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Freedom Unfinished
Fundamentalism and Popular Resistance in Bangladesh Today
Jeremy Seabrook, Zed Books, £14.95 paperback, £45.00 hardbackThe best and the worst of Bangladesh is explored in Freedom Unfinished.
Bangladesh is a nation divided by a struggle over land rights, which if not resolved may see the landless seek refuge in religious fundamentalism. Jeremy Seabrook's book seeks economic liberation in achieving access to land for the poor. His account finds the tide of events moving strongly in the other direction, with the poor struggling against land enclosure and ruthless exploitation.
The story of a group of landless people fighting for their statutory rights illustrates the general problem. As ever, the legislation is there but it is not implemented without a struggle against enormous resistance.
The group, the Samata movement, was set up in the Pabna district to secure a hold on khas land, officially designated by the Bangladesh Government as land for redistribution among the poor.
The statistics are striking. Landlords have occupied most of the khas land, with Bangladesh's landless population increasing from 31 per cent of the people to 67 per cent.
Moreover, 80 per cent of Bangladesh's people work in agriculture, but they own only five per cent of the country's resources.
The Samata movement identified some 12,000 acres of khas land in its working area and distributed 1,705 of them at a place called Ghugudah Bheel. Seabrook's book describes what happened next from the point of view of the chairman of the Landless Welfare Society. He describes the struggle that arose from the landless being used to clear the land in partnership with the “local elite (former landlords of the now defunct feudal system) in return for title to the land.
The local elite tried to evict the landless with hired thugs (known as mastaans), though not before many landless people had registered their name to the land, and bought it using the few possessions they owned. The local elite ignored these titles and started selling the land on. With persistence many of the formerly landless people in that area have managed to obtain title to small parcels of land, equivalent to around one acre. But that one acre gives people independence and subsistence, room to build a house and earnings to send their children to school.
John D Allen
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