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Congratulations to the Dhaka University (DU) authorities for having completed the translation work of a lone book in 22 years. It is indeed better than having done nothing at all. The rare feat goes to the credit of the translation cell of DU, which has been given an allocation of Tk. 35 lakh in the last 22 years to translate important books relating to science and other disciplines. So, finally, they did it!
   According to an agency report, the authorities thought it more judicious to spend the money on publishing doctoral theses of the teachers of the same institution instead of taking the trouble of finding worthy books and worthy translators for which the money had been allocated. From the report it transpires that teachers were not too keen on translating books.
   The translation cell of DU was formed in 1983 to undertake such academic work on books of significance in Bengali to fulfill the pledge of introducing Bengali as the medium of instruction at all levels of education. Then in 1988, the Dhaka University publication cell, combined with translation, marketing and printing section, was formed. Since then regular allocation has been earmarked for translation work. In 2001, the book, Jiner Bhasha, was translated and published by the authorities. Another book is nearing completion for publication. According to one source teachers get disappointed by the procedural bottlenecks as the files for translation work move at a snail’s pace. As a result, most teachers prefer to contact private publishers to print their books.
   Translation of important books written in other languages is an integral part of the development of the education system of a country. Hectic translation works are going on round the clock in the universities of the developed countries in a bid to enrich the reference sections of their libraries. It, therefore, surprises us that Dhaka University teachers are showing markedly less interest in undertaking prestigious work like translation of good books to enrich our language and develop our education system further. There is the long-felt demand for the Bengali versions of world famous academic books as well as classics and contemporary novels written in English, French, German, Arabic and other languages. But one can hardly find noteworthy translated versions of such books in our libraries. It is doubly disconcerting to learn that even though there is sufficient allocation of funds for undertaking translation work, qualified individuals like the DU teachers show their reluctance to get involved in the noble enterprise. One tends to wonder aloud at this point: how will our language be enriched then?
   Considering the importance of the translation of good books, we feel the authorities should also approach scholarly persons outside the realm of Dhaka University or contact retired DU teachers who might show a willingness to be part of such ventures as an honest means of earning. We do have many good translators in the country and they may be contracted out to fill the gap. We hope the DU authorities will look seriously into this matter of utmost importance.

Addiction among the young

We know that the vicious tentacles of addiction have spread to almost all parts of the country with new drugs seeping in every day, but what was so far been a malaise afflicting the adult population has now targeted the young. In fact, addiction among boys who are too small to even differentiate between right and wrong is now a common phenomenon.
   And, in this light, we are literally shocked to learn the story of one Nur Alam in Rajshahi who has become a heroin addict because his parents were also dependent on the drug. His mother left his father, a heroine seller, and the latter is now paralysed from abuse of heroin. Obviously, such a family setting had a devastating influence on the psyche of young Nur and, later on, to forget his trauma he started to take residual heroine left by the customers of his father. The result is the inevitable, and now Alam is an addict undergoing rehabilitation at a centre in Rajshahi. Though we may feel relief that he has finally made it to a centre, we cannot but take his example to relate to thousands of young kids who have become dependent on drugs owing to some cruel social twist. To be frank, the case of Alam is actually symptomatic of what is happening around the country – young people with social problems get easy access to drugs and thus, become hooked.
   At a time when a huge portion of the post-liberation young has lost its potential due to addiction, the victimisation of children gives sends out a diabolical warning.
   Understandably, if this is not stopped now, then in about 15 years time a large section of the young will already be vegetables, incapable of any productive work. Are we ready for that eventuality and its implications? Unfortunately, we do not see a comprehensive drive from the authorities to fight the menace of drugs. It is true that we cannot uproot it but the accessibility of drugs can be reduced if the authorities are strict. Simultaneously, widely disseminated anti-drug publicity can also educate the young who often take to the substance out of curiosity. Surprisingly, we see very few NGOs working in this sector and cannot ask why this is so. Perhaps the task in this field is a bit more challenging and hence the non-committal attitude of the NGOs. Maybe it should be made mandatory for all major NGOs to run a full-blown drug rehabilitation programme alongside their other work. If any NGO fails to fulfil this responsibility then its operation can be suspended. A bit too harsh? Well, thinking of our nation, we cannot be lax and relaxed.

Not many years ago, I came upon upon a Bengali at Islamabad airport. That is not the story. You meet your own people everywhere, and you surely feel happy about that. But what was striking about this Bengali, in his fifties and having served the Bangladesh government in a number of capacities already (he was to go on to play an even bigger role in government), was the positive pride he appeared to be taking in some old boys’ meet in Pakistan at the time. He went back to giving me something of a briefing about what the old boys’ meeting was about, who the old boys were and what the meeting, which by that time was over, had achieved. It was obvious he was reliving the old days when, before the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, he had enjoyed life in what was then the western part of Pakistan. It did not occur to him that having been a senior functionary of the government of Bangladesh post-1971, he should have been more circumspect in speaking of times in which we as a nation take not much of pride. We may have been part of Pakistan for twenty four years, but that is a time when we in Bangladesh we went through the many degrees of battering our self-esteem went though every time we tried dealing with the Pakistani civil bureaucracy and its military. Besides, let there be no mistaking the fact that it was for Bengalis a huge mistake in linking up with the Pakistan idea in the 1940s, a blunder for which they have already paid the price. Nothing about history, about heritage, dictated that we make ourselves hostage to the two-nation theory of the Muslim League. But we did that and suffered immensely, until the right men came along to free us of our predicament.
   But, of course, that does not in any way mean that there are not even now among us Bengalis who try to look back with nostalgia on the ‘good old Pakistani’ days. Our very own Fazlur Rahman, minister of state for sports, has just reminded us, in intriguing fashion, of those people and those days. In Colombo, right inside the residence of Bangladesh’s high commissioner Yaqub Ali, the minister of state thought he would be doing a good job of injecting spirit and patriotism into the boys of Bangladesh’s cricket team through invoking the spirit of Ayub Khan. And what did he do? He simply quoted lines from a broadcast the dictator made in September 1965 as the Pakistan army fought what would turn out to be a disastrous war with India. The story of the war did not end on the battlefield. It ended with Ayub Khan and Lal Bahadur Shastri reaching a deal in Tashkent in January 1966. And yet our Bangladesh minister simply chose to ignore all those extra bits of history. He was simply in the mood to remember good men, his version of what good men are about. Of course we all remember, at particular moments, the days we spent in school and college. There are many around us, Bengalis and Pakistanis alike, who admired Ayub Khan when they went to school. But few of those people, now in their fifties, will now remind themselves of that horrible part of their lives. As we grow older, we know how embarrassing our boyhood obsessions have been. For a Bengali especially, treating Ayub Khan as a source of inspiration (we will ignore here the old, ailing or dying Convention Muslim Leaguers who owe everything they came to own in the 1960s to the rise of Pakistan’s first military ruler) cannot be anything but a refusal to grow out of the old obsessions. It is amazing, therefore, that Minister Fazlur Rahman found nothing in the archives of his own national history to inspire our cricketers with. Observe that he did not even try coming out with a few lines from the founder of the political party he belongs to. One would have thought General Ziaur Rahman would be his role model. It turns out that his hero is still the man who made himself a field marshal in 1960.
   But, as we have noted, there are quite a good number of Bengalis who still swoon at the mention of Pakistan as it used to be in their younger days. You might come across a superannuated civil servant who, over a couple of beers, suddenly throw you off balance with his assessment that Ayub Khan, observed in hindsight, was not so bad a proposition after all. Not bad? If you truly go into an examination of the factors which intensified the collapse of Pakistan in its eastern wing, you cannot but acknowledge the terrible degree of discrimination the Ayub regime fostered in the land of the Bengalis. Nearly everything dark and dreary we associate with Pakistan was forged and applied in the days of Ayub Khan —- the first martial law, the education report, the Agartala case, the installation of Bengali sycophants in the provincial corridors of power, the rise of the bureaucracy as the arbiter of people’s fate, the long shadow cast by the military on society, the exile of Tagore, et al. What General Yahya Khan did in the subsequent period was merely to think that he could survive in similar fashion. He fell with a thud, on all the blood his soldiers had caused to be shed in occupied Bangladesh. But let us move on. We have noted on earlier occasions that the dark legacy of Ayub Khan has remained in the lives of so many around us, indeed in the lives of all of us. Those old images of the Pakistani dictator in full military regalia even as he talked of such inanities as Basic Democracy have been replicated over the years in Bangladesh, which is why you will not be surprised to bump into wall posters of a uniformed Ziaur Rahman informing Bengalis of his contributions to the fostering of multi-party democracy in the country. And then, surely, is the story of General Ershad.
   No, we as a people are not amused when some individuals refer to Ayub Khan as a heroic figure or to Pakistan as the paradise we lost in 1971. But we are intrigued at the stubborn manner in which a handful of people continue to see in pre-1971 Pakistan some of the brightest sunshine of their lives. Back in the late 1980s, a minister in the Ershad regime travelled to London and spoke before a group of renegade Bengalis who still believed that Pakistan could be restored in Bangladesh. No one in authority said or did anything about it when the minister came back home. But those aware of the minister’s past remembered only too well that the individual in question had been part of the Pakistani delegation to the United Nations General Assembly session in 1971. The delegation, if you recall, was led by Shah Azizur Rahman who, despite his love of Pakistan in the year its army murdered three million of his people, subsequently served as independent Bangladesh’s prime minister. And he did so per courtesy of the ‘multi-party system’ inaugurated by General Ziaur Rahman. Our sense of amazement never ceases at times. There are a number of Bengalis who are often spotted telling some quite embarrassed Pakistani diplomats that for them Pakistan, the land of pure Muslims, has lived on in Bangladesh despite the surrender of General Niazi and all his 93,000 soldiers in December 1971. If that surprises you, how do you deal with the individual who, having had a role in Sheikh Hasina’s administration, one fine day informs a South Asian diplomat that in the three months between December 1971 and March 1972 the Indian army did worse things to Bengalis than all the atrocities committed by the Pakistanis between March and December 1971?
   In the late 1970s, a high civil official at Khulna Shipyard, right in the presence of President Ziaur Rahman, ended his address of welcome through raising a full-throated cry of Pakistan Zindabad. The result was his immediate suspension. But that is not the point. What is of essence here is that when subsequently the man apologised and told people he had meant to say Bangladesh Zindabad, not many were convinced. If nine years into freedom you do not remember that you are inhabiting a new country, you are committing treason before your people and you are sinning before God.
   Men like Mahmud Ali, though, do not think they have done anything wrong by not acknowledging Bangladesh’s sovereign entity. Ali went off to Rawalpindi in November 1971, watched Pakistan collapse in Dhaka from afar and yet went on believing that all would be back in one piece again. In 1996, to the great amusement of some Pakistani journalists in Karachi, he stated that Pakistan had never died for him in ‘East Pakistan’. Reminded that Pakistan had recognised Bangladesh as an independent country, Mahmud Ali made things quite comical with his assertion that despite everything, ‘East Pakistan’ would always live in his heart. You find it quite ironic that the heart in Mahmud Ali did not go through pain, none at all, when his political masters in Islamabad killed Bengalis in Bangladesh.
   E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk