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KALEIDOSCOPE

March 26 in retrospect
***The situation demands a broad national unity to resolve all the core national issues still keeping us divided. In spite ofthe negativities ofthe past, our achievements have not been little. It could have better, but for the lack of sagacious and farsighted leadership. This is what the nation is waiting for.**
ON this 41st Independe nee Day, it is time we had a fresh stocktaking of the past. The very remoteness of those tumultuous days of March
1971 has placed us at this vantage point to consider those from a dispassionate outlook.
The need for this retrospection has become necessary as we are yet to settle many of our fundamental issues of national importance. As a result, the leading political parties have failed to establish democracy even after restoration of the elected and parliamentary form of government at the peak of a mass struggle against military autocracy in 1991. Again, that long-drawn struggle was necessary, because before 1991, the country had gone into the hands of military dictators for a decade and a half.
Since independence, the country has been falling from one pitfall into another. And all these national calamities have seriously disrupted the normal functioning of the state, its politics and economy. And the new faces that assumed power in the wake of each such changeover did impose their own brand of politics on the country and run it at their whims and caprices. These proved to be a serious blow to the nation's desired progress and economic growth, because the nation had to start fresh from scratch after each such upheaval and the political changes that ensued.
The absence of constitutional civilian power over 16 years stymied the normal growth of democratic politics in the country. The long political vacuum distorted even the characteristics of the constitutional civilian politics.
Which is why, even after the nation got back the elected civilian government in 1991, healthy growth of democracy still remains a far cry. Each of the two major parties, the Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP) that now dominates the political scene has been embroiled in an endless bickering and they are often at each other's throat. As a result, they have not yet been able to restore socio-political stability and play by the rule of the game to run the country smoothly along the path of continued peace, progress and growth.
The sum total of these failures on the political front has been that the dream to establish a democratic, just and egalitarian society that the people cherished has been left unfilled. The ideals that inspired them to take up arms in 1971 and wrest the country's independence from the clutches of Pakistani occupation forces appear to have proven hollow.
At this point, it is important to note that it was not exactly the Black Night of March 25,1971 when the Pakistani
military junta let loose its blood thirsty military on the unarmed population of Dhaka that the War of Independence had begun. True the abattoir that the Pakistani junta had turned the sleepy provincial capital of Dhaka into on that Black Night proved to be the casus belli for the people of Bangladesh to begin the war for their total liberation. The history of our liberation struggle can be traced back further into the past in the great mass upsurge against the dictatorial military rule of the Pakistani junta in 1969. Before that there was a decade-long democratic struggle ofthe people against the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan. The long period of military dictatorship was preceded by more than a decade of civilian rule under a multi-party democratic dispensation, since the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and
emergence of Pakistan.
At that time, this deltaic plain, which is now Bangladesh, was part of that Pakistan. Soon after the emergence of Pakistan, the Bengali population of this land realised that they have been betrayed by the political leadership that was at the helm at that time. Then on started the Bengali people's broader struggle to protect their culture, language as well as democratic and economic rights. In the long tortuous struggle for national liberation, one watershed was February 21 of 1952, The Muslim League government then in office showed its true face by ordering its police to fire on students who were demanding that Bengali be established as a state language. The blood that the students spilled that day continued to roll until the moment of truth arrived in 1971.
So, the Bengali people's struggle for nationhood did not start on a fine morning. The 1971 was the biggest watershed on the long trek to independence. But after the entire struggle and the blood that it spilled, what has the people's net gain been so far? Have they been able to fulfil their mission of an exploitation-free just society after all these years?
Now, to all appearances, even after the last two decades of democratic civilian rule, we are again back to square one and much of it is due to poor leadership. The nation is divided. And this division is largely the handiwork of the present breed of politicians. All is being done in the name of partisan politics.
At the moment, the situation demands a broad national unity to resolve all the core national issues still keeping us divided. In spite of the negativities of the past, our achievements have not been little. It could have better, but for the lack of sagacious and farsighted leadership. This is what the nation is waiting for.
The writer is Editor, Star Science & Life, The Daily Star, E-mail: sfalim.ds@gmail.com