Cross Talk
How does Ghulam Azam explain himself to himself?
It was deceiving to look at the man although one already knew his looks would be deceiving. For the same reason, hatred was a difficult emotion to summon when one saw this bespectacled bug-eyed octogenarian prisoner whose flowing beard is white as the driven snow. This nation took a close look at Ghulam Azam for the first time in many years, and suffered from that quiet confusion. His imposing bearing scornfully betrayed our knowledge of his infamous background when television cameras zoomed in on his face on the courthouse steps and inside a prison van.
Many like me must have grappled with their emotions when that mastermind of monstrosity appeared on the television screen. A seraphic-looking man was arrested for his purported role in a gruesome genocide, an unreal character in a surreal world looking as if he couldn't so much as hurt a fly. Some of us struggled for words to express how they felt while putting that misleading impression in its proper context.
When Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old Korean student, went on a killing spree at Virginia Tech in the USA in 2007, Stanton Samenow, a forensic psychologist and author of the 2004 book Inside the Criminal Mind, gave his reaction: "Is this a person who has no conscience at all?" That terse and quizzical statement somehow captured the essence of our horror. I don't know about others, but I uttered those exact words under my breath when I saw Ghulam Azam.
In an ironic twist of fate, this man is facing trial for outrageous crimes committed forty years ago. He and his band of bigots are said to have killed and tortured in cold blood. They committed those heinous crimes in their desperate bid to save a political union whose breakup by then was a foregone conclusion. It is most disturbing that they had perpetrated their atrocities in the name of sublime sentiments such as love of country and religious devotion.
Researchers have found that 95% of mass murderers are men; they tend to be loners, and they feel alienated. They also tell us that these killers look normal on the outside and are really, really angry inside. We know there were some men amongst us who were really angry in 1971. They were angry because their beloved country, erstwhile Pakistan, was going to be dismembered.
Ghulam Azam was not alone to act out his anger on those who fought for the independence of Bangladesh. This dastardly man and his despicable desperados had collaborated with an invading army that plundered, raped and killed indiscriminately to take their anger to its logical conclusion. It is hard to believe that anybody in his sane mind could go that far for the nourishment of his rage.
But foremostly, watching Ghulam Azam on television was metaphysical. It was as if the wind of history finally whipped up the waves of disdain that crashed on the shores of our collective conscience. It was shocking by all means that life should come to this, and many of us felt cheated by its obvious contradiction. The profound visage of a grandfatherly man cleverly concealed the godfather-like perfidy which presided over a monumental madness including delivery of our mothers, sisters and daughters to the Pakistani camps amongst other brutal acts.
Psychologists have tried to differentiate serial killers from mass murderers. The former type likes to take one life at a time, mostly to derive sexual gratification from their killings. They do not want to be caught, while maximising their perverse pleasure every time they kill. Mass murderers are more obsessed with number, working on economies of scale. They like to take out a gun and kill as many people as they can.
Genocide is a combination of both when the intention of mass murder is driven by the instinct of serial killing, and it kills a lot of people over a long period of time. The perpetrators of genocide have the inspiration of a serial killer but the aspiration of a mass murderer. They are very sick people who can kill ruthlessly and then lead normal lives.
That explains why Ghulam Azam and his entire ilk never apologised. Millions of people in this country have hated them for forty years, yet the burden of that hatred never bothered them. It's because deep down inside they have never repented for their crimes.
Neither did Adolf Eichmann. Hitler's henchman shouted from the gallows that he had to obey the rules of war and of his flag. He believed the Jews belonged to an inferior race.
But Ghulam Azam obeyed enemy rules and enemy flag. What was he thinking every time he sent a victim to the enemy? If proven guilty, he deserves the highest punishment. But nothing will hurt him more if he knows he isn't a superior man.