Nothing can be sweeter and more savouring for a nation than achieving a victory against a marauding army that is not only brutal but also bereft of any moral values. But on the eve of such a victory this country stood stupefied to know that the Pakistani force's genocidal mission here culminated in the systematic murder of its most enlightened people ---the intellectuals. Fully aware that the defeat was staring in its face, the Pakistani occupation army dealt the final blow with the ulterior motive of leaving the Bangalee nation deprived of the service of scholars and resourceful minds in different areas of human knowledge and profession. The sole purpose was to create an intellectual vacuum so that the emerging nation could never claim its rightful place in the comity of nations.
Thus the shadow of the tragedy of December 14 lingers on to make the celebration of the victory somewhat subdued for understandable reasons. There is a blatant similarity between Hitler's gas chamber annihilation of the Jews during the World War II and the pogrom and the subsequent mass killing of the Bangalee intellectuals at Rayer Bazar killing field. How treacherous and deplorable that the local collaborators helped the Pakistani monsters to hunt down the best sons and daughters of the soil! Like blood-thirsty ghoulish spirits from the hell they were let loose to celebrate an obnoxious vengeful ritual. What the Pakistani military junta did is unforgiveable and certainly unforgettable. The incumbent prime minister rightly made this observation when Pakistani high commissioner went to pay her a visit at her official residence. Never will the agony and loss will be assuaged but at least the Bangalees have the consolation to prove the Pakistani conspirators wrong. Today Bangladesh stands tall. Even the Pakistani incumbent prime minister now wants to know about the Bangladesh's development recipe. However, it has yet to seek pardon for the war crime.
A nation in the making unleashes energies of astounding quantity. The more advanced segment of society harnesses the energies for constructive purposes. The decapitation of this segment has certainly left Bangladesh poorer. Even after independence there were conspiracies to prove that the Bangalees were incapable of governing themselves. Coups and countercoups, military and autocratic rules for about two decades made the country's journey towards its cherished goal all the more difficult and challenging. But undeterred it is now making a steady progress.
Where the country, however, has not made its gains commensurate with its economic achievement is in the attainment of human resources and socio-cultural enlightenment. Independence becomes fully meaningful when the human spirit soars unhindered; that is it becomes liberated to set the benchmark ever higher. The ideals and values the best sons of this soils set for us to inculcate have not been accomplished. So we need to follow those martyrs and study their lives in order to shape our individual life and society at large. A society with outsize disparities cannot at all help us fulfil the dream of the martyrs. We need to redefine development and progress in the light of the spirit of the Liberation War.
