Staff Reporter :
Dr Akbar Ali Khan, former adviser to the caretaker government, has said that Bangladesh should not be grateful to India eternally for its contribution to the liberation war.
He came up with the remark while speaking at a discussion organized by the Centre for Governance Studies (CGS) marking ’50 years of Bangladesh’ at a city hotel on Monday.
“Of course, India contributed to the victory of the liberation war in 1971. But we should not be grateful for it eternally. This was not heard in 1971, it has come up recently. I am telling it clearly,” Dr Khan said.He further said, “India also knows, Bangladesh also knows that there is no place of eternal gratitude to anywhere in the world as it is not personal friendship.”
“It is the friendship of nation with nation, state with state. The friendship of the state with the state will be only when national interests are identical and if there is a conflict of interest, the gratitude will never be lasted,” he said.
Dr Khan said, “I met Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and its Defense Minister in 1971. They had made it clear that they want we live independently.”
The former cabinet secretary also said, “The final nationalism has been achieved in Bangladesh and there is no reason to worry about it. But the reason to worry is about democracy. We believe in liberal democracy and just election is not enough for it.”
“There must be respect for the other’s views. There must be a role of civil society and rule of law. Such issues are still weak in Bangladesh,” he said.
“Democracy must be consolidated and for that, all political parties have to believe in democracy. But there are many political parties, they talk about democracy, in fact, they do not believe in democracy. If they don’t it democracy will not progress,” he said.
He also thinks that secularism will not be sustainable without democracy in the country.
“We have set socialism as goal. The dream of socialism was in the spirit of the liberation war to reduce division among the people. But the division is growing among the people and it has increased in the last 25-30 years for massive corruption,” Dr Khan said.
He also mentioned that the war of liberation was a people’s war with the participation of all walks of life including soldiers, peasants, government officials and employees.
Bir Bikram Lieutenant Colonel (Retd) Jafar Imam said that the spirit of liberation war is now under threat and if the spirit disappears, the country will be destroyed.
“There must be the spirit among the present and next generation and it cannot be maintained by the development,” he said.
Bir Pratik Major General (Retd) Syed Mohammad Ibrahim, CGS Chairman Manjur A Chowdhury and Executive Director Jillur Rahman, among others, spoke at the event.
