Prisoners of misinformation

A child's future is potentially decided before it is born, even conceived: its race, religion, socio-economic status. As it grows up, it can reshape some of this future and be ready to pass on its knowledge and understanding to its own children. But childhood learning has a profound impact on the child's psyche, where parents, family members, friends, peers, teachers and community members play important roles. Children believe and trust what they are told by their loved ones; it stays with them and it takes wilful, determined and objective self-education to alter it – this happens, but less than usually.

Childhood events are etched deeply. I experienced two such distinctive events as a child. One occurred during the first international cricket game I ever watched, an abandoned match in Chittagong, when Asif Iqbal led a team from Pakistan to play two matches, in their time off from the Indian tour of 1979-80. On the second day of the match a crowd broke in and attacked some of the Pakistani cricketers. Police were called as chaos erupted in the stadium. Having to jump from the high walls of concrete galleries, the sting of teargas and panic stricken runs with my family members to reach safety will never leave my memory. I was told later that angry students from the University of Dhaka intruded to protest against the derogatory greetings and comments (a 'Namaste' insinuating that we all were Hindus) exchanged by some Pakistani players on arrival. Cricketing relationships only became normal in 1986 when Omar Kureishi brought a team led by Imran Khan on a short tour.

I was a bit more cognisant when the second event occurred: jolted by the atrocity I joined other school kids and teachers in a spontaneous procession to protest the brutal killing of Chittagong College Chhatra Union member Shahadat Hossain by Islami Chhatra Shibir in 1984. My school was in the same education precinct and I was in year 5. I was strongly admonished by my parents and guardians and I have never participated in another agitation or protest march, but the event shook me, and it certainly had an impact upon my reasoning and beliefs.

Children of our generation encountered conflicting messages about our brief history; we inherited extremely polarised views on many aspects of politics, which filled in our unfinished history debates — How many people were killed in our Liberation War? Who declared our Independence first? Who played what roles in 1975′s killings and coups? Who actually let Jammat back into politics in the country?

As firsthand witnesses to the Earshad regime and the years of protest that it took to topple it, our generation is very familiar with the roles played by the AL and the BNP, and there is hardly any disagreement among us about the roles played by political actors during that nine years. If you get a random number of us to discuss 1971 and 1975 killings and subsequent coups and counter coups, the reestablishment of Jamaat-e-Islami and other related topics, we are at odds with others. We are not solely debating the actors and their roles but confused to a point where our freedom fight is termed as 'Liberation war' by AL, 'Independence War' by BNP and 'Civil War' by Jamaat and razakaars.

The History syllabus in our schools has had so many iterations and variations, depending on who was in power that it would be confusing to a naive youth trying to work out what exactly did take place since 1971. Apparently the O-Level history curriculum does not include post 1971 as our education board fails to approve an accepted set of historical events (as the details get changed with changes of government). I have checked University of Cambridge International Examinations syllabus for Bangladesh Studies for 2013, 2014 and 2015. The syllabus, interestingly, captures the influence of major cultural figures, ancient Bengal, early kingdoms, the establishment and consolidation of Muslim rule, the rule of independent Sultans, the Mughal and the British periods and the transition from Pakistan to Bangladesh, but bizarrely nothing after 1971. O-level students are thus provided with no formal history of Bangladesh for the last 42 years, when they can get comprehensive information from 1500 years ago.

Furthermore, this is likely to become even more entrenched. Today's schools are under enormous pressure from parts of the curriculum such as mathematics and science; they compete for respectable positions in their academic league tables, and it is normal for them to prefer to concentrate on more scholarly subjects. It was certainly so when I attended public school; we seldom had time for history. Our educators, whether parents or private tutors, shunned history lessons which were seen to be a waste of time as students' efforts needed to be focused on high scoring subjects.

With this reality, what hope do we have that our youth will be told the proper facts? This situation is not unique to our country and that is our hope. Historical events and major wars provide contrasting recollections by survivors and these are continuously argued. The accounts are usually written by the winners (at least the widely circulated ones) and it is difficult to challenge the entrenched victor's version.

For example, after 200 years overwhelmingly white populated Australia has to accept and recognise in its history curriculum, albeit still subtly and indirectly, that Indigenous Australians were the first people and custodians of the land, and that they were brutally massacred by their white ancestors. In my short, incomplete and no doubt superficial level of understanding of the issues, Australians had to campaign, debate and argue relentlessly for many years before a Prime Minister in 2007 said 'Sorry' to the Aborigines for white people's past misdeeds — and many still do not share that apologetic view. Americans even today debate their civil war, 150 years later. We continue to read varying accounts of the roles of Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and other leaders during partition.

Each society, region and country has its demography and its idiosyncratic ways of dealing with the issues. When we have developed destructive means to settle our differences, sycophantic views supporting one camp or the other are in abundance, feeding the new generation. We know well that the contrary is unrealistic.
Then there are the political distortions of history. The quest for truth, however natural, instinctive or honest, is always surrounded by controversy and debate and it is likely to be painful. Living with untruth is nothing new for us. Confusion and argument rage on in our world. We are so divided, that our historical recollection is also divided, reaching the point where there is no common narrative of what exactly happened. There are books but they are not objective studies, so memories or personal recollections are told from individual insight, falling short of general acceptance. (They are, of course, good sources and should be part of any history archive).
Commemorative TV programs, plays, rituals and jingoistic rhetoric, while filling some of history's vacuum, especially post 1971, demonstrate continued contradictions which overshadow discussion. If we cannot agree on a common historical narrative, and are unprepared to discuss and research it so that an archive can be built – and this will not be done by a single study, but should be built progressively and systematically by gathering evidence – we will be in this divide for the foreseeable future. As time passes without correct and agreed understanding and acceptance we are moving further from the truth, letting others create and tell it for us.

This situation is particularly helpful for politicians, opportunists and opinion makers (it is easier to promote their preferred versions, in the absence of an agreed, accepted and documented post-independence history) – as they are preoccupied with emotive and inaccurate information, wasting our youthful energy in the most destructive fashion, and reaping the profits.

There is nothing new in that, it is just sad that many of us, including 'intellectual' heavy-weights, give support to one side or the other, with little information and understanding inherited from our traditional upbringing. A typical family today has members or supporters of AL, BNP, Jamaat or other major parties with their own supporting arguments, using only a handful of research papers, to which no doubt there will be opposing views.

And that is perhaps the result of democracy, which while nowhere is free from untruth and malevolence, is complex, is least efficient in the short term, but has still been found to be a stable and enduring system of government. It is supposed to distribute political power and economic benefits more evenly than other systems, but it demands fine leaders with long term vision in order to be functional – even mature democracies of the West suffer from poor leadership.
In spite of this grave portrayal, we cannot overlook the power of information now available through the internet which could be of some aid, and I do not doubt that young people use it proficiently. I just urge them to be aware that there are gaps in our political history which are being used to satisfy emotional needs.

I do not purport to know what exactly has happened, but I know that a fledging state must adopt, accept and agree on key facts of its history. Depriving a generation – for example, the current generation of Bangladeshis – of facts is unhelpful, as they, their children and their grandchildren will be further and further from the truth.
No opinion is ultimate but analysis should be evolving in nature. Opinions offered by outsiders such as myself would hardly be close to reality, let alone practical – but they can open doors for new ways to consider issues. Ongoing discussion and debate, especially in a digital age, could build the necessary understanding and knowledge base setting us free from the stronghold of tradition: the poison of misinformation. Coming generations will be better served without this.

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Irfan Chowdhury writes from Canberra, Australia.