[ALOCHONA] Worth a read: The season for remembering by Syed Badrul Ahsan

Counterpoint

The season for remembering

Syed Badrul Ahsan

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Daily Star

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=154040

 

The decade-long rule of Mohammad Ayub Khan in Pakistan went a long way in giving bureaucrats a place in the power structure they did not deserve. The objective was a sidelining of the political classes. And what better way than a bonding between Pakistan's military and its bureaucracy, both deriving pleasure from being remnants of the system the British colonial power left behind in 1947?

 

In a third world country, especially one where democracy is a tenuous and tentative affair, a meeting of minds on the part of the military and the civil administration successfully keeps society beholden to the combine. Into the combine sometimes come elements from other areas of society. The result is an insistent drilling of falsehood into the minds of the people. In the end, it all turns toxic when an entire nation, tired and angry and exasperated, takes to the streets to run the combine out of town. Think here of Pakistan and then of Bangladesh, of their military-bureaucratic complexes . . . and much else besides.

 

Ayub Khan had Altaf Gauhar to assist him in manipulating the affairs of state. And then there were all the others. Manzur Qadir was a good lawyer who saw nothing wrong in cosying up to the military regime. Yes, of course, Z.A. Bhutto remains a classic example of how illegal governments are propped up by their civilian cohorts. But Bhutto was not the only one at fault. Mohammad Shoaib remained happy being Ayub's finance minister.

 

In S.M. Zafar, the dictator found a law minister happy to defend everything that was lawless about the regime's workings. And do not forget Altaf Hussain, the Bengali editor of Dawn who cheerfully turned his back on journalism to be the self-styled field marshal's minister for industries. Khwaja Shahabuddin, obsessed with Pakistani "ideology" decreed a ban on the "Hindu" Rabindranath Tagore.

 

Observe now the re-branding of the Ayub story in Bangladesh. In a country where no one honestly expected bandit regimes to take over, dictators have arisen to give us some bad times. It was not just politicians who helped General Ziaur Rahman in prolonging his hold on power. There were others, men who clearly were successors of the generation that in the 1960s was in thrall to Ayub Khan in Pakistan. Some even belonged to that generation.

 

Shafiul Azam, once close to Monem Khan, was brought back into the scene by Zia. Ayub's former minister Kazi Anwarul Haq too came back, this time as a minister in a purely Bengali military dispensation. Add to the list of Zia enthusiasts the respected academic Abul Fazl. It is heart-breaking when such men do not see the evil in unconstitutional regimes.

 

Abul Fazl was not the only scholar to link up with Zia. There was Professor Shamsul Haq, a former vice chancellor of Dhaka University who took upon himself the job of foreign minister in the military regime.

 

Ziaur Rahman poached Professor Yusuf Ali, he who read out the Proclamation of Independence at Mujibnagar in April 1971, from the Awami League. Ali never explained why he had turned his back on Bangladesh's secular legacy, in much the same way that Justice Munir could never explain to Pakistanis what good he saw in being with Ayub Khan.

 

In the non-freedom fighter Awami Leaguer Zahiruddin, Zia spotted Bangladesh's first ambassador to Pakistan. Off went the man to Islamabad.

 

Yahya Khan was not far behind Ayub Khan in coming by civilian support for his regime. A.R. Cornelius, a former chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, was a strong underpinning of his regime. In the times of Hussein Muhammad Ershad in Bangladesh, there was Justice Ahsanuddin Chowdhury.

 

If Pakistan's second military ruler had G.W. Chowdhury, Shah Azizur Rahman, Mahmud Ali, Nurul Amin, Raja Tridiv Roy, N.M. Uquaili and Roedad Khan for company, Ershad celebrated himself in a court that included the likes of A.S.M. Abdur Rab, A.R. Yusuf and Sardar Amjad Hossain and others.

 

There is always the past to remember. There is forever a necessity to learn from the mistakes of men. Shah Azizur Rahman, Mahmud Ali and Syed Sajjad Hussain made the mistake of defending the Yahya Khan junta abroad even as Pakistan's soldiers murdered Bengalis in occupied Bangladesh. And then Mohiuddin Ahmed and Abdul Malek Ukil, men once close to Bangabandhu, did not see the contradiction in themselves as they offered a defence of Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed in Moscow and London in post-August 1975.

 

The properly Pakistani diplomat Iqbal Athar repudiated his country to embrace the Bangladesh cause in 1971. Tragically, quite a number of Bengali diplomats in the service of Pakistan would have nothing to do with a "secessionist" Bangladesh, until the Bhutto government would turn them out.

 

And yet there have been the brave men, the uncompromising souls. Justice S.M. Murshed and Justice M.R. Kayani gave Ayub Khan short shrift. Justice Abdur Rahman Chowdhury, Justice Syed Mohammad Hussain and Justice K.M. Sobhan refused to be intimidated by H.M. Ershad.

 

It is the season for remembering.

 

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star. E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk

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