Repressed history syndrome
THE mystery of BDR killing is piling up, delay on delay, blunder on blunder, speculation on speculation, and then body count on body count; ten deaths in custody already in roughly one month. While the investigation gets another 30 days and the government mulls over getting the Interpol involved after FBI and Scotland Yard, the handle is getting bigger than the blade.
We shouldn't investigate an ongoing investigation, because it could interfere with its outcome. But we can't but ask questions if something doesn't make sense. Take for example our minister of commerce. There was something quirky about the way he said what he said and then suddenly rescinded it. For several days, he said he had evidence that Islamic militants had a hand in the BDR killing. Then all of a sudden he changed his story in the swing of a confession.
What was it? Was it some kind of a delusion? Actors face this problem at times. They don't recover from characters portrayed by them. It seems the honourable minister has suffered from the same problem. The man who stood in front of the dressing mirror in the morning got perplexed in front of the phalanx of television mikes in the afternoon. He completely forgot that they were supposed to be two different men that he was a private man in a public role, a minister not a minstrel, whose job was to tell us what really happened.
Instead, he entertained us with his version of the story, and told us what he thought we ought to hear. What he said in his official capacity was actually what he thought as a private man. In the uplands of enlightenment, there should have been consequences. In this flatland of forgiveness, one doesn't have to take responsibility for one's mistakes.
This is where the anger turns from the minister and targets on us. This is where we sense in us a territory of ignorance about ourselves. After thirty-eight years of independence we can still do nothing when our politicians take us for a ride. All that time we thought this master coordinator was bringing us updates from the investigation. But he was conducting his own investigation in the swamps of his own mind.
Going by the trend, one is afraid if more blight will pile up on blight in the next 30 days. It's a long time, more time for more goof-ups, perhaps more time for more things to be said and retracted. Perhaps more private men will become more oblivious of their public roles, bringing personal analysis into national synthesis in more swings of more confessions.
It's possible that the atrocity at BDR was an external sabotage. It's possible that there was a deadly blend of conspiracy and grievances, which flared up in a brutal carnage. But a procrastinated investigation runs the risk of distortions for the same reason an overexposed film stands the chance of getting damaged. Truth gets rusty and loses its shine.
So justice, like flowers, has a season. It's diluted if delayed, harassed if hurried. That's why what is happening somehow doesn't feel right. Apart from other things, the timing of the investigation has shifted a few times. It seems like we are getting justice made in a tailoring shop. Come delivery day, it asks for an extension of time.
It's said in the marketing world that brands stumble before they walk. Can we say the same thing about this investigation? No problem if it has stumbled a few times, extensions given, committees reshuffled, so forth and so on. Let us hope these have been done to make corrections so that the investigation runs without further interruption.
We need that assurance from the government, preferably from a new and laconic coordinator, who will not speak his mind but mind his speak. It must come, not from a ventriloquist's dummy, but someone who understands that history works like the mind. If a painful experience is blocked out, it returns to hurt again. In psychotherapy, they call it Repressed Memory Syndrome.
This nation has blocked out many of its painful memories, dividing us into two sides. One side likes to remember what another likes to forget. If this investigation also blocks out truth, it will widen that division.
If history is piled up, it creates its own syndrome. It furiously recalls what it is forced to repress.
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