Bangabhaban across the years

On the morning following the afternoon when the Pakistan army surrendered to the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Command in 1971, a huge crowd of exulting Bengalis chanted Joi Bangla as it tried to make its way into Governor's House. It was not yet called Bangabhaban, but the crowd, among whom was yours truly, felt that it would be quite some experience taking a walk inside a place that had lately come under heavy shelling, forcing the puppet governor installed by the Pakistanis to quit and take refuge in a neutral zone set up inside the Intercontinental Hotel. The guards, all smiling and so very friendly on what would be the first full day of national freedom, told everyone to be patient, said that there were mines inside, and that, once the mines were removed or defused, the place would be ours, the people's. The exuberant men, all drunk with the euphoria of freedom, came away. The country was ours, which simply meant that Governor's House belonged to us too. When the new Bangladesh administration renamed it Bangabhaban, we cheered. It was, truly, a people's republic we were now part of.

It is all part of our history. But when you reflect on everything that has been happening lately inside Bangabhaban -- the nocturnal meetings, the unscheduled arrivals and departures of powerful men and women, the tea served to the two most significant politicians in contemporary Bangladesh -- you cannot but let your mind wander in search of the history, or segments of it, associated with Bangabhaban. No, it is not a matter of how the structure came up. It is, in a large sense, a question of the men and the work they did within its premises. Have these men made us happy? Or did they leave us all wishing that they would do things better? The answers to these queries depend by and large on the quality of the men who have resided in Bangabhaban, beginning in the days when Pakistan was the country we thought was ours.

There were the good, well-meaning men whose reputations have remained unsullied all these years. Think of General Azam Khan who, as governor of East Pakistan in the years immediately after the promulgation of martial law in October 1958, earned the trust of Bengalis through the sheer quality of his performance. He was one of the men who had compelled Iskandar Mirza, at gun point, to hand over the presidency to Ayub Khan. That was not a bad act on Azam's part, considering the contributions Mirza had made to the web of conspiracy in which Pakistan's politics had become trapped. It was as governor in Dhaka, though, that Azam Khan began to demonstrate the qualities that would soon make Ayub Khan nervous. The governor's comprehension and appreciation of the political and social realities of East Pakistan simply took him closer to the Bengalis he presided over.

And that closeness precipitated his fall. He was summarily removed by President Ayub Khan, who then placed in Governor's House the extremely uncharismatic Ghulam Faruque. There is nothing in the records to show that Faruque accomplished anything of note to qualify as a man to be remembered by the Bengalis. But it was the man who came after him, the beautifully genuflecting Abdul Monem Khan, a Muslim Leaguer and a thoroughbred Bengali to boot, who would become one of the individuals all too willing to undermine the sanctity of the office he operated in. Governor's House in Monem's time was a hub of constant conspiracy, a long series of it, all aimed at puncturing holes in rising Bengali nationalistic aspirations.

More loyal to Pakistan than the (West) Pakistanis themselves, Monem Khan made it his life's mission to go after the reputations of such honourable men as Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The Awami League leader, warned the governor over and over, would not see the light of day as long as he occupied Governor's House.The big irony is that Mujib was freed and the Agartala conspiracy case was withdrawn on February 22, 1969, more than a month before Monem Khan would be dropped by his president. To this day, anecdotes abound about Monem Khan's incomprehensible fealty to the West Pakistani ruling classes in distant Rawalpindi. In a nutshell, the years that Abdul Monem Khan spent in Governor's House were not edifying ones. He was done away with by the Mukti Bahini in the closing stages of the War of Liberation.

One of the finest of men to occupy Bangabhaban (or Governor's House) was Vice Admiral S.M. Ahsan. The difference between him and the others who occupied the place at various points in time was his pretty simple outlook on life. And that consisted of an interplay of decency in behaviour and efficiency in administration. He was part of the Yahya Khan martial law administration, and yet he went out of his way to demonstrate certain moral principles he thought ought to be a basis of political behaviour. He appreciated Bengali aspirations and expected them to be respected and upheld after the general elections of December 1970. Because of his old-fashioned adherence to values, he had little hesitation in throwing away his job as governor in early March 1971 and going back to West Pakistan. He died in London a few years ago.

Now contrast the mess Governor's House became in the times of our very own Bengali, Abdul Mutallib Malek. The man had been an ambassador and a cabinet minister. Respected by everyone who came in contact with him, Malek was a soft-spoken individual. But when he agreed to take over from Tikka Khan as governor of East Pakistan in September 1971, he sent his earlier reputation down the path to destruction. He was then not his own man, for there was Rao Farman Ali to prioritise things for him. It was on his watch that General Niazi and his men intensified the murder of Bengalis and the rape of Bengali women. Perhaps the only bold act, a self-serving one, A.M. Malek undertook in that dark phase of history was writing out his resignation on the back of a cigarette pack, his hands shaking through the screams made by Indian warplanes flying low over and bombing Governor's House.

Some of the more hallowed of moments in the history of Bangabhaban in our times came through the presidency of Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury. The former vice chancellor of Dhaka University was head of state for less than two years, until December 1973, but in that time Bangabhaban once again saw its reputation as a national institution restored. The reputation was further enhanced during the two periods, first as acting president and then as elected president, that Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed served as the symbol of the republic. His honesty was, and is, beyond question. His presidency was a process of a detoxification of the presidential palace. His dealings with people who came calling were not merely above board, but fundamentally and absolutely moral as well.

Contrast the integrity of the Shahabuddin presidency with the venality of the Ershad regime. After nine years of harbouring a condition of political illegitimacy, Bangabhaban went through a cleansing process with the presence in its spaces of President Shahabuddin Ahmed. Indeed, Bangabhaban has so often been pelted with the ugly and the despicable that the story can only go on and on. Think back to the eighty one days, between August 15 and November 6, 1975, in which the presidential mansion was held hostage by assassins under the patronage of Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed. All manner of conspiracy, every flavour of villainy permeated the corridors of Bangabhaban, typifying as they did the bigger villainy running riot all across the country. Moshtaque's ministers cowered at cabinet meetings at the sight of the gun-toting murderer-soldiers. Men like Taheruddin Thakur and Mahbubul Alam Chashi ran the show. A frightened nation watched from the sidelines.

The sordid tale appeared to come to an end when a new band of soldiers, more decent and better disciplined, forced Moshtaque from his usurped office and sent the assassins into exile. We all thought that the bloodletting of August and November was behind us as Justice Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem took charge on November 6. The next morning, fresh pools of blood were seen flowing in the cantonments as General Zia's loyalists pursued General Khaled Musharraf and the other good men with him to their deaths. For the subsequent five years, Bangabhaban remained in a state of the opaque. The mist would not lift in the few months that President Abdus Sattar inhabited it. And then, of course, there was Ershad.

These days, in the gathering haze of winter, there is an alacrity which defines activity at Bangabhaban. Rare are the times when hope lights up around it; and politics goes round and round the mulberry bush. When you spot the young men and women from the media mulling, at an atrociously big distance from the gates of the palace (no one in that mansion will let them in), over the dreams or the nightmares being shaped anew within Bangabhaban, you look up at the heavens. That faint grey spot could be the making of a new dark cloud across the horizon.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Executive Editor, Dhaka Courier.