Photo: Amdadul Huq / Driknews

In the Oxford Dictionary the meaning of hartal has been mentioned as, “the closing of shops and offices in India as a mark of protest or sorrow.” According to this definition, hartal is a property of India and we have inherited the same. But in the next new edition the authors of Oxford Dictionary would probably correct this definition by replacing the word India by Bangladesh as we are playing the leading role in observing hartal as well as incorporating new strategy / actions such as killing people, damaging and torching vehicles and factories to make the hartal successful.
The people of this country, after a lapse of about three & half years, got the taste of a dawn to dusk hartal on 27 June 2010 against the call of the opposition party BNP and its allies to voice their protest, on behalf of the general people as they say, against soaring prices of commodities, electricity, water & gas crisis, political repression of the government on its opponents etc. As it is always claimed by pro-hartal parties, the closedown was successful but at costs of colossal economic loss, damage of public & private properties, loss of lives and wounds to many. The indiscriminate beating of the family members of the BNP leader Mirza Abbas inside his house, including his wife and the old mother will be remembered by all for a long time.
But a news analysis published on the previous day of the hartal mentioned some other reasons centring BNP and its leading family for calling this hartal. The news analysis reported that the BNP opted for street agitation as it failed in its secret bid to reach an understanding with the government that the latter would not make a move on Khaleda Zia's Cantonment house, and would withdraw the cases against the party chairperson and her sons. If this is true then the people of this country must be ready to pay more in the coming days as no one can say when the country can come out of the grips of the top two.