Psychologists have a term for a peculiar contradiction of human judgment: Solomon’s Paradox.

In Islamic tradition, Prophet Sulaiman (AS) is remembered as a messenger of God. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Solomon is remembered as a king.

Whatever the title, he was famed for his wisdom–subjects traveled across his empire to seek his judgment, and he dispensed advice with clarity and brilliance.

Yet in his own life, Solomon’s wisdom faltered. His household was chaotic, filled with hundreds of concubines. One of them lured him into idolatry, and for this betrayal, scripture tells us, God cursed him, stripping his descendants of the kingdom.

That tension–brilliance in guiding others, blindness in guiding oneself–is what psychologists Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross later labeled Solomon’s Paradox.

They argue that the best way to resist this trap is through self-distancing: seeing our own dilemmas as if they belonged to someone else, and judging them with the clarity we extend to others.

The paradox returned to me as I read a top government official’s recent facebook post on the controversies surrounding three million martyrs of Bangladesh’s Liberation War.

With gravitas, he dissected the politics of casualty figures, insisting on the moral and historical importance of knowing the true number. Yet, in the same breath, this government remains entangled in its own contradictions.

During the state violence of July 2024, its own accounting of casualties does not match what foreign sources have reported. Lists appear inflated in some places, incomplete in others. The gap between rhetoric and reality is glaring.

Like Solomon, the government shows wisdom when reflecting on the past, lecturing others on the sanctity of truth in history. But when faced with its own record–its own responsibility for recent bloodshed–that wisdom evaporates.

This is Bangladesh’s Solomon’s Paradox: clarity in judgment for the dead of 1971, blindness in judgment for the dead of 2024.

Fixing the immediate past

Many of the bureaucrats and military officers implicated in the July killings still sit comfortably within the circle of power.

It took an entire year just to sideline one official directly linked to a murder, quietly shifting him to the cosmetic title of Officer on Special Duty.

Meanwhile, senior Awami League leaders were given a clear path to escape abroad, where they now bankroll misinformation campaigns with impunity.

We do not know who inside the government helped them flee in droves. We do not know who shielded them. And we still do not know the names of those responsible for the murders of Sagar-Runi, Tonu, and countless others whose families continue to wait for justice.

At the same time, mob violence and far-right networks are destabilizing the country in plain sight, and yet the official gaze remains fixed on 1971.

Under the circumstances, a government functionary writing ethical lessons about the metaphysics of casualty numbers in a war half a century past, while ignoring the blood still fresh on the streets today.

He exhorts us to guard against misinformation about 1971 while doing nothing to prevent the disinformation campaigns already metastasizing around the July killings.

By refusing to confront the truth of the present, he is writing the distortions of 2054 in real time.

Perhaps that is all we can expect: that our children, thirty years from now, will hear another “responsible” official deliver solemn lectures about 2024, just as this one does about 1971–full of wisdom for the past, and silence for the present.

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Mikail Hossain is a writer and analyst