Midlife crises are unpleasant, even if the results produced can be life-altering in a positive way at times. A transitional phase brought on by the realisation of one’s mortality, one is filled with thoughts of the past, being incapable of seeing that there is a future.
Age, however, is relative. The 40s mark the midway point for human beings, while most other members of the animal kingdom never reach those heady heights. Nations, once born, are expected to be on natural trajectories that stretch to lifespans measured in centuries and millennia.
Barring acts of God and men that defy sense and decency in the severity of barbarism that brings an early demise, Bangladesh, at 43, is a child. It is unusual, absurd even, for a child to be beholden to its past. That is not to say that history should be forgotten: That can never be allowed to happen, especially a history that is evidence of resilience, hope and sacrifice, and the immeasurable cost of freedom that is paid from before conception to well into adulthood.
That most precious freedom was obtained over four decades ago today, not from a despised country and its criminal leaders, but from injustice, oppression, and despotism. To relegate the great victory of the latter to the narrow parameters of the former is to fail to understand what Bangladesh represents, to insult citizens past and present.
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The appreciation of the past needs to come from a position of noble, unconditional patriotism, not vitriolic, incentivised nationalism. In saying “the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history,” George Orwell warned about the perils of the latter.
When history is used to govern and ghosts materialise to become more tangible than the struggling, crying, bleeding citizens presently alive, it cultivates injustice, oppression, and despotism to cruelly impose an absolute rule.
The unbridled, gleeful revisionism that has, as a result, been commonplace since independence – thus controlling the present and the past – has not been challenged or corrected by the last remaining members of the generations who made that history.
The current standard-bearers, the two scions, like the youth – children of the 90s, and, at a stretch, late-80s – were not unfortunate enough to live it, and are, therefore, incapable of invoking their own memories. Their mothers are conspicuous by their absence from the pages that their own propaganda machines churn out.
So steadfastly focused have they and others of the ruling class been on repeatedly rewriting history at the expense of that which they have created and are creating, they have perpetuated that trite adage about history repeating itself. Everyone can agree that Bangladesh deserves better, that no one should suffer so again and again, in perpetuity.
The attainment of independence is cause for celebration. Its anniversary is a time to reflect on and celebrate the accomplishments of an independent state, too. Independence of a nation, however, ought not be confused with freedom of its people.
Both are burdens that will weigh heavily on Bangladesh when the sun rises on the December 17. They are confronted by every single individual who identifies himself or herself as belonging to the country.
As the embers of the generations that saw independence that brought it about expire, facing the erosion of freedom becomes a depressingly hopeless endeavour for the generations left behind to separate fact from fiction and try to shed the shackles of both.
If all of life is perceived as a permanent transitional phase, then at no point during the life of Bangladesh should it ever be forgotten that its independence was gained by the spirit and actions of its people, free, and equal.
That crucial aspect of history cannot be allowed to be written out, for therein lies an undeniable fact, a hope that cannot be suppressed nor extinguished. Tomorrow will come as a welcome challenge when the burden of independence is negated by the freedom of the people, to whom is owed, and by whom is defined said independence.
A child having a midlife crisis is an anomaly that requires urgent rectification. It should never be allowed to be subjected to the mental and physical crises of confidence, happiness, integrity, identity, et al. Children, especially those born in testing circumstances or after struggles, are full of the promise of life, full of the dreams of the future.
Bangladesh is a child. Its present and future matter much, much more than its violent past. Let honesty define history and guide the debilitated child into a dignified adulthood.