Daily Times

Forty-five years since Bangladesh and the national narrative is still anything but clear. The main reason, of course, is denial. We are still not able to digest the breakup of the country so soon after independence. The result is just as simple to understand. Since we never debated the real reasons, we never understood the complexity of the tragedy. This is all the more true for the present generation. It did not ‘live’ the brutal standoff and historic war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. It has just been ‘allowed’ the official, patched up, narrative.

Not just the average Joe, but also the so-called enlightened individual, will tell you that the military government, and the army’s brutal choke-hold on then East Pakistan, triggered the bloody revolt that ultimately drew in the Indians and broke the eastern wing. That, unfortunately, is typical of our handling of history.

As a nation we have long developed the bad habit of dealing with the symptom rather than the disease. We allow problems to linger till they assume large, very dangerous proportions. The East Pakistan problem was the perfect example. We ignored it and let it grow till it became a cancer.

The Bengali issue had been brewing for a long time. Even before the military complications, and the democratic Bhutto-Mujeeb hatred that preceded it, the Bengalis had been effectively degraded to second-grade citizens in this Islamic Republic. By the late ‘60s, it had become abundantly clear. They were given the back seats in colleges and universities, and they were pushed down the totem pole in the job market.

If we had only been aware of the wider world we might have learnt from others’ mistakes and saved our own country from breaking. After the First World War, the Allied powers pushed Germany to the wall after the Versailles Agreement. But years of oppression and exploitation only made the Germans rebound with venom and hatred, resulting in the longest, most brutal war of the twentieth century.

What we did to the Bengalis was not much different. Yet there was no reason to treat them as ‘the other’. They, unlike the Germans vis a vis mainland Europe, had not initiated any hostilities or aggravated any sovereign. If anything, they were our principal partners in enabling the partition. How could we become enemies so soon? Cleary political, ethnic and geographic issues took precedence over the greater ‘Ummah’ factor that supposedly united the Muslims of the subcontinent against the combined strength of the British and Hindus.

And these factors played out in a much more pronounced manner when Mujeeb’s Awami League took the majority in the ’70 elections. In hindsight, we simply refused to accept the results. And these factors were once again on display when war finally broke out. Far more importantly, these factors made us brush even the breakup of the country under the carpet.

The then much hyped Hamood ur Rahman Commission only saw the light, thirty-something years later, when an Indian newspaper leaked parts of it. And, as much as we have tried to hide what really went into the historic cataclysm of ’71, putting the pieces together brings a much ignored, very disturbing, truth to light.

It seems, despite popular rhetoric, that the partition of ’71 was not a military but a political blunder. The political elite distanced the Bengalis by depriving them of their fair share in not just statehood, but also other more commonplace avenues of life. Even when this discrimination was abundantly blatant, nobody in the political hierarchy seemed bothered enough to address it.

Yet as tragic as the events of ’71 were, the present situation is cause for even greater concern. We still refuse to learn lessons from the blunders and mistakes of our past. The same sense of alienation that the Bengalis felt is now found, again quite abundantly, among the small provinces and religious and sectarian minorities. Once again blatant injustices, to the point of mass murder and genocide, are going unnoticed as well as unaddressed. Once again, there are separatist movements in one part of the country, sectarian alienation and slaughter in another, and political discontent all around.

Dec16 will once again expose the wounds of ’71. But once again it will be handled in the wrong manner. We will continue to turn a blind eye to our own excesses and mistakes and blame the eternal enemy for influencing the Bengalis, forcing the war, and breaking our country. And, once again, we will all — especially the cherished democratic elite — watch from the aisle as the country sleepwalks into more, chillingly similar, disasters.

The writer is the Resident Editor, Daily Times, Lahore and can be reached at yourafiq@gmail.com