The day Dhaka fell and our nation suffered its worst humiliation has passed on 16 December. As a nation we seem to live in a constant state of denial, unwilling to accept our past mistakes and make amends. History must never lie, however bitter the facts may be. Lessons can only be learnt if history is not distorted. We allowed those who served the British Raj to retain the fruits of their disloyalty to motherland and now they with their accumulated wealth enjoy political clout. The majority Bengali speaking Muslim population, who started the movement for a separate homeland in 1905 were forced to accept Urdu as a national language and denied their share in civil and uniformed government services. Their democratic majority right to form a government was again denied to them in 1971 by Gen Yahya Khan and a ruthless military operation was launched which led to the fall of Dhaka and our shameful surrender. The Hamoodur Rehman Commission report tasked to fix responsibility for this national shame has never been published. Lessons have not been learnt and another ruthless military operation was launched in Balochistan by Gen Musharraf leading to the murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti and others. Those who were instrumental in destroying Quaid-i-Azams vision of a modern democratic welfare state and replacing it with a security state, have done immense damage to this unfortunate nation and its civilians who live today in a state of perpetual insecurity, where neither their lives nor property are safe from these vultures. Religious fanaticism nurtured by Zia-ul-Haq haunts the nations very survival, while rampant corruption threatens our existence as an economically viable sovereign nation state. ALI MALIK TARIQ, Lahore, December 22.