“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” — Buddha
Those who wield falsehood and deceit often imagine that a single lie can obscure an entire reality, that a meticulously crafted fiction can dictate history itself. Lies may seize transient victories, dazzle perception, and confound cognition for a fleeting instant. Yet history possesses a voice older than ephemeral power: truth is indomitable. Truth cannot be interred.
Like an ember smouldering beneath the soil, truth waits, imperceptible yet inexorable, until the moment arrives to ignite and illuminate. Falsehoods may mislead for hours, days, or even months, but they are intrinsically brittle. Truth, by contrast, is resilient, anchored in evidence, moral rectitude, and conscience. Those intoxicated by deception may exult today, but they disregard the ultimate adjudicator: time itself. Time discerns neither allegiance, wealth, nor station—it recognises only veracity.
In the short term, lies may appear triumphant. Yet they run fast and far only to exhaust themselves, whereas truth, deliberate and inexorable, advances with an unstoppable impetus. The end invariably belongs to the authentic. As a Bangladeshi proverb warns, the fire beneath the soil eventually erupts. Buried truths, too, emerge when their hour arrives.
This is no abstract moralisation; it is the lens through which one must appraise Bangladesh today. Since the extralegal displacement of the Awami League government and the installation of Dr Muhammad Yunus’s transitional regime, both domestic and international observers have sounded urgent alarms. Chroniclers of governance caution that the nation teeters on the precipice of institutional collapse, where legitimacy erodes, administrative control wanes, and the state’s capacity to provide essential security and services disintegrates.
During Yunus’s tenure, multiple episodes illustrate the trajectory of institutional decay. Each event, though discrete, collectively reveals a pattern of weakening state capacity and diminishing credibility. The human cost is stark: to comprehend the consequences of a failed polity, one need only examine nations where institutional collapse has precipitated widespread suffering.
The peril is acute. In a polity where deceit masquerades as policy and expedience eclipses public good, the stakes are existential. The social contract, already tenuous, risks rupture. Citizens who once relied on governance for protection, opportunity, and dignity confront an abyss. When public institutions falter, chaos fills the void, and ordinary people—farmers, workers, students—bear the brunt.
Yet amid this bleak landscape, hope endures, embedded in the immutable character of truth. Lies may accelerate, dazzle, and dominate attention, but their victories are ephemeral. Time, the ultimate arbiter, bends inevitably toward the veracious. The falsehoods propagated under the transitional regime, whether in rhetoric, manipulation, or misappropriation of authority, cannot indefinitely suppress the aspirations of a nation forged in resilience, education, and civic consciousness.
Political engagement is imperative. Deception may cloud the present, but an informed, vigilant citizenry, coupled with accountable leadership, forms the fulcrum that prevents the collapse of state authority. Civic protest, electoral participation, and insistence on transparent governance are not optional—they are imperatives of survival.
The struggle is arduous. The transitional regime may seem omnipotent, yet its foundations are inherently fragile, constructed upon misrepresentation and expedience rather than legitimacy and service. Lies may surge, creating illusions of control, but they cannot endure against the cumulative weight of empirical evidence, civic courage, and historical memory. Truth is patient; in its patience lies its potency.
