GROUND REALITIES

The betrayal question . . .

26 November 2013, 18:10 PM

UPDATED 27 November 2013, 11:55 AM

Syed Badrul Ahsan

KAZI Zafar Ahmed is an angry man these days. His ire has been directed at General Ershad, who he believes has betrayed the nation by opting for elections and deciding to stay beside Sheikh Hasina and her government. One certainly understands Kazi Zafar, especially the emotions which today have led him into repudiating Ershad. But then, there is the very proper question of how this one-time leftist politician has conducted himself over the years. Betrayal, you see, is not just Ershad's. There have been many others in our political arena who have switched sides with abandon and who have never thought of the damage they do to their self-esteem by indulging in such manifestly unacceptable political behaviour. In his youth, Kazi Zafar was a prominent leftist politician whose admiration for Moulana Bhashani was palpable. Then came a time when he branched out to form his own organisation. He called it the United People's Party, or UPP. It was a time when people believed they could glimpse something of the future in Zafar. But that hope was to fade soon enough, when Zafar cheerfully linked up with General Ziaur Rahman in the latter's newly cobbled Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Zafar stayed loyal to Zia till the last day of the military ruler's life. After that, he demonstrated his loyalty to the general's widow, to a point where in 1983 he accompanied Khaleda Zia to Bangabhaban for a meeting with General Ershad. Khaleda Zia refused to sit down despite Ershad's appeals to her. She stood there for a few minutes, gave the new military ruler some tongue-lashing before stalking off, Kazi Zafar in tow. Soon afterward, Zafar joined the Ershad regime and rose swiftly to the heights. He ended up being Ershad's prime minister. That is part of the story of betrayal in Bangladesh. At the risk of sounding repetitive, one cannot but speak of other political betrayals in this country. Captain (retired) Abdul Halim Chowdhury and M. Korban Ali were entrusted by their parties, the BNP and the Awami League, to liaise with the Ershad regime in the early 1980s. Neither of them kept that trust. Both walked into the Ershad camp, became ministers in his government and lost touch with the country. Both men are dead. There are not many to remember them. The tale of betrayal extends to other men in the world of our politics. Prof. Yusuf Ali, who ensured a place for himself in history through reading out the Proclamation of Independence at Mujibnagar on April 17, 1971 and who subsequently served as education minister in Bangabandhu's government, linked up with General Zia's BNP in subsequent years. He is as good as forgotten too, much like Mohammadullah, who graduated from deputy speaker to speaker to president in the Bangabandhu era. Post-August 15, he became part of the BNP, with little thought to the consequences of such action. Betrayal has also been a powerful narrative in Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto remains the best instance of a politician who can easily turn his back on his benefactors and feel little or no guilt about it. He came into government when President Iskandar Mirza took him into Pakistan's central cabinet following the coup d'etat of October 7, 1958. A grateful Bhutto wrote to Mirza, extolling his virtues in superlative terms, to a point where he informed the president that history would have a place for him greater than that of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. A mere twenty days later, with Mirza removed from office, Bhutto turned his loyalty to General Ayub Khan. He was to betray Ayub in the mid-1960s through spreading the falsehood of a secret clause concluded by Ayub and Indian premier Lal Bahadur Shastri in the Tashkent declaration. Betrayal and ingratitude have been staple food for a number of politicians in our part of the world. The most disturbing instance here is certainly that of Khandakar Moshtaque Ahmed. He was always around Bangabandhu, even wept copious tears at the funeral of Bangabandhu's father in 1974. And yet it was through his conspiracy that the Father of the Nation was done to death in August 1975. Moshtaque's betrayal would come full circle through the murder of the four national leaders, all of whom had been his associates for decades, in prison. Betrayal, for individuals like Moshtaque and Taheruddin Thakur, has been a pillar of politics. They are remembered, if at all, for the gruesome crimes they committed thirty eight years ago. Betrayal is what men like Raja Tridiv Roy committed in the aftermath of 1971. The Chakma raja did not return home to the Chittagong Hill Tracts at the end of the war in 1971 but stayed on in Pakistan -- to serve that country as a minister and as an ambassador. Betrayal is what Zia and Ershad demonstrated in their days in power. The first military ruler merrily sliced through the constitution, giving us a state that ruthlessly stole our secularism from us. The second gave the state a communal garb through giving it a religion. In both instances, it was the constitution that was whipped into emasculation. To betray is to destroy the foundations of social decency and political progress. Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Anwar Zahid betrayed Ershad by turning their backs on him. Moudud Ahmed has switched political loyalties with such alacrity that it is difficult to keep count. Shah Moazzem Hossain was in the Awami League, Democratic League and Jatiyo Party, in that order, before walking into the BNP. The story will go on -- until good men come together in defence of national causes. The writer is Executive Editor, The Daily Star. E-mail: [email protected]