The Hijack of History
When I realized even truth can be politicized
After I started questioning religion, I turned my eyes to the state. I was still young—maybe in 10th grade—when I had a thought I couldn’t unsee: Why are our ministers not experts in the ministries they lead?
I noticed it first in agriculture—the field my father worked in. Then in education, science, and even health. A person could be handed power without any domain knowledge. They could sign off on national budgets, appointments, and policies—without understanding the lives they were shaping.
It felt absurd. But as I grew older, it began to feel even more dangerous. Because I didn’t just see mismanagement—I saw manipulation.
Every time a new party came to power—whether BNP or Awami League—they didn’t just govern. They rewrote the story. Roads were renamed, projects were repackaged, and institutions were rebranded. Everything built by the previous government was repainted, reframed, or removed.
Even our liberation war—the most sacred moment of Bangladesh’s history—became a battlefield for political ownership.
I studied the speeches. The manifestos. The back-and-forth over who declared what, and when. BAL claimed Mujib’s letter authorized the resistance. BNP claimed Ziaur Rahman made the actual broadcast. Scholars argued. Politicians twisted. But no one dared say, “Here is the full truth, with everyone’s role included.”
It shattered something inside me. We were a country founded on sacrifice, yet we couldn’t agree on who sacrificed what. We were a people born from courage, yet we let power distort our past to protect the present.
That’s when I realized: Truth doesn’t win by itself. It must be protected by a system.
And fairness must be enforced—not assumed. If even our history could be hijacked, how could anything remain pure? I didn’t want a party. I wanted a system. Not a new leader—a new logic.
That’s when the seed of Equitism began to form—though I didn’t have the word for it yet.