I was there in the early afternoon of December 11, 1971, at the very first public meeting of the war-time government of Bangladesh at Jessore. It was after the fall of the Jessore Military Brigade Command of the Pakistan Army which fled towards Dhaka, where they were soon to be compelled to surrender to the Joint Command of the Allied Forces of Bangladesh and India on the 16th.
The day was a crisp and sunny winter day. I was informed that Jessore had been liberated and my father, along with other senior members of the provisional war-time government, was to address a public meeting at the Town Hall Maidan. I was ecstatic with joy, and made my way to Jessore to attend and witness that historical event. I did not wish to fail to attend such a phenomenal commemoration in person.
The public meeting was presided over by my father, the then president of Jessore District Awami League, previously the agriculture secretary of East Pakistan Awami League, and a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan in 1962 and 1970. The meeting was addressed by both Syed Nazrul Islam, acting president of Bangladesh in the absence of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and Tajuddin Ahmed, the prime minister.
On December 6 and 7, 1971, the city of Jessore was liberated as the defeated Pakistan Army continued their retreat back to Dhaka, pressed by and unable to withstand the well-coordinated offensive military operation by the joint Armed Forces of Bangladesh and India. Since March 25, 1971, and until that day, the land known as East Pakistan witnessed vicious butchery, barbarism, and genocide, resulting in the indiscriminate murder of innocent Bengali civilians, the atrocious rape of Bengali women, and the flagrant burning and pillaging of the property of the Bengali population in the ruthless, scorched-earth war strategy wielded by the Pakistan Army to compel the Bengali nation into servitude.
The warning that my father, Mohammad Sohrab Hossain, as a member of the Pakistan National Assembly, conveyed unequivocally in the “Ayub House” of the Assembly in Rawalpindi on December 6, 1962, stated that if the Bengali nation continued to be exploited and if the Punjabis continued to plunder the wealth of East Bengal, nothing could stop the secession of East Bengal from Pakistan. I had the historic opportunity to observe the exact actualization of my father’s words.
I had felt emotionally overwhelmed watching my own father on the rostrum on that momentous day, sitting in the centre, flanked by the acting president and the prime minister. With them, over many years, through uncompromising strive, pulverizing labour, obstinate dedication, and the determination to throw away the yoke of slavery and accomplish the legitimate rights of our nation, he had evolved into and emerged as one of the founding fathers of the country established on the blood of three million martyrs.
The world has moved on since then, and we are celebrating our Victory Day, basking in the happiness of the near completion of the Padma Bridge. Though the happiness is not shared universally given the costs incurred -- which critics claim are unusually many-fold higher than reason. Though this alleged suspicion may have been orchestrated with malicious intent, if their assertion is true, the superfluous wastage of public finances is likely to have adverse repercussions in the years to come.
With the dawn of December this year, it has been the 12th month that the Covid pandemic has swept over the planet. On December 31, 2019, WHO’s Country Office in the People’s Republic of China, for the first time, was made aware of the virus that eventually became infamously known as Covid-19, from a media statement posted by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission on their website, on cases of “viral pneumonia” in Wuhan, the capital city of the Hubei province in the People’s Republic of China.
Wuhan is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China. The devastating journey thus began of the atrocious bio-hazard of the century that touched our way of everyday life in a way never before, a notoriety of the passage of a microbe that wiped out more than 1.6 million human lives from the face of the Earth in less than a year’s time.
The Covid pandemic has wreaked havoc and brought untold misery. Among its inexhaustible archives of contrition is the flare-up of and aggravation of extreme conservatism and neo-nationalism, as well as rise of autocracy in the affairs of the states. The neo-nationalism or exclusive nationalism is completely different from traditional nationalism -- such as the “Bengali nationalism” that became the symbol of resistance against Panjabi neo-colonialism for the people of East Bengal within the confines of Pakistan, created when the colonial British Raj left India.
Bengali nationalism
Bangladesh’s war of independence was seeded in the concept and principle of “Bengali nationalism,” reflecting the conventional, inclusive nationalist movement that by definition is politically or culturally motivated -- in this context the cultural movement demanding the recognition of Bengali as the state language may have embroiled both political and cultural concerns either simultaneously or consecutively. In our history, the “Language Movement” preceded the war of independence, forced onto us through the perpetration of a deliberate and planned genocide.
The exclusive neo-nationalism, on the contrary, comes in various forms founded on autocratic dogma, many times under the pretense of democracy. It typically over-emphasizes the national affiliation in the individual’s self-concept, pathologically idealizing and worshiping one’s own group, and ruthlessly suppressing the ambivalent attitudes towards the group/nation or the regime, representing an excessively insular culture and blaming others for its own social ills.
The dramatic saga playing out in the United States at present will have far-reaching and long-lasting repercussions and ramifications on the socio-political-economic foundation of the society in the US and beyond. The loss of 301,000 American lives resulting from the Covid pandemic in the United States of America may be just the tip of iceberg of the disaster consequent to the exclusive neo-nationalism, which is being officiated and honed by the out-going US administration that has been marred by unlawful killings perpetrated by law enforcement agencies, ethnic riots, civil disorders, and unrest throughout the entire year of 2020.
The Brexit agenda in the UK to break the “so-called” shackle of the European Union and pursue their own selfish agenda of English nationalism comes from the same concept of an exclusive form of neo-nationalism. The British government is contemplating legislation to broaden the powers of the British naval police to stop, board, arrest, and even impound EU fishing vessels if they enter the English Channel after a no-deal Brexit, turning the UK from the European Union’s friend to foe in a matter of no time. This irresponsible Sabre-rattling of the “English nationalist” is threatening the British relationship with the rest of Europe; the British are escalating the situation with their battle-ready gunboats prowling the English Channel.
Joy and sadness
The month of December brings both joy and sadness in my life. Joy as millions of Bangladeshis celebrate “Victory Day” in our War of Liberation, inspired and fought in the light of Bengali nationalism, under the dynamic leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his able colleagues. Sadness due to the loss of my mother and my elder brother, a veteran freedom fighter who had died on December 16, our Victory Day, years later. With a mixture of sadness and happiness, I very fondly remember my precious time with my parents and my brother.
On this day of celebration, we must continue to strive for a fair, equitable, corruption-free society in Bangladesh where every human being can live a decent life with dignity, free from poverty and hunger, with access to quality health care and fundamental human rights, protected by the law of the land.
Dr Raqibul Mohammad Anwar is Specialist Surgeon, Global Health Policy and Planning Expert, and Retired Colonel, Royal Army Medical Corps, UK Armed Forces.