A friend of mine recently told me that he had three relatives who were freedom fighters. The last of them died of Covid-19 last year.
“After he died, there is no one left to give me goosebumps with heroic tales of our Liberation War. I will never get that feeling again,” he said.
When he said this, it struck me that the time when there are no more freedom fighters left alive may indeed be fast approaching.
Although the country does not have any official records on who was the youngest participant in the war, Shahidul Islam Lalu from Tangail was the youngest person to be awarded the title of “Bir Bikram.” He died in 2009 at the age of 53 and he would have been 65 years old if he lived to the present day.
When we consider that the average life expectancy in Bangladesh is 71, most freedom fighters are likely to pass on in the next six years. With such a short amount of time on hand, measures to document and preserve their knowledge must be taken in order to carry on the legacy of the Liberation War.
What does the documentation scenario look like now?
According to Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque, the number of freedom fighters in the country currently stands at 160,000. Although this appears to be a significant number, all of them are elderly and many are losing their memories with every passing day.
The largest collection of Liberation War documents that exists in the modern day was prepared under the Project to Document the Liberation War undertaken by the Ministry of Information in 1978. By the end of the project, led by eminent journalist Hasan Hafizur Rahman, two 9,000-page volumes on the war had been published.
Hasan Hafizur in his own writing said: “We have collected documents and data containing approximately 350,000 pages. Now we are publishing only around 15,000 pages of documents and data, so a major portion of the collection will remain unpublished.”
Only documents that were verified thorough intensive fact-checking by the committee were included in the published collection.
Although the documents are an invaluable resource, amalgamations of data and statistics do not carry the same weight as stories from our fathers and grandfathers. Documents cannot convey the raw emotion and passion of those who actually experienced the horrific bloodshed and glorious victory.
Dr Mesbah Kamal, professor at the department of history of Dhaka University, said: “War can be documented in two ways: through accounts from direct participants, or from those who were affected. Although the amount of hearsay is quite substantial, the number of living fighters is decreasing as nature takes its course.
“It is alarming that we are not paying more attention to recording the valuable stories of freedom fighters. When you hear a story from someone in your family or community, you feel the spirit,” he added, stressing the importance of oral accounts.
The professor also pointed out that the experiences of biranganas and female freedom fighters were under-documented.
“Even a few years ago, the biranganas were stigmatized despite their suffering at the hands of Pakistani forces. Women freedom fighters are also under-represented in our records. There are 322 gazetted female freedom fighters in the country, but there is little literature on them, and none of them have been portrayed in cinema or documentaries,” he said.
Numerous initiatives have been taken by government or private organizations, academicians, and learned freedom fighters to improve documentation of the Liberation War. Some of them have received applause for their contribution, such as the Liberation War Museum, but a complete collection on the war still does not exist even 50 years after independence.
Youths are not involved
Dr Kamal said the Shahbagh movement in 2013 showed that youths of the country hold the spirit of independence, but he questioned whether enough had been done to grow their interest in the Liberation War.
“Once upon a time, Bangabandhu was ignored in the curriculum related to the Liberation War, now everything is about Bangabandhu. This has alienated the youths from the struggles of the ordinary people,” he added.
In 2017, a collection of rare documents on the war were uploaded on the Liberation War e-Archive Trust to make them easily available to the people. Although this is a praiseworthy initiative, the archive needs to be made more interactive in this era of multimedia platforms, the professor further said.
“A very good example of the involvement of youths in restoring a nation's history would be an India-based organisation - The 1947 Partition Archives. It is an initiative led by a group of youths who are keeping records of stories from those who went through the partition in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan,” he said.
He called on filmmakers of the country to work hard on making new and meaningful documentaries on the Liberation War and urged the government to support such initiatives.