Untold Facts

Isn’t it time we call ourselves blind?

Many of my fellow human beings can see this beautiful world with plain eyes, but I need the help of spectacles to enjoy the scenic beauty of what is around me. So people call me myopic.

All these days I used to envy those who can clearly see the wonders of this world without any external, optical aid. But recently I have started to think otherwise. Maybe it’s not only me after all.

I admit I can’t see without specs, but still I am not blind. I see when I need to — even if that is through my specs.

But the nation to which I belong seems to be completely blind and does not see anything happening around it. I wonder, how can we, as a nation, be so blind and yet we are not worried about our loss of sight!

If we had been able to see, then how could we have let all these glitches and gremlins happen around us — and yet, we remain silent?

About four years back on 28 October 2006, we saw on the TV screen our fellow humans being beaten to death in broad daylight like snakes by some elements carrying the badge of ‘humans’ in the most brutal fashion that we ordinary people dread to imagine! Many of us will admit that we “saw” that. Yes, we did, but if we really did, how could we have voted for the killers of that day to rule our nation in just two years’ time at end of 2008? Yet we claim we can see! Or, did we really vote for them? Was the election really fair? Was the counting done in the normal way we count votes? No doubt, these are extremely perplexing and bewildering questions.

And what do we see today? Through which eyes do we see the killing of the upazila Chairman Mr. Sanauallah Noor Babu in Natore? Wasn’t it equally brutal as the incident of 28 October 2006? Are we becoming immune to such atrocities? Are we losing our essential human sensitivity and human values, let alone religious and moral teachings?

How do we keep our eyes open when the members of the pro-government student organization throw each other from a building? How could we remain normal when our Prime Minister’s boys torture ordinary students at public universities for their refusal to join political rallies including her birthday procession?

Can’t we see every day in the news how our fellow Bangladeshis in the border regions are being killed by the security forces of a ‘big and friendly’ neighbor? Can’t we see how our lands and waters are being used unlawfully by that neighbor? Can’t we hear how our ‘friends’ of that country are continuously branding us as ‘terrorists’ in the international forums only to keep the world in the dark about what they are doing to us?

Where is our nation going? Where are we as citizens heading? How long shall we keep quiet when our democratic and human rights are being violated, our media being silenced, and our sovereignty being slowly eroded?

If we can, then how come we as a nation are not rising to the occasion? And if we can’t do that and if we remain blind to our surroundings, then let’s be forthright and call a spade a spade. To be more precise, let us call ourselves blind! Or, has our conscience died? Has the fountain of our human compassion dried up?

To cover my myopic eyes, I use spectacles. To conceal our dried conscience, what can we use?

Author: Mrinmoyee Rahman