Forgotten heroes…forgotten promises?

It was a rainy Monday evening -- the monsoon showers poured heavily on Dhaka city, flooding the streets within hours. It was the day that my friend Minu and I had planned to watch the movie Guerilla in the Bashundhara Multiplex cinema. I yearned to watch it on the big screen since there is something special about watching a movie in a theater, where the process is more interactive, given the participatory reaction of the audience. However, I have to confess that, secretly, I was put off by the weather and was on the verge of cancelling the programme.
It was fortuitous that I held on to my resolve and braved the deluge, because Guerilla ended up being a memorable experience. True, I belong to the 1971 generation and my views on anything related to the Liberation War are somewhat tinted by the prism of my personal experiences. Also true, the movie resonated with my spirit and made me relive all the terror-filled, agonising and yet, in many ways, rewarding moments of the War.
Nasiruddin Yousuf Bachchu's direction of Guerilla is a virtuoso performance. Most remarkable is his decision to shoot much of the film on location in a free flowing style. This generated a sense of ownership for the beauty and simplicity of the motherland that the mukti bahinis fought to liberate. Bachchu masterfully weaves the montage of war scenes and experiences like a garland around the main character, Bilkis (portrayed brilliantly by Joya Ahsan). He does this in such an innovative manner that the core story, although perceived through the eyes of Bilkis, is not only hers but one that embraces everyone who contributed to the freedom of Bangladesh. It could be you or me -- as a matter of fact, he depicts many real life characters that we know.
However, the director has been careful not to make this a personal story, but a war story. For example, we do not know if Bilkis' husband is dead, captured or has fled to India. But that does not seem to bother us because the real power of the movie lies, not in its characters, but in the many sacrifices made by the freedom fighters to build a country where Bengalis could live a life of freedom and dignity -- a life which was denied by the Pakistani junta.
A work of art impacts people in different ways. Some like to analyse and judge its merits by its technical perfection, as defined by the book. For many, like me, a painting or a song or a film becomes memorable when it triggers the imagination and creates critical consciousness. Guerilla was such a film. It evoked unique emotions and passions that held my attention for a long time, even after the movie ended. The overriding question that kept cropping up in my mind was: "Why did Bangladeshis, as a nation, fail to live up to the heroism and noble sacrifices that were made in 1971? What about the promise of building a country free of prejudices, inequities and injustices?"
Let's be candid -- the brave Bengalis were fighting not just the Pakistani army, but what the Pakistani leaders represented: the hubris of their racial superiority, the contempt for the language and culture of a people who belonged to their country but were ethnically different, the intolerance for religious diversity and the sheer incapacity to listen to the people's voice. Guerilla made me think hard about all these issues. The "whys," not just the "what's"!
Of course, the atrocities committed by the Pakistanis were monstrous and the movie once again reminds us how beastly human beings, even Bengalis, can become when driven by erroneous ideologies and self-interest (as is evident from the brutal slaughtering of neighbours and fellow villagers by Bengali Razakars). But then, the men and women who made noble sacrifices were not only fighting individuals, their goal was to obliterate the prejudices and evil beliefs from the society. Has this goal been achieved? I am not sure….
As I write this column from the United States, my thoughts drift to the liberation struggle in Vietnam. Despite a vastly superior army, the Americans failed to defeat the Viet Cong guerillas, as they fought against all odds for twenty years. The resilience and tenacity -- and ultimate victory -- of the Vietnamese can be explained by their overwhelming desire to free their country from occupation. Unfortunately, one tends to ignore the lessons of history: the Pakistanis, too, believed that their powerful conventional army could defeat the "ghaddar Muktis" who, according to them, were only paper tigers. Guerilla reminds us that no force can resist a mass patriotic uprising aimed at the pursuit of freedom.
It is interesting that, although Guerilla is a movie about Bangladesh's freedom struggle, there are no dramatic patriotic speeches or long-winded rhetoric about shadhinata (freedom) or deshprem (patriotism). And yet, I stepped out of the theater overwhelmed by one overriding emotion: "shadhinata." If only half the audience came out sharing this feeling, the director and his talented team of cast and crew have indeed succeeded in re-igniting the spirit of 1971!

The writer is a renowned Rabindra Sangeet exponent and a former Employee of the World Bank.