Tortured Truths

Tortured Truths is a collection of columns and a public lecture, published in the English daily New Age, the writings span a five-year period (2008-2012). It is the first volume in a five-part series; the series title “Exercising Freedom” captures well what drives her to write. Freedom is neither an abstraction nor a commodity Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, she writes, even if objective for freedom exists, it is does not mean people are necessarily free. Freedom must be thought of as a possibility; it is a reality but only one of several. To move towards the future desired, one must move beyond thinking of freedom as a legal right, one must enact freedom instead of (merely) having aspirations for freedom. The first piece, written during a state of emergency levied by the military-installed caretaker government (2007-2008), details the gruesome torture which the joint forces had subjected adivasi leader Choles Ritchil to, leading to his death. In a later piece, written post-emergency, she proposes re-thinking the coinage, “military-installed caretaker government”. She argues that “consortium government” is more appropriate since the Fakhruddin –Moeenuddin caretaker government was constituted by a combination of national and international forces- the military leadership, shusheel shomaj (civil society by design), and Western diplomats. The final piece in the collection, a public lecture, engages with what reclaiming life in times of death-a never- ending “war on terror” aimed at encompassing the world –involves, when university campuses are marked by intellectual subservience: the fifteenth amendment to the constitution which declared all citizens of Bangladesh to be “Bengalis” was not collectively challenged by public and private universities, as it should have been, in the interest of academic freedom renowned development agency, committed to eradicating poverty globally turns a blind eye to occupational and its horrors( depleted uranium and the desecration of corpses) while working in Afghanistan. When the US government‘s account of 9/11 is full of unexplainable holes including suicide-hijackers who happen to be alive. Inspired by Begum Rokeya and Martin Luther King, Jr. she urges us to discover the meaning of life through disturbing the status quo, for therein lies the possibility of freedom.