Fri 27 Apr 2007
I was going to tell you about Fatima, the engaging eight-year old I met in Rangpur during my recent trip to visit Madhabi. You may recall that I wrote last year about an offhand remark made one day by Nisit, a teacher educator colleague of mine, to the man driving his rickshaw to work. “You should send your daughter to school” he’d said, then gone on to explain why. He’d thought nothing more of it, until a chance meeting a full three years later, where the same rickshaw driver proudly announced how heíd followed this advice, and how his daughter was now doing well at school.
Read more here
April 27th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I am happier right after having read this than I have been all day. Not just because Mohammad Azimuddin chose to send his daughters to school, but also because he is working even harder to give them an education in music (I’m a bit biased). That is something that not even the literate upper classes always support n their children. Don’t suppose he would be interested in a privately-funded scholarship for his daughters, would he?
April 27th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Being Bangladeshi, living ‘like-’ Azimuddin, this report is another valueless, no point stories. Good for Andrew’s school project. For last many decades we have hundred of these stories with hundreds of pointless advice. We do not need a foreigner to tell us what we already know for years. All these Andrew-like organization from 1st world countries are so meaningless & misleading that is unbelievable. Money & poverty is not our # 1 problem. We have means to feed ourselves (Inshallah) and define our own what poverty and happiness means. Our major problem is we do not practice enough to ask, think, discuss and come to a common decision for benefit of mass & finally walk the talk. I can find similar stories of different flavor in Australia of ‘I met Jenifer the …..’.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Asaad,
I hate patronising first-world organizations as well. This story is a far cry from that. Ask yourself this, would you say the same if a Bangladeshi had written something similar?Personal attacks help no one.
A few days ago, someone posted a story about migrant workers on this blog. I did not hear anyone protesting about “foreign” reporters commenting about Filipino practices. That story too focussed on an individual instance to make a bigger point.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
There is a point that bloggers make here and it’s not about the personality behind the post.
There was something about this post that I couldn’t articulate well - but will try now.
There are probably hundreds of instances like this that our eyes see but don’t comment about. There’s something about foreign gaze that picks up every day observations that are external to us - sometimes academics call this the exoticising gaze. Or in a more neutral way we might call it the anthropological gaze which inevitablely involves a process of ‘othering’. Our friends in the US might’ve read bell hooks who has a lot to say about the gaze.
Not sure if i articulated this well but the lady with the interest in migration was taking a research view of things - not let’s help one man send his child to school. Raising poor people’s education demands are more complicated - the poster no doubt is also aware of this. But the hunch I have is something to do about aid dependency and the old fashioned way of providing assistance to the poor. More like Victorian ideals of philanphropy which the UK ditched a long time ago. One man and his project is not a sustainable way to do poverty allievation. Bloggers here will have experience of sustainable development.
April 28th, 2007 at 12:29 am
I am kind of surprised to see this much of reaction from Asaad and Tahir :(!
I am seeing Andrew only shared his good feelings with us. Who knows this one piece of advice that Mr Azimudding followed could lead to a great doctor or a teacher or even a great national leader some day.
All the best with Fatima and her sister. There are lots of schlarship programs going on and I am sure they will get benefit from one or the others someday. I belive, if I can lit the candle in one person today, someday that will lit hundred others.
Makes me feel great, thanks Andrew for sharing.
-Sharmin
April 28th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Hmmm, some tangled knots here.
First of all, let me make clear I gave no advice to anyone. My role in this whole episode is entirely as a reporter - I played no part in the advice-giving or the subsequent decision made by Azimuddin. But, having heard about it, I thought it was worthy of note.
I plead guilty to having a ‘foreign gaze’: that’s a statement of fact. But I hope that my writing over the last year here and on my own site is one that displays sensitivity to the local context rather than some variety of anthropological exoticism. That’s for others to judge, but the reactions of most readers would suggest I’m not overstepping the mark too often.
Back to this story. Nisit, my colleague, who is central to this piece, is a Bangladeshi and one who is committed to education. Would you accuse him of ‘exoticising’ and ‘othering’? On what basis?
So Tahir, I fail to see what on earth this has to do with philanthropy or dependency. Anyone would think I’d stopped some destitute rickshaw driver one day and said “Poor man, let me help you because I’m rich and western”. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you’d actually read the story rather than jumping to neat and simplistic conclusions about first and third world viewpoints, you’d see that Azimuddin made this decision by himself, and committed to it. So, he got a prompt from a local well-wisher. Is that a problem? Should we ban advice-giving?
And where, while we’re on the subject, do I suggest that this is a way to alleviate poverty on a national scale? This is one person’s story and claims to be nothing else. Of course there are implications here for others in similar situations, but that is for them to infer. I make no grand claims for Azimuddin, other than to salute his far-sightedness.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Should we ban advice-giving? Heaven forbid, no, if that happens then what we, the chatterati, will do?
April 28th, 2007 at 5:47 am
It was a beautiful and inspiring story. Such stories should be shared with as many people as possible. This was such a story where the good feeling lingers long after the story ends.
I am astonished at the efficiency with which Asaad and tahir antagonized our pleasant feeling with bottomless bitterness.
April 28th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Bloggers
I deliberately didn’t refer to the story not to personalise matters. There are different views to aid, helpling, philanprophy - I wasn’t suggesting any of us are guilty of one or the other. That’s the style of debate we want to encurage right ? Stimulate debate? Not takes things personally? Except as you say, Andrew, your gaze, like mine is a fact. We all bring to our roles as reporters and researchers a sense of responsibility. That responsibility is also one that needs to respond to sensitivity. I wasn’t invoking 1st/3rd world - I thought that’s a terribly demeaning way to refer to our world.
The point wasn’t to accuse you or others of exoticising gazes but to place what we do every day in a historical and political context of the times we live in - you must’nt tale my comments personally, there are lots of hunches at play when we are dealing with inter-faces between black/white folks, sometimes it’s healthy to talk about these hunches. Don’t forget black and Asian people their motives, emotions, fears, ambitions, are talked about day in day out - it should be OK to do the same for white people.
Other bloggers shouldn’t tale debates and points to promote aid, projects, dependency discussions are personal either. This site is fairly mature and exists to promote challenging discussions.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Tahir,
I don’t quite get what your last post is trying to say, but I do understand your concerns about the “exoticising” or the “anthropological” gaze. It’s classic orientalism.
But my impression is that if you had read this piece by someone with a more Bangali name, you would not have commented in the same vein. You would have made the same points differently. Bangladeshis above a certain income level “exoticise” their poorer cousins as well. Sure it’s negative, but it’s still novel: “all drug addicts and criminals”.
My point is that accusations of “orientalism” (and that is what it sounds like. If not, correct me) can easily turn too racist/chauvinist for my view. You cannot say to a person: “oh, you did not grow up in Dhaka, so you don’t know what it’s like”. Most of DP are expatriates living in the West. Would we like it if we were stopped from even commenting on Western politics and society because we did not grow up there?
The anthropological gaze might be inevitable. Posting about it here gives off the wrong vibes.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Andrew bhai,
I’ve read your article on Azimuddin and his family, and, I’ve ‘made’ my mrs read it.
Your articles provide an invaluable insight on/of BD.
Do what I do with resentful ad hominem arguments, ignore it.
You’re not a foreigner, you are a sarvik prithvi atma.
April 28th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Dear Andrew,
I’m highly appreciative of your and your group’s endevour in doing something for distitute Bangladeshis. I do passionately go throuh your posts in this forum.
I’m critical and cynical of the different human right groups/international NGOs working in different parts of the world as they are seen sometimes very biased and fail to reach out to some really needy left out section of human population across the world. I’m out of my country and don’t know what is the current living and human right status of Biharis in Bangldesh. I believe, they are very much unfortunate contiegent of people, chronically denied of their human rights and have been living a precarious lives. This is may surmise, the Bangladeshi human rights activists have blind eyes to them and perhaps the Beharis are considered as the enemies of Bangladesh as once their predecessors didn’t support our liberation war. It’s anti-human and drastically unfair. Here in the USA illegal immigrants fight for their rights and Bangladeshi political and human activists are very active and vocal about Bagladeshi illegal population here. But Beharis are stateless people in Bangladesh for last 36 years. It’s really shame on human rights activists at Dhaka.
I would request your group to see their issues at your modest possible scope and capacity.
Thanks
April 29th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Asif Y
The point I was making but quite badly and inarticulatey is that debates about the ‘gaze’ whether it’s anthropological or indeed elite/wester expatriat gaze is worth of debate - it doesn’t lead to chauvinism. Sociology and anphropology continually discuss these points and noone accuses us of chauvinism of racism. But your point taken that this might not be the apprpriate place. Perhaps DP is just not concerned about our own roles as researchers and how we discuss the poor. That proves my point that we discuss and analyse the poor, their motives, desires, ife styles, we happily dissect these. But as soon as we pose back the attention on what our motives might be we get a little alarmed. Why? I didn’t mean to give the wrong vibe - one of the challenges we face as a nation is indeed how we are represented, talked about, discussed about etc, including we as the not-so-poor discuss other poor Bangladeshis. Isn’t this what the roundable discussion about Daily Star is about? The relative merits of priviledged elites in Bangladeshis discussing the state of democracy - the irony is that it is the most undemocratic group hence people raise questions about their ‘gaze’ on the poor but it wasn’t phrased in this way. So I suppose I thought it was OK to comment on the racial angle - it’s a healthy discussion but if it isnt right for this blog’s comfort zone this is cool - democracy rules.
April 29th, 2007 at 3:18 am
These are interesting points you make Tahir, and I welcome your moderate tone. The problem is, I think to an extent you are looking for issues where there may be none.
I’m open to discussions of gaze. It’s an interesting subject, but in this particular story, try as I might I can’t really discern the “racial angle” you describe. Apart from as a visitor, I play no role in the whole thing.
Neither is it orientalist - I’m not making grand judgements on “the people of the subcontinent” or whatever. I’m neither glamourising nor patronising the poor - this is the story of one guy and I thought it was newsworthy. So, evidently, did my editor.
Anyone who’s looked through my own site should, I hope, find a variety of articles ranging across all levels of society here, from the elite to the middle classes to those from the working class that I do encounter in my job. I speak Bangla pretty fluently now and so my communication tends to be unmediated by translators with their own filters.
What I am doing as I write these more socially-driven articles is to highlight individual cases. Whether they are or should be representative or not is up to the reader. I try not to make sweeping statements along the lines of “all poor people should go and do likewise”.
As other commentators have pointed out, it’s a straight bit of reportage - which could easily have been written in virtually the same way by my excellent colleague Hana over at SWM.
The one bit of opinion I allow myself is on the communication gap between the classes. This has been amply borne out in my nine years here and I stand by that.
April 29th, 2007 at 4:16 am
Tahir,
When I said “here”, I meant Andrew’s post and not all of DP. By mentioning the “gaze” here, you placed yourself in a position where it seems that you’re saying the gaze becomes relevant only “foreigners” judging “Deshis”. I’m sure it does to some extent, although once again, I didn’t notice any in this article.
But as you mentioned, the “gaze” becomes relevant even when Deshis judge Deshis. So once again, do mention it in other posts as well.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Hello both
Thanks for clarifying and encouraging remarks - and this has been an interesting discussion, makes DP all the richer for it.
Point taken that I might be seeing issues that aren’t in the article. But that’s the way with communities of practice ( that’s what blog culture is..) when one idea spins another one and issues arise that aren’t in the original think-piece. And the original author is no more responsible for this spin-oof thoughts and I guess the way I blog (perhaps not others do things differently) is to play with ideas whereever they come from - and I like to debate issues away from the author himself/herself so we can have a free-field discussion.
Thanks for listening - might be now guilty of hogging blogspace!