He showed us the way to liberty. He led us to the valley of freedom. And then he was murdered in foul conspiracy. He died all alone, along with his loving spouse, his dear sons, his soft-spoken daughters-in-law, his devoted brother, and so many others.
On that dark dawn, only Brigadier Jamiluddin Ahmed went forth to try to save him. No one else came to his assistance. None of us went out on to the streets, to his home, to see that he was safe, or to drive his assassins out of town. We who had prayed for him in the dark days of 1971, we who had given him a rapturous welcome home in January 1972 --- we stayed home, shaking with fear, with no thought to saving the life of the greatest Bengali of all time.
On August 15, 1975, we failed Bangabandhu miserably.
Our loyalty to him came into legitimate question on the day. A bunch of murderers attired in soldiers’ uniforms took his life and the lives of his family -- and we stayed home. An arch conspirator in his cabinet seized power, called the killers children of the sun -- and we did nothing. On August 15, all of us let the Father of the Nation down. Each one of us betrayed him.
That is the unvarnished truth. Yes, over the decades we have paid homage to him, we have sung his praises, we have extolled his role in the making of our history. But on that day in August 1975? The three services chiefs, the leading figures of the Rakkhi Bahini and Bangladesh Rifles, all sat out a good number of hours before meekly making their way to the den of the killers, to demonstrate their fealty to a “president” installed in power even as Bangabandhu lay silent and dead on the stairway of his home in Dhanmondi.
In all these 47 years since Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was felled in bursts of gunfire by renegade soldiers, we have never investigated the role of these uniformed, powerful men of shifting loyalties on August 15. We have not asked them why they did nothing to preserve Bangabandhu’s government after he had been murdered, why power did not go to Vice President Syed Nazrul Islam, why they in their pusillanimity turned their back on a constitutionally-empowered president and professed loyalty to a usurper.
Six of Bangabandhu’s killers have walked the gallows. The others, with the exception of one who has died in Africa, will face justice in this land, hopefully. And while we wait for that day, we ask about all those others whose conspiracy caused the Father of the Nation to die.
Khondokar Moshtaq has not been posthumously charged with conspiracy to murder his president. In the final days of Bangabandhu’s life, Taheruddin Thakur was a ubiquitous presence around the Father of the Nation. We have not investigated his role in the assassination. No moves have ever been taken to inquire into the clandestine meetings of the political conspirators at BARD in Comilla.
Bangabandhu’s murder was a vast conspiracy and yet we have not delved into the details of the conspiracy. In the minutes before he was killed, Bangabandhu tried reaching out to men he thought would come to his assistance. His calls were not picked up. Yes, we have been informed that the assassination was the result of a huge security failure.
None of the intelligence agencies, civilian or military, could detect the conspiracy that was afoot to bump off the president of the republic. Was that really the case? Or was the conspiracy a closely guarded matter on the part of those who manned the security agencies on the day?
Our collective failure to ensure Bangabandhu’s safety remains an indelible blot on our national conscience. Our guilt will never be washed away. We ask today why Khaled Musharraf did not do on August 15 what he did on November 3. We ask why Shafaat Jamil remained unaware of the movements of men in his 46 Brigade.
In all these years since the assassination, many have been the men who have proffered their explanations or excuses for their failure to do their constitutional duties. General Shafiullah asked Bangabandhu if he could come out of the house. Should Bangabandhu have leapt across the wall of his home and scampered off to safety, in manner not commensurate with his political character?
We remember the newspaper editors who produced effusive editorials hailing the tragedy and arguing, shamelessly, that the assassination of the nation’s supreme leader was the beginning of a bright new day. We remember that embarrassing newspaper image of the usurper presiding over a cabinet meeting --- and all those ministers had till early 15 August been men serving under Bangabandhu’s leadership.
Go back to that picture. Not a shred of sadness is there on the faces of these ministers, not an ounce of shame. Not one of them thought of resigning or of accompanying Bangabandhu’s remains to Tungipara. How many of these ministers were subsequently questioned about their inaction on August 15?
General MAG Osmany bravely quit parliament, in protest, on 25 January 1975 once the fourth amendment to the constitution had been adopted. And yet not a word of sympathy, of grief came from him when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman died all alone. This brave man cheerfully joined Moshtaq as his defence advisor and remained beside him till Mosharraf’s coup in November.
More irony was to come. In 1978, the Awami League, as part of an opposition alliance, catapulted Osmany to the position of a presidential candidate. No one has questioned or reflected on Osmany’s indefensible role in August 1975. None of us have condemned Abdul Malek Ukil over his “feraon-er poton” comment in London. None of us have remembered that Mohiuddin Ahmed went to Moscow as Moshtaq’s emissary.
Two senior politicians, once aligned with Bangabandhu, cheerfully and without an iota of shame decided that the day of Bangabandhu’s murder deserved to be celebrated as ‘najat dibosh’ or deliverance day. That was a criminal act and we have not sufficiently censured them, not enough to have them shamed before the nation. Not a single diplomat of the country resigned his position abroad to protest the assassination.
And the men who in the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal remained engaged in their relentless efforts to remove Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from office and from power have never been made to answer for their misdeeds but have ended up becoming ministers in various governments.
General Shafiullah and Air Vice Marshal AK Khondokar served as diplomats for years abroad before linking up with the Awami League. Did anyone ask them why they served under Moshtaq, Zia and Ershad before seeking political rehabilitation in Bangabandhu’s political organization?
On August 15, we the people were nowhere to be found. And yet on the preceding evening we were all proclaiming our ‘undying’ loyalty to our leader in all the energy and enthusiasm we could muster.
Every August 15, we shed copious tears at remembrance of Bangabandhu. We speak of his ideals, of his greatness. We do that even as we have carefully papered over the nature of the wide conspiracy which claimed his life and pushed this nation down the road to perdition.
We weep. We mourn. We grieve. But have we done penitence enough, to wipe off the humiliation of what we did not and would not do on August 15, 1975? We let the Liberator perish on a macabre dawn. There is no excuse we can come up with to explain our ingratitude.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.