I am struck by the bank of telephones on the mahogany-style desk. This seems a curious throwback, the detailing of a 1970s’ Bond villain, unmindful that present-day billionaires are unlikely to sit awaiting calls on landlines. Perhaps the phones are a visual reference to a time, not so long ago in a nation’s history, when it took money and connections to get a landline in Bangladesh: to have more than one meant you were a real Somebody. As a child in the early 1980s I remember being deeply impressed when visiting the home of a government minister by their many multi-coloured telephones - the only evidence I can now recall of their wealth and power. I read it as power, and that is what it signaled.

But that was forty years ago. In Bangladesh, a notoriously chatty society, mobile telephony was embraced with such speed that landlines are now no longer even ornamental. Yet there they are, lined up neatly on said desk, in what otherwise presents as a contemporary video. In one clip, he picks up a receiver. Sell, sell, buy, buy, we presume he says; but it is mime, and there is no audio. It is not clear what we are to make of the telephones. Possibly the message is something like: marvel at this wealth and power, at how it is to be a Prince in modern-day Bangladesh.

Transnational ambitions

If the audience for this display is now domestic, the Prince once had more transnational ambitions. A £5 million donation to Tony Blair’s Labour Party was turned down in the 1990s, presumably out of concerns that the funds were not entirely halal. A Japanese documentary is said to have been made about the Prince. In 2013, a British journalist wrote an article about Prince Moosa which was not, despite the claims of his public relations team, published in Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper. The article pokes fun at the Prince and his accessories in that perfectly English style of class snobbery and cultural superiority. It is funny. But in the end, as much as you are offended by his excesses or his alleged criminality, you feel sorry for Prince Moosa, because of his apparent ignorance of how he appears to the rest of the world.

Perhaps he just does not care. Prince Moosa’s lifestyle seems to have been unaffected by international travel and exposure to other societies. His dressiness, Fair & Lovely maquillage, and jet-black hair are all symbols of masculine success that speak louder in Asia than they do elsewhere. That said, unsubtle grooming among portly old men of wealth and power is now very much a thing, so perhaps he surfed that trend.

The referents remain staunchly national, as shown by one much-viewed video in which the Prince entertains a group of Europeans. At a grand dinner table, with the Prince at the head of the table and his guests lining either side, his wife feeds him the meal by hand. He explains to the foreign guests that this personal attention is a sign of her great and enduring affection for him, and that he has never once had to feed himself.

As Bangladeshis know, many Westerners take the view that eating with your hands is a disgusting habit, even though many Western meals are eaten so. But to be fed by the hand of another - this is for everyone an uncomfortably intimate show, infantilizing, possibly sexual, and a symbol of Prince Moosa’s great power over everyone in his sphere. The European dinner guests are duly entertained. They behave as if they are in a zoo, rudely making no effort to hide their derision from their host.

Yet the video and other online offerings attract apparently sincere compliments from people for whom Prince Moosa’s rise to wealth is a remarkable tale of achievement, to emulate and aspire to. The style and expression of these comments confirm that the audience is native rather than foreign. They speak of a patriotic optimism and pleasure in this proof that Bangladeshis can succeed on an international stage.

Amid the admiration and delight, there is also sycophancy and opportunism; several of the most complimentary seek employment or assistance, making time-worn pleas for the patronage of the great man through the very modern means of the Like and Comments functions of social media. Why not ask? He has so much, the crumbs from his table would feed many Bangladeshis for months. It is worth the tiny effort at flattery afforded by the technology, an online platform for patronage.

‘meteoric rise’

Prince Moosa disrupts the discourse again, by going on record as saying that poor people just don’t try hard enough; if he could pull himself up to the position of an international arms dealer with diamond shoes, why not others? It is a rare public statement from a rich Bangladeshi, a class of people who more usually and sensibly avoid blaming the poor for their condition.

But he is not above pandering to the nationalist sensibilities about the perception of Bangladesh as a basket case. In one puff piece published in a magazine which apparently served no other purpose than to glorify him, the following account of the Prince’s meteoric rise was given:

Date-line mid 70s when the newly born at the same time the war torn country was devastated by millions of problems like famine, poverty as epidemic the whole nation was eclipsed by the darkness of distress humanity and untold misery. As the world’s poorest country it was defamed by the world media as bottomless basket .... But suddenly news sparked worldwide and that become a bolt from the blue to each and every Bangladeshi and helped to hope to see the light at the end of the tunnel i.e the meteoric rise of a young aspirant man in Asian foreign trade in competing with the giants in the field astounded all in the East. The world media showed keen interest in this rising star and cast their searching sights on a least developed country like Bangladesh.

There is more:

It is a matter of pride at least that one of our close comrades has occupied a prestigious position in this world of immense wealth and unlimited power. He has added extraordinary qualities to his personality characterized by firm commitment to righteousness and genuine sympathy for mankind …

He is highly respected as the pre-eminent architect of man power export to whom the nation shall remain ever grateful. During the last few decades’ natural calamities that befell the nation one after another, he came out in a big way to provide supports to the afflicted people

And so a biography of business success takes on the sentiments of development nationalism to resonate with its local audience. From the bottomless basket, it reminds us, a remarkable individual has scaled these great heights. The Prince’s progress is all the more remarkable when set against the dark and difficult days of the post-Independence period. His charity demonstrates that he cares for those in need, as a rich and powerful Bangladeshi should. His success demonstrates the great and endless possibilities of the Bangladeshi businessman.

Bangladeshis respond in a variety of ways to Prince Moosa, depending on where they fit in the social firmament. Some admire, others mock. My cultured upper-class friends consider him a curio and a national embarrassment. When I give talks about Bangladesh’s unexpected economic success, the inevitably small handful of invariably cosmopolitan Bangladeshis that show up smile knowingly when I flick to the slide of Prince Moosa, resplendent on his golden throne. Everyone knows who he is. At least he has that.

Prince Moosa has had many other things to worry about since his digital heyday. He has faced corruption charges, and more seriously, accusations that he committed war crimes during the national struggle for liberation. In one television clip, he is seen being bundled off to court, looking dishevelled and disoriented. This was not how it was supposed to be.

Postscript

I wrote this in 2018 and Prince Moosa’s story has continued since. But I had become fond of the Prince and was too disheartened by his fall to follow it any further.