By Sikander Hayat
December is the month when Pakistan lost its eastern half of East Pakistan which became Bangladesh in 1971. The cold chilly nights of December send shivers down the spine of Pakistanis forcing them to contemplate about what went wrong. Why our brothers who created Muslim League, who suffered partition of Bengal, who were at the forefront of the movement for the independence of Pakistan felt so angry that they decided to part their ways from the rest of Pakistan.
I do not want to blame our brothers from Bengal (East Pakistan) for wanting to secede as they gave us 24 years to correct our wrongs but leaders of West Pakistan, the intelligentsia, the elite and the general public attitude never considered East Pakistan as their integral part. There was a hint of racial, intellectual and martial prejudice and then there was a feeling in Eastern Pakistan that West Pakistan considered them the insignificant other.
It has been 37 years but the wounds are still not anywhere near healed. There is not much anguish about the succession itself as it was always going to be difficult for two parts of country to function as one when divided by thousand miles of hostile territory, but the way the separation took place make us Pakistanis anxious. If there was a referendum and had resulted in the creation of Bangladesh, it would have been fine but the birth of Bangladesh happened through a caesarean. A lot of bloodletting happened and a lot of innocent people lost everything they had.
West Pakistanis became foreigners in there on land with in a matter of hours. On 16th December 1971, Bangladesh was born, wounded, crying and dripping with blood.
Army operation which started on 25th of March and ended in a defeat on 16th December 1971 was an episode in the history of Pakistan which I as a Pakistani cannot justify.
A lot of West Pakistanis living in East Pakistan were killed by the Mukti Bahni but that still not justified the indiscriminately ruthless action by the Army. So here I am thinking what should be my reaction to all that misery and I have come to the conclusion that I must apologise whole heartedly, without any reservations.
I apologise as a Pakistani to all those mothers who lost their sons
I apologise to all sisters who lost their brothers
I apologise to all those sons and daughters who lost their parents
I apologise to all those daughters of East Pakistan who were humiliated &
I apologise for not keeping the promise we Pakistanis made to East Pakistan in 1947
These are the sins of our fathers, I cannot disown them, I cannot make them go away, I cannot forget them but I ask for forgiveness. I ask people of Bangladesh to forgive Pakistan (not forget the torment that you went through). Pakistan is not the same Pakistan; Bangladesh is not the same Bangladesh. I hope that when history lessons are taught in Bangladeshi schools, they end with a plea from Pakistanis for forgiveness and compassion.
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Thank you for apologise
ReplyDeleteAKM Azad Khan
Dhaka
The announcement of the schedule for elections to the tenth Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament) on November 25 has stoked an already volatile political situation in Bangladesh. The ready reaction of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led opposition alliance to the chief election commissioner’s televised speech to the nation, during which he announced that the general elections will be held on January 5, 2014, came in the form of what was initially a 48-hour countrywide blockade of road, rail and water ways, subsequently extended to 71 hours, beginning from November 26. The blockade ended on November 30, but the BNP commenced another 72 hour countrywide blockade the next day, which was ultimately extended until the evening of December 5. The alliance has called for yet another blockade to begin on Saturday, December 7.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, there has been widespread violence and vandalism: vehicles are torched, public and private property destroyed. The death toll as reported on December 4 had reached 40 and scores more have been wounded. Many of the casualties were caused by an explosion of crude bombs and arson attacks on public transport. According to Samanta Lal Sen, the coordinator of the burn and plastic surgery unit at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the premier public hospital in the country, several of the victims of political violence, admitted with severe burn injuries in the last one month, had died and quite a few are in a critical condition.
The BNP-led alliance has been engaged in street agitation for months now in its demand that Sheikh Hasina resign as prime minister, given that her Awami League government completed its term on October 25. The opposition alliance claims that polls conducted under the government will not be free, fair or transparent. While the two sides continue their finger-pointing over the ongoing political impasse and social disorder, arising out of the failure of the ruling and opposition political alliances to reach a consensus on election-time government, there have reportedly been informal contacts between the feuding camps, supposedly geared towards a dialogue. Still, publicly at least, the two camps have thus far produced only contradictory statements about what the media has dubbed as “clandestine” meetings between the general secretaries of the Awami League and the BNP.