For correct representation and dissemination of national history
Cultural Minister Asaduzzaman Noor remarked in a function of the Rangpur District Shilpakala Academy on Saturday that the present or younger generations must come to know their correct national history. We believe the minister has made an eminently important and sensible suggestion that should draw the attention of our policymakers though it is not a novel one. Many times in the past similar observations were made by distinguished personalities and public figures. Unfortunately, these may have had fleeting impact on the audiences only to be soon forgotten. Therefore, there is need for our leaders and policymakers to give befitting attention to this proposal with which is vitally linked to our proper nation building based on unalloyed truth. There is possibly no nation in the world that has become great today knowing not the laudable things in its march twards nationhood or more significantly knowing only distorted versions of its national history. Bangladesh offers a classic case of such gross distortion of its correct history. After the abominable killing of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in mid-1975, the governments that were in power sought to rewrite the history of this country in accordance with their own views.
Bangabandhu and his contribution to the making of todays independent Bangladesh was belittled. Even the photographs of Bangabandhu and accounts of his accomplishments were wiped out from school text books in a bid to hide the real history of the course of the independence movement and Liberation War from successive generations. There were attempts to obliterate the philosophies that guided our freedom struggle such as Bengali nationalism, secularism and democracy from the minds of successive generations of our young people who were born after 1971. Thus, for many years our young ones have been growing up without knowing their true history.
Especially, they suffer from a identity crisis about their actual roots culturally and in other ways. This hiding of the nations history has enormously aided the process of brain washing a great number of our young people to think that they should act like revisionists. Needless to say one of the main reasons of the present disunity in Bangladesh society is the ignorance of many young people about their true history. Unfortunately they were forced to learn false history since the assasination of Bangabandhu in 1975.
Thus, it is so very important to make up for lost time and imprint in the minds of all people in this country who were born after 1971 the real history of our independence struggle. This is supremely important for them both to draw right inspiration from our independence movement and for the sake of national unity and cohesion.
