The Bangladesh apology melee

The recent apology to the Bangladesh issue, an annual ritual now, started with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar’s visit to Bangladesh wherein she personally delivered an invitation to Hasina Wajid to attend the D-8 Conference in Islamabad on November 22. No sooner than Hina arrived in Bangladesh, she addressed Bangladesh as a brotherly Islamic country and she was happy to be in Bangladesh. What she got instead was a terse demand that Pakistan should first apologise to Bangladesh for its alleged atrocities in the 1971 War before Bangladesh could consider taking its relationship with Pakistan forward. The Bangladeshi prime minister also declared that she would not visit Pakistan after receiving the personal invitation.

Despite repeated expressions of grief over the 1971 tragedy, the Bangladesh’s demand for an apology is unfounded for Pakistanis belonging to the western wing also suffered the same fate as did their brothers and sisters in the eastern wing at the hands of Mukti Bahini and Indian-administered mercenaries’ squads of death.

It is over 40 years now but some all-round commentators and experts do not appear inclined to go through the history that brought a turnaround in the eastern wing of the then Pakistan and its eventual break-up from the state of Pakistan. They will do well if they go through Indian writer Sharmila Bose’s book titled ‘Dead Reckoning: Memoirs of the 1971 Bangladesh War.” Other books written on East Pakistan saga include ‘The Lightening Campaign’ by Major General D K Platt and ‘The Liberation War’ by A K Subrananium and Mr Ayub are also a testimony to the facts that makes Bangladesh’s demand for an apology irrelevant.

Today, what the Bengalis call genocide, in fact, was an organised mass scale massacre of Pakistanis by the Indian-sponsored Mukti Bahini and hired teams of Indian trained mercenaries. History is testimony to the fact that Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League had entered into an agreement with India seeking latter’s help to secede the Bengali dominated eastern wing from West Pakistan.

The late prime minister of India, Indra Gandhi, while addressing the Lok Sabha on 27 March of the fateful year of 1971 had addressed the Indian parliament and minced no words in declaring that India will not hesitate in taking timely action in East Pakistan when required.

The same day, A K Subramaniam, the then head of India’s Institute of Strategic Studies, told a seminar in New Delhi that India could not find a better opportunity to dismember Pakistan. Since that time, India connived with Sheikh Mujib and Russia and ran an international campaign to justify its attack on the eastern wing of Pakistan, now called Bangladesh.

The fact that Hasina Wajid refused the invitation was against the goodwill that would have accrued had she agreed to visit Pakistan and attended the D-8 Conference in Islamabad. Both the sides need to reconcile with the history as the large scale killings that took in that fateful era was tumult that shaped the events like a violently-churning whirlpool. Bangladesh would do a lot of good not only to its future generations but the South Asia as well if it reconciles with an incident that took away lives of both the peoples and make up for the lost opportunities for giving our new generations to grow and prosper.

By sticking to a 40-year demand that has no relevance now with the dictates of a peaceful, regional and bilateral development environment, it is aiding divides in the future generations of both the countries. This is certainly against the vision of Shiekh Mujibur Rahman who wanted to see Bangladesh as a friendly, progressive and responsible country in the comity of nations.

Posted in: National