Dhaka, April 2 -- I have often asked myself why Justice S M Murshed went into a state of silence in the 1970s. And I have not yet been able to respond to that query. But why do I raise the question in the first place? That is again something which takes me back to a particular stage in our lives, a moment in history which brought out some of the more glorious attributes in all of us.

It was a time when the dictatorship of Field Marshal Ayub Khan was beginning to come apart at the seams. All the symptoms of decline were there: the regime was trapped in its insidious move to trap Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in a kangaroo court, it was embarrassing itself through trying to humiliate Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in custody. All the signs were o...