A massacre and a celebration
THERE was no war-like situation in the month of August in the year 1975 in Bangladesh. A nascent government in a nascent country was trying its best to make all the loose ends meet despite internal and outside evil forces trying their best to make governance impossible. The evil forces, supported by the defeated forces in the War of Liberation, got desperate and plotted to kill Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Accordingly, on the fateful night of August 15 the entire family of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was gunned down. There was no revolution and there was no war. It was a peaceful time and yet the crime was committed in cold blood by a deranged group of people. They did not spare innocent and unarmed women and children.
Since then the sky over Dhaka changed full many a time in the month of August. It often poured rain over the city to cleanse it of the blood of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib and his family but the blood never did wash away. The blood stuck on the forehead of each of the killers and the beneficiaries of the gruesome murders. Instead of ever saying a word of sympathy the beneficiaries began to celebrate August 15 as the birthday of Begum Khaleda Zia, the present chairperson of BNP.
The TV footage of Begum Zia and her sycophants having a great time on August 15 speaks loudly of the kind of persons they are in reality and the kind of politics they do. What kind of people follow them as leaders? I wonder how the few literate and saner people in the party tolerate such behaviour! A Bangla daily reports that August 5 is the real date of birth that is kept on record in the school Begum Zia went to in her childhood. If that is true then we cannot but be amazed at the level of ingenuity, degree of machination and extent of wickedness that went behind planning of the event.
Can lust for power make people stoop so low that they would banish etiquette, nicety and civility from their character entirely? What kind of examples are they setting before the young generation by resorting to such spiteful, malicious tactics to go one up against the opposition? Will they ever get respect of the people for showing such colossal scale of disrespect to another political leader?
By organising a birthday party on August 15, BNP leaders may pat one another's back but by doing so they expose the darkest side of their character that borders on the sinister. Nowhere in the world, in the past or the present, have politicians shown such disrespect to deceased opposition leaders. But our politicians have beaten all such records and set examples of vulgarity that only bring shame on the entire nation.
Somehow, I have this strong conviction that had Ziaur Rahman been alive today he wouldn't have allowed such celebration of Begum Zia's birthday on a day when the nation mourned the death of a leader and his family. Whether Ziaur Rahman had any hand in the assassination is another debatable issue, but he never spoke ill of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as long as he lived.
BNP always speaks loudly about protecting Islam in Bangladesh. But we know that in Islam, during the janaza (last prayer before burial), the imam asks everyone to forgive the deceased if he or she had pained anyone during his or her lifetime. People do so and pray for the salvation of the departed soul. Maintaining the religious and cultural custom of the land, people do not speak ill of the deceased. In politics, one may criticise the political motives and actions of a dead leader but that shouldn't cross the parameters of ethics and civility. Is BNP following the tenets of Islam when it comes to showing respect to a deceased person?
If one may call the deaths of Bangabandhu and his family a Shakespearean tragedy then one may also say the plan to observe August 15 as the birthday of Begum Zia a Shakespearean wickedness. And one does not have to be an Awami Leaguer to say so.
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