 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|
|
Looking the past in the eye Published March 31, 2005 Sidrah, a student of mine of Pakistani origin at National University of Singapore came to see me the other day. She asked me some questions on the course I was teaching, and then she asked me whether I would answer some of her questions not related to Sociological Theory, the course I was teaching. I agreed. Sidrah was born more than a decade after the birth of Bangladesh or the breakup of Pakistan -- depending on which way you look at it. Her family has lived in Singapore for a long time now. The distance from Pakistan gives her some detachment, if not complete objectivity. A Pakistani in Pakistan would know, more or less, what happened. There the official story was that India helped some "misguided" Bengali leaders such as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to break up Pakistan. And that was all. So there was not much to find out. Sidrah wanted to know what happened looking straight into my eyes. She wanted to know in what way people of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) were different from Pakistan (then West Pakistan) and why Pakistan could not remain united. After over three decades these questions made me look back at a time when I was younger than Sidrah today, a witness to hopes, tragedies, anguish, fear, relentless patriotism, nationalism, revolution, liberation war -- in a word, history. Memories came back to haunt me. Some of my dear friends perished in that war. I was lucky to tell the stories to none other than one who descended from the same people who were on the other side of the divide. I do not know how the children of the Jews from Auschwitz looked at the children of Nazis, or Palestinian children would look at an Israeli. I did not see her as an enemy. She was just a twenty year old girl slightly older than my own daughter who grew up in foreign land unencumbered by animosities or past baggage. They are members of the "Cell phone generation." They listen to Anasthesia and Eminem. They do not care much about history. They look into the future with eyes wide-open. Sidrah was different. She wanted some answers. Is Islam in Bangladesh and Pakistan the same? I asked her whether she was fasting. She said she did. Luckily on that day, I could also say to her that I too was fasting. I told her that as far as religion was concerned, we were practicing the same religion. What was different was our ways of life, our dreams, aspirations, our language, our ways of eating and what we ate, our marriage ceremonies, in a word, culture. The language movement of 1952 when people of East Pakistan fought for the rightful status of their mother tongue. At this point Sidrah interrupted. "What movement?" she asked. Somehow, her history lessons did not include 1952. The language movement, the sacrifice of Bengalees on the streets of Dhaka, Shahid Dibosh, etc were not part of the history curricula in Pakistan, I presume. And when I told her of the banning of Tagore songs in 1967, she exclaimed: "What!" in utter disbelief. I told her about economic exploitation and disparity; how Pakistan had used the hard earned foreign currency from the export of jute that the peasants of Bangladesh grew to build and modernize their cities and to industrialize and so on. The economic disparity was glaring. All the cushy jobs went to the Pakistanis, and Bengalis became second class citizens in their own country. It was nothing but an internal colonialism. I told her the stories of political oppression and cultural discrimination. I told her how the rulers of Pakistan systematically followed a strategy of exclusion. I told her that the Muslim League which brought Pakistan on the map itself was created in Dhaka in December, 1906, more than twenty years after the creation of Indian Congress Party. I told her that in 1946 a large number of Muslims of East Bengal voted in favour of the creation of Pakistan and how over the years they were excluded. By and large, the Bengali Muslims -- both the elite and the common people -- were involved in the movement of Pakistan but their hopes were dashed and they felt a deep sense of betrayal. In 1971, after winning 167 seats in the election of National Assembly of 300, Awami League under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was denied political power. I told her of the brutalities of March 1971. I told her of the systematic extermination of our intellectuals in the declining days of Pakistan. I told her the whole story -- not in anger but in a dispassionate tone of forgiveness. Why should I be angry? She had nothing to do with the crimes of the past. Why should I put her on the spot? I told her to read Hassan Zaheer's book. But can we just forget and forgive? I remember one moment of history vividly. President Nelson Mandela came to Singapore to deliver Singapore Lecture on March 6, 1997. We were waiting with batted expectation at the Ball Room of Hotel Shangri-La. Mandela walked in escorted by a single bodyguard. A tall, handsome, crew cut, smart, young white man followed Mandela closely. Here was a man who spent nearly three decades of his life in jail imprisoned by the white ruling class in one of history's cruelest episodes. Now he was free man who forgave his oppressors. He stood taller. ================ The author is an associate professor of department of sociology at National University of Singapore. Response:
|
|
|
|||
 |
|
 |
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|
 |
 |
 |