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Originally Posted by Sohel
First of all, thank you for posting this. It is always good to see such things. That being said, there has always been a miniscule group of Pakistani intellectuals that has advocated coming clean and doing the right thing, so we've seen this before. They all seem to be connected to The Dawn in one way or another. Hamid Mir and my good friend Saadiya Ahmed come to mind right away.
As to what kind of impact if any such scholarly folks have in changing the typical public perception in that country is highly debatable. I don't share your optimism, as guarded as it is. As much as I'd love to see them do the right thing for their own sake, Pakistanis and what's left of their dysfunctional state has no real relevance in my life, to be honest. They're simply not relevant enough for me to support having diplomatic relations with them until they do those right things.
"Views in Pakistan" in that sense won't change until the real influencers, all directly connected to Pakistan's crimes against humanity and the Bangladeshi people in 1971, begin to come clean themselves. I don't see the Muslim League(s), the PPP, Jamaat-i-Islami, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Civil Service and the mainstream Civil Society with deep connections to the establishment taking any meaningful steps. Until and unless they do, public perception on 1971 generated though a carefully woven web of lies and misguidance won't change much either.
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Completely agree with you. Although it's at a slow pace but it's good that it's changing. Many Pakistanis that I meet these days, do agree to the mistakes they made. I'm not too optimistic of a massive change in public perceptions, but the way Pak is heading, you never know it may happen sooner than we expect.
While separation of Pakistan has been the result of poor political principles pursued by the western parties (ML), it's interesting that we also had our share of mistakes and short sighted actions. How could we not vote for Fazlul Haq's Krishok proja party and vote for Sohrawardi's Muslim league.... ? Haven't our people tried to be more Muslims than Bangali at some point? That should have encouraged Muslim league further to ignore us, because they felt we can be fooled so easily... Then why not?? And then, being rejected by the people of Bengal, FH didn't any option but to join Muslim League.