Tag: Mujibur Rahman

Is Bangladesh History Headed For A Revision?

By Kunal Bose

Many in Bangladesh calling the shots now have in their wisdom liked the unrest, killings and chaos leading to a change in the government as “revolution.” Going a step further, they say the change amounts to the country’s second liberation. What, however, the world had witnessed during the protest period was great degrees of senseless violence, including the highhandedness of the state machinery in restoring order, communal strife and destruction of public and private property.

Without questioning the earnestness of participating students to eliminate the malice in the system and justification of protest points, it can be safely said, their movement was infiltrated by fundamentalists, communalists and lumpen elements. In fact, their actions gave the movement a bad name.

Marxist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara said: “The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated. One cannot lead a revolution through common sense or gut.” Certainly, the Bangladeshi protesters have failed to live up to the Guevara standard. Guevara also said true revolutionaries would necessarily be “guided by a great feeling of love.” That was also lacking among the protesters. Then there is a great deal of controversy over describing the dethroned Bangladeshi leader now in exile as fascist. This calls for some cogitation.

A fascist has one too many abominable attributes. But basically, someone to be called a fascist will be found to be anti-liberal and anti-left. A fascist leader will be promoting a nationalist dictatorship and he will have a positive disposition to violence. Mass mobilisation besides, he will be prone to building himself as a charismatic authoritarian leader who overtly and covertly will stay engaged in snuffing out all critics at all times. Some leaders will wear democratic mask but their actions will give out their fascist bearings. Since her resignation as prime minister and the army aided fleeing the country for friendly neighbour India as a result of unrelenting protests turning violent with students in the forefront, Sheikh Hasina to her acute discomfiture finds that her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is called a fascist by several leaders of the interim government.

The present dispensation in Bangladesh is well aware that Mujibur Rahman’s place in the country’s history is secure. But why not make a campaign to give him a bad name so that he is at least half hanged. The liberals around the world were mortified the other day when the Attorney General of the interim government Muhammad Asaduzzaman told the country’s high court, among many other disturbing things of far-reaching political and social import, that the government wanted revocation of the 15th amendment of the Constitution declaring Mujibur Rahman as the ‘father of the nation.’ The AG while acknowledging Mujibur Rahman’s “contributions to our liberation war” says, the conferment of such a title to him “contradicts the spirit of constitutional inclusivity…. Moreover, the amendment betrays the sacrifices of martyrs like Abu Syed and Mugdho.” The two were student leaders.

Later at a Press conference, the AG made the emphatic statement that the government rejects the proposition that all that led to the emergence of Bangladesh was due to one individual. What regrettably the AG failed to appreciate was that how much the present administration might try to besmirch the image of Bangabandhu, his place remains secure in the pantheon of modern world political leaders. Even among those opposed to the Awami League, which is to be faulted on many counts, governance standard in particular and the Exchequer being drained of funds because of corrupt practices of some ministers and bureaucrats, are to be found many strongly disapproving of the AG’s snide attempt to make references to some martyred student leaders in the same breath as Mujibur Rahman.

As it would happen, ahead of the AG deliberating on the alleged infirmities of the 15th amendment, the government had allowed removal of Mujibur Rahman portrait from the Durbar Hall of Bangabhavan and government offices, for being a ‘fascist.’

ALSO READ: Muhammad Yunus – Walking A Tightrope

In a shocking demonstration of heroics at the height of student agitations across the country, misguided students along with gatecrashing lumpen pulled down the statues of Bangabandhu at several places. Their attempt was to diminish the physical visibility of Mujibur Rahman. Many observers of the Bangladeshi scene fear that there may already be insidious moves to rewrite the history of the country born in March 1971 following a brutal war Bengalis fought against the Pakistani army, undermining Mujibur Rahman’s central role in ending Pakistani tyranny.

In fact, there is reason to be concerned about the AG saying in his deposition in the court that in no way the 1971 victory was to be exclusively credited to one individual. Is not that enough of a hint that in the coming days the country’s official history would undergo revision? The interim government considers the conferment of ‘father of the nation’ title to Mujibur Rahman in the preamble of the constitution using the 15th amendment amounts to “deviation from the original spirit of the constitution,” an official spokesman contended recently.

Let’s not get into the semantics of the 15th amendment that its continuation is a negation of the “spirit of liberation war” and an assault on “democracy and the rule of law,” as alleged by the interim government. What, however, is for sure is that the country’s political, social and economic structure will undergo profound changes and for the worse if the pillars of secularism, socialism and Bengali nationalism are removed from the Constitution. It is disappointing that in this time and age, the argument is advanced that the idea of secularism should be dropped in favour of unwavering faith in Allah since around 90 per cent Bangladeshis are Muslim.

According to the 2022 census, of the country’s total population of 165.15 million, the Hindus constitute 7.95 per cent. Even under the oversight of Sheikh Hasina, the Hindus would sporadically come under attack and their places of worship vandalised because of the intolerance of fundamentalists. It was not for nothing the government in October 2022 made a proclamation guaranteeing the security of the Hindu minority community.

As it would happen, for no reasons, the Hindus became the target of attack and some of their religious places were damaged during the July-August agitation that saw the end of Sheikh Hasina regime. Unfortunately, instead of sustaining a genuine campaign against religious intolerance, the country’s AG was advocating deletion of ‘secular’ and ‘socialism’ in the preamble of the Constitution. Yes, there were occasions when chief adviser Muhammad Yunus would visit Hindu temples and give messages that all minority communities would be ensured peaceful living and their properties protected.

Besides the Hindus, the Christians in Bangladesh too have the feeling of insecurity. All the minority communities want Yunus not to stop at making symbolic visits to Hindu places of worship and politically correct statements, but met out exemplary punishments to the miscreants. Donald Trump during his election campaign expressed his disappointment over the persecution of the Hindus and the Christians in Bangladesh in strongest possible words. Aware that Bangladesh is earning a bad name globally, the media savvy Yunus dismissed attacks on Hindus as baseless propaganda.

No one knows for sure how much authority Yunus actually wields in the government. The Nobel laureate was chosen to create ‘ideal condition’ to hold the next parliamentary elections because of his reputation as a liberal economist who was a banker to the poorest of the poor. Did Yunus himself choose the three new advisers with alleged links to extremist groups or was there pressure on him from an unidentified power centre to induct the controversial trio? What certainly did not enhance the image of the interim government was the open voicing of disapproval and disappointment over the new appointments by student groups who engineered the fall of Sheikh Hasina government.

Friendly Neighbourhood Bangladesh@50

By Mahendra Ved

Fifty years is a long time, enough to look back and ruminate over the present, and Bangladesh’s emergence after a bloody struggle that changed South Asia’s map in 1971 is a good landmark.

The region has changed, and yet, little has changed if you look at millions living in poverty. Their governments pay them pennies compared to the pounds of preference the few get. Life expectancy has increased, but so have calamities, both natural and man-made.

In geostrategic terms, the heat of Cold War prevails. Russia, the erstwhile Soviet Union’s remnant, is replaced by a more aggressive China that has deep pockets and bigger ambitions. China has already gained access to the oil-rich Gulf and to the Indian Ocean. Ranged on the other side are Joe Biden’s ‘pivot’ and the just-emerging Quad. That lends importance to the largest portion humanity residing in the region.

Both alliances are expensive propositions, also designed to be exclusive. Does one have to join one or the other to stay afloat? During his Bangladesh visit last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi projected the Southeast Asian model (Asean) for South Asia, suggesting that there can be smart, nuanced tweaking. But only that much, perhaps. He seemed to think beyond trade and transit.

On the ground, however, one can’t really say if South Asia — and the world itself — are a better place to live. Not with Covid-19 and the resultant war over vaccine-ing the pandemic. Not when economies are struggling to revive car manufacturing and civil aviation, but millions walk hundreds of miles to jobless safety of their homes. The contradiction was never so stark when you look back at 1971.

Fifty years ago, the world helped India to feed and shelter ten million refugees pouring in from the then East Pakistan. It responded to India’s huge effort at public diplomacy that brought together the likes of Pandit Ravi Shankar, Yehudi Menuhin and Beatle George Harrison to stage the “Bangladesh” campaign. People like Edward Kennedy chipped in. They sought to open the eyes of the Western governments blinded by cold war compulsions. When Bangladesh was liberated, finally, Andres Malraux called India the “mother”, who embraced her children no matter who they are or where they come from.

ALSO READ: Bangladesh – The Next Asian Tiger

We now live in a world divided by ‘nationalist’ barriers. On the day Modi embarked on his Bangladesh visit, his government told the Supreme Court of India, in the context of the Rohingyas from Myanmar, the current unwanted lot, that India “cannot be the refugee capital of the world.”

At geopolitical level, South Asia remains as divided as it was half-a-century back, depending upon which way you look. Everyone was, and remains, non-aligned – only the movement itself is dead. South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) remains dormant, a hostage to India-Pakistan rivalry. Common cultures help maintain a semblance of unity. But they are hostage to faith-based extremism and violence.  Democracy is dodgy, limited to electoral games, while the rich-poor gap keeps widening.

Bangladesh is celebrating fifty year of hard-won independence, which also marks the centenary of its founding leader, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. At the helm is his daughter, Sheikh Hasina, the longest-serving Premier who has provided political stability and helped unleash economic development, making her country Number One on several human development counts.

But huge challenges confront her, not the least religious extremism in a nation of pious, conservative Muslims. Strong cultural mores, love for Bengali language and the considerable position women enjoy in the country’s economic well-being, give Bangladesh a unique place, not just in South Asia, but also in the Islamic world.

It helps India to stay close to a smaller, but self-assured, neighbour that, under Hasina’s stewardship has been most friendly. The two have learnt to resolve disputes and problems that can naturally arise along a 4,300 km border. Both sides need to work to maintain the high comfort levels in relationship that can grow to provide a role model for the region.

That it took them half-a-century to restore the mutual access that was disrupted after the 1965 India-Pakistan war shows that precious time was lost. With road, rail and sea infrastructure being expanded, the two can build on to mutual and regional advantage.  The Modi visit has seen pacts on vaccines to rains, technology to nuclear power.

Agree, geopolitics cannot be ignored. This is where Modi’s citing the Asean model provides a pointer for closer and wider economic relations. India needs to have a significant role in seeing Bangladesh graduate out of the LDC (less developed country) status in 2026.  

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Defence cooperation where China dominates is almost a new area for India. Past Bangladesh governments have fought shy of Indian defence supplies and cooperation for fear of being attacked as India’s ‘agents’. With her opponents marginalized, Hasina seems to have shed this reservation. India needs to move carefully on this if it wants to compete with the Chinese, given their money power and a better delivery record. Successes with Bangladesh could set examples for India in its neighbourhood.

India has invested billions to earn goodwill in the last decade. Modi did well, with an eye on the future, to offer scholarships to the young and invited entrepreneurs to come and invest in India. Economic interest in each other is the key, if only it can be worked and extended to the larger region. Bangladesh provides the jumping board.  

Both harked back to the past, but in different ways. Modi’s reference to “effort and important role” played by Indira Gandhi in 1971 was niggardly, to say the least. He belittled it further with a “me too” about his own having staged a Satyagraha as a youth. He may have. Mention of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in that context was a party add-on.

Old-timers would recall how opposition leaders those days had adopted postures as per their ideology, picking holes while broadly supporting the Indira government’s efforts. Some impatiently wanted her to launch an instant attack on Pakistan. You can expect only this much grace from our politicos those days, and now, especially with elections in Assam and West Bengal. Mercifully, the Bengali-speaking Assamese, allegedly illegal migrants, were not called ‘termites’ during the current campaign.

The missing link was the Congress, now marginalized at home. It was once a movement in East Bengal during the anti-British struggle and gave prominent leaders to the entire region. The era of Indira Gandhi, Jyoti Basu and Pranab Mukherjee is gone. India, whatever the new leadership, needs to build on it, not belittle it.

The year 1971 was tumultuous. It gave India its first military victory in centuries. It forced surrender of 93,000 soldiers, yet quit it after three months. This remains unique. It gave birth to a nation. Those of us who witnessed it can count themselves lucky.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Bangladesh – The Next Asian Tiger

By Mahendra Ved

Last December, after witnessing Bangladesh’s ‘Bijoy Divas’, the day in 1971 Pakistani military had surrendered to Indian and Bangladeshi joint command, I experienced a sad, solemn moment at the home of its founding father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He was assassinated along with 20 of his family members on August 15, 1975.

On that fateful night of August 14-15, a group of serving and retired Bangladesh Army officers had, in a planned conspiracy, stormed this house located in Dhanmondi Residential Area. After killing other inmates including his wife, three sons, one of them just ten, and two daughters-in-law, one of them pregnant, they confronted Mujib as he came down from the second floor bedroom.

They demanded he resign. When he refused, he was gunned down. Bullet marks bear testimony and rose petals spread where Mujib fell remind of the mayhem. Then posted at Dhaka, I had reported that coup d’etat. As memories came rushing, the passage of almost 45 years couldn’t steel my senses. I cried while signing the Visitors’ Book.

India had played a key role in 1971. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government hosted ten million refugees. On diplomatic front, she could persuade lawmakers like the US’ Edward Kennedy, sections of the international media, artistes like violinist Yehudi Menuhin and philosophers like France’s Andre Malraux. But she could not shake the Western governments driven by Cold War bias.  

Signing the Friendship and Peace Treaty with the then Soviet Union, India, when attacked, responded with full military fury. Its confidence showed at the massive rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan that Indira addressed, with fighter jets providing air cover.

The two-week war ended with surrender of 93,000 Pakistani soldiers. It was the swiftest and most decisive outcome of a war since the World War II. And precisely three months later, the Indian Army left, its departing columns saluting Mujib. There is no precedence.

Viewed in the backdrop of the Cold War, this was a debacle for the West. Bangladesh was not recognized for long by the West and the Islamic world. An unrepentant Henry Kissinger called Mujib “history’s favourite fool.”

That Mujib’s assassination, like Chile’s Salvadore Allende, was a conspiracy is glossed over today, post-Cold war. American journalist Lawrence Lifschultz, in his book ‘Bangladesh: An Unfinished Revolution’, writes that the “CIA station chief in Dhaka, Philip Cherry, was actively involved in the killing of the Father of the Nation—Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.” Cherry, of course, denied this. His boss, the US Ambassador, said he was unaware. But, among the many pointers, one is of Cherry’s woman colleague being friendly to Major Shariful Haq Dalim, one of the “killer majors”, who announced on the radio Mujib’s killing and the success of the coup.

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Final touches to the conspiracy were given during Dhaka visit of the first Pakistani trade delegation barely ten days before it unravelled. It included a retired Pakistan Army major general, a former Intelligence chief. As per official itinerary, the delegation met Khandaker Moshtaque Ahmed, then Commerce Minister. Within hours of Mujib’s assassination, Moshtaque became the President.

Moshtaque replaced the national slogan “Joy Bangla” with “Bangladesh Zindabad”. He was removed in November 1975 after he had signed the Indemnity Ordinance that blocked any punishment to the “killer majors”. Two decades later, after Hasina Government took office, the National Assembly repealed it.

In office, Mujib left a mixed record. An astute politician and agitator, his experience of and hold over governance were poor. He fought against heavy odds, even natural calamities like drought and flood during his short tenure that witnessed chaos and food shortages. Bangladesh came to be called an “international basket case.”

Daughters Hasina and Rehana escaped the massacre as they were in Germany. They were hosted for six years at a safe house in New Delhi, protected from hostile governments in Dhaka. This has been a less-known chapter of India helping in the well-being of Bangladesh.

This contemporary history, it seems, is poised to take a full circle. Pakistan and Bangladesh are set to normalize relations, almost half-a-century after they were violently snapped. A thaw is building. Imran Khan last month phoned Hasina to invite her to Islamabad.

This will be epochal for the generation of Indians that suffered while hosting ten million refugees in 1971, paying Refugee Relief Tax. Those who fought and families of those who died in the conflict that year, may find this heart-breaking.

But shorn of Indian sentiments, and that of Bangladesh’s own freedom fighters, this is also inevitable when seen from a larger prism. After all, Vietnam, last century’s most violated nation, has normalized ties with the US.

ALSO READ: Pak Bid To Court Bangladesh Will Fall Flat

Times are a-changing. The US is about to hand over Rashed Chowdhury, one of the “killer majors”, to be hanged by Dhaka, so that the latter doesn’t get too close to Beijing!

The regional context explains it better. There is definitely a nudge from China that has crossed the Himalayas. It is wooing all of South Asia, once India’s backyard, with its deep pockets and political determination.

For Pakistan, if the Indian enemy’s enemy (China) has been a long-time friend and now a saviour, then the enemy’s friend (Bangladesh) should be more so. It would be is getting back at India.

Arguably, Pakistan under Khan and his mentors, the Army, is trying to cleanse its image as militancy hotbed. Unable to sell its line to the world since India ended Kashmir’s special status, reaching out to Bangladesh serves multiple purposes: a) it can hope to be seen as a conciliator in the western eye and also please the Muslim ummah, b) it can in the long run hope to drive a wedge between Delhi and Dhaka when the latter is already peeved with the Modi Government’s Hindutva agenda and; c) it can tug at the sentiments of those that once lived as part of Pakistan and enjoyed privileges.

Although Khan renewed invitation to Hasina to visit Pakistan, it seems unlikely for now as she prepares to lead Bangladesh into 50th anniversary celebrations, already underway. She wouldn’t like to answer this query: liberation from whom? Would she invite Khan to the celebrations, the way her father had invited Z A Bhutto to Dhaka in 1974?

A rush is unlikely. Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdul Momen asked the Pakistani envoy who met him that Pakistan formally apologize for 1971. Khan can’t sell this to the army, forget his people.

Undoubtedly, it is for Bangladesh to decide how to respond to Pakistan’s overtures. Separation from Pakistan was not only due to political and economic discrimination. Bengalis had shed blood to preserve their language and culture. That ethos sustains among emotion-driven Bangladeshis. It was evident while fighting the Islamist extremists.

One thing is clear. Bangladesh is not Pakistan’s neglected kid brother. Pakistani scholar Pervez Hoodbhoy last year extolled Bangladesh’s strides in numerous areas that have eluded his country.

He sees Bangladesh as the next Asian Tiger. Its population graph has reversed in Pakistan’s comparison. The health indicators are positive. “Bangladesh and Pakistan are different countries today because they perceive their national interest very differently. Bangladesh sees its future in human development and economic growth,” says Hoodbhoy.

“For Pakistan, human development comes a distant second. The bulk of national energies remain focused upon check-mating India. Relations with Afghanistan and Iran are therefore troubled; Pakistan accuses both of being excessively close to India. But the most expensive consequence of the security state mindset was the nurturing of extra state actors in the 1990s. Ultimately they had to be crushed after the APS massacre of Dec 16, 2014.” This, Hoodbhoy points out, “coincidentally, was the day Dhaka had fallen 43 years earlier.”

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com