Moudud Ahmed led a charmed life, in the political sense of the term. In his interaction with people, he demonstrated a degree of decency which often eludes many among our political classes. In conversation, he never raised his voice but made sincere attempts to get his point of view across to the person on the other side of the table. It is of course another matter whether he was able to convince others -- in a good number of instances he did not or could not -- but all his arguments came wrapped in politeness.
There are, now that Moudud Ahmed has gone the way of all flesh, all the reasons why an assessment of his politics becomes necessary. He was among the young Bengali students in Britain in the 1960s whose patriotism was unmistakable. It was a group of young people who, even as they studied law, remained acutely aware of the discrimination their fellow Bengalis were subjected to in Pakistan.
Moudud Ahmed returned home and at a time when the Agartala Conspiracy Case threatened to undermine Bengali aspirations and looked as if it would mar the career of an increasingly vocal and rising Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he linked up with the defense team set up to defend the future Bangabandhu and the 34 others accused in the case.
In 1968, therefore, Moudud Ahmed was part of the nationalistic caravan that was beginning to roll in the direction of freedom. When the War of Liberation began in late March 1971, he made his way to Calcutta, where he offered his services to his senior lawyer, Barrister Amir-ul Islam. The latter, whose crucial role in the formation of the Mujibnagar government is part of history, quickly placed Moudud Ahmed in the office of Bangladesh’s postmaster general in the fledgling administration-in-exile. It was on Moudud Ahmed’s watch that the first stamps on the Bangladesh war, designed by Biman Mullick in London, were released to the world.
Considered in its overall form, Moudud Ahmed’s career makes for fascinating and certainly intriguing reading. His opposition to the government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led to his arrest in 1974, though the exact circumstances related to his detention have never been made known. It was obvious at the time that Moudud Ahmed had riled the government, a situation which led to a snapping of his ties with the establishment in Dhaka.
While that is perfectly understandable, what has raised questions over the years is the political trajectory Moudud Ahmed took in the years following the violent coup d’etat of August 1975. The questions are all the more significant because Moudud Ahmed, a politician whose faith in democracy had been well-pronounced, chose to abandon that principle and join the military regimes, in swift succession, of General Ziaur Rahman and General Hussain Muhammad Ershad.
That career path, or call it a radical change in his career-related priorities, was strangely different from the scholarship Moudud Ahmed demonstrated through his research into Bangladesh’s history. His Era of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman remains a good point of reference for those whose interest in Bangladesh’s early post-war history has been of an abiding sort. Another work, Bangladesh: Constitutional Quest for Autonomy, is a recapitulation of the gradual evolution of a movement that would soon transcend to an armed struggle for freedom. A study of Moudud Ahmed’s books is quite at variance, though, with the politics he pursued post-1975, for where his preoccupation in his scholarly works remains a factual and faithful presentation of the historical record, his politics was something else and not necessarily one that made people comfortable.
Moudud Ahmed’s association with the country’s first military ruler, Ziaur Rahman, was a rude shock for many who had thought he could well be a voice for democracy in the future. His presence in the government was, for earlier watchers of history in pre-1971 Pakistan, a reminder of the political classes that had joined hands with the regime of Ayub Khan in the 1960s and so strengthened illegitimacy. Observed in such light, Moudud Ahmed’s support for and participation in the Zia regime was a move toward according legitimacy to it.
More worrying was the fact that at a time when General Zia went around upending the fundamental principles of the constitution, notably secularism and socialism, Moudud Ahmed did not raise his voice in protest.
There were others too with him, Mohammadullah, Kazi Zafar Ahmed, and KM Obaidur Rahman for instance. It was a sad phase in national history.
Moudud Ahmed’s political somersaults were impediments to a career that could have reached greater heights had he maintained his independence as part of the broad secular political opposition. His arrest by the new regime of General Ershad was soon followed by his release and quickly capped by his joining the dictator’s government. In effect, Moudud Ahmed’s career truly took off in the Ershad era, a phase which saw him ascend the ladder from deputy prime minister to prime minister and eventually to vice president.
He was among the few men in Bangladesh’s history who have occupied the office of vice president, the others being Syed Nazrul Islam during the War of Liberation; Mohammadullah, who served as vice president under Khandakar Moshtaq Ahmed between August-November 1975 and again under President Abdus Sattar for barely 24 hours before the coup of March 1982; Justice Nurul Islam, who was Ershad’s first vice president; and Justice Abdus Sattar, who as vice president took over as acting president after Zia’s assassination in May 1981.
Moudud Ahmed’s resignation from the office of vice president on the morning of December 6, 1990 paved the way for President Ershad to appoint Chief Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed as the new vice president. Moments later, when Ershad resigned in the face of a mass upsurge, the new vice president took over as Bangladesh’s acting president.
Politics did not end for Moudud Ahmed in 1990. He would return to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, rejoin Begum Khaleda Zia, and serve the party till the end. He was law minister in the BNP-Jamaat alliance government till October 2006.
Moudud Ahmed’s comprehension of Bangladesh’s political history remains impressive, as his works make obvious.
He could have scaled the peaks of prominence had his politics stayed clear of any association with military regimes and with politicians whose preoccupation after August 1975 was a systematic and deliberate dismantling of the secular structure of Bengali nationhood as it had evolved through the 1960s and reached a fullness in the mid-1970s.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.