Pathe Ja Peyechhi
Mohammad Anisur Rahman
Adorn Publication

Mohammad Anisur Rahman's memoirs, for these two volumes are what they essentially are, need to be read for the sheer spontaneity they come wrapped in. The economist, who has been part of the political history of Bangladesh, especially in its early, formative phases, has consistently aroused curiosity about the role he has played in the shaping of his career as also the forging of new economic policies for a country born of war. He might have been expected to come forth, all these years after he helped shape events, with a tome laden with the kind of didacticism, even sermonising, that important men generally are tempted into producing. That Rahman has stayed away from succumbing to conventional temptation is encouraging. His uninhibited narration of the events that went into the making of his life and career is therefore the instrument which makes these volumes rather gripping.
It is the glimpses from a bygone era that shine through in these memoirs. The idealism that once inspired the middle class, the parental concern over the academic careers of children, the intense need to earn the approbation of family and friends through relentless performance are some of the themes that hit the reader. And, of course, the reader clearly empathises with it all, for he and others like him have sprung from a similar phase as also background in Bengali social life. Anisur Rahman's ambitions, cheered on by his stern and yet considerate parents, were then honed at such prestigious academic spots as Harvard. It is old world education, with that dash of enterprise that came along with it, which Rahman recreates here as he speaks of such men as Vassily Leontieff. In the corridors of academia, all testimony to the heritage that higher education in the West has consistently been, Rahman comes across and befriends many individuals who are destined to find perches for themselves in the future. Rahman's future, as he knew all too well, lay in his native Bengal, or East Pakistan as it used to be. His return to Dhaka University was a swift journey back home, for he was bursting with raw energy. Everything he had learned in the West was everything he wished to impart to his students in the department of economics here. It was disappointing, at times, to know that his expectations were not being met. His students failed to keep up with him. But that did not mean any flagging enthusiasm in the teacher. Quantity was not what mattered. And quality was all.
And yet when it came to ground realities, Anisur Rahman noticed that quality all too easily became a casualty to human caprice. The vice chancellor of Dhaka University, unable to accommodate a Marxist academic as chairman of the department of economics, approached Rahman, once a student of the Marxist, to ask him to take the job. A thorough gentleman and cognisant of old, or old-fashioned values, Rahman declined to accept the offer. Obviously, a vice chancellor in the Monem Khan era would not take kindly to such 'rudeness' from a young teacher. He did the next best thing: he began, in his own way, to demonstrate manifest hostility toward Rahman. The young teacher went off to the East West Centre in Hawaii, having earlier resigned because he would not be given leave. Once Hawaii was over, it was to Islamabad that he went, to supervise the development of the economics department at the new federal university in Pakistan's equally new capital. That was in 1967. Barely two years later, it was Air Marshal Nur Khan, deputy chief martial law administrator in the post-Ayub Khan period, who turned to Rahman for advice on restructuring education in the country. Nur Khan and Anisur Rahman respected each other and would probably have made a good team if the former had soon not found his way out of the military regime.
Come March 1971 and Anisur Rahman finds himself in the company of Tajuddin Ahmed, Kamal Hossain, Rehman Sobhan, Mansoor Ali and others in the period when the Awami League is engaged in negotiations with the Yahya Khan junta. As nearly everyone in the group indulges in what appears to be self-congratulation, because the regime has been accepting one demand after another of the Awami League team, Anisur Rahman explodes in fury. It is all a ruse, says he, for the army will crack down the moment it knows the Bengalis, or their leaders, have turned complacent. Ten thousand students, Rahman almost shrieks, will die when the soldiers pounce. He would be proved right before the month is out. And then, like so many others, he would look for ways to get out of Dhaka, indeed out of a province which had through all the gunfire and genocide just declared itself to be independent. On 29 March, Rahman would set out in search of shelter, along with Mustafa Monwar. Rahman would be 'Deen Mohammad' and Monwar would be 'Mokhlesur Rahman'. Fish smugglers would collect two hundred rupees for each of them, to help them cross the frontier as fish, euphemistically speaking.
It was an entire nation at war, and Anisur Rahman was one of the more significant soldiers in the battle for liberty. He would travel on to Calcutta and Delhi and then find his way to America, the goal being a propagation of the Bangladesh cause before the international community. In 1972, the return from exile, followed soon afterward by a return to the university, would not be the end. Rahman, much against his will and therefore much to his discomfort, would be pulled into independent Bangladesh's first planning commission. Of course, there were the conditions he placed before the government. He would go on teaching at the university and would consider the classroom the centre of his universe. The government agreed. For the first time in his career, Anisur Rahman was privy to decision making in the corridors of power. A struggling new state, a makeshift administration, politicians long in opposition suddenly entrusted with historic responsibility --- these were the truths he came to know as the weeks and months went by. Anisur Rahman's candour is refreshing. He recalls the time when the Mujibbadi Chhatra League stole the election to the Dhaka University Central Students Union by a simple, open stratagem: walk off with the ballot boxes. He speaks of the interest shown in his Swanirvar prigramme by the prime minister, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Summoned to Ganobhavan one day, Anisur Rahman is rather taken aback when the prime minister throws him an idea. Bangabandhu would call a news conference where the economist would explain his programme to the country. Rahman is appalled, for he has little wish to have his brainchild commandeered by the government. He declines the offer of the news conference, respectfully, and inwardly knows that he needs to leave the planning commission. Not even a visit by Professor Muzaffar Ahmed and Motia Chwodhury, along with some others, from the National Awami Party to try to convince him to stay on at his job would make him have second thoughts. He would leave.
Pathe Ja Peyechhi is a mirror image of some of the most stirring of times for Bengalis. Anisur Rahman remembers the lonely, doomed struggle put up by Tajuddin Ahmed against the policies of an increasingly pro-West Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. On a lighter note, he recalls the inimitable Debabrata Biswas, whose discomfort before the cameras of Bangladesh Television is enough for him to break with his song and ask Jamil Chowdhury (then chief of the organization) to remove his 'cannons'. A young, spirited Suchitra Mitra brings Tagore afresh to Bangladesh. In his own, pretty much conversational way, Anisur Rahman somehow turns his own story into that of a nation. This is a work that calls for a good slot on your shelf.

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