Bengal's baul and his story
MINAR Monsur demonstrated unquestionable courage when he first placed this compilation (Sheikh Mujib: Ekti Lal Golap, published by Shahitya Bilash) on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman before the country in 1979. And it was courage because of the dark nature of the times. Bangladesh was under its earliest spell of military rule. And just how harsh the times were can be gauged from the very fact that it was General Ziaur Rahman who happened to be presiding over the fortunes of the country as its first military dictator. It was dictatorship unbridled and unambiguous and not just because politics was in suspension. That Parliament had returned, with Zia's followers in the majority, really did not matter. What did matter was the sure and steady attempts made to airbrush the Father of the Nation out of Bangladesh's history. References to the 1971 War of Liberation carefully excised Bangabandhu's name as also those of the political leaders instrumental in the formation of the Mujibnagar government.
Far worse was the military regime's decisive move to prevent any trial of the assassins of August-November 1975 through the infamous Indemnity Ordinance, which was incorporated in the nation's constitution. Bangabandhu's murderers, rewarded by the regime through recruitment as diplomats (!) at various Bangladesh missions abroad, thus stayed out of reach of the law. And the constitution? Zia and his regime felt little embarrassment in tampering with it. The state of Bangladesh, in stark terms, increasingly resembled the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the very historical symbol of retrogression Bengalis had freed themselves of in 1971. It was against such a background that Monsur came forth with these enlightening essays on Bangabandhu. The second edition of the work appeared in 1998. And now we have the third (it appeared in 2010).
Of course, much has already been written on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and there is little question that a good deal more will be written in the times to come. But what you have here are some essays that provide the sort of insight into Bangabandhu's personality that you quite did not come by earlier. Annadashankar Roy's is a piece that reveals, for perhaps the first time, what many of us have long suspected as the truth. And the Indian scholar makes it a point to inform readers that he had promised to keep Mujib's confidence. But then, Bangladesh's leader died. And thus it is that we know of the plans Bangabandhu had been making for Bangladesh's freedom even as he waged his struggle for regional autonomy within the Pakistan state. In the earlier part of the 1960s, Mujib had sought Indian assistance to free Bengalis of Pakistan. Jawaharlal Nehru was not agreeable to the idea. And when did thoughts of a free Bangladesh first come to him? Mujib's answer is emphatic. It was in 1947, when Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Sarat Bose made a feeble attempt to stay out of Pakistan through keeping Bengal united as an independent state. The plan eventually collapsed. No one was surprised.
In Pakistan, as he rose to prominence, Bangabandhu focused on East Pakistan's severing all links with Islamabad. “Do you know what my plan was?” He throws the question at Roy. And then answers it without waiting for a response. “We would suddenly seize power. Every point in Dhaka would come under our control. We had our people in the army, navy, air force, police and civil service. But it was one individual's treachery which ruined it all. A navy officer had talked about the plan with his subordinate, who then revealed it. And we all got caught.” Annadashankar Roy asked him when the plan would have been put into effect. Bangabandhu laughed and told him, “I won't tell you.”
Ataus Samad recalls his flight with Bangabandhu to Dhaka from Delhi on 10 January 1972. There were others on that historic journey back home --- Dr. Kamal Hossain and his family, Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad, diplomat Faruq Chowdhury. Mujib, says the veteran journalist, recited verses from his favourite poets in a state of euphoria. Then, turning to his companions, he said with satisfaction: “The country is free. My goal has been attained. Now I can wrap myself in a shawl and go on a trek through Bengal's haats, fields, riverbanks. I will talk to my countrymen and listen to their tales of happiness and woe.”
Ataus Samad, with that hint of sadness, reminds us that such was not to be. And yet if Bangabandhu had indeed been able to put his dreams into reality, things might well have been different.
Khan Sarwar Murshid moves off into a different field, the better to focus philosophical light on Bangladesh's founder. He recalls Andre Malraux's trip to Bangladesh in 1973 to receive an honorary doctorate from Rajshahi University. The French intellectual, who had been engaged in the Spanish civil war and had played a leading role in Charles de Gaulle's resistance to the Nazis, offered to lead a brigade against the Pakistanis in 1971. In Rajshahi, he reflected on the lonely struggle that men like Gandhi and Mujib had led against their oppressors, on the historic changes they thus brought about. Murshid sums it up. In Malraux's intellectual assessment, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was part of a historic procession of victors. The procession fell into a pattern: Mujib-Gandhi, Gandhi-Nehru, Nehru-De Gaulle, De Gaulle-Malraux.
The sheer plenitude of essays in this compilation should be cause for joy. Read on. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in his elemental nature --- as politician, as bard, as revolutionary --- comes alive once again.
Syed Badrul Ahsan's 'From Rebel to Founding Father: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman', was published by Niyogi Books, Delhi, in 2013. His forthcoming works are a comparative study of Chitta Ranjan Das, Subhash Chandra Bose and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and a biography of Tajuddin Ahmad
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