A sordid tale of lessons not leant

Pain and grief of separation immortalised through poignant rendering

As a teenager, I cried inconsolably on the breakup of Pakistan. Today, I grieve over a sordid tale of lessons not learnt.

Then one was seized with the dream of Pakistan staying united. Today, one is consumed with the inevitability of it breaking up. One only wonders why it took so long in coming!

I had been trying to reconcile with not writing about Bangladesh this December since I had already done it a few times in the past. But, what made me change my mind is the resolution adopted by the national assembly condemning the hanging of Quader Molla for atrocities committed during the Bangladesh fight for independence.

I am not the one for capital punishment. In that context, the loss of another human life to the court edict is unfortunate. But if one were to agree with the capital punishment, there would be few deserving it more than the likes of Quader Molla.

I fail to understand the motivation behind the moving of a resolution expressing concern over the hanging of Quader Molla which, strictly speaking, is an internal matter of Bangladesh. The hanging may have hurt some sentiments as it recalled the harrowing days of the Bangladesh tragedy and the thought of the hundreds of thousands of people who perished before the country was finally able to raise its flag of freedom. That’s all human, may even be justified by a stretch of logic. But, what prompted the expression of concern by the national assembly at the death of a person who was dubbed as the ‘butcher of Mirpur’ and who was given in by the tale of Momena, then a child, narrating how her entire family was mercilessly massacred by the Jamaat-e-Islami goons led by Quader Molla. In the process, Momena lost her father, a pregnant mother, sisters Khodeza and Taslima and a baby brother Babu who was just two years old then. Only Momena survived the horror to narrate the story forty-two years later during the course of which she broke down frequently. Now, what would the court do with a testimonial like that?

How would the court deal with a person who allegedly led the murderous orgy? Let him walk away a free citizen, or punish him for his alleged crimes?

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‘As a teenager, I cried inconsolably on the breakup of Pakistan. Today, I grieve over a sordid tale of lessons not learnt. Then one was seized with the dream of Pakistan staying united. Today, one is consumed with the inevitability of it breaking up. One only wonders why it took so long in coming!’

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In addition to expressing concern over the hanging, the national assembly also urged the Bangladesh government not to “revive the issues of 1971” and “terminate all cases registered against the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh, in a spirit of reconciliation”. The interior minister went a step further calling the court verdict “judicial murder” stating that Quader Mollah’s hanging had “opened old wounds again”.

In certain respects, the most important factor about the resolution is that it was passed by a divided house with the PPP, ANP and MQM opposing it. The contents of the draft also had to be softened from the original ‘strong condemnation’ to only an ‘expression of concern’ to make it acceptable even to those who finally supported the resolution. This is like a breath of fresh air in an environment that, to say the least, is stifling.

Lest we forget, the resolution was moved by a member of the Jamaat-e-Islami that orchestrated the mayhem in the former East Pakistan after the launch of the army action. Most of the deaths of innocent civilians are allegedly traced to the murderous assaults of the goons of its militant wings, Al-Shams and Al-Badr, which went on a rampage to teach the Bengalis a lesson. In the process, they laid the foundations of the ultimate dismemberment of a country that was already hanging together by the most tenuous of threads.

Among the supporters of the misguided resolution were the stalwarts of the ruling PML-N, PML-Q, the entire religious and regressive conglomerate represented in the assembly and the ardent neo-religious supporters of militancy. What do they have in common? Only one thing: to continue appealing to the right-of-the-centre vote of which they are all equal claimants. In other words, crass political interests were allowed to take precedence over national interest and the forum of the national assembly was used ill-advisedly in a matter that is highly sensitive and that, by all permutations and combinations of logic, should have been left alone to be handled by the government of Bangladesh. There should at least have been no public statement on the issue, least of all from the platform of the national assembly, thus further complicating an already frayed relationship.

But wisdom is a commodity that we don’t quite cherish. Even common sense escapes us by a million miles. Instead of seriously contemplating tendering a formal apology to the Bengali people and laying the ghosts of a fractious past finally to rest, we have further aggravated the crisis by injecting the element of condemnation about what the Bengali people claim as their inalienable prerogative: that of devising an appropriate method and mechanism to deal with people they call ‘war criminals’ including the likes of Quader Molla. The consequent ‘Aide Memoire’ from the Bangladesh government is a befitting response to an audacious act.

Post 1971 tragedy, there was a need for the state of Pakistan to initiate an objective analysis of the reasons that contributed to the unprecedented catastrophe, apportion the responsibility and hold the perpetrators to account in a public trial. Unfortunately, the Report compiled by the Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission, whose constitution itself attracted a lot of flak from people demanding a greater level of transparency, which showered some light on the unfortunate event, was never to be released. In fact, there have been stories that its contents may have been compromised with the prime objective of changing a bulk of the conclusions drawn. But, in the ultimate analysis, no one was ever held responsible for this most heinous of crimes committed in the annals of human history.

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‘A much greater level of effort needed to be put in to understand the dynamics of this mammoth failure and initiating and implementing measures to stall the prospect of such eventualities in the future. That has not been the case as we see the ruling elite entangling the state mindlessly into controversies which it can and should stay away from, the national assembly resolution being the last of a depressing sequence of decisions which do not appear to end any time soon. What should have been was not to be. No one is to blame for that except our own barbaric conduct which tragically has escaped scrutiny and punishment.’

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Instead of looking inwards to see where we had gone wrong, our leaders have the audacity to ‘express concern’ over the punishment meted out to one of the principal criminals in enacting countless murderous orgies during the days leading up to the creation of Bangladesh. Contrary to what we did and the manner in which we spared the architects and the collaborators of the dismemberment of Pakistan, if the people and the government of Bangladesh choose to move against their ‘war criminals’, we should at least refrain from any public comment that may be construed as interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign state.

Speaking at a different level and in a different tenor, the separation of the former East Pakistan caused immense pain for the people across the divide. They suffered because they did not know what the people of that part of the country were subjected to and what they genuinely felt about the usurpers who branded them as their serfs. They continued to suffer the ignominy of being treated as captive slaves even after Pakistan, which was supposedly their country also, had won its independence. The megalomaniac superiority complex that the Punjabi ruling elite suffered from injected the first dose of poison in a relationship that never quite took off. It was doomed in its infancy and the eventual separation was only a matter of time. The bloodied manner in which it finally occurred remains a painful chapter in the short chequered history of Pakistan.

The most horrific part of the painful sequence is that no one, least of all the ruling elite, appears inclined to understand the extent of damage that the tragic event did to the fabric of the state and its credentials as a non-partisan arbiter of the fate of its people across the artificial divides of religion, caste, colour, race and creed. In one painful push, it catapulted the state into a tight embrace with pursuing a discriminatory philosophy in dealing with its citizens. This, in turn, emanates from the religiosity cloak that it has worn since long and which has eroded its ability to handle crises in an able, equitable and transparent manner.

Momena endured the ultimate in pain and humiliation. The rest have also not been spared the consequences of the tragedy. They have all suffered the ordeal to varying degrees. A much greater level of effort needed to be put in to understand the dynamics of this mammoth failure and initiating and implementing measures to stall the prospect of such eventualities in the future. That has not been the case as we see the ruling elite entangling the state mindlessly into controversies which it can and should stay away from, the national assembly resolution being the last of a depressing sequence of decisions which do not appear to end any time soon. What should have been was not to be. No one is to blame for that except our own barbaric conduct which tragically has escaped scrutiny and punishment.

The events pass. The pain stays. No one could illustrate that better than the inimitable Faiz who penned these unforgettable verses on his return from Dacca of an independent Bangladesh:

Strangers we stand after many a passionate embrace

How many reunions shall it take to be friends again?

When shall we behold the spread of green without a blemish?

How many monsoons will it take to wash the blood away?

The moment of separation was filled with anguish

Indescribable was the pain of the listless mornings after many a blissful night

Much that the heart yearned, there being no time

That we could convey how we felt with hands spread out in supplication

To them we had gone, Faiz, to say so much with our heart in hand

Unsaid it remained after all else had been spoken.

The writer is a political analyst and the Executive Director of the Regional Peace Institute. He can be reached at [email protected].