Editorial
Martyred Intellectuals' Day
Translate their dreams into reality
IT is that time of year when we remember some of the bravest sons and daughters of the soil who made the supreme sacrifice in order to ensure the liberation of Bangladesh. In December 1971, only days away from freedom, the Bengali nation lost a whole group of its intellectuals to the murderous onslaught of the Pakistan occupation army and its local collaborators, the Razakars, al-Badr and al-Shams. Between 12 and 14 December, perhaps even later, our doctors, academics, civil servants and journalists were picked up by these forces and then systematically picked off. Their sinister objective was clear: an emerging Bangladesh was to be left maimed so that it could not realise the full meaning of liberty. The occupation army and its collaborators were clearly on the run, but along the way they sought to inflict as much damage as they could on this freedom-loving nation.
Today, thirty seven years into freedom, it becomes once more our responsibility and indeed moral calling to remember our martyred intellectuals with due solemnity and respect. More significantly, it is once again time for us to take stock of ourselves, by asking ourselves if the cause for which these brave men and women lost their lives has culminated in an egalitarian economic prosperity and political democracy. The history of the last thirty seven years remains proof that we have faltered along the way, that indeed the dreams these martyrs once shared with us have remained just that, dreams. And yet this very fact of remembering them, not just today but nearly every day of the year is again a huge hint of how poignant the dreams and aspirations of these dead remain for those who were witness to the struggle for liberty and for their children. For all our political divergences as a society, the truth cannot be ignored that the fundamental reasons why our intellectuals embraced death on the eve of liberation have never been forgotten. Today, therefore, it becomes the responsibility of every citizen of this land to uphold the old message of dreams and sacrifice and to spread the essence of it across our hamlets and our towns.
Those dreams centred around the idea of creating for ourselves a democratic order of things. Much though we have faltered and slipped in these many years, today we can tell ourselves that, armed with new hope and vigour, we are once more ready to give ourselves a system of government, a process of politics, that will justify that long-ago twilight struggle for liberty, for the removal of darkness from our lives. As the nation prepares to vote in a new parliament and a new government later this month, we pay tribute to those brave men and women who gave up their lives in 1971 so that we may translate ours into those of meaning and higher purpose.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments