Last week, at the height of the civil disorder in Bangladesh, some policemen armed with a warrant for his arrest turned up at the residence of Barrister Mainul Hosein. He had been charged with committing arson, of being behind the agitation which had some public infrastructure going up in flames in the nation’s capital.

The policemen were blissfully unaware that Mainul Hosein had passed away eight months earlier and was in his grave when they called at his home. It begs the question: didn’t those who helped draft that warrant know anything about the late barrister, didn’t know of his demise in December last year? How ignorant can governmental authorities be? Those policemen, not fully convinced that Mainul Hosein was indeed dead and gone, asked the caretakers of his residence to show proof of the barrister’s demise. They showed him his death certificate. It was only then that the policemen left the place.

One is not quite sure what those policemen told their seniors after they went back to their workplace. Someone in the police department or at the Home Ministry should have taken prompt action against the men who had issued that warrant against a dead man. One is quite relieved, though, that those policemen with the warrant did not go to Mainul Hosein’s gravesite to question him on his ‘role’ in the recent violence.

It is certainly dark or gallows humour we are indulging in, but what is of bigger concern to us is that the incident is a pointer to how carelessly and insensitively and without evidence men and women who are alive are often taken under detention on questionable or false charges of having indulged in public disorder. That is one of the many ways in which the rule of law is routinely made a mockery of in the country by the very people who are expected to uphold it.

The incident reminds us of a similar story flowing out of Pakistan some years ago. It concerned Fatima Jinnah, the sister of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The authorities in the city of Karachi, steeped in ignorance, served notice on Miss Jinnah about a non-payment of bills relating to utilities provided to her. She was warned that unless she cleared the amount, coming to nearly three hundred thousand rupees, a warrant of arrest would be issued against her. The authorities were surely doing the right thing. No one, no matter how highly placed or how privileged, should be allowed to get away with a commission of manifest wrong. If Ms. Jinnah had done anything wrong, she would pay for it. She was not above the law.

But then you will recall that Fatima Jinnah has been dead for ages. She passed away in 1967, twenty years after her brother created the state of Pakistan. Two years before her death, she was the presidential candidate of the Combined Opposition Parties in the election against Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan in January 1965. She lost the election. Or, given that the right of franchise at that point of time belonged only to 80,000 Basic Democrats under a system put in place by Ayub, the election was engineered in a way that would have Ms. Jinnah lose. But during the campaign, especially in East Pakistan, the venerable lady did indeed give Ayub Khan a fright. Many people thought that Ayub’s own system would defeat him. They were mistaken, of course.

The question now, though, is why the Karachi authorities were not aware of the fact that Fatima Jinnah had died years earlier and that her corporeal being had mingled with the dust in her grave. Did no one among those utility people remember Fatima Jinnah, of who she was? Did no one care to recall that she had been long dead and gone? Or did not the name Jinnah ring any bells for them? Which takes me to the time when a few of us were dwelling on the life and career of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy here in Dhaka on a quiet afternoon.

We were having a good conversation with Rashed Suhrawardy, the son of the late leader, on the life and career of his father. One of the people in the group, a new businessman in his gaudy attire brought uninvited to the meeting by a friend of his, suddenly asked Rashed Suhrawardy a very embarrassing question: What was Mr. Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy’s profession? You can well imagine the embarrassment which followed. He was given a cold, matter-of-fact, blistering response by the son of the prominent man: Nothing much. He was once Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Ignorance is never bliss. Sometimes ignorance can often lead to some of the most hilarious moments in life. Think of the naïve young man who, having intently listened to some other men whose company he happened to be part of discuss Mozart and the music he composed, asked rather foolishly: ‘What is Mr. Mozart composing these days?’ Pat came the answer from someone who was clearly irritated with the questioner’s colossal naivete: ‘He is not composing anything. As a matter of fact, he is decomposing.’

Which reminds me. Not very many years ago, a retired Bangladeshi diplomat, now deceased, went reminiscing on his role in international diplomacy in an article for a journal. He happily recalled that in the 1980s, as a senior official at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), he travelled to Pakistan, where at a certain spot and a certain time, he came upon Ayub Khan. As he noted in his recollection, there was no sign of the old, brave and energetic Ayub Khan in that bent, aged figure tottering up the lawn where our diplomat happened to be. But our diplomat was making a mistake. He surely must have seen somebody, but it could not have been Ayub Khan. Pakistan’s first military ruler had died in April 1974. How then could he, in ill health and physically diminished, have been leading a quiet, superannuated life in the 1980s?

Loss of memory is, of course understandable. But when individuals simply do not remember what they have seen or heard in their lifetime, it is heart breaking. People do have amnesia. That is a different thing altogether. And there are men who, having been in public life, come down with Alzheimer’s. Harold Wilson was quite conscious of the gradual loss of memory which was affecting his ability to function in office. In 1976, he decided on his own to relinquish prime ministerial office in Britain and have James Callaghan take over.

Over in the United States, Ronald Reagan remains an epitome of a resurgent America for millions of Americans --- in the aftermath of Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter’s ‘malaise’ speech. Within years of leaving the White House, though, he fell prey to Alzheimer’s, so much so that he did not remember that he had once been America’s president. Invited to the White House by the Clintons, Reagan was taken to the Oval Office and told that he had worked in that room as President for eight years.

Reagan looked surprised, disbelieving, when President Clinton reminded him of his presidency. When James Baker, once Reagan’s Secretary of State, went visiting him in California, he had a hard time remembering who he was. As Baker conversed with Nancy Reagan nearby, the former president asked one of his attendants, ‘Who is that young man talking to my wife?’

The men who sent the police in Bangladesh to Barrister Mainul Hosein’s home with a warrant for his arrest and the men who despatched that utilities-related notice to the dead Fatima Jinnah in Pakistan are truly personifications of ignorance. But what do you do with men and women who carefully and studiously prepare voters’ lists, here in Bangladesh, which sometimes include the names of men and women long gone to their graves?

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Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, diplomacy and history