It is rather irritating when some people come forth with wrong information about history or public affairs. The feeling gets to be worse when you realise that they have not done their homework and clearly are not willing to do so. Or that some of them deliberately indulge in mischief.
How's this for a beginning to this discussion? On one of those ubiquitous online channels that are so much around us these days, a participant on a chaotic talk show -- talk show because everyone on the program was talking at the same time and hardly anyone was listening -- demonstrated his poor knowledge of history. He stated in glib fashion that Bangabandhu had led a team to Lahore in 1974 to attend the Islamic summit without ensuring that Pakistan accorded diplomatic recognition to Bangladesh.
This man's reading of history was badly skewed. Or he was deliberately conveying misleading information. The presenter, who appeared to have little idea of history, stayed silent. Had he been knowledgeable on the subject, he would have informed that participant that Pakistan recognized Bangladesh on February 22, 1974 and Bangabandhu flew to Lahore the next day.
On this same subject, there is that instance of a willful distortion of history. Some years ago, a BNP lawmaker, obviously up to mischief by attempting to undermine Bangabandhu, unabashedly stated on a television talk show that Bangabandhu had, on that visit to Lahore, Shah Azizur Rahman on his team. He said he had a photograph as evidence. For a few irritating minutes he resisted showing the picture to the other participants on the show.
When he was compelled to show it, it was his moment of shame. In the picture, at Lahore airport, Bangabandhu was flanked by Pakistan's president Fazle Elahi Chowdhury (in a Jinnah cap) and prime minister Z A Bhutto. The BNP man had been trying to spread the lie that Pakistan's president was actually Shah Azizur Rahman. He got an earful from the senior Awami League leader Tofail Ahmad, who had joined the program online and who had been to Lahore with the Father of the Nation. The BNP man beat a hasty retreat.
Not very long ago, at an informal gathering in London, some of us got into a discussion on the Six Points program launched by Bangabandhu in 1966. One of the individuals in the room, the son of a retired judge of what used to be the East Pakistan High Court, ventured the misleading information that his father had authored the Six Points. A rebuttal naturally was in order and it came soon enough. But then, such purveyors of fiction clothed as facts are all around us. They live and breathe in their own imaginary worlds.
A significant instance of wrong information we in Bangladesh have lived with for decades relates to Henry Kissinger. He is guilty of a number of misdemeanours, of course, but he certainly did not describe Bangladesh as a bottomless basket. Here are the facts: at a meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG) on 6 December 1971, as Bangladesh's emergence appeared to be imminent, US under-secretary of state U. Alexis Johnson noted that Bangladesh would be “an international basket case.”
Kissinger, who was present at the meeting, responded, “But not necessarily our basket case.” And yet many of us go on ascribing the statement to Kissinger. By the way, there is no record of anyone using the phrase “bottomless basket” about Bangladesh.
The tragic happenings of 1971 continue, for all the right reasons, to exercise minds in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. And within the ambit of the discussion comes Bhutto's alleged statement, in Urdu, “udhar tum idhar hum” -- you over there, me here -- as he began to generate the political crisis in Pakistan in March of the year. Bhutto did not say that.
What he did say was that the Awami League had a majority in East Pakistan and the People's Party was the majority party in West Pakistan. It was a journalist working for an Urdu newspaper in Karachi who in his fertile imagination used “udhar tum idhar hum” in his report. Years later he admitted that he had made up the phrase.
There are some people in Bangladesh who have tried peddling the notion that at the end of his seminal speech on March 7, 1971, Bangabandhu raised the slogan “Joy Pakistan” after he had proclaimed “Joy Bangla.” In that million-strong crowd on the day, no one heard Bangabandhu say “Joy Pakistan” because there was no reason, once he had made it known that the struggle was henceforth to be one of independence for Bangladesh, for him to speak of Pakistan's integrity or its future. You tend to wonder how this handful of people heard Bangabandhu say something he did not say. Willfully playing truant with history?
A superannuated Indian diplomat once wrote what should have been an informative piece for a journal. The write-up turned out to be a narrative which strayed from the reality. Briefly, he informed his readers that the 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war were released by India on the basis of the Simla Agreement signed by Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1972.
It was information which was absolutely wrong, for the POWs would not be released until India and Pakistan signed the Delhi Agreement in August 1973. The 195 Pakistani military officers charged with war crimes by Bangladesh were allowed to go free under the tripartite agreement between Delhi, Dhaka and Islamabad in April 1974.
Dishing out wrong or deliberately misleading information is what needs to be tackled decisively. In these times of digital technology, it would be very easy to do that. Conversely, digital technology is also an open door to such happenings as photo-shopping, which is disturbing. But what do you do about journalists who, having written or spoken of things that did not happen, have passed into their graves?
One veteran journalist once wrote that whenever Bangabandhu needed to deal with a problem, he would call the journalist in the middle of the night to Dhanmondi 32 to discuss the issue! Another journalist once told me that when he went to see Bangabandhu at the old Ganobhaban in early 1973, the Father of the Nation happily told him that he was glad to see him and could he look to the use of English in the PMO for there was no one who knew good English there?
Unbelievable, but here's another. Coming across a well-known Bengali journalist at the BBC Bengali Service in London in March 1997, I told him how fortunate he was to have been present at Bangabandhu's press conference at Claridges Hotel on January 8, 1972. I mentioned too that Bangabandhu's opening remarks, in lyrical English, at the press conference were beautiful. This senior journalist, to my shock, swiftly responded that it was he who had prepared those remarks for Bangabandhu. I simply walked away from him rather than listen to him inventing a tale.
By the way, the late Abdul Matin, a diligent researcher on Bangladesh's history (with a number of works to his credit), told me in London shortly before he died that this same journalist had tried putting on air at the BBC in November 1971 the “news” that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had been “executed” in Pakistan. Frantic inquiries subsequently revealed that the “news” was false, that this newsman had no way of verifying his report, which naturally was binned.
And here's the conclusion. A Bengali journalist working for an overseas media organization disseminated, in early November 1975, a report to the effect that a letter from the Indian government calling for the release of the four Mujibnagar leaders then in prison and have them take power in Bangladesh had been intercepted in Dhaka. In less than twenty-four hours of the report being aired, Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmad, M Mansoor Ali and A H M Kamruzzaman were gunned down in Dhaka central jail.
In subsequent years, our report peddling journalist known for his right-wing leanings informed those who asked him about the letter that he had a copy. Still later, he said someone had taken it from him. Eventually, he made the admission that he had never seen the letter. No one took him to task. No one applied the law to him. He went on working for various media outlets in Bangladesh.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
