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Forget 1971, says Pakistan
PAKISTAN has asked us to let bygones be bygones, to forget 1971. Now, that is indeed a queer proposition to make before a nation that Pakistan's soldiers so happily and brutally went into the job of murdering, raping and maiming over nine months of medieval barbarism. But, of course, we are ready to forget and forgive, ready to turn a new page if only Pakistan's government and its people would do their bit in helping us forget that sordid past. The trouble is their attitude has not helped all these years since the end of Pakistan and the rise of Bangladesh. It is always attitude that matters.
And how it matters was demonstrated beautifully and poignantly by Willy Brandt, that man of peace, when he went and knelt before Israel's Yad Vashem memorial in 1970 as a mark of penance for what Nazi Germany did to six million Jews in the Hitler years.
The German chancellor could well have declined to do that, seeing that he himself had run from the Nazis, that his politics had nothing in common with that of Hitler and his brutal regime. But, then again, Brandt knew that the road to the future would stay blocked until the past had adequately been tackled.
It is a lesson Pakistan and its leaders need to learn from. To be sure, Pakistanis will tell you in their turn that Pervez Musharraf once expressed his regret over any crimes that may have been committed in Bangladesh in 1971. When they do that, you might as well inform them that there is a huge difference between an expression of regret and a clear statement of apology.
When you regret something you have done, you are not exactly contrite over your action. But when you publicly let people know that you are apologetic over a crime or sin you have committed, you give out the good feeling that you have finally been able to catch up with history. More significantly, you have finally adopted the thought that in life morality matters than anything else.
Pakistan's people and its leaders have, to our clear displeasure, never tried to take the high moral ground when it comes to dealing with 1971. The history that is taught in schools is a travesty of the truth. While a detailed analysis is provided of the circumstances leading to the creation of Pakistan in 1947, nothing really is offered as an explanation for the disappearance of East Pakistan in 1971. Or if there is something of an explanation, the clear hint is there that a conspiracy, obviously by non-Pakistanis, broke the country into two. With that kind of approach to history, you only undermine history. An angry Zulfikar Ali Bhutto visited the National Memorial in Savar in June 1974 and made it clear he saw nothing wrong in what his country had done to Bengalis in 1971.
You would have expected a different kind of response from Bhutto, for he was an educated man and comfortable in the ways of the world. Yes, he did have a big hand in the genocide, but he could have redeemed himself if he had, on that trip, apologised in unambiguous terms to the Bengalis. He did not and neither did any of his successors. His daughter Benazir, a student at Harvard in 1971, scrupulously refused to believe the reports of the killings carried by the western media at the time.
All that mattered was what her father told her in his letters. And she believed him. To the end of her life, you might reasonably conclude, she thought the Bangladesh crisis was not brought on by the army or her father but by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League.
Naturally, therefore, you do not expect anything but professions of regret from Pakistan about the atrocities of its army in Bangladesh. Or there is the quixotic too. When Ziaul Haq travelled to Dhaka in 1985, he did a good thing of visiting the memorial at Savar. It was one opportunity he could have used to say sorry on behalf of his country. He did not do that. Instead, he told bemused Bengali journalists: "Your heroes are our heroes." So why then did his army go about picking off our freedom fighters and our innocent citizens? Imagine the Japanese telling the Chinese: "The people we massacred in Nanjing in 1937 were our brothers."
We will forget 1971 when Pakistan makes a move to remember it. That remembering ought not to be like Pervez Musharraf's. In his memoirs, the former military ruler notes that he and his fellow soldiers in Rawalpindi wept on the day the Pakistan army surrendered in Bangladesh. That weeping came a little late in the day and for the wrong reasons. For nine months the Pakistanis made Bengalis weep. And then it was their turn to cry, not because they had brutalised Bangladesh but because they had lost East Pakistan.
Roedad Khan, that incorrigible Pakistani bureaucrat, glowed at dawn on March 26, 1971. As Bengalis were shot down, he exclaimed: "Yaar, iman taaza ho gya." Pakistan must someday weep for that comment. And then we will forget.
PAKISTAN has asked us to let bygones be bygones, to forget 1971. Now, that is indeed a queer proposition to make before a nation that Pakistan's soldiers so happily and brutally went into the job of murdering, raping and maiming over nine months of medieval barbarism. But, of course, we are ready to forget and forgive, ready to turn a new page if only Pakistan's government and its people would do their bit in helping us forget that sordid past. The trouble is their attitude has not helped all these years since the end of Pakistan and the rise of Bangladesh. It is always attitude that matters.
And how it matters was demonstrated beautifully and poignantly by Willy Brandt, that man of peace, when he went and knelt before Israel's Yad Vashem memorial in 1970 as a mark of penance for what Nazi Germany did to six million Jews in the Hitler years.
The German chancellor could well have declined to do that, seeing that he himself had run from the Nazis, that his politics had nothing in common with that of Hitler and his brutal regime. But, then again, Brandt knew that the road to the future would stay blocked until the past had adequately been tackled.
It is a lesson Pakistan and its leaders need to learn from. To be sure, Pakistanis will tell you in their turn that Pervez Musharraf once expressed his regret over any crimes that may have been committed in Bangladesh in 1971. When they do that, you might as well inform them that there is a huge difference between an expression of regret and a clear statement of apology.
When you regret something you have done, you are not exactly contrite over your action. But when you publicly let people know that you are apologetic over a crime or sin you have committed, you give out the good feeling that you have finally been able to catch up with history. More significantly, you have finally adopted the thought that in life morality matters than anything else.
Pakistan's people and its leaders have, to our clear displeasure, never tried to take the high moral ground when it comes to dealing with 1971. The history that is taught in schools is a travesty of the truth. While a detailed analysis is provided of the circumstances leading to the creation of Pakistan in 1947, nothing really is offered as an explanation for the disappearance of East Pakistan in 1971. Or if there is something of an explanation, the clear hint is there that a conspiracy, obviously by non-Pakistanis, broke the country into two. With that kind of approach to history, you only undermine history. An angry Zulfikar Ali Bhutto visited the National Memorial in Savar in June 1974 and made it clear he saw nothing wrong in what his country had done to Bengalis in 1971.
You would have expected a different kind of response from Bhutto, for he was an educated man and comfortable in the ways of the world. Yes, he did have a big hand in the genocide, but he could have redeemed himself if he had, on that trip, apologised in unambiguous terms to the Bengalis. He did not and neither did any of his successors. His daughter Benazir, a student at Harvard in 1971, scrupulously refused to believe the reports of the killings carried by the western media at the time.
All that mattered was what her father told her in his letters. And she believed him. To the end of her life, you might reasonably conclude, she thought the Bangladesh crisis was not brought on by the army or her father but by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League.
Naturally, therefore, you do not expect anything but professions of regret from Pakistan about the atrocities of its army in Bangladesh. Or there is the quixotic too. When Ziaul Haq travelled to Dhaka in 1985, he did a good thing of visiting the memorial at Savar. It was one opportunity he could have used to say sorry on behalf of his country. He did not do that. Instead, he told bemused Bengali journalists: "Your heroes are our heroes." So why then did his army go about picking off our freedom fighters and our innocent citizens? Imagine the Japanese telling the Chinese: "The people we massacred in Nanjing in 1937 were our brothers."
We will forget 1971 when Pakistan makes a move to remember it. That remembering ought not to be like Pervez Musharraf's. In his memoirs, the former military ruler notes that he and his fellow soldiers in Rawalpindi wept on the day the Pakistan army surrendered in Bangladesh. That weeping came a little late in the day and for the wrong reasons. For nine months the Pakistanis made Bengalis weep. And then it was their turn to cry, not because they had brutalised Bangladesh but because they had lost East Pakistan.
Roedad Khan, that incorrigible Pakistani bureaucrat, glowed at dawn on March 26, 1971. As Bengalis were shot down, he exclaimed: "Yaar, iman taaza ho gya." Pakistan must someday weep for that comment. And then we will forget.
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