We need to have a mass upheaval, a cataclysmic popular protest on the tsunami scale. It is no longer enough to have strikes and demonstrations. No more hunger strikes or barricades on the road. No more silent protests, negotiations, waiting for the elections to change the government. We need to march on the houses, offices, pleasure pads, and bank accounts. We need to take the country back from them.

We need Phulbari, Kansat and Shonir Akhra on a national scale, not small pockets of isolated incidents but chain reaction of popular resistance. We need to find all of them no matter what is their party orientation, family pedigree, academic degree, religious denomination, or anything else. Thieves, goons, hoarders, black marketers, syndicates, godfathers, musclemen, middlemen, liars, cheaters, everything corrupt, rotten and decadent, we need to find and finish them.

By all means, it is time for change. This country belongs to the people and people must take it back. Yes, we must make it clear that we are sick and tired of them. We must make it clear that when pushed people swell like waters and inundate the plains. We need to have a revolution to show that homes, cars, diamonds, and jewels can be washed away.

By God, they have turned this country into a seedy place where all things can be bought and sold. Character, wisdom, knowledge, purity, honour, everything is negotiable. You can buy the judge; you can buy the lawyer, banker, journalist, policemen, doctors, engineers and, of course, the politicians. If we talk about the oldest trade on earth, there is a brothel in each of their souls.

We need a revolution to tear down those brothels, those temples of greed where money is worshipped like a god. We need to find those who have stolen from us, deceived and deprived us, those who have used public office for private gains. We need to find those who have taken bribes, commissions, margins, percentages, those who have taken us for granted and misused our trust.

It may sound like I am being an instigator. But what I am doing is asking for a final solution. I am asking for things to be expedited to bring forward the disaster that is going to happen. I am asking to face large scale death and devastation instead of incremental murder and violence leading to the same tragedy anyway. Let us have it with a bang, not with a whimper. Let us have a final showdown instead of these daily skirmishes.

The revolution must come sooner than later, and people must become their own vigilantes. We have to enter every house that looks suspicious. It's time to reconcile the books, match income with expenditure, words with actions, and means with ends. It's time to ask questions, it's time to have accountability. We must find those who are guilty and deal with them.

It's time to draw the line between vice and virtue, right and wrong, profound and profane. Believe me, it is time to deal extreme with extreme. A judge gave death sentence to an innocent man. Can you believe it? Then verdicts came dime a dozen, four in less than a month, in the hurry to acquit a dictator. But the trial of the killers of a national hero keeps shuffling for three decades. Don't rely on anybody, and especially avoid the so-called educated folks. These are shady people behind the enlightened face. It is time for the common men to do the uncommon thing. After all, it is their country. They should take it back.

Trust me. The demos have to go crazy if they want to save democracy. They need to get angry and ruthless. They need to get tough and unforgiving. Nobody should be able to plunder this country and get away with it. Nobody should be able to disgrace the people and get away with it. Go after them. Hunt them down. Take away everything from them, everything ill-gotten, everything acquired by questionable means.

Time is ripe for a revolution now, because freedom of men starts with their refusal to submit. It has been proven many times in history. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the American Revolution and then myriads of revolts by unassuming men who refused to accept subjugation, exploitation, and discrimination. We need to have a revolution to shake up the tree, which can come if we go against the stream.

Every revolution needs a symbol like the patriots of the French Revolution had a bonnet rouge, or red cap of liberty. The Chestnut Revolution in Ukraine was named after the trees lining the capital Kiev's main thoroughfare. When the Syrians were forced to withdraw from Lebanon, it was called the Cedar Revolution after the cedar tree which is a national icon. The underground opposition threatened to have a revolution in Kyrgyzstan where more than 60 different species of tulip are found. They wanted to call it the Tulip Revolution.

We need a revolution to start with a fresh dawn. Call it the Lotus Revolution, the Sunflower Revolution, even the Royal Bengal Tiger Revolution. My choice is the national flower, the Shapla which is a great symbol. It is quite a shade-tolerant flower, which can grow even in scant light, much like our people who have been kept in the dark for too long. Let us have a revolution, because right now the only way to the light is to go against the stream.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.