Friday, December 20, 2013

What did we learn from the world today?



What did we learn from the world today?



Kamila Hyat   
Thursday, December 19, 2013


The execution in Dhaka of the Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah has stirred up violent protests in Bangladesh. It has also created controversy at home, with condemnations pouring in over the hanging of a man found guilty of involvement in the death of civilians during the civil war of 1971, which led to the creation of Bangladesh.

These people included professors, doctors, students and others – with Mollah’s walk to the gallows coming, ironically enough, just a few days before December 16, the day that marks the fall of Dhaka as a bloody civil war ended with the surrender of the Pakistan Army.

The sentencing of the JI leader, with more trials set to follow, raises a host of questions. These involve impartiality, the long delay in conducting the trial, the fact that Sheikh Mujibur Rehman himself had warned against retribution and held on to this position till his 1975 assassination and then the issue of whether the trials are politically motivated. These are matters for Bangladesh to consider.

At home we should be asking other, different questions. We have for the past four decades refused to face up to what happened in what was then the eastern wing of our country. The torture, the killings, the mass rapes committed there have been buried away, deep under multiple layers. There are many, indeed most, who do not know what happened; we often forget that the green and white flag of Pakistan once flew over Dhaka.

Today few of us realise that the red disk that floats across the green of the Bangladesh flag is intended to depict not only a sun rising over a new land but the blood that stains it. That blood, of students, children, men and women, was shed by Pakistani soldiers – and those, like Mollah, who colluded with them. Calling such men ‘patriots’ as the JI leader at home Munawar Hasan has done, insisting Mollah would count as such even in Bangladesh on the basis that the two countries were then one, can only be ranked as a remark of grotesque insensitivity and ignorance.

Some other comments from political leaders have been barely better. Certainly there is very limited suggestion that we should be looking back at what happened, facing up to it and learning from the sordid events of 1971. This goes well beyond the matter of Abdul Quader Mollah and whether or not he should have been hanged.

What is significant is that we have got into the habit, rather like a scared child, of trying to cover up everything that has gone wrong and then denying we had anything at all to do with it. The example of Bangladesh is also pertinent in this case. For us, it appears that placing curtains around the truth and veiling our eyes has become the solution to everything – just as was the case in Bangladesh.

The problem is that this approach can solve no problems at all. Instead they will worsen and become more entrenched. We saw this happen in what was then East Pakistan. The signs of trouble were visible many years before the 1971 war. The people of that part of what was then our country had pointed out discrimination and injustice again and again. This is visible even now in documented figures. They show that though East Pakistan had a larger population than the western part of the country, the resources spent on it since the 1950s were only about 40 percent of the budget available – in some periods, falling even below this.

Naturally, the development in which all people of a country should have had an equal share never took place there. Today, we see precisely the same pattern unfold again, with startling disparities between provinces and districts in allocation of funds and development.

The perceptions of unfair play are a key reason for the anger directed against the state and in turn the violence that shakes Balochistan. This violence has already left deep scars across it. While the Baloch recall the events that led up to the formation of Bangladesh, it is questionable what the future of that remotely populated stretch of miserable territory is to be with its regular haul of mutilated bodies that turn up in street corners. Even the recent dramatic march made by the relatives of the disappeared from Quetta to Karachi has not really changed matters.

The affair of Abdul Quader Mollah should remind us that when the lessons of history are not learned, the amendments needed are not made, and further problems arise. We should today be examining all that went on in Bangladesh before posting messages on social media about Mollah or what is happening in Dhaka. Quite irrespective of the trial of JI leaders underway in that country, it is the doings they are alleged to have been involved in that is of key importance.

We seem to have lost sight of this reality. The ability to accept what is happening and act to deal with it in many ways marks nations that are successful. We are certainly not headed along this path. The same mistakes are being repeated once more and the same story of wrongdoing in other places told. Our history books say too little about Bangladesh and quite how that country took form as an independent state on the map. This is something we should all know about and something we should make sure our children know of too.

If we keep describing men like Mollah as heroes or refuse to put before the public all that he and others like him did there can be no change. We will have only more brutality, more bitterness and greater division within a country that has been torn apart before – and risks this happening again. Our assignment for the future must be to ensure this can never happen and that this is prevented by accepting what is going wrong, tackling crime and brutality wherever it exists and giving people everywhere in our country the equal treatment and respect for their rights which they deserve.

This is certainly not happening today, with the curious attempt to prevent opinions from Balochistan reaching people, inflicting a great deal of damage and in so many ways providing an ugly reminder of what happened just over four decades ago.

The writer is a freelance columnist andformer newspaper editor.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com

Reactions:

 
I have been told by a Bangladeshi that the red circle on their flag is supposed to represent a Bindya.

That Bangladeshi was an ignorant and an illiterate one.

--These are matters for Bangladesh to consider--
Not a fair assessment. Till 16 Dec 1971 whatever happened in that part of the country, is to be equally shared and accepted. Blunders were committed almost since the beginning. We failed to produce a leader of future,who could evolve a methodology for smooth running of the two distant placed people who collectively struggled for a separate homeland of the muslims of this sub-continent. To cut a long story short both the parts of that initial state should have been given a path to run their affairs independently with a minimum link of a confederation. No doubt this postulation in the beginning would have been too difficult to consider. Simply put. now this revengeful attitude might create serious threats for the Bangladeshi society and then again someone will exploit the situation again.

She has a head start. Even Pakistani writers have documented, or at least insinuated, what happened in East Pakistan. I have talked to Paki soldiers who served in East Pakistan who said that rape and killing was common. In Sindh, the so called operation against "dacoits" was as ruthless as you can imagine. Do I need to go into tribal territory? The trouble with Punjabi establishment is that it creates it's own enemies and the corrective is never applied to a state that's veered off course long time ago. This Punjabi "mitti pao" on the past cannot hold promise for peaceful and prosperous future. You sow the seeds of hatred, you reap the same. So now is the time to resurrect 42-year old history because a similar situation is playing out again in an even more sinister fashion? Our land is not the land of Kabbaddi. I am not stopping at some line in the dirt. I'll cross every line you can think of.

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