Nothing is settled until settled right
If the South hadn't finally accepted the outcome of the Civil War as being on the whole just, Gilbert Keith Chesterton observed, Abraham Lincoln would have been wrong in trying to preserve the American Union. In politics at least, right and wrong are matters of consensus. Lincoln summarised it in his own homely words. Nothing is ever really settled, he said, until it's settled right. What he didn't mention is that the settling must happen in people's minds.
Now that the National Probe Committee (NPC) has completed its investigation, the second of the three investigations into the BDR killing to submit its report and the only investigation whose findings have been partially disclosed in public, how does it stand against that Lincolnian standard? Since the army isn't sure if it should release its report in the public domain or hold it close to the chest, is the NPC report going to build consensus? Are the findings of the report going to settle the matter in the public mind?
The third and the last of the three investigation reports will come from the CID and, as we know, that report is going to be the basis for forming charges and for prosecution. Two dozen BDR men have already died before the trial. A few dozen more might be found guilty, no matter whether they are tried in a military court or a civilian court.
If morning shows the day, the partial disclosure of the second report is roughly what we are going to be officially told about the mutiny. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. The BDR mutiny is BDR business. It was conceived by BDR men, planned by them and implemented by them. So they are the ones who should pay for their crimes.
Be it as it may, is the outcome going to be accepted by people as being on the whole just? May be yes, may be no. When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed, an unusual calm had descended on the people. We don't know if it was fear, shock or something else that paralysed them. They didn't take to the streets or explode in protest. But after thirty-four years, we know that the people had never condoned that killing and always desired to punish the killers. The same thing is true for the trial of the war criminals. People have been silent at times, but they never abandoned the hope that those who are guilty should be tried.
Time will tell how people are going to react to the way the BDR mutiny has been handled so far. For the time being, let us believe there is no string attached to it. It was an act of disgruntled privates who took revenge on their officers because they were abused and deprived. There was no outside force involved in it. No terrorist group had a hand in it, like our commerce minister once opined.
Although one will always wonder why others tried to add flavours to this plain vanilla. Why did a foreign magazine come up with a bare-all story, quoting names of people and sums of money to prove that the mutiny was the outcome of a conspiracy? Who was that foreign journalist, who wrote in a publication in faraway Ghana to counterpoise that conspiracy theory with a conspiracy theory of her own?
Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. It's not easy to investigate into a mutiny and then give the full account of what actually happened. It has many bones that clutter the facts, and this government has put together a report cutting through that clutter, revealing it, albeit partially, for the first time in our history. It has done a commendable job.
But how will the government take it to the next level? Left at face value, it might fester. The NPC report says that the BDR mutiny in 2009 was the continuation of earlier revolts in1973 and 1991, one mutiny every 18 years. Yet another proof that nothing is settled until it's settled right.
For that reason, the government should consider divulging the findings of all the investigation reports on the mutiny. The reports can also be debated in the parliament. Multi-party committees can scrutinise the findings and make recommendations to the government. In other words, the investigation reports should go through a challenge process to be acceptable and transparent. The government should leave as little room for controversy as possible.
A nation of half-dones remains undone, and this government has the historic opportunity to break that vicious cycle for us. It's settling right many things from the past, and the specter of the BDR mutiny, given proper closure, won't come back to haunt us in future.
More than a change of regime, it will mark a regime of change that this nation will gratefully remember.
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