Our 1971, our allies and our truths

A few individuals are outraged that some veteran Indian military officers were here recently to be part of Bangladesh's Independence Day celebrations. And they were outraged because they believe, and have always believed, that India has had nothing to do with our liberation in 1971. Of course we do not subscribe to that opinion, for it flies in the face of everything decent and everything that reminds us of values.
For anyone to suggest, nearly four decades after the Indian army joined forces with the Mukti Bahini to free Bangladesh of Pakistani colonial repression, that the Indians were not involved with our struggle seems like careless thinking. Worse, it makes you wonder why people who have always tried to convey an impression of being analytical about history, who have watched history unfold in their very presence, should now sound so bitter when it comes to acknowledging the truth.
And the truth is that without the Indian military's intervention in the war, the emergence of Bangladesh as a free nation in December 1971 would well nigh be difficult. Now, of course, you could argue, as so many of us have always done, that a greater sense of purpose could have been injected into our nationhood had we been allowed the privilege of waging a long war of attrition against Pakistan and had we, in the manner of the Vietnamese, struggled long and hard before ejecting the foreign occupiers out of our land.
The Vietnamese first forced the French into retreat through Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Twenty-one years later, they repeated their triumph through forcing the Americans to leave their country in all the rapidity they could muster. It could well be that if we were given the opportunity to wage the War of Liberation in our own way, we might have waged that war for years on end.
Long wars do something wonderful to a nation's soul: they leave it tested for endurance and eventually give it solidity of purpose. A twilight struggle is a formidable step to a collective understanding of history.
But then, history always moves along in its own distinctive, inexorable ways. And about 1971, do not forget that in nine months the Pakistanis had done away with three million Bengalis. Had they been given more time, they would have murdered millions more. Yes, we agree that men shape history. But there are also the moments when history gets ahead of the individual and pulls them along with it.
In essence, therefore, what happened in 1971 was two-fold. On the one hand, we outlined the way our history as a nation was to be; and on the other there were the currents and crosscurrents that added their own weight to the making of our history.
And so it was that the Indian people and government, as our allies, came in to provide us with all the moral and material support we needed at that point in time in order for our struggle for liberty to gather critical mass. It is a truth you cannot deny. If you do, you run the very grave risk of undermining the very truth upon which you happen to be a free individual today.
Now, these men who have tried telling us that General Jacob and his friends had no contribution to make to the rise of this independent republic we call Bangladesh, tend to forget that a mass of citizens far greater than any crowd they can gather on their behalf actually remembers the way things happened.
Ten million Bengalis found refuge in India. Our guerrillas learned the art of warfare at training camps in India. It was the Indian government, which agreed to the operation of the Mujibnagar government-in-exile on its territory. At a time when the Nixon administration and the Chinese, to say nothing of countries in the Middle East, stayed ludicrously hostile to the Bangladesh struggle, it was the government of India and the political leadership in the Soviet Union which helped us disseminate our message of freedom to the world beyond our fields of battle.
These are truths we have not forgotten, despite the many and diverse differences we have since had with the Indians on matters of policy. Think back on the 1940s. The liberation of France, of other nations in Europe, was accelerated by the solidarity the Allied Powers demonstrated for the people of these occupied lands. No one has ever suggested that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had little or nothing to do with the restoration of French sovereignty. Charles de Gaulle administered the Free French government from London; and in subsequent years he ran into major disagreements with Moscow, London and Washington.
No one in his country has ever stooped to the parochial through suggesting that the foreigners who assisted France in regaining its liberty had no role to play in 1944. Look around you. There are the instances of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Timor Leste and a host of other nations coming by freedom with not a little help from their friends abroad. Kuwaitis will forever remember the coalition of nations that freed them from Iraqi occupation in 1991.You do not see these nations getting into denial mode, for gratitude is what defines their perception of their history.
Ours happens to be a great nation in the sense of its being a symbol of liberality. Pore through its history one more time and you will have cause to arise in you yet once again the truth of how its culture has emerged from a complex and healthy mix of thoughts. Ours is not a land where tribalism is the norm. Cannibalism is behaviour we do not condone. Ours is a society, which has always acknowledged the many contributions made to the growth of its heritage by a diversity of sources. The problem, though, comes in when anti-historical forces try to spring upon us the sordid untruths we could all do without.
Please recall that, in 1974, the communist Abdul Haq, having refused to accept Bangladesh as it came to be in December 1971, felt little embarrassment in soliciting Pakistan's material help in dislodging the government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Such men called themselves Marxists, with that pronounced pro-Beijing leaning, and would go on calling their organisation the East Pakistan Communist Party.
There are men who look upon themselves as intellectuals in this country, individuals who have unabashedly told us that the Bangladesh war was but a struggle between two dogs, in that Cold War perspective. It is language that unnerves you. And it is again language that depicts before you a class that stands forever ready to undermine the truth you and I have lived with all these years.
There are journalists who wax eloquent in their assessments of the arduous political struggle waged by Bengalis for autonomy and then political freedom from Pakistan. And yet, these very men will have nothing to do with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. They struggle mightily to convince themselves that Mujib is not Bangabandhu. For them, on November 3, 1975, it was not four national leaders, but four Awami League politicians, who were assassinated in prison.
Of course, it takes all kinds of men and women to people this world. But when absurdity is carried to improbable heights, threatening to make a casualty of history, you cannot but go red in the face before the rest of the world. You can go on excoriating foreign diplomats over their "interference" in your domestic affairs. But before you do so, ask yourself if such "interference" was not a direct offshoot of our own bad politics. You can choose to describe the visit of the Indian war veterans as a disgrace. How much of disgrace envelopes us a nation when you speak thus is a point you might wish to dwell on in your more sober moments.
Our circumscribed geography should be no reason for us to mutate into a society of narrow minds. We shoot ourselves in the foot when we deliberately choose to repudiate the contribution of other nations to our struggle for liberty. Ingratitude drills holes in our morality.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.