Will the two leaders meet?
Over the past few years, it has oft been suggested that most of our national problems would be solved only if the two leaders would meet one another and talk. This topic has gained importance recently, particularly when it came out from one of the advisers of the present government. The adviser had to reassert that he never said the government would apply pressure to get the leaders meet. Though many observers are sceptical about the meeting, the nation as a whole is looking forward with both curiosity and hope to this occasion.
It is a fact that we are now a divided nation. Some of us consider our nationality to be Bengali, while some others consider it to be Bangladeshi. Some of us observe August 15 as a mourning day, some do not. Some of us demand the trial of the August 15 killings and the jail killings, while some of us like to change the topic when the issue is raised. These differences exist even at the highest intellectual level. The teachers of the highest seat of learning, the University of Dhaka, are divided. Over the years, teachers belonging to one party never participate in the meeting organised by the DUTA officially on August 15. Even the office bearers of the DUTA including the president, the vice president and the general secretary do not attend the meeting to carry out the responsibility entrusted upon them by the general teachers. When I asked one of them a few days after August 15 this year if it was a party decision to abstain from the meeting, he told he might have got some other business to do. He sped away from me and did not give me the time to ask if he had joined a birthday party. I would have more respect for the DUTA if he told me he did not believe in observing August 15 as a mourning day.
In my opinion, the most important achievement of the present government would be to effect a national consensus on the issue of the Father of the Nation, the Declarer of Independence, the National Mourning Day, the trial of the killers of August 15, and offer our children a correct, undistorted version of the history of the nation, including the liberation war. It is true that we cannot be proud of a past president who was chased by the police in the streets and who started saying prayers and reciting from the holy book on the streets, or a president who addressed the nation in words which did not seem to be his own. But we sure can be proud of the man who made sacrifices to unite us to fight the war of liberation, to make us feel that we have a nationality whatever we call it, and those others who fought valiantly during the war of liberation. These characters are our national treasures, and they do not belong to any party. We should value them and any attempt to disfigure them should be resisted.
Like all others, I am curiously waiting to see if Barrister Rafiqul Hoque succeeds in holding a meeting of the two leaders. I do not know what the agenda will be. I suppose Barrister Hoque will propose a power sharing formula, as we have seen in South Africa and in Zimbabwe. What I would expect from them is an undertaking that there would be no more street violence. No vehicles would be broken. No streets would be kept blocked by political meetings. No student leaders will be nominated by them in educational institutions. I shall be looking forward to watching on August 15 next Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia walking together along Road no. 32 in the morning.
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