Daily Times

How can a song bring back so much nostalgia? Photos, poetry, music and songs contain that mysterious, magical characteristic that one just cannot resist at all. The song that I am referring to is from a Pakistani movie of yesteryear, filmed in Dhaka, called Chand Aur Chandni (moon and moonlight). It was sung by the Late Mala and filmed on Nadeem and Shabana: “Yeh samaan, mauj ka kaarwaan, aaj aey hamsafar, ley chala hai kahan” (apologies for my poor translation: what a scene, like a caravan on waves, with my beloved, leading me to the unknown). Readers are encouraged to view it on YouTube, to experience the sheer beauty and simplicity of the song. Despite being in black and white, it represents the genuine colour of simple yet magnificent Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan. A sail boat in the deep blue sea — what an extremely romantic setting. There are a lot of other movies that show the era that we have simply erased from our memories, all because of the severance of our eastern wing.

Ah yes, we are getting closer to the date, every year when we do a bit of lament, do our usual blame game towards our arch rival for conspiring to break ‘United Pakistan’. We quote late Indian Prime Minister (PM) Indira Gandhi’s byline of seeking 1,000 years’ worth of revenge, after the fall of Dhaka. Or, for that matter, quote the ‘You there, we here’ slogan of our own late PM Bhutto. We blame him for the break up and call it a day. Last time at this venue, when I wrote about this subject, ‘Fall of Dhaka and a fall guy’ (Daily Times, December 21, 2011), I received a lot of feedback, some solicited and mostly unsolicited, especially from the usual quarters, laced with honour and dignity, and labelling me with the usual accusatory and derogatory names.

However, I am extremely proud of an e-mail that I received from an icon (solicited of course), the late Mr Cowasjee whom I will quote here: “What happened, happened and it was our fault.” A lot of people wrote to me from the other side of Wagah too, some who had served in that bloody war of 1971 from their end. However, the most important e-mail that I received after that of the late Mr Cowasjee was from an Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) correspondent from Pakistan, who was serving at the UN General Assembly in New York at that time. The gentleman put certain misconceptions about Mr Bhutto to rest for once and for all. I quote him here: “I have heard people saying with authority that he (ZAB) was fooling around somewhere so that Dacca falls before he reaches his destination. I was then in New York covering the UN General Assembly (UNSC) session as correspondent of APP. The fact is that, during the war, there were no flights out of Pakistan, so he travelled for nine hours by road to Kabul and caught a flight going to Cairo the next day where no connecting flight to New York was available. He took the first available flight in Cairo going to Europe the following morning. He landed in Frankfurt from where he took the Lufthansa flight to New York. That is what happened. The second story that was spread about him is that he tore the Polish resolution in the UN Security Council and thus tore up Pakistan. After ZAB stormed out, tearing up his notes, I went into the chamber and picked the scattered papers, finding no resolution in them. Forget about a certain Chinese veto, the Polish resolution, if tabled, could not have mustered the nine required votes for passage. The reason? No country wants to give the UNSC the power to dismember a country — the intent of the resolution. ZAB never said “idhar hum, udhar tum” (here we are, there you are). That was the headline of a newspaper, not the words of Bhutto who had proposed what he called a “grand coalition” between the PPP and Awami League to run the country because the two victorious parties did not have any representation in both wings of the country. Mujib rejected the proposal, asserting that it was the right of the majority to rule, and the rest is history!”

To clarify the much misunderstood and debated position of Mr Bhutto, I would like to ask: suppose you are a law maker in present day Punjab and have zero representation in, let us say, Balochistan, how can you help your constituents in Quetta? Now consider East Pakistan having zero representation in the western wing — how could it solve the issues of the provinces of the western wing? The grand coalition perhaps would have been a better option but most people overlook or deliberately obfuscate the main issue. It was 25 years, neglect, bigotry and persecution that truly alienated our eastern brethren. Next, Mr Bhutto must be the first person in history who, supposedly, conspired to break Pakistan and then ordered an independent commission called the Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission to investigate the causes of the break up. No doubt, due to the explosive, shameful and sensitive nature of its findings, he was unable to make it public at that particular time. Ponder on just this fact — who would have been exposed?

I do not consider Mr Bhutto to be an angel, and yes he made several mistakes, like any other ruler in our history, but to squarely blame him for the break up is perhaps an injustice to our history. To the deeply passionate and patriotic lot who really need to go beyond the textbooks, please revisit the ugly chapter of our history with an extremely open mind and utmost patience. I can forewarn you that there it is a mirror and its reflections will be quite dark. It is very easy to brush things off as a conspiracy and very hard to face the ugly truth. For example, please revisit the headline of the oldest English newspaper on December 17, 1971, founded by the Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It reads ‘War till victory’. The story reads of General Yahya Khan’s pledge of how the final victory in the war of survival, by the Grace of the Almighty, will be ours. May I remind the readers that on December 16, 1971, our General A K Niazi, alias Tiger Niazi, had surrendered and signed the historic ‘instrument of surrender’. No wonder we are so lost — we have zero moral courage to accept our own faults and any ability to learn from our own follies.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar