Of contradictions, assassinations and birthdays
ON National Mourning Day, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party's Khondokar Delwar Hossain informed the country that he saw no contradiction between observing the death anniversary of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and celebrating the birthday of former prime minister Khaleda Zia on the same day.
Such an expression of sentiment raises quite a few questions, fundamentally around the premise of morality. That small matter of what day of the year actually happens to be Begum Zia's birthday apart, considering the controversy raised around it, and with full appreciation of why her followers believe she was born on the same day that was destined to mark the end of Bangabandhu's life, there come to us thoughts of values. In this country, indeed all over Asia, values have sustained life. Ask Singapore's grand old man Lee Kwan Yew. He will tell you how Asia's traditions have always been a priority with the continent's people.
It all boils down, therefore, to the idea of what we should and should not do on days that remind us of monumental grief. On August 15, we who have consistently remembered the War of Liberation and have endlessly recalled the momentous leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in our lives do make it a point to exercise self-restraint in all that we do in terms of individual observances and celebrations.
We consciously stay away from playing music of the sort that we play all round the year, for we remember the old lesson imparted to us by our parents that memories of sadness must not be marred by an insensitive demonstration of happiness. Those are, let us remind ourselves once more, part of the value system on which we were brought up by our parents.
When the muezzin sounds the call to prayer, even those who do not set much store by conventional faith are insistent that proper respect be shown to the Creator and his commandments. And they do that through turning off the music, through suspending their raucous laughter until such time has elapsed as to warrant a resumption of the banal festivities of life. Which is why we think that on August 15, the loyalists of the Begum could afford to be a little more circumspect about celebrating her birthday. If they cannot do that, it will -- as it has generally been -- always be taken as a sign of bad taste.
There are days of the year, in this country, when we studiously observe or respect the occasions when serenity came to be attached to them. The death anniversary of a parent, the illness of a child, tragedy in a neighbouring family, et al are the points when we avoid indulging in contradictions. Khondokar Delwar may not spot any contradiction in a simultaneous remembrance of murder and birth, but those of us steeped in an understanding of life all the way through to its roots remain acutely aware of what we need to do.
We do not have our children marry on Ashura; and we stay away from organising luncheons during Ramadan. That attitude springs from our innermost beliefs. Or it is a sign of our absolute faith in and respect for the right of devout men and women to uphold the sanctity of religion.
At the National Memorial in Savar, the only music we play or hear is the last post, for it is with heartbreak that we recall the three million martyrs of the War of Liberation. As darkness falls over Bangladesh every March 25, it is remembrance of the early martyrs of that twilight struggle that comes alive. For men and women of sensitivities and an understanding of history, that is as it should be. At Yad Vashem, we celebrate no birthdays as we pray for the six million Jews the Nazis killed in their enthusiasm for the creation of a pure Aryan race.
On January 30, it is Mahatma Gandhi's martyrdom we recall in the way that we feel intense sadness remembering Indira Gandhi on October 31. And not many of us may recapitulate the day Colonel Abu Taher went to the gallows, but those of us who wake up at dawn every July 21 silently pray for him.
Every November 3 we salute four brave men -- Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmed, A.H.M. Quamruzzaman and M. Mansur Ali -- men who led us through the trauma of war and into freedom and then were done to death by the assassins who only months earlier had shot down the Father of the Nation. Every November 7, for all the cacophony about a "sepoy-janata biplob," silence and prayers come in abundance for Khaled Musharraf and his loyalists murdered by men defined by brutality.
Remembering is important. For remembering is a sign of civility; and paying respects to the memory of dead men and women is proof that the world has not yet been taken over by elements thriving in sinister darkness. Ask the people of Japan. For a couple of days every August, they recall the tens of thousands of people that Harry Truman's atomic bombs wiped off the face of the earth in 1945. And along with the Japanese, millions of people around the world remember. Abraham Lincoln paid tribute to the fallen brave in Gettysburg in 1863 thus: "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But it can never forget what they did here."
We do not celebrate the joys of life on the old battlefield in Gettysburg, just as we do not trivialise the skulls of all the Cambodians bludgeoned to death by the homicidal Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979 through cheerful verbosity at the museum holding these specimens of what used to be lives. Which brings us back to August 15. Bengalis try to stay away from marrying on the day. They have little appetite for partying, for carousing on the day. There are forever contradictions when you adulterate a patently solemn occasion through an unabashed infusion of things frolicsome.
On September 11, people cause to well up in their souls memories of Salvador Allende. Chileans remember 1973; and not very many of them will be willing to lionise Augusto Pinochet as thoughts of the old bloody coup come rushing back into their sensibilities. In New York as elsewhere, heads are bowed low in prayer for those who died when the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11 twenty eight years after Allende's life came to an end. Men of faith and adherents of historical truth do not celebrate birthdays on the day. And they do not because they know of life, of the metaphysical that binds life and death to the cosmic patterns of Creation.
Yes, there are contradictions in observing the solemnity that comes with remembrance of murder most foul and celebrating the birthday of a living politician through lighting pretty little candles on a weighty cake. The darkest day in the life of this nation, or any nation, cannot be made light of, morally as well as politically, by our pretending that nothing of the wrenching kind happened on the day, that whatever has happened is of little consequence in the history of this unfortunate country.
Comments