So when we are informed that the caretaker government has been going full steam ahead with giving the Father of the Nation the respect he so richly deserves, through incorporating the history of his long political struggle in school textbooks, we are impressed.

In a larger sense, though, the reality for us has always been that our national history is what we have observed developing over the decades. That means that there is surely little need for us to be informed of who belongs where in the procession of events leading up to our liberation as free Bengalis in December 1971.

Even so, we are happy that some good souls, men with a keen understanding of their past as individuals and as part of the collective scheme of things, have taken upon themselves the onerous and honourable task of setting things back in proper perspective.

It is a job that surely has demanded great courage, given especially the accumulated untruths, the detritus, of all the decades since the tragic occurrences of August-November 1975. And these men who have now decided that enough is enough, that all purveyors of falsehood must be put in their places, are people who truly deserve our gratitude.

That said, it now becomes our collective job as a nation to zero in on the men and women who have, for the last thirty-two years, refined the lie into fake truth. Some of these people are dead; some others are yet moving around, proof that they are not yet embarrassed about the bad role they have played in the mauling of history and proof again that we as a society are yet to condemn them to an isolated corner.

It is all a matter of intellectual dishonesty that we have here. When a very large number of your educated, articulate men decide, in their narrow selfish or partisan interests, that it is worthwhile to molest the truth and thereby secure for themselves a place in or around the corridors of power, you know how moral depravity may have come to be part of the tale you live through from day to day.

Think of the men who advised the now-departed Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led government on a revision of history only a year ago. All the men who were on the team that decided that General Ziaur Rahman actually declared Bangladesh's independence on March 26, 1971, are still around.

Among them are academics and lawyers, individuals who have seen little reason to feel contrite about their contribution to the distortion of the truth. How many among us have called them to account over their misdeeds? And what action, from that certain moral point of view, does the caretaker government plan to take against them for the damage they have caused to our self-esteem as a nation?

Let us face it: if we happen to be speaking of reforms, in politics and government and, indeed, in society, it is only proper that we take to task the very men who have flouted our traditions and undermined our history in order for our children to be given false information about the political heritage they are heir to.

These former vice-chancellors and barristers-at-law who stumbled upon the discovery, only because they liked what Begum Khaleda Zia and her government were doing, that General Zia "declared" Bangladesh's freedom on March 26 need to be asked about the sources of their information.

Let there be no mistake here: these men have deliberately played around with the truth and have systematically engaged in the job of keeping this nation divided along partisan lines. Wherefore should they be allowed to go free when individuals charged with other crimes are going through due process of law?

Of course, we do not recommend a witch-hunt. But we do ask that all the men and all the women who have made their singular, sinister, contributions to the degrading of the historical ethos of this country be singled out by name and publicly condemned for their acts. In the months after the murders and mayhem of 1975, a senior journalist came forth with the bizarre thought that "Bangladeshi nationalism" was what underscored the foundations of this country.

Sit back a while and ask yourself if the suggestion made by the journalist, who later served as a minister in Bangladesh's first military government, was not essentially a discreet going back to the discredited two-nation theory of the 1940s. Expect some people around you to howl in protest.

It was no such thing, they will say. It was only a measure to ensure our distinctive national characteristics, especially in relation to the Bengalis on the other side of the political frontier.

And that, Sir, is where logic takes a mauling. The issue is not that there are Bengalis in our neighbouring country. More specifically, the issue is that it has always been our Bengali nationalist characteristics at work in our long struggle for political freedom.

Why must my social status as a Bengali be done away with only because that other man across the frontier is a Bengali as well? And that is not all. The fundamental truth about our sovereign nationhood is that nationalism for us has always been a culture-based affair.

Nationalism is not a mathematical formula, which works uniformly for all nations. It is an idea that applies in different ways to different societies. Anyone who argues, therefore, that our culture-based nationalism rests on weak foundations, that indeed our place in history will be determined by the political geography we are heir to, is conveniently engaging in falsehood.

And, yet, falsehood is what we have lived with for years. A whole generation has grown to adulthood learning about life, not through an understanding of the moral dimensions of living but through a series of lies constantly and consistently packaged and drilled into its sensibilities. It is here that we now need to put a check on things.

Those who have for decades peddled untruth through pushing aside the historical realities behind our long and arduous struggle for free expression as a people need to be officially condemned for their sins.

Those who promoted the cause, if it was a cause, of "Bangladeshi nationalism" and those who, in the earlier stage of the 1970s, were vociferous about "Muslim Bangla" have made large rents in the fabric of our national being. And those who in the 1980s cheerfully gave Bangladesh a religious connotation and thereby gave politics a clear, new, communal twist only put the clock back for us.

In our enlightened, collective self-interest as a people, it becomes critically important that the stains made on our historical canvas be wiped clean. It is equally important that we remember and identify the men and women who have caused those stains on that canvas, the bigger objective being that no one in future will call forth the audacity to challenge our self-esteem as a people.

It is not always healthy to go back to conversations of the past, but in societies where truth has received an endless battering and history has been subjected to unending distortion, it makes sense to revive some old, uncomfortable questions and try locating some answers to them.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.