We Bangladeshis are not known for holding back our emotions — we tend to use emotional arguments as a recourse in situations where we are perhaps unable to fully articulate rational arguments. We were reminded of this recently when the verdict of “guilty” of contempt of court was awarded to David Bergman. The judgement, handed down by the International Crimes Tribunal-2, has put particular emphasis on hurting “the nation’s emotion.”
Appealing to hurt emotions or sentiments to put an end to a conversation always comes at a cost. Let us explain. When the first unexpurgated edition of DH Lawrence’s famous novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was first published in the UK, the publisher, Penguin, had to face a high-profile court case for “obscenity.” However, the trial ended up becoming a useful public debate on the nature of literature with many writers of the day weighing in and explaining to a great extent the nature of literature and why the great novel was not obscene.
The court in the end returned a verdict of “not guilty” and established the intellectual freedom in which literature can be cultivated more freely. This public debate contributed significantly in increasing an awareness of the intellectual freedom required to foster and for the flourishing of literature.
High profile cases such as this one, and the one involving David Bergman, present us with rare but important opportunities. They give us the chance to discuss some of our most cherished freedoms. One of the fundamental freedoms that human beings cherish the most is the freedom to express themselves without being threatened, which at times may not seem necessary, but is in fact a must for the well-being of a nation. Yet, this fact can only be realised if a society is allowed to have an open discussion in order to gain public consensus and understanding on the issue.
As soon as the charges of “contempt of court” were brought against David Bergman for discussing the various sources and estimates of the number of war dead in the Liberation War of 1971, and for pointing out what he took to be the problematic elements of in-absentia trial process at the ICT-2 in comparison to those of various international tribunals, a few voices spoke out (including one of us) defending his right to do so.
However, to our great regret, the International Crimes Tribunal-2 swiftly put a halt on the possibility of any open discussion either on the matter of the war dead, or the freedom of expression, by decreeing that no discussion of the case be held in Bangladesh media citing it as a “sub judice” matter. We, along with the media, obliged.
As the verdict is now out, and as on paragraph 44 of the judgement it says: “We reiterate that we always welcome post-verdict criticism,” – we presume we are able to discuss the issue.
Following the verdict a chorus of “liberal” voices has come out in Bangladesh justifying the sentence against Mr Bergman. However, David Bergman has been misrepresented in the media. For example, the opinion piece “Holocaust, 1971 genocide and preventing distortion of history through law” by Showgat Ali Sagor published in bdnews24.com recently, justifies the guilty verdict by comparing Mr Bergman to some of the most infamous holocaust deniers in the Western world, and arguing that since holocaust denial is a crime in many Western countries, we too are justified in punishing David Bergman for denying the genocide of 1971.
The problem with these arguments is that they are straw man arguments. Not only has David Bergman never denied that there was genocide in Bangladesh, he has done more than any of these people to bring perpetrators of that genocide to justice through his award winning film “The War Crime Files.”
Another appalling aspect of the vituperation that has been unleashed on David Bergman is that our intellectuals and justice system seem to have descended to explicit or barely concealed racism and xenophobia.
Are we not a nation of immigrants? Earnings from the hard labour of Bangladeshis living abroad, many of whom have dual nationalities or permanent residencies, form a significant part of our economy. As immigrants abroad each of us expect to be treated with respect in our second homes, and we are appalled when we are subjected to racism or xenophobic prejudices that threaten to impinge on our civil liberties. Yet such sentiments are being used in Bangladesh in trying to vilify Mr Bergman, a foreign national married to a Bangladeshi, for doing his job as a journalist!
In 1968, at the height of persecution of all things Bengali, Professor Anisuzzaman, at the behest of two of his students, Ahmed Sofa and Kazi Shiraj, edited and published a book of essays titled “Rabindranath” on the great Bengali poet, novelist, musician, philosopher and educationalist Rabindranath Tagore. The essays were written by the East Pakistani Bengali intellectuals of the day, and the publication of this book was a major event, both as a literary and a political act of freedom of expression, in the life story of the Bengali Muslim identity that gave birth to Bangladesh.
This book was reissued in 2001 and in the new introduction Professor Anisuzzaman reminisces:
Translation: “From the time of planning until publication of the book it took quite some time. During this period, on the 22 of June 1967, Khaja Shahabuddin, who was the Central Minister for Information, announced in the National Parliament of Pakistan that in the future Rabindra sangeet (songs of Tagore), which was contrary to the values of Pakistani culture, will no longer be broadcast in the country’s media, and there will also be a reduction in the broadcast of all songs of this kind. Immediately after this, nineteen of us writers put out a press statement protesting this decision. For quite some time after this, there were some arguments about this, and in the end all discussions about this subject in the newspapers were banned by a verbal order from the Central Ministry of Information.” [Emphasis added.]
Can one see a parallel between what was happening then and the suppression of freedom of expression at present? As Sara Hossain has recently argued and as intellectuals in our fight for freedom, such as Professor Anisuzzaman or the late Professor Abdur Razzak would have said, freedom of expression was an integral and important part of our struggle for freedom from West Pakistani rule.
One ought to ask: What has changed? When we were children in school we were often given a sentence to write an essay upon: “It is harder to defend freedom than to gain it.” Why, then, our intellectuals today are so eager to give up what our fathers and mothers gained at such high cost? If we are to give up our freedom of expression have we really become free? Or have we just replaced one master (Pakistani) with another (Bengali)?
Milan Kundera in his novel “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” explains to us why politicians and those in power, even though they always talk of the future, are actually obsessed with controlling the past. This is because he who controls the past also controls the future.
Thus the slogan “Children: you are the future,” which is so popular amongst politicians, has a deeper and more sinister meaning: politicians in power, by erasing the past, and by dictating what can or cannot be talked about in our historical narrative, are trying to induce mass forgetting, and by doing so trying to reduce us to a state of childhood.
If we allow the discussions and debates about our past to be limited and controlled, we also become complicit in the forgetting of the past. And by forgetting our past we give up our identity and the reins of our destiny to those who rewrite that history for us.
Our War of Liberation does not belong to Awami League or the BNP, even though both have repeatedly tried to lay claim to it. With all due respect, it does not belong to our courts, although they have tried to limit discussions (perhaps with the best of intentions) about it. It belongs to all of us. The radical nature of freedom demands that we strongly resist any attempt to wrest away our history from us. It is an integral part of our freedom that we be able to have conversations, discussions or even arguments and disagreements about our history without fear of prosecution.
It is time that we cease to be children and take control of our history away from politics.