One hears that the human brain has a remarkable ability to adapt and change. Our brain can form new neural pathways, learn and remember things well into old age. Implicit in all this is that the force of the lessons we draw from our memories — and our ability to recall — depends directly on our will. Nations, just like individuals, represent the power and pitfalls of selective memory. And nations, maybe far more often than individuals, indulge in selective amnesia.
Children going to school, reading their books and coming back home is a seemingly innocent routine. But depending on what we teach our kids, this is exactly where the corruption of the minds can take place. What lends this corruption strength is its acceptance by those around these young minds. Sanity to an individual, after all, is little more than a validation of her faculties by the people she interacts with. Even our noblest passions and gravest crimes need validation. And when mobs validate them, we risk becoming part of a mindless collective entity; some call them nations.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot relive the grief of the partition of 1947 or the debacle of 1971 that led to the creation of the present day Bangladesh. But the 1947 tragedy is not something that we forget. In ways acceptable and otherwise we keep it alive. Somehow or the other, the authors of the Punjab Textbook Board managed to keep the tragedy relevant in ways that suited them and the establishment. Birthdays — no matter how deeply colored by counterpart deaths — manage to get celebrated.
Maybe we keep the tragedy of 1947 alive because it allows us to point fingers at a perceived enemy. Is that what it is? I am increasingly convinced. The reason? If a country is so willing to relive and recount tragedies inherent in its birth then it defies logic why it would not do the same for the day it chopped off a limb — after deliberately corroding and letting it rot for years. 16th December, 1971 is a day that we do our utmost to push out from our collective memory.
Did the Two Nation theory die with the creation of Bangladesh? Was it ever alive? I don’t know. But something in us died in 1971. And it haunts our collective existence each day.
Did we ever treat the people in present day Bangladesh as our own? Even our towering intellectual elite of the times saw the people in Bengal as lesser Muslims; they were far too ‘Hinduized’. Mr Jinnah’s insensitive handling of the language issue in the former East Pakistan is just one example. Maybe it was a tragedy in the making all along but our despicable hypocrisy regarding the tragedy of 1971, and everything leading up to it, must not be forgiven.
The words ‘Operation Searchlight’ hardly figure in our textbooks yet they represent the systematic beginning of one of the most gruesome campaigns of genocide in history since World War II. Men, women and children were rounded up and shot. Their deaths, screams and last breaths happened on our watch, no matter how hard we try to look away now. Intellectuals were rounded up and killed by the thousands as were many young men our army saw capable of putting up resistance. Those lives were stories of promise and innocence. We allowed them to be butchered and we watched silently as their stories were torn out from the selective history we decided to teach our children.
Our favourite way of dealing with tragedies we want to bury — a judicial commission — led to findings that understate the atrocities committed in our name. But even then we refuse to debate or learn from the Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission Report. A genocide is not something a nation can forget. But as we now know, it is definitely something a nation can accept and then heartlessly move on. Fresh targets: Baloch intellectuals and youth for they are not good enough Pakistanis. The most vulgar condition of secure citizenship in Pakistan is submission to the establishment’s narrative. We raise our kids to be oblivious to the deaths of innocents we called our own. The hatred and dementia that has been taught to each one of us must be confronted by none other than us.
Bangladesh has recently taken steps to prosecute war criminals from 1971. Pakistan must issue a formal apology and take all steps necessary to hold the perpetrators accountable. One can disagree with the nuances of the Bangladeshi law enacted for prosecuting war criminals but an acknowledgement of all that we took away from them is essential. No doubt that in retaliation injustices were committed against innocents from West Pakistan too but that is no excuse to deny a greater tragedy.
Uncomfortable silences and blaming others characterise our way of dealing with this tragedy till now. Our silence simply cannot drown out the screams of millions of innocents demanding accountability of our collective soul. For cleansing our collective conscience and for raising future generations that have the courage of confronting history, this silence must be broken.
The writer is a Barrister and an Advocate of the High Courts. He is currently pursuing an LL.M at Harvard Law School. He can be reached at [email protected]
Mr. Waqqas, I agree with your views regarding our infatuation with the history of 1947. We have been teaching selective history from the perspective of Muslims that migrated to present Pakistan from central Indian states and that has been one of the major causes of Pakistanis' inability to associate themselves with Pakistan.
Jinnah's mishandling of language issue is just one of the many blunders he made right after partition, but holding him responsible is not appropriate because he was one man fighting a war at many fronts with rapidly failing health. There was little he could do, he was a Lawyer after all and not a Social Science majors, and failed to understand the social structure of the provinces that formed the state of Pakistan.
One of the biggest reasons for our inability to understand Pakistan is the lack of association with the country when we study its history. Who are these poets that we are forced to study?
Mir Taqi Mir? Allama Iqbal? Josh Malih Abadi?
Common Pakistani has no association with them. Their poems are in Urdu, a language for just 8% of Pakistanis, and remaining 92% are more or less confused why we study poems that speak of freedom and often border on inciting violence (in heroic fashion).
The historical dates are always without details. They only convey facts of pre-partition from the perspective of Muslim League (central India and not the local chapters of Punjab, Sindh and Bengal) and after partition Muslim League simply vanishes only to resurface in early 90s to indicate Nawaz Sharif's party. Why the early Muslim League vanished? Who was the head of it after Jinnah? No other details are available.
The history taught in Sindh has no connection to Sindh at all. There is no account of Sindh's participation in freedom struggle (Sindh chapter of Muslim League is completely ignored, G.M.Syed's contribution TOTALLY forgotten and the only mention is of Resolution of Sindh Assembly that was passed in 1940). No one, particularly in Karachi, who has studied establishment's history knows who was the first governor of Sindh. They have no idea about Sindh AT ALL and the it is taught, it feels like Karachi is a whole province itself with no connection to Sindh province. There is no mention of ethnic violence in Sindh and its causes. There is no discussion, in the books or in classrooms, of possible solution to problems Pakistan face.
Except for dates, names of Presidents and Prime Ministers and wars, there is nothing in our history worthwhile to know and that is something that needs attention.
I suggest the author to read "Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War" by Oxford scholar Sarmila Bose, who is a Hindu Marxist Bengali from India and grand-daughter of the immortal Subhas Chandra Bose.
She talks in great vivid detail (and well-researched material) of the atrocities committed by BOTH sides in 1971, and with particular focus on the exaggerations said and claimed by the Muktijoddha to demonise the Pakistan Army whose misconduct (in many many cases) was over-hyped and over-blown by the winners of 1971.
People of today might learn a thing or two thanks to that book.
listen Mr. Ali Ahsan, Read a little about the reviews of Dead reckoning too.
It is highly criticized for being partial to pakistani generals made up stories of innocence, while it leaves out the stories of Bangladeshis and their sufferings pointedly.
Its remarkable how pakistanis always manage not to look at their miserable past. The misfortune your country now lives through is due to this state of mind your people possess. Karma Mr. Ali Ahsan. What goes around comes around.
Only the millions who have suffered in Bangladesh know what it meant to be trampled in 1971. We have not forgotten. Won't forget, no matter who tries to paint a happy picture. They are painting it over ashes of the dead.
Agree with Ali Ahsan. Waqqas Mir seems to be one of those over-apologetic Pakistanis who would rather have us all bleeding to death and cursing ourselves for past events in which most of us had no active part. What about, for once, thinking of those Pakistani soldiers who fought bravely in this war? Those in West Pakistan who struggled to carry on with India threatening us? Why should the mistakes and follies of a few deprive us of the beauty and courage that Pakistanis before us have shown, and we can be inspired by. Sorry dude, but if you were actually living back here you would feel less inclined to scratch imaginary wounds and more focussed on doing something positive for your country and its people.
I'm surprised that you seem to think that one can be 'over-apologetic' about the atrocities committed in our name. The youth of today may not have had a role in what wenton before butbwhat have they done to apologize for it? Are you seriously saying that Pakistan should not apologize? How will an apology undermine any of the so called heroes you allude to? And what about Balochistan? What's positive about that? The writer may not be living in his country but he definitely seems to care more about it than you because you sound insecure and obsessed with the 'oh lets talk positive' mindset. How is criticizing a past injustice not positive? You really need to go back to school again. Wait, it won't do you any good!
The author must be feeling heroic being voiced as over apologetic.
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