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Pakistani by birth, Bangalee at heart


Pakistani by birth, Bangalee at heart

By birth he is a Pakistani. Now a Swedish citizen, Syed Asif Shahkar has a last wish ---one that is significant in more ways than one. He wants to be laid to his eternal rest in Bangladesh soil. Aged 72, he is not an ordinary person. He is a retired judge of the High Court in Sweden where he had to seek political asylum for his 'crime' of protesting the genocide against the Bangalees committed by the Pakistani military in 1971.

At the time he was only 22 years old but as the general secretary of the Punjab Student Union, Shahkar with the backing of his left-leaning politics and a highly developed conscience was among the handful of people in then West Pakistan to have opposed the Pakistan's barbaric oppression in the eastern wing. He brought out demonstrations, distributed leaflets and wrote poems protesting what the Pakistani junta regime called 'Operation Search Light'. This led to his imprisonment and he could come out of the prison only after December 16 when the Pakistani army surrendered to the joint command of the armed forces of Bangladesh and India.

Justice Shahkar, a recipient of the Liberation War Friendship Award in 2012, has made an impassioned appeal through a letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for granting him Bangladesh citizenship and allowing his mortal remains to be buried here. He also made a similar plea in 2014. This is something unique. He is a living proof of humanity at its finest and noblest quite contrary to the image the Pakistanis in general have projected before the world. He has still been working for the recognition of the Bangladesh genocide, the worst ever after the World War II, at the UN forums.

It is refreshing to think that Pakistan did not produce only butchers like Yahya, Tikka Khans and Niazis, there were and are men like Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan and Justice Shahkar. In fact, any generalisation of a community, nation and race risks errors of judgment. Macaulay had a very low esteem of the black people and the Bangalee race. Effeminate, weak and mean were the Bangalees, according to him. This is awfully derogatory for the race which, according to Gokhle, thought today what the rest of India could think tomorrow.

People in general have a tendency to be unduly critical of others. Racism, communalism and regionalism and even localised inter and intra-village antagonism have not helped people live a peaceful life. Thus a slanderous and often sarcastic attitude towards people of one district finds a breeding ground among the rest of the country. Are people quite aware of the import when they go for character assassination of the 'Barishalyas' and the 'Noakhailas' or compatriots of other districts without going deep into the matter?

Hitler's anti-Semitism invited the worst crime against humanity. Pakistan military's vitriolic hatred of the Bangalees, Serbian notion of ethnic superiority and Myanmar junta's pogrom against the Rohingya have all caused bloodbath and untold human sufferings. Human civilisation has stood dismayed and desecrated by the crimes so committed.

This is exactly why human rights, values and secularism need to be fostered. Men like Justice Shahkar are a rare breed, whose virtues need to be highlighted and extolled in order to inspire the new generations to follow in his footsteps. He certainly deserves what he has made his last wish. Yet it has to be noted that this is no compensation for the horrendous crimes committed by the Pakistani military in Bangladesh.

Pakistan will never come out clean even if it seeks pardon for those crimes because those are so outrageously anti-life and diabolical. Yet an apology, if it comes out of conscience, is due in the interest of the new generations of Pakistan so that it marks a psychic dissociation for them from the evil legacy. At the same time, it is incumbent on the UN to recognise the Pakistani genocide in Bangladesh in 1971.

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