Ground Realities
A brief history of handshakes in our times
ZILLUR Rahman, the veteran Awami League politician, was spotted shaking hands with the Jamaat-e-Islami's Motiur Rahman Nizami at a Saudi embassy iftar a few days ago. Nothing wrong with that, you just might argue. Shaking hands, after all, is a social thing. If you do not proffer your hands to the individual standing across from you, or before you, you might end up being accused of rudeness or arrogance. That is a point we do not overlook, except that in this instance it was a man whose party has regularly accused that of the other of criminality of the most vicious kind being seen in the company of a man routinely charged with culpability in the genocide perpetrated in 1971. So what do you do now?
You could simply ignore the entire episode as being one more instance of unnecessary and unwelcome conversation. There are more things on heaven and earth, you might pipe up Shakespeare-like, than a matter of a mere handshake in the few minutes that remain before the break of fast. That is the attitude you could, if you wanted, adopt.
And then there is the other one, which will have you come squarely up against this age-old problem of hypocrisy. If the Awami League has so emphatically been arguing the case against the Jamaat and what it did back in 1971 and what should now be done about the ageing men who once offered the services of the Islami Chhatra Sangha and the al-Badr force to the occupation Pakistan army, it could well have chosen to stay away from that Saudi iftar.
Someone could have sent a polite note to the embassy regretting the party's inability to be part of the program. There would have been no need for an explanation of the reasons.
Ah, easier said than done, you might say. The truth about Bangladesh's politics in these tumultuous, uncertain times, is that it often cannot ignore the presence or opinions of some influential diplomats from powerful countries. Which means it is not an easy job saying no to an invitation that might come a politician's way from the American or any European or Middle Eastern embassy.
And there's the difficulty. Or the dilemma. But consider that other small matter. We call it principle. If a party has adopted the position that it will have no dealing with another it believes did grievous wrong to the country in its moment of grave peril, it naturally follows that the principle will be lived up to. Ah, yes! There is that bit of history which comes in as well. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman went all the way to Rawalpindi, post-Agartala, to talk to his tormentor Ayub Khan. They shook hands, didn't they? It has even been said that an increasingly politically haemorrhaging Ayub offered the prime ministerial office to Mujib.
The point here is simple: if Bangabandhu could proffer his hand to his inveterate enemy, what reason can there be for Zillur Rahman to keep his from coming in touch with Nizami's? Point noted. But note too the fact that prior to that Rawalpindi meeting, Ayub Khan had not committed, or had not helped to commit, genocide in East Pakistan. There was no blood on his hands.
Obviously, something goes badly wrong when the good seek a compromise with the bad. It may be that the Jamaat is an acknowledged political party, but that does not absolve it of the sins it committed during the War of Liberation. And those of us who remember those sins will do all we cannot to indulge the sinners in any way. Which is why none of us will be willing to shake hands with Radovan Karadzic or Ratko Mladic or the likes of Pol Pot.
But then, Bangabandhu did shake hands with Tikka Khan at Lahore airport in February 1974. Should he have done that? Here, you can be reasonably sure, the Father of the Nation had a strong case going for him. Tikka Khan was the vanquished one who, as chief of Pakistan's army staff, had just saluted the man he had once taken prisoner with such contempt in March 1971. Sarcasm underlined Bangabandhu's smile as he took Tikka's hand, saying, simply, "Hello, Tikka." There was no respect in that handshake, none whatever in that smile.
There are instances aplenty of how men uncomfortable with one another have ended up shaking hands. Anwar Sadat, the visionary suddenly taking hold of his soul, travelled to Jerusalem on a November night to make peace with his Israeli enemies. It was the former terrorist Menachem Begin's hand he took and so set the region down the road to possibilities. It was an attitude that John Foster Dulles could not and would not adopt for himself.
At the Geneva conference in 1954, he spotted China's Zhou En-lai approaching him with outstretched hand. He simply turned his back on the Chinese prime minister and walked away. Such appalling behaviour would cost America dear, until Richard Nixon decided to travel all the way to China in 1972 and shake Zhou's hand, the same that Dulles had rejected with disgust.
All his political life, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto spewed hate for Indians. He was less than gentlemanly with Sardar Swaran Singh at the United Nations Security Council in 1965; and he had little respect for Indira Gandhi. But then came time for him to eat humble pie. He did that in Simla in 1972, through shaking hands with Mrs. Gandhi.
Shaking hands, then, is of critical importance. And not shaking them is equally important. On December 16, 1971, for all his initial misgivings, Kader Siddiqui ended up shaking hands with the murderous Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi at the Dhaka race course. It was a place and a time when he could not have done otherwise. It would look bad, less than gracious, had Siddiqui opted to spurn the hand of the defeated soldier. You do not humiliate a soldier who has already been defeated in war. You help him keep some of his self-esteem intact.
But what do you do when men like Than Shwe come to you with extended arms? Than Shwe and his men have presided over a constricting dictatorship in Burma for years. Their respect for people outside the confines of their cabal is minimal, or not there at all. Will it then at all be a matter of public discourse if no one shakes hands with them? Should men of manifest goodwill shake hands with Sudan's Omar el-Bashir after what he has done to the people of Darfur?
Dilip Barua -- he of the Samyabadi Dal -- worries, though. He believes that the damage that Bangladesh's secular camp may already have gone through as a consequence of the Zillur-Nizami handshake cannot easily be papered over.
The right wing, and especially the men we think are war criminals, will now, in the run-up to the general elections, project that image nationwide as proof of secular hypocrisy.
And do you realise that Barua may turn out to be right after all? And yet there is the feeling that in time people will get that handshake thing behind them and simply move on. Justice Badrul Haider Chowdhury, in his quest for the presidency long years ago, sought the blessings of Golam Azam and was roundly condemned for such behaviour. But that is now distant memory.
In the euphoria of liberation in 1971, Tajuddin Ahmed saw little reason for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to come in with advice or help for Bangladesh. At a meeting in Delhi, he had little wish to shake hands with Robert McNamara. It all changed, however, in 1974. Tajuddin Ahmed, much against his will, summoned up the willingness to call on McNamara in Washington. They shook hands. The world changed for Bangladesh, for better or for worse. Take your pick.
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