We have just lived through another sixteenth of December. It is a date that unsettles us in our minds and our hearts. But we have learnt to not be bothered excessively by any painful memory or an intrusion of reality into our thoughts.
Until 2014, the sixteenth of December was solely a reminder of the darkest moment in our history. It acquired an additional significance with the massacre of our schoolchildren in Peshawar on this date seven years ago. Apparently, we are not able to make sense of this juxtaposition of two momentous national tragedies. Is there some divine connection between the two – a message that we are unable or afraid to carefully decipher?
This year, though, the existing social and political environment has pushed us deeper into a pensive mood. Then, there are some specific reasons to remember the breakup of the country and the most devastating incident of terrorism that we have suffered.
In the first place, 1971 was exactly fifty years ago. This means that Bangladesh is now celebrating its golden anniversary. It is an appropriate time for Bangladesh to take stock of what it has made of its freedom. At the same time, there is bound to be a comparative study of how Pakistan has fared after the loss of its eastern wing. It is obviously very hard for us to contend with the fact that Bangladesh, born as a ‘basket case’, has overtaken Pakistan in almost all economic and social indicators. How did this happen and what does it mean?
More than anything else, 1971 signifies our refusal to face facts. The circumstances that led to the surrender in Dacca – Dhaka – on the sixteenth of December were kept from the people of Pakistan and we still are not able to make up our mind to lay bare the facts that can be certified and to debate the issues that would emerge from those facts.
Yes, some efforts have been made this year to project a particular narrative that spotlights the machinations of Pakistan’s enemies. But there is an element of deception in this narrative. There seems to be a deliberate attempt to find a way of circumventing some vital aspects of the truth that can be validated historically.
If we did not face facts fifty years ago, can we do that now, in light of what is happening in Pakistan at this time? It is in the context of our present crisis that the other tragedy that took place seven years ago deserves to be fully explored and explained. Do we know the entire truth about why terrorism and violent religious extremism were able to flourish in Pakistan?
It was on the third of December this year that we had to bear the pain of the lynching of a Sri Lankan citizen in Sialkot. We have witnessed the national outrage that this tragedy, a replay of numerous other cases of mob violence led by religious fanatics, has prompted. An impression is being created that the government is now fully committed to wiping out the passions that are invested in mob violence of the kind that we saw in Sialkot.
But the drift clearly is not in that direction. No review has been undertaken of the secret deal made with the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) that amounted to a surrender to religious fanatics. When Imran Khan spoke about negotiations with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), parents of the children who were the victims of the TTP’s terror saw it as a betrayal – and the PTI government has not calmed their anxieties.
A rather ominous initiative of the government is the introduction of a Single National Curriculum that negates all progressive ideals of education at the primary level. This appears to be a conspiracy against any prospect of education encouraging critical thinking among students. And utterly inexplicable is the choice that Imran Khan has made to head his Rehmatulil Aalameen Authority. What one learns about Dr Ejaz Akram through social media is not easy to comprehend.
In his HardTalk interview on BBC this week, British-India author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera said something that has stuck in my mind. “Understanding history is a vital part of patriotism”, he observed. Our ‘patriots’ have a habit of hiding from history. They try to write their own version of it, without any obligation to tell the truth.
I was impressed by our historian Ali Usman Qasmi’s very concise and objective summing up of the story of 1971 for BBC Urdu. Facts, of course, can be interpreted in different ways and we need historians, social scientists and thinkers to not only draw lessons from our failures in the past but also to infer the consequences of the ideological sense of direction of the present rulers. In every society that is in crisis, the need for a serious investigation of the current situation becomes paramount.
There was this opinion piece in The New York Times on Wednesday with this title: ‘How to Tell When Your Country Is Past the Point of No Return’. Writer Thomas Edsall had essentially collected the thoughts of a number of leading political scientists to assess the present state of America’s political system.
One quote: “Unlike the threat to democracy posed by a military coup, the threat posed by authoritarian populism is incremental. If the water temperature increases only one degree per hour, it may take a while before you notice it is too hot and by that time it is too late”.
Another, with specific reference to political polarisation in the States: “It is not beyond imagination that Republicans could be prepared, fueled by a mix of fear and provocation, to push the nation over the brink”.
Would you want to apply this to Pakistan after replacing the ‘Republicans’ with – what?
The writer is a senior journalist.
Email: ghazi_salahuddinhotmail.com