It is good that we have found in Shaheed Noor Husain a symbol or a mascot, so to say, for our people's struggle for democracy. We shall be needing, as things after three years of a great democratic victory indicate unambiguously, many more long days of unrested fighting to realise just that modicum of democracy essential for sustaining a civilized society — and a symbol such as Noor Husain s would help us greatly in that frustrating fray. The national economy is not yet such as would spawn democratic attitudes and practices and sustain them. And socially too the nation is still enmeshed in feudal vertical arrangements and mental frames that go with the perpetration of those. Democracy is a formidably tall order for a society still not ready for it but. nevertheless, would die for want of it.

There are, however, very serious problems attending with the canonization' of anyone into sainthood or a symbol for any noble collective striving.' First, the pedestal tends to take away life from what has so long been living — the cause and the person who is being celebrated. The person elevated, specially by modern media hype, loses in living significance in inverse projiortion to the build-up he or she is given.

A proof of that unfortunate and actual degradation occurring in the case of Noor Husain lies in the fact that the policeman who criminally shot him at point blank range as also the officer who was in charge of the killer have not been brought to book. And what indeed is the official or formal state position on Noor Husain? We do.not think he occurs anywhere on state papers. So far for our building a memorial over the hero — hollow to the hilt.