Chaudhry Nisar is one person in the government who is enormously upset over the hanging of Abdul Qadir Molla and has pleaded with the Bangladesh government to desist from opening up old wounds and inculcate a spirit of forgiveness, especially towards the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. He chastised his colleagues in the National Assembly, especially the PPP, for not supporting the resolution condemning Molla’s hanging. In the same breath that the minister was asking Bangladesh to let bygones be bygones, he acknowledged that we have not learnt anything from the Fall of Dacca 42 years ago. Whatever Chaudhry Nisar meant by that, it is true that we have never seriously discussed what mistakes were made then and have been condemned therefore to repeat them. He asked the house to analyze and weigh the successes and failures the country has accumulated since the parting of the ways with East Pakistan. Imran Khan, while supporting the resolution, has asked the government to declassify the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report. MQM wanted other issues, such as the extradition of Biharis stranded in Bangladesh, added to the resolution. The resolution, saying that Molla was hanged for his loyalty to Pakistan, was adopted with the house divided over it. This reflects the gnawing feeling within about the inhuman and shameful treatment we meted out to the Bengalis. Having reduced them to a virtual colony to fulfill the development needs of West Pakistan, the Eastern wing had been deprived of a life worthy of decency and political participation. Molla and his like are being persecuted not for battling for Pakistan but for their activism to instigate massacre and genocidal killing of the Bengali intelligentsia and citizens. Forty two years after these events, we still lack the moral strength to face the truth. It is ridiculous that we should be waxing indignant to condemn Bangladesh without so much as a nod in the direction of our own responsibility and culpability. This lends weight to the argument of the PPP that we should not interfere in the internal affairs of Bangladesh, on principle and for our hollow ‘morality’. Even if the government finds it hard to bring into the open the Hamoodur Rehman report, it could at least apologize for the atrocities of 1971 instead of feeding the rage over the hanging of someone who had been found guilty of the mass murder of our Bengali brothers and sisters.
Molla was not a hero, but Chaudhry Nisar and the Jamaat-i-Islami seem bent upon proving him one. Bringing the resolution into the National Assembly and then dissecting it threadbare was wrong. Similarly our penchant for blaming India for aiding the secession of East Pakistan is a convenient way to shut our eyes and close the door on our unacceptable deeds. The facts would not disappear by such gimmicks. The only appropriate way forward is to own up to the atrocities that the state committed against its own people in East Pakistan. Pakistan’s relative political stability is a recent phenomenon. We have 66 years of tumultuous history dotted with disharmony between the Centre and the provinces, barring Punjab. We turned our heroes into villains. Those who were the flagbearers of Jinnah’s ideology grew disenchanted with this state because the power that be considered them second class citizens. We did this to Sindh, to Balochistan and to East Pakistan. Even today our blame game stops at India. So much for the desire to learn from history. The Fall of Dacca, as we commemorated the failure of our military crackdown December 16, was turned more melancholy due to Molla’s hanging. The two issues were linked and raised to the same intensity, which shows our lack of acumen. Groping in the dark, we cling to anything marked Pakistani, be it religion or even the mistakes of our own making, without critically going beyond the surface of things.
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