Forgetting is a biological necessity for nations like sleeping is for men. We may care to look at the warring factions in Lebanon, Cambodia and the African countries, where absence of a clear winner and inability to forget have perpetuated unending horror.

David Irving is a revisionist historian who has recently lost a court case in London. What was the crux of his case? He had sued Penguin Books and US academic dA>o-rah Lipstadt over a book in which he was described as a Holocaust denier. Going farther back In time, what earned him that epithet of derision is his doubt that the systematic murder of Jews in Nazi concentration camps had never happened. In its verdict, London's High Court declared that the comment made by Deborah Lipstadt In her book was Justified and ordered David to pay $3 million in defense costs.

David's mistakes are obvious. He not only failed to look at history from the winner's side, but also embroiled himself in a litigation to refute the ascription he had rightfully earned. Then again, he is not the only denier of historical facts in recent times. Shintaro Ishihara, the writer-politician

Governor of Tokyo, provoked controversy in 1990, when he categorically said that the massacre perpetrated In Nanjing by the Japanese troops was a fabrication of the Chinese histori-

History, like most things, is a matter of perspective and creates its own paradox when seen from different angles. Needless to say. the optimum angle of history Is neutral, although, more often than not. it is tainted by the passions of the winning side. A Spanish priest named Bartolomoe* de las Casas, who was engaged in the transcription of Christopher Columbus' journal, wrote that the Genoese navigator had invoked God in the name of slavery. "Let us in the name of Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold." Thus a notorious slave trader, who so ruthlessly exploited the Arawak Indians that they no longer exist, is remembered in history as the man who discovered the New World. If any of the Arawak Indians had survived the massacre, what would have been his assessment of Columbus?

This is but one of the many flip-flops in history when win-

ner's merriment overshadowed loser's misfortune. David Irving may have been a denier of the Jewish Holocaust, but history has been a denier of its many misdeeds. Dietrich Bonhonho-effer. the German Protestant theologian executed by the Nazis, coined this phrase history written from below" in 1942. In prison he wrote, 'to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of those who are excluded, under suspicion, ill-treated, powerless, oppressed, and scorned, in short those who suffer."

According to Richard Cohen, a columnist of The Washington Post, the American historians fell all over themselves in the late 80s as if to write history from below and they tried to "rediscover the greatness of Harry Truman". Truman had many positive attributes like "a snappy candor and willingness to take tough decisions”, but he also showed a terrible capacity "to ignore victims". The historians took a renewed look at how this lionized US President had ruined the careers and lives of many loyal Americans by the Loyalty Review Board instituted by him. He was also the Presi-

dent who had inaugurated the McCarthy period, which had unleashed an unprecedented era of paranoid politics in the history' of his country.

Second time around. Truman was insensitive to victims when he ordered the use of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands. He once said that he never lost a night's sleep over his decision to drop the bombs on these two Japanese cities. How would the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki measure the greatness of a statesman who wrecked their lives to implement his one tough decision?

For that matter, how would

blacks consider the greatness of Dwight D Eisenhower, yet another larger-than-life US President. who took his time to implement the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision, while many black kids missed their chances to attend an integrated school? Or. how would the greatness of Winston Churchill be ascertained by the residents of Dresden, the German city, which was firebombed into ash at his insistence? Nearly 35.000 people got killed by this bombing at a time when the war was almost over.

and Germany was already beaten. Historians have often asked whether bombing of Dresden was at all necessary.

On the long stretch of moral shoreline, history' appears to be a Darwinian vindication where the winners tell their stories and the losers are forever silenced. Is there anything right or wrong about it? What makes the Jewish Holocaust any less justified than the annihilation of the Arawak Indians? How is Christopher Columbus any more adorable than Adolf Hitler? Or for that matter, how does one draw parallels between two of history's foremost heroes: Christopher Columbus and Winston Churchill, one who is credited with discovery of the New World and another who Is credited with the deliverance of the Civilized World?

Hitting home, these questions address the jumbled state of our own history, which is marked by a Holocaust in which three million lives had perished in nine months. Last week, a meeting of Golam Azam had to be foiled in Narsingdi by the government-supported proliberation forces, why must we encounter the killers of 1971 turf by turf, meeting by meeting.

and statement by statement all these years after Independence? ye we trying to tell our history from below showing understanding and patience for the losers?

That is not. however, unheard-of. Abraham Lincoln Intervened on behalf of the state and pocket-vetoed the Wade Davis bill. when, at the end of the American Civil War. the "Radical Republicans" proposed to restrict all of those who had fought for the Confederacy from voting and holding office. In Uruguay, the people voted in a referendum to let the brutalities of military rule be bygone. The Argentines, however, prosecuted their military leaders who had given orders for torture and execution, and then erased that chapter from their minds. ,

May be it is important to be decisive in history to put its controversies to rest. The most popular way of doing that has been to let the winners tell their story and force the losers to their silence. A more agreeable way may be if the winners can forget part of their story and forgive the losers. Forgetting is a biological necessity for nations like sleeping is' for men. We may care to look at the warring factions in Lebanon. Cambodia and the African countries. where absence of a clear winner and Inability to forget have perpetuated unending horror.