Who is afraid of Joy Bangla?

BNP's statement on the unprecedented youth-led rally at the Shabagh Square (Projonmo Chattar), that caught the nation's imagination, defies logic.
"Questions and serious confusion have arisen about neutrality of the [Shabagh] gathering," said the BNP statement, "due to chanting of a slogan that was used during the Liberation War, but lost its general acceptability for being made too much partisan in the post-independence years."
Too much partisan, because BNP and its ally Jamaat chose to abandon the Liberation War slogan, while the Awami League and their allies did not? What compelled the BNP-Jamaat forces to banish the slogan that inspired millions of freedom fighters and became a call for determination of hope for the people during the Liberation War? Are they as afraid of the slogan as were the enemy forces in 1971?
How can one forget that the full-throated sound of Joy Bangla struck terror in the hearts of enemies of the liberation fighters in 1971? My contemporaries will remember that Pakistanis in Dhaka and abroad at that time referred to the liberation forces (Mukti Bahini) as the Joy Bangla Force.
The cruel twist of history, with the ignominy of the killing of the Father of the Nation and the coup d' etat of 1975, banished Joy Bangla as an assertion of pride and valour. Joy Bangla was replaced by Bangladesh Zindabad as the celebratory slogan for public occasions. Not that Zindabad was wrong, but how could this compare with the evocative power and historic significance of Joy Bangla? And can one be blamed for suspecting that the ban on the slogan was an attempt to turn the clock back and express nostalgia for the days of Pakistan Zindabad?
Even after an elected government was restored in 1991, Zindabad remained the sanctioned slogan, and Joy Bangla remained banned. Do we need to wonder why? The post-1975 military rulers and the political parties that were shaped on the anvil of military rule were not just unenthusiastic, but positively averse, to a slogan that evoked the spirit and ideology of liberation. How else can one explain the allergy to the words that inspired the liberation fighters and bolstered the morale of the people?
General Ershad, who harboured poetic pretensions, indeed had an ear for the evocative resonance of Bangla words in his naming of residential colonies and buildings around Dhaka while he was president. But he carefully avoided pairing the two words Joy Bangla and bestowing any official significance on them during his rule.
This situation prevailed until 2008, except for an interregnum between 1996 and 2000, when the coalition led by Awami League was installed in the government.
I recall that in 1996, after the new government was elected, a national education conference was held in Dhaka where several renowned educationists from the region were invited. The then Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, inaugurated the conference. Indian educationist Anil Bordia, a former secretary of education of the government of India, concluded his speech with the words Joy Bangla, in an expression of solidarity and friendship. The Bengali daily Inquilab made it a point to observe the next day that the Indian speaker had uttered the words Joy Bangla in his speech, which was reminiscent to the reporter of Jai Hind, victory to India.
I also recall that in a civil society gathering organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue prior to the aborted general election in 2006, A.M.A. Muhith, the current finance minister, concluded his comments with the words Joy Bangla. Some of the participants remarked that Mr. Muhith made the discussion unnecessarily controversial by bringing in “Joy Bangla." Unnecessarily controversial!
Should we not ask why exactly people of certain political persuasion were, and remain averse, to the evocative words Joy Bangla -- the words that struck fear in the hearts of the enemy of liberation; words that provided a boost of adrenalin to the freedom fighters; the words that should continue to be an assertion of pride and identity for citizens of Bangladesh. What exactly are they afraid of?

The author writes on education and development.