People in general in Bangladesh only know two Argentinians very well: Diego Armando Maradona and Lionel Messi. And some educated people know Ramona Victoria Epiphany Rufina Ocampo (1890-1979), who was a writer and editor of the literary magazine Sur. She was once invited to India by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the Bengali poet and novelist and the first Nobel laureate among Asians. Of course, there is no doubt that communists know Ernesto (Che) Guevara (1928-1967) very well.
By Muhammad Tanim Nowshad
Before explaining Siloism and its scope in Bangladesh, I want to narrate the history of this movement in our country and especially in Dhaka University. It is because Dhaka University is the intellectual motivation centre of Bangladesh and its professors and students led all national movements in the near past.
It was the year 2000, when I first saw some Europeans distributing leaflets among the students before the central bookshop. They said they came to spread a new ideology of humanism. The ideology of humanism is not unknown to the educated people here, as they understand it from different schools of thought. But they were not very familiar with Silo’s teaching of the Humanist Movement before the year 2000.
When the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. – 43 B.C.) first coined the term humanism 2000 years ago, he wanted to understand the world in a liberal way and to stay away from religious dogmatism. The German philosopher Friedrich Philipp Immanuel Niethammer (1766-1848) was one of the greatest humanist philosophers, who developed the idea of humanism from the perspective of philanthropism. He, like the other thinkers of the illustration period, spoke about education, the better upbringing of children (Latin: paideia), the development of civic sense and consciousness of people, which are important for the creation of a proper human and civilised world in a real sense. Cicero’s idea of ‘humanitas’ was therefore widely accepted by the thinkers of the illustration.
Silo was the last important prophet of this lineage. But Silo said something else and added some new dimensions in his philosophy of humanism. Now, the question is: what is new and what is important in Silo’s philosophy?
From my point of view,
1) First of all, Silo was a socialist, but his ideology does not promote violence.
2) Siloism is feminist, but it does not promote hatred against men.
3) Siloism affirms the equality of all human beings, but does not want to erase their individuality.
4) Silo did not profess any religious beliefs, but affirmed the need for spirituality and the transcendence of the person.
5) Silo recognises cultural diversity, but nevertheless, he was able to develop the idea of a universal brotherhood.
I and some of my friends were able to understand the meaning of this philosophy very early. Bangladesh is a poor country. It is an agrarian land. The poor people are angry with the society. This situation created a ripe opportunity for the communists. But its result was horrible. The so-called “class enemy” concept only helped to kill innocent people.
However, we need a social revolution and socialism. We need to overcome our ego and secure our self-transcendence. Our great teacher Silo opened a door to a new world. I have much to write about the necessity of Siloism for third world countries. Today I will do so far.