The Minister of Home Affairs, in one of his latest press briefings, differentiated between the terms “children” and “adolescents.”

As a teacher of children, adolescents and adults, it is my duty to clarify any confusion regarding this matter. But it was far more complex than I initially thought.

According to Cambridge dictionary, the definition of “Children” is “a boy or girl from the time of birth until he or she is an adult, or a son or daughter of any age”.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most universally accepted human rights instrument, ratified by every country in the world except two (and Bangladesh is not one of the exceptions). The Convention incorporates the full range of human rights—civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights—of children into one single document. The Convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1989 and entered into force in September 1990.

The Convention outlines in 41 articles the human rights to be respected and protected for every child under the age of eighteen years.

Article 1 of this document clearly states the definition of child as “every human being below the age of eighteen years, unless the national law considers majority attained at an earlier age”.

Now, let’s take a look at what Bangladeshi law considers a “child.” The Children Act 2013 clearly defines it in Section 4, “Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for for the time being in force, all persons up to the age of 18 (eighteen) years shall be regarded as children for the purposes of this Act”.

Finally, according to Banglapedia, “Children in Bangladesh are grouped in three categories: shishu – anybody under 5 years of age, balak or balika – a child of 6 to 10 years and kishor or kishori – a child of age between 11 and 14”.

Now, the question arises: where do individuals aged between 15-17 fall? They are called “adolescents.” According to The Tea Plantation Labour Ordinance of 1962, it means a person who has completed 15 but not 17 years. According to The Factories Act of 1965, it means a person who has completed 16 years but is below the age of 18 years.

Naturally, the question arises whether these adolescents are considered “children.” Let’s look at the Bangladesh National Adolescent Strategy document (finally published on 15 December 2020). It defines “adolescence” as “a period of human growth and development that occurs after childhood and before adulhood and includes those persons between 10 and 19 years of age.

Let’s come full circle now: how does the Cambridge Dictionary define adolescence? “A young person who is developing into an adult”—meaning not an adult yet. But the Bangladeshi perspective is not to consider them as children. In a Prothom Alo report published on 5 July 2023, titled “Children Act: Lowering age below 18 years to define a child goes against international law,” Naznin Akhter asked the Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque what the new age limit for children would be. He said that it should not be more than 14 years and that teens aged between 14-18 should be considered adolescents and thus should be subject to punishment.

This is so problematic…

If we deny these adolescents the rights and protections afforded to children, do we not also deny them the guidance and support they need to navigate this critical stage of their lives? Adolescence is a time of profound transformation, a bridge between the innocence of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood. By categorizing them as neither children nor fully adults, we risk losing the essence of their unique developmental needs.

Shouldn’t our laws and policies reflect the complexities of their experiences rather than forcing them into rigid categories? For argument’s sake, if they are old enough to be held accountable as adults, should they not also be granted the full spectrum of rights that come with adulthood, including the right to vote, to have their voices heard in shaping the society they are inheriting?

These young individuals are not just the future of our nation; they are the present, actively participating in the discourse, innovation, and progress of our society. To marginalize them based on an arbitrary age distinction is to overlook their potential and contributions. While we have been preoccupied with definitions and categories, Gen Z has been busy redefining this nation and what it stands for. They are not merely talkers like us; they believe in action. Perhaps that is how things should be done.

We have all done this at some point in our lives. Whether it’s with our parents, to get our favorite toys or with our friends to receive favors. We have made people feel guilty, to make them do something for us. It works most of the time. It’s not a great feeling though — when we are guilt-tripped. Guilt-tripping is one of the oldest tricks in the book of manipulation, and I’m noticing it around me a lot lately.

The intentions of guilt-tripping may vary, but the outcome is always the same — manipulation. We can say that the people who intentionally convince others that they’ve done something wrong and should feel ashamed of themselves/their actions have disordered characters. These people with disturbed characters are often successful in manipulating their victims.

You may ask, why are they so successful? Why are these victims so dumb to fall for those manipulative tactics? Well, are they really? Are the victims really dumb? The answer is “No!” In fact, the victims, who feel guilty or ashamed, are the people with a more developed conscience than the manipulators. This is exactly why the victims feel guilty in the first place. Unlike the manipulators, they are empathetic; they can feel.

What if we make these manipulators taste their own medicine? We may try, but that won’t have any effect on them. They will never fall for it because their consciences haven’t developed to the level, from where they can feel guilty or empathy. They may pretend to be affected, but deep down, they know they don’t care; just like the victims may pretend that they aren’t affected, but deep down, they are feeling guilty and ashamed. Therefore, it’s tricky to give a verdict about who’s a manipulator and who’s an empathetic person. One definite way of spotting this kind of manipulation is when you personally become a victim of such guilt-tripping.

After the George Floyd murder, the world has seen an anti-racist movement that was long overdue. People from different countries took the streets. Many netizens — activists or not — spoke up online, showing solidarity with the movement. This is the inculcation of what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from the Birmingham jail.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but see a growing number of social media posts and even newspaper headlines saying that before we feel concerned about what is happening on the other side of the world, we should be doing something about the injustice happening in our own community first. Yeah. Proximity matters. This sounds valid. So, I shouldn’t be… Wait a minute! Why am I feeling guilty of not speaking against the injustice happening in my country and people? Why do I feel like I shouldn’t be concerned about black men dying in foreign soil when I won’t or can’t talk about the unjust treatment of people in my home country?

What an emotional distraction it is! This is the first logical fallacy I caught. This argument is an example of a “Red Herring Fallacy,” where the manipulator diverts the focus to something that seems to be relevant but is actually trying to confuse and distract the victim. The movement triggered by the murder of the Floyd is about racism against the black people in the U.S. hence, “Black Lives Matter (BLM).”

On the other hand, the injustice that happens in my country is a different case altogether. Unlike the African Americans, We weren’t brought to this land in chains and treated like animals for hundreds of years. It is not logical to compare the struggle of black people in America with our everyday struggles as the majority race of our country.

Now, if I take an active part in the BLM movement and choose not to engage with my country’s government, does it give anybody the right to slap a label of a hypocrite/traitor on me? Absolutely Not! But funny thing: It sounds like the only option!

I have seen posts that said something like this:

if you’re speaking out about Injustice happened with Floyd and not talking about the police brutality in Bangladesh, then you’re not an activist at all!

This kind of guilt-tripping is happening worldwide. Even some Bollywood stars are facing the same kind of faulty criticism from these groups of evangelical social media champions.

This brings me to the next fallacy I’ve identified. This time a classic “Black-or-White Fallacy!” Here the manipulators are limiting the options for the people who are speaking up about racism and putting them in an either-or position — either speak out about local issues or accept the label of “fake activist.”

Apart from being highly illogical, these arguments are surely affecting the ongoing social movements against racism. Think about the consequences these arguments are bringing with them. Whenever the manipulators are shaming the people who are currently talking about social issues of their own choice, the victims in most cases become silent because they are the people with a higher conscience. Their empathetic nature was the reason for them to speak out against that injustice in the first place.

Moreover, this kind of criticism will make them think twice in the future before they decide to speak up against another injustice, whether national or international.

The people of Bangladesh who are showing solidarity with the black Americans aren’t blind or deaf. They know very well what’s happening in their own society and country, yet they chose to associate with a movement that is happening thousands of miles away from where they currently reside. We do not know what factors may have influenced the kind of individual choices they made by picking an issue to talk about that is happening far away from them. Don’t you think this deserves some deep thinking before we start judging them from the get-go?

Since we are in this in this faulty argument game now, let me then throw in one of my own fallacious theories out there. Oops… I started with the Appeal to Hypocrisy, didn’t I? Anyway, here’s my theory:

I think this whole thing is a conspiracy by the people who are in power. When they saw how the people united against power and started to bring revolutionary changes that weren’t possible before due to bureaucracy and dirty politics, they started shaming people to break that unity. The colonial “divide and conquer” is at play again. They are dividing a global unity and guilt-tripping people into silence. They are turning one oppressed against another so that they cannot join to fight the one common enemy called, the power.

Slippery slope you’d say? I agree! Nonetheless, it makes more sense than the guilt-tripping arguments made by the manipulators popping up around us like toadstools.

Note: This article was later published in Dhaka Tribune on June 22, 2020.

Human life is like a quest. At birth, humans have only one identity—human! In the process of growing up, we adopt different traits from our environment. Our conscience unconsciously decides which identity we should mold ourselves into. We cherry-pick from our culture, family, and language to shape who we are. However, when we suddenly move away from our familiar world, or when the world around us experiences rapid change, we may become confused about our identity. We start to investigate the issue and try to reach an equilibrium. Those of us who can identify the issue and strive to fit in with the environment undergo tremendous psychological phenomena because our identity is crucial to us. Even if we change our behavior, our biological features unyieldingly broadcast an identity that we may no longer feel a part of.

I am a Bangladeshi, and the first time I experienced an identity crisis was when I went to the U.S. in 2011. I was young and naïve but had already built a strong Bangladeshi identity that I was proud of. When I started living with a conservative white family with American traditions and values, I became the perfect example of the dictionary definition of Identity Crisis: “personal psychosocial conflict, especially in adolescence, that involves confusion about one’s social role and often a sense of loss of continuity to one’s personality” (Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, 2017). I lived in Altoona, Iowa, a predominantly white conservative county. After spending a few months immersed in American culture, I went to the bathroom and asked my reflection in the mirror, “Who am I?” My reflection received a bolt out of the blue, jaw dropped in awe. I was not only talking to myself in English but also thinking in English. That inner self within us, which some call conscience and others call soul, was speaking in English. I forced it to speak in Bangla. I failed. I panicked. I had never thought that I would be so depressed just because I could not define my identity for one moment in my life. I realized how crucial identity is for human survival but how ignored it is in our conscious life. I was uprooted from Bangladesh, and in the U.S. I was like an uprooted plant. “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul” (Ferguson, 1990). We all want to be rooted wherever we are because only then can we identify ourselves in the crowd. Identity is what matters to us the most as human beings.

Finally, I did insert my roots into American soil. I transformed my identity to a new level. The new identity gave me confidence, and I was reassured by certain students in my school, who, upon first meeting me, could not tell that English was my second language. They thought I was an Indian American. I had to reiterate the fact that “I am a Bangladeshi” numerous times throughout my one academic year in the U.S., and still people would call me an Indian. My dark “Bollywood” hairstyle and brown skin proclaimed to the world, “I am an Indian.” Even when I clarified that I am Bangladeshi and that we are a totally different country with a different culture and religion, people would eye my hair and skin color again and say, “…but…but you look like an Indian! Like Raj from ‘The Big Bang Theory’.” This experience resembles that of an Indian couple in one of Lahiri’s stories from Interpreter of Maladies, who, after buying a new house with a Jesus Christ statue in the garden, are asked by a neighbor, “I hope you don’t mind my asking… but I noticed the statue outside, and are you guys Christian? I thought you were Indian” (Lahiri, 2014). From this seemingly universal experience, I lost hope and stopped correcting the Americans. I can change my tongue, I can change my religion, and I can even pretend to believe in American traditions and values, but I absolutely cannot change the color of my skin.

To some, my experience might sound a tad exaggerated. They might say that identity crises do not occur among Bangladeshi people because we live all over the world, contributing to the global labor force. We send back remittances and enrich our country. However, if they are honest, they must agree that these working-class immigrants are deprived of a life outside their work. They lead a machine’s life to feed their loved ones back home. They are already facing an identity crisis, asking themselves whether they are humans or machines. They had to let go of their Bangladeshi culture and language; they too either went or are going through a Bangladeshi identity crisis in a foreign land.

Meanwhile, my identity crisis did not end when I returned to Bangladesh. It restarted. I was criticized by my family for not being able to speak Bangla without English contamination. Strangers—men and women—on the street looked at me like I was some kind of lunatic when I said “hi” to them while passing by. I had to re-engineer my identity back to Bangladeshi mode. Who knows? Maybe someday, I will have to re-engineer myself to some other foreign identity.