Badrul Ahsan's article
Syed Hamde Ali, The Nawab Palace, Bogra
Mr. Badrul Ahsan has written a piece on the teaching of false history to our children, in which he suggests a fate "worse than perdition" for a nation that permits it. The main thrust of Mr. Ahsan's article is not disputed, that the attempt to distort and reshape the historical record by the four-party government was reprehensible. However, Mr. Ahsan goes on to do a little reshaping of his own when he describes the roles played by Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy and Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq in the struggle for Bengali independence.History did not begin in 1971, and there would not have been a sovereign Bangladesh had there been no 1947. The struggle for that, in which these two leaders, as well as Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman took a part, led finally to the eventual creation of Bangladesh. All of them worked within the framework of the Pakistan ideology, although it is known that Mr. Suhrawardy also for a time subscribed to the notion of an independent, united Bengal. Mr. Ahsan dismisses Mr. Suhrawardy as "controversial" and Sher-e-Bangla as "erratic" without providing a shred of support to his observations. He would do well to reconsider these terms lest we be inclined to view his writings as erratic and consign them to a fate "worse than perdition".
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