We hate the sinner, not the sin
A couple in the United States went on television and bragged about how they had engaged in shoplifting while their children gave them a hand. They claimed they had earned as much as $3,500 in a week, totaling $100,000 altogether, which was easy money for them. But it proved not so easy soon after the TV show, when the FBI started to investigate them. Truth doesn't always set us free. It also gets us in trouble.
I recently met with one of the four hundred and fifty-two people in this country who told the truth and got in trouble. In the most vulnerable moments of his life, he, like his cohort of corrupts, had gone to the national equivalent of a church confession box. Ho! Ho! Don't tell me you don't know what I mean. I am talking about the half-defunct, half-deluded Truth Commission. It was created so that people could unload their dirty secrets off their chests.
As it looks, once again to draw a church analogy, my man and others like him confessed to the wrong priest, who was offering absolution without valid ordination. The Truth Commission, as we all know, is fighting for its legitimacy in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Chances are, this baby will die in the delivery room.
If it lives, the Commission will have a hard time explaining what happened to the promises it made to those four hundred plus credulous folks. It asked them to tell the truth and not to worry, which they did. They came forward and gave confessions on the assurance of anonymity.
Then why were their names leaked to the press as if it was an honour roll of successful candidates in a board examination? After all, those men went to confess because they didn't want anybody to know what they did. They didn't want their children to know that the luxuries they lavished on them weren't bought with honest money. They had gone to the Truth Commission because they wanted to save their faces by the skin of their teeth.
That's precisely why my man feels betrayed. He was given false hope and lured into confession under false pretense. And, he doesn't know how to reconcile the fact that the Truth Commission has lied to him. His friends and colleagues make fun of him because they had advised him not to confess. Those people thank their lucky stars because they could see that it was a hoax. They knew that in the world of moral obtuseness, nobody was guilty until proven by his own confession.
But these are not his only regrets; he has more. A businessman who has been accused of allegedly stealing billions and using some of that money to hush up a murder is not only walking free but also going around promoting sports and culture. This beleaguered confessor, however, wasn't surprised.
Because nobody thought it was improper when the same businessman had sponsored our Ekushey Book Fair, building a marble-and-steel arch in front of Bangla Academy, which is still there. Streams of people walked under that arch, common people, enlightened minds and conscience keepers, with the name of the sponsor affixed on its imposts. Yet it didn't cross our minds why the hallowed event in our national life in the hallowed month of our national pride was smeared with the questionable money of a convicted man.
Then, this man who confessed to his crime, came up with his own formulation. It wasn't an issue when the same businessman sponsored that arch of avarice, because there was no sight of him. The Football Federation thing proved an eyesore because the sinner incarnated as an anti-climax to the man he was sitting with.
Here comes the coup de grace. My man says that people of this country are lot like his children. Rip Van Winkles they are, his children never asked him where the money came from when he was paying them on demand, until they woke up one fine morning and read his name in the paper.
Likewise, we never ask where the money comes from when someone builds the largest shopping mall, drives the fleet of fancy cars, and spends money on charity, culture and sports. It's not until a caretaker government tells us that we start smelling the rat. Then it shocks us that the money should have come from a not-so-legitimate source.
So, my man the confessor wants to believe that he was the victim of a scam. A fake company takes deposits from people on the promise of fabulous returns and runs away with the money. The Truth Commission did the same thing. It took his trust and ran away with it, which has left behind a more damaging reality. We hate the sinner, not the sin.
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