Memory, the priestess,
kills the present
and offers its heart to the shrine of the
dead past
--- Rabindranath Tagore
The year draws to an end. There will be reflections around the world, particularly in the media, of how 2025 has been, of the promise and peril which underpinned these twelve months which have gone by. On politics, on geopolitical happenings, on controversies, on themes such as AI there will be elaborate discussions. That is as it should be.
For people born in the 1950s, however, it just might be a time travel which takes them sixty years and fifty years and forty years back to remind them of a world as it used to be in 1965, 1975 and 1985. No, let it be clearly understood. No research comes in here. Nothing of the analytical is the goal here. It is simply a matter of memory being refreshed for those of us who were in school in the 1960s before moving on to youth followed by recognised adulthood.
The generation we speak of grows old. It hovers in the age range of the late 60s and early 70s. So what does it remember of the past? And how have the years spoken of earlier influenced their lives, if at all? Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to suggest that rather than being influential these years, at this end-point of 2025, form a significant part of that all too human propensity to travel back in time. Nostalgia is in the air.
We walk back to 1965.
How do we recall the year? It was a time when US President Lyndon Johnson decided that a show of military strength in Vietnam would be enough for communism to be contained in that troubled and divided country. American soldiers were flown to South Vietnam in their tens of thousands to beat back the assaults on the Saigon regime by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese.
1965 was also the year when French President Charles de Gaulle, having inaugurated the Fifth Republic, faced a tough election challenge from the socialist Francois Mitterrand. The two men were forced into a second round, with De Gaulle eventually beating back Mitterrand’s challenge.
In Pakistan, Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, having seized power in a coup in 1958, opted for an election under the Basic Democracy system he had put in place. It was Fatima Jinnah, sister of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who challenged him for the presidency. The challenge came to naught, for Ayub’s machinations made sure that he did not lose.
In 1965, Ferdinand Marcos defeated incumbent President Diosdado Macapagal in the Philippines, a happening that would propel him to a long, albeit authoritarian stretch in power till a popular movement against his regime dislodged him more than twenty years later. In Rhodesia, Ian Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) came as a roadblock to black majority rule.
1965 was the year when the Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka disappeared in Paris. It was a time when India and Pakistan found themselves engaged in a couple of armed conflicts, first in the Rann of Kutch and then through a full-length war in September. In 1965 Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella was ousted by his defence minister Houari Boumeddiene. In 1965, tragedy unfolded in Indonesia on the last day of September, with horrific ramifications.
Winston Churchill died in 1965. So did the poet T.S. Eliot.
That is how we remember 1965. We move on, a decade later, to 1975.
For Bangladesh, 1975 was a year of unmitigated tragedy. Coups, counter-coups and assassinations underpinned the year. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and almost his entire family were murdered by renegade soldiers. Barely three months later the four influential leaders of the Mujibnagar government of 1971 were done to death in the putative security of Dhaka central jail. The season was one of bloodletting when the nation’s reputed freedom fighters, once part of the Mukti Bahini, were pushed to their deaths.
1975 was that sad year when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of emergency in India. It was an unprecedented, indeed shocking move which for the first time in the country’s history saw opposition politicians carted off to prison. Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of Mrs Gandhi who held no position either in parliament or government, began asserting unconstitutional authority. The consequences would be far-reaching.
At the end of 1975, the Indonesian army marched into East Timor, today’s Timor Leste, and occupied the small country as a new province for Jakarta. In China, the tumult caused by the Cultural Revolution led to the rise and fall of a number of leading figures, especially Deng Xiaoping. Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing was dominant in the way the Chinese republic was being administered. Her ruthlessness added to the chaos.
How did the year 1985 fare?
It was a time when expectations of a political renewal were raised in the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the deaths of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko in quick succession, the Communist Party turned to the relatively younger Mikhail Gorbachev, who quickly initiated measures aimed at reforming the system through glasnost and perestroika.
Gorbachev was regarded as a dynamic new leader who would transform global politics. In November 1985 his first summit with US President Ronald Reagan was considered a success. It was a classic case of a younger politician upstaging an older one. Gorbachev was looked upon in much of the world as the statesman who would transform communism into a system relevant to the needs of the future.
For South Asia, 1985 embodied hope when the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was formally set into motion by the leaders of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and the Maldives. The first summit of the organisation took place in December in Dhaka. In attendance were President Hussein Muhammad Ershad, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, President Ziaul Haq, President J.R. Jayewardene, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, King Birendra and King Jigme Singye Wangchuck.
In the same year, a devastating cyclone hit Urir Char in Bangladesh’s coastal region, leading to the death of as many as 10,000 people and laying human habitation waste. Rajiv Gandhi and General Ziaul Haq travelled to Bangladesh and visited Urir Char to assess the situation. Pakistan’s President also paid homage to Bangladesh’s freedom fighters in the 1971 war against Pakistan at the National Memorial in Savar. He told Bangladesh’s newsmen, ‘Your heroes are our heroes.’
The focus in 1985 was also on Nicaragua, where Daniel Ortega was elected president. The happening was a turning point for the country.
Postscript: These reflections of 1965, 1975 and 1985 are more than a walk back to memory land. They are more than a recollection of history. For the generation which grows old, which falls back on nostalgia, it is an acknowledgement that a world has passed by, that life as it used to be in irretrievably lost times. And yet the imagination recreates the past. Yet the heart sings the old songs. Yet the soul comes alive with remembrance of things as they once were.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a writer.