service provided by big banks. It is an open secret that the sinners find a safe haven for their plunders in the private banking window of the big banks. Who owns and supports those banks? The powerful saints, of course. Anyone trying to copy them will meet with the same fate as some upstart banks have met with.
The economics of sin is simple. I steal - it is no problem. You steal, it is a great crime. Honore de Balzac said: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Does it explain the great fortune of the developed world? The empire is dead. Long live (economic) imperialism.
Adam was the original sinner. He was the first man, first prophet and first saint. All rolled into one. Many of the politicians of our time claim such a mantle. People have serious reservations about their credentials, though. Adam succumbed to temptations and lure. The avowed and eternal enemy of mankind, the devil or Satan lured Adam towards the temptation of the forbidden fruit. Consequently we all, the descendants of Adam, are expiating the original sin of father Adam and struggling on earth for peace and salvation that Heaven offers.
Accountability
Good and evil dwell in all of us. Those who develop the potentials of good, reach beyond the high level of angels. And those, like our politicians, worship the devil and follow the path of evil, end up in jail. What will happen to them on the Day of Reckoning? They never cared for accountability.
Degenerate merchants of falsehood, make tall pronouncements and promises at election times, and persuade the gullible voters to entrust the wily sinners with state powers. Time and again the sacred trust of the people has been wasted on some politicians devoid of moral compunctions.
"I can resist everything except temptation", said Bernard Shaw. The sinners of Bangladesh, who happen to include all terrorists, extremists and many (perhaps most) politicians, bureaucrats, professionals, academicians, media members, business leaders, some NGOs and trade union leaders etc., fully share the spirit of Bernard Shaw.
Politicians (most of them) cannot and do not resist anything that come their way in the shape of opportunity to pilfer and pillage. Everything is grist that come to their vicious mill. Their avarice knows no bounds. There is nothing called shame in their dictionary. Limitless greed and insatiable craving for power, pomp and define their mindset. The free reign to their rapacity has taken them to the position where they are today. It will take much more than empty promises, if the degenerate sinners hope to merit public trust, confidence and respect one more time. But then is there any alternative?
"Why pick on us, we are not the only sinners. There is no profession in the society free from the crimes we are being persecuted for", so say politicians." Maybe they have a point. There are sinners in every profession. Some saints pick up news items from papers and paint their country blacker than it really is. Is it the money they receive from their patron saints that benumb their sense of patriotism?
Neighbouring countries are in no way any better but their media and their do-gooders do not wash the national dirty linen so much in public. Many NGOs dance to the tune of their paymasters who have their own agenda. A section of bankers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, newsmen, lawyers, academics, bureaucrats - and name others - all are more or less in the same boat.
Why then single out the politicians? Perhaps, because politics is the glue that binds the various power centres to create national power. Weak centres and weaker glue make national power a sham. Politics stinks, so does the rest of the society. High profile and high position of politicians attract high visibility. More importantly, many politicians betray public trust, steal public money and destroy the very basis of civilised society. There are more sinners in politics than elsewhere. Maybe that explains as to why people criticise most of the politicians.
Adam sinned. So did Satan. The difference is, Adam succumbed to temptation and the sin was inadvertent. The moment Adam became aware of his transgression, he repented, reformed and prayed for mercy and forgiveness of the Lord. "My Lord, I have defiled my soul. I seek your kind forgiveness and unless your mercy is showered on me I will be among the lost ones".
Satan disobeyed the Lord wilfully. He was arrogant and unregenerate (like many of our politicians). Satan claimed he was superior to Adam, since Adam was made of matter (soil) and Satan was made from energy (fire). Satan thus became cursed and outcast. The sinners of our time are more like Satan- unregenerate, ungrateful and unreformable.
There is a sinner (however much attenuated it may be) hiding inside a saint. Similarly, there is a saint (however much dormant it may be) hibernating inside every sinner. The basic difference lies in the fact that the saint has been able to thwart the enticement of sin and remain steadfast on the straight path of virtue, by the grace of the Lord. The sinner on the contrary chose to slide along the slippery slope of vice and throttle the voice of virtue. Saints and sinners use the limited freewill granted to them by the Lord. This conscious exercise of freewill and deliberate choice of options create the defining line separating the saints from the sinners.
Freewill
Starting from the same point and same endowments of body, mind and soul, the saints and sinners end up at different destinations, albeit destinations of their own choice made in the conscious exercise of their freewill. The accountably in human courts as well in the Divine Judgement will be on the basis of intent and action. In human courts measure of intent is more or less based on inference and indirect evidence. The Lord knows the innermost thoughts and intents of all creations. Human beings will be judged by the Lord on count of both true intents and actual actions. The sinners seem to be blissfully unaware of the final accountability.
Our chicanery, duplicity, extortion and thievery are all for the sake of the people and for advancement of democracy -so claim the sinners. On the other hand the saints say, "Truly my prayer and my service of sacrifice, my life and my death are (all) for Allah, The Cherisher of the worlds". The sinners mortage their souls to unbridled greed and avarice. The saints sacrifice everything at the alter of grace and mercy of the Lord. But then who is a true saint and who is a confined sinner cannot be known entirely on the basis of perceived motivation and evident performance. The Lord will judge all of us at the end of all pomp of power and boasts of heraldry. Till that time all saints and sinners may do well to keep in remembrance the Grace and Mercy of the Lord.
"Mischief has appeared in land and sea because of (the mead) that the hands of men have earned, that (Allah) may give them a taste of some of their deeds: in order that they may turn back (from evil)". Thus the Lord guides His mortal creations.
All sins including all forms of mischief can be traced to human imperfection and flaws. Those who strive to seek the mercy of their Lord Creator can overcome, with the grace of the Lord, much of the imperfections and achieve higher level of communion with the Lord.
All politicians and for that matter all members of other professions are not equally steeped in sin and vices. The relatively saintly ones need protection, care and freedom from perceived unbearable threat. The challenge for the nation today is how to make it happen. How to draw the line? How to create balance and moderation? How to overcome the overwhelming fear psychosis that seems to heavily burden the consciousness of both saints and sinners alike? In the name of the Lord, can we make some creative efforts to emancipate from the present imbroglio.
There are saints and saints. There are sinners and sinners. All are not the same. If you have known one, you have not known all. Sometimes label of sinner gets foisted on a saint. Sinners pass under the garb of saints. That is the game of politics. How does one differentiate? Manifest conducts provide the only dependable basis for judgement. The intent is rather difficult to discover with a degree of certainty. The sinners seek hedonistic goals and pray for good in this world only. The saints have faith, hope and noble objectives. They pray for blessings in this world and beyond. Everyone is free to choose a role model -- saint or sinner - of any hue or humour. Accountability follows that choice.
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