Original Sin

With elections around the corner and the Jamaat-e-Islami in the ascendant, December 14 takes on a new significance this year.

The question we need to ask ourselves today, with more urgency, perhaps, than at any other time in the recent past, is how do we reconcile the role played by the Jamaat in 1971 with their emergence as a major political force in 2025.

December 14 is the ideal moment for this reflection, as it helps crystallize the nature and extent of the wrongs committed by the party in 1971.

The official Jamaat position that the party was opposed to the break up of Pakistan is defensible, so far as it goes.

We are not suggesting that to be anti-Liberation in 1971 is something that should be criminalized in independent Bangladesh. It is possible for people of good conscience to have opposed our independence on one or the other grounds.

The issue surrounding the Jamaat is at what point does active collaboration with a genocidal army of occupation, including the worst kinds of atrocities and crimes against humanity, render one beyond the pale of redemption.

The shocking brutality and viciousness of the December 14 killings are well established, as is the fact that they were carried out by the Jamaat and its auxiliaries.

There are those who maintain that the crimes it committed in 1971 were of such enormity that it disqualifies the party from participating in political life in independent Bangladesh.

We do not subscribe to this point of view, as our position is that as long as a political party commands a following at the polls, proscribing them from participation is fundamentally problematic and undemocratic.

Of course, the rich irony is that in the upcoming election, while the Jamaat is free to participate, it is the Awami League, the party that was instrumental in bringing independence to Bangladesh, that is barred from the 2026 elections.

The only way one can square the banning of the AL with the participation of the Jamaat is to give primacy to the recency rather than the extent of the crimes each party has committed.

The historical revisionism that is currently in vogue notwithstanding, and not to minimize the atrocities committed during the July Uprising, but there is no question that the Jamaat’s crimes in 1971 dwarf those of the Awami League’s last year.

Recency, however, is a relevant consideration, as is the fact that the current Jamaat consists almost entirely of those born after 1971 with no connection to the crimes committed then.

That said, if the Jamaat wishes to portray itself as a party that has turned over a new leaf and should not have the millstone of 1971 war crimes hanging over its head, it may wish to rethink including people with credible accusations of war crimes in its senior leadership.

If the Jamaat wishes for the nation to move beyond its crimes of 1971, the first thing it needs to do is to acknowledge and apologize for them.

This, the party has never done. Honesty, accountability, and self-recrimination are the key to moving forward.

If the party wishes to be a positive force in Bangladeshi politics, if it wishes to be part of the future, if it aspires to one day sit in government, then it must come clean with the Bangladeshi people.

It must look squarely at the sins of its past and demonstrate to us how the Jamaat of today is not the Jamaat of 1971.

Yes, as a nation, we should focus on the future more than the past, and yes, to try to eliminate Jamaat from political life, given the support the party has, would be undemocratic.

And, yes, the War Crimes Trials were not a paragon of justice and accountability, and a truth and reconciliation commission would perhaps have been a wiser mechanism for seeking justice for 1971.

But on this December 14 we should neither forgive nor forget the atrocities that were committed against the Bangladeshi people, not just on that day in 1971 but throughout the nine months of the Liberation War.

Some sins are unforgivable, and December 14, 1971 is one of them.