Opinion
Truth Commission: Needed Proper Evaluation of Events
A recent landmark television series Millenium (by CNN) described the then Indian part of Bengal as an "industrial workhouse" as witnessed by the British. Yet, we lost our freedom due to political intrigue, duplicity, mistrust, and backlashes among the key players of those days. It took us two hundred and fourteen years to be exact to regain our lost freedom through a collective effort at a severe price and yet, we slipped through the slippery road of political mistrust, personal animosity, and for the past two decades, jealousy. And in between a political culture has been developed which thrives on propaganda, and lives on falsehood.
Be it the meeting of four opposition leaders to "drag down the present government", be it the "very personal attack" on the opposition leader of the house by the leader of the house or be it the siege of Shahjalal Science and Technology University to scrap the names of revered national heroes (decided by the highest decision making body of the University), one thing is very clear and that is, all that is left between the opposing forces of the politics is mere hatred and the vast majority of deprived population are hapless victims.
If we try to look into the root of all these personal animosity which are making a public killing field, we have to look back just after our independence. Failure of first AL government, internal squabbles, opportunism, led to August 15th, 1975 tragedy. The successive governments coming from barracks did all that their fellow uniformed politicians do. During the same period of time, we found the rise of anti-liberation forces in our political and social culture-many of which can be prosecuted as war criminals. They have so far been immensely successful by thriving on their propaganda machine. That led our nation to a series of confusion. While one group claims the sole credit of leading our independence, the others see our independence as a mere extension of break up of the then united Pakistan. Thus confusing the role of our national leaders. It has reached such a virulent climax that while one group thinks that the 'world' was created on August 15th, 1975 the other very passionately believes the same was created between 1966 and 1971.
Ours is a nation where emotion gets precedence over issues even in politics. At this critical juncture of our political history, it is urgent that personal animosity be sorted out and discarded from our political culture. It will be a good idea to create a truth commission headed by most respected and undaunted sons of the soil. This truth commission should properly evaluate the roles of our national leaders and their place in history. It must investigate the role of the anti liberation forces during our liberation struggle. It should also put down the names of ranks and files (for the sake of historical records at least) of the then Pakistani occupation forces who were involved in mass murder and genocide. Its function should cover the means by which post 15th August, 1975 governments came to power and their failures and successes. It should evaluate the significance of the "national days" which came about after our independence. A committee led by our highly respected President should nominate commission members with the approval of major political parties. Our nation must go through a healing process.
Pakistanis tried democracy for about a decade and proved themselves unworthy. During this period two "democratic" and "progressive" political parties in turn plundered the nation to shame. Result is a deep-rooted sectarian violence and division in the name of religion and military take-over. India too, which maintained Ghandhi-Nehru politics of tolerance for so long, gave in to fascist groups like RSS and Sangh Parivar who are busy re-writing history. This is the outcome of the failure of secular and progressive political forces like Congress and Janata Dal.
Current trend of politics and polarization in Bangladesh doesn't really give an optimistic impression about its future. The failure of two successive popularly elected governments can only lead this country to the path of destruction. There is no third party with rational policy and/or wide popular base in the scene, which can lead the nation to the third option - extremism. Be it a Taliban/RSS like movement by the anti liberation forces or a simple military take over Pakistan-style, the overly populated and massively destitute nation cannot simply afford them.
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