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Traffic of Truth

Thoughts on genocide

Published : Thursday, 13 April, 2017 at 12:00 AM  Count : 590
Ahmed Tahsin Shams
Past is history only when it can be revisited. And when genocide revisits, it seems an alarm-clock to wake up citizens. The merry-go round celebration, of any event, proves our oblivion nature. Then, those dark-days turn out as past, not history.
Worldwide, the recent catastrophes are terrifying us, though we forget soon as one ends, before another starts. It goes for all such events: whether the launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in Syria, suicide bombing in concert halls in Paris, or assigning public intellectuals in 1971, as well as in our 'post-independent' State till today (also the one to-be-born, perhaps!), even the nightmarish figurative 'genocide' held in TSC, on the eve of Pahela Baishakh 2015!     
In different places, time to time, 'horijupia' patrols around. In the time of Harappa civilization, 'hori' used to mean the mass people and 'Jup' means where the sacrifice takes place. The word 'horijupia' means an area of genocide!
Films, like 'Saving Private Ryan', or 'War Horse' based on the Second World War, nowadays took a real-form (in different shapes), and reading or watching news seems enough to be panic!  
The live-Halloween 'serial-killer' drama in last 3 years in Bangladesh soared high. The killer-Halloween figures roam with human-faces in Bangladesh. Recently, Institute of Fine Arts at University of Chittagong faced a tiny (to me gigantic) incident. On 11 April 2017, at night, unknowingly 'known' (those 'Halloweens') have thrown burnt oil to deface the wall painting on the eve of Pahela Baishakh.
It makes me tremble. It's not tiny to me. It reminds me the Pahela Baishakh of 2015 at TSC, in Dhaka.  It also reminds me the assassination of Dr Govinda Chandra Dev, Munier Chowdhury, Shahidullah Kaiser, and many more. Still, the game of knocking scholars down hasn't taken pause. Attacks on Humayun Azad (2004), Dr AKM Saiful Islam (2014) and Dr Avijit Roy (2015), among many others, constantly strike a chord of the black night of the 25th of March.
Earlier, in our 'free-land', 'Satyer Sandhane' (In the Quest of Truth), written by Aroj Ali Matubbar (1900-1985) took the writer in custody. There is a bucket full of such incidents. Cartoonist Arifur Rahman, who worked for Alpin, a satirical publication of Prothom-Alo, was arrested in 2007 and later moved abroad (Norway). Poet and scholar Daud Haider, living in Germany, exiled for his poems in 1974. Hundreds of more incidents can be inked picturing the return of the 'red' days!  
'Horijupia' constantly revolves. Looking back, the first free-thinker we came to know --- Anaxagorus (500 BC - 428 BC) was exiled, Protagoras (490 BC - 411 BC), the first known agnostic, was exiled from Athens and his books were burnt. In the 5th century BC, Diagoras was outlawed and offered a reward for his capture: DEAD or ALIVE!
In addition, the most known name Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC) was sentenced to death by Hemlock poisoning. The first notable female scientist Hypatia (370 AD - 415 AD) was stripped, stoned, dismembered, and burnt to death by Christian mob!
Moreover, Giordano Bruno, creator of Copernican system of astronomy: placing the sun at the centre of the solar system, was burnt alive. Kazimierz Lyszczynski's tongue was forcibly removed and beheaded on charges of free-thinking. Jean-Francois de La Barre was beheaded before his body was burnt on a pyre along with Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary' nailed on his torso.  
Even many Sufis also met genocide. Persian Sufi poet Mansur Al-Hallah (858-922) believed that he and God had become one and the same. As a result, he was cut into pieces in public in Baghdad. A Sufi mystic poet Sarmad Kashani (1590-1661) was also beheaded by the Emperor Aurangzeb.  
Once, when Bangali was led by the Father of Nation, the Poet of Politics: Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, mass learned to voice against unjust, to ask for rights and a light towards freedom was in all's eyes. Secularism wore the veil of full-stop when this Father of Bengal was crucified on the 15th of August.
Independence --- we achieved, not gifted. The incident happened in Pahela Baishakh 2015 shows how much independent our women were, and how 'humane' those 'men' were. Another Baishakhi is about to bloom. Now, all these past (with some history) make eyes apprehensive towards carnival.
It seems, most of the time, we live in no free-thinkers' land, where anybody can kill, abuse, harass, or arrest anybody. On this note, the moment a state loses its power to dissent; it is no more civilized, say leaders in quote pages. And I must add, passive is death.
Ahmed Tahsin Shams is Editorial Assistant in The Daily Observer





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