I was reading some other day in an essay by Sir Francis Bacon that Pilate was the judge who ordered the crucifixion of the Christ, right before signing the order, he asked, jestingly, “What is truth ?” and, without waiting for the reply, he signed the crucifixion order. While writing the account, Bacon adds, that a mixture of lies in truth adds pleasure to the truth that is, otherwise, so tasteless and somewhat bitter. Not only in the case of the East Pakistan tragedy but on all the issues we face the same condition. It’s common among people that they mix their own perspective in finding out the truth rather than finding out facts following a scientific critical method. I believe that this way, i. e., spreading untruth without cross analysing, is not only clouding our history but our validity as a responsible nation as well.
In nearly all the books, written about the tragedy of the East Pakistan, a personal view seems prevailing over the pages and over the conclusion as well. Be the author Gen. A. A. K. Niazi or Z. A. Bhutto or anyone else, involved directly or indirectly. I have read Siddiqui Salik blaming mostly Z. A. Bhutto and Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rehman on political side and Gen. Yahya Khan and Gen. A. A. K. Niazi on military side. But he dispraises Gen A. A. K. Niazi on merely moral basis that is not tactical criticism. In his reply to Siddiqui Salik’s blaming, Gen. (Late) A. A. K. Niazi, counter blames Salik for being only an ISPR journalist and not even a regular army man and says that he has never been immoral to any woman Bangali or non- bangali and. In his own book “Eye-wittnes To Surrender” , on the othersid, Salik himself acknowledges on page#130 of the Urdu edition that he was once presented before a beautiful newly married girl and was badly insulted by her.. I will go no far in this detail and will say that only few books have been written without giving any personal view point e. g., The Dead Reckoning: The Tragedy of the East Pakistan, by Sharmila Bos, granddaughter of Sir Sabhash Chandra Bos, otherwise truth has been mixed up with the reasoning of the author’s personal view point about the tragedy of the East Pakistan. Even the Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission Report has also been blamed of being one-sided. In his book, “Why did I surrender” by Gen. Niazi (Late), he blames Z. A. Bhutto for burning three real copies of the report and keeping only one copy that was recomposed in which he, Bhutto was not blamed for the conspiracy. This makes our big dogs, I would say, “Thieves of History”… What a tragedy that our national record has become so clouded and contradictory.
Truth has been intermingled between subjective one and objective one, in our age, and it has become difficult to separate one from the other. Our social media is doing much in dispersing our social opinion even about sensitive national issues like the two nations theory, religion, national origin and defense, etcetera and paving way for any foreign invasion and this is, in other words, called the 5th generation warfare which we are talking about in the 21st century and unfortunately we have fallen victim to this modern warfare from the mid of the 20th century when Indian Culture and Bangali Hindu teachers started by edificating and poisoning the tender Bangali Students’ minds. For proof, one can read, “Eye-wittnes To Surrender” by Late Siddiqui Salik who has given a detailed account of all this. We remained too blind to this to understand and to tackle that Indian propaganda against West Pakistan. The issue of teachers playing with tender minds of students appeared before us in the incident of the Laal Masjid when many students raised guns against the national government. After the East Pakistan tragedy, we smelled the same rat in Baluchistan and saw BLA and BLF and for more proof Kulbhooshan Yadive was arrested by the prime security agency, the ISI. We did nothing unless the enemy reached Islamabad and we retaliated not untill 16 December, 2014. The tragedy which started on 16 December, 1971 kept chasing us in varying forms and we see even today that social media is replete with Gen. A. A. K. Niazi laying down arms before the Indian counterpart. We are still blind to understand the nature of the defeat, more blame Army and less blame politicians but a few of them understand that it was a propaganda war, the 5th generation war. Armed forces have limitations in fighting war and they are doing the job which was to be done by our media, our education system and our religious leadership. It’s more than enough on the part of the armed forces. We look reality and ignore the higher reality, which is more important to understand.
In the light of the above discussion, I feel two issues are serious and need attention; one is that what would our next generations conclude about their history and what decisions will they be able to take if the historical record is so unauthentic and the second one is how long shall we ignore dispersion of opinion by the hands of the ciber war. Do we have any authentic record they may save future of our past history ? I am afraid that we will be held responsible before our next generations.