History has been a preoccupation with scholars and researchers in Bangladesh. And yet there have been the gaps in either an understanding of history or a detailed examination of it. In these past many decades, history has all too often been a casualty in the hands of partisans ready and willing to interpret it in their parochial ways. What have been ignored, by design or honest forgetting, are the details of the historical tradition which has contributed to the evolution of politics and society in Bangladesh.
It is this tradition that is rekindled by Harun-or-Rashid in Bangladesh: Rajniti Sarkar O Shashontantrik Unnayan 1757-2018. Rashid goes for a sweeping recapitulation of the details which were to lead to the Bangladesh phenomenon of the early 1970s, continuing along a tortuous path that terminates in 2018. The beginning, as the title makes it all too obvious, is the Battle of Plassey, followed in subsequent years by the rise and consolidation of British colonial rule in India. Yes, the focus of the writer is on Bangladesh. The work does not appear to be centred on Bengal or India as it used to be. But that would be a wrong conclusion to draw, for in his enumeration of the history that would lead up to Bangladesh, Rashid brings into focus the very details which would go into a reconfiguring of politics in India as a whole.
The principal feature in Rashid’s work could easily be seen as a return to the idea of Bengal thinking today what the rest of India thinks tomorrow. In other words, politics and history in India, as the writer observes them, have consistently been rooted in Bengal. Ferment has regularly underlined the growth of thought in Bengal, before expanding into a wider Indian sphere. This idea comes alive in Rashid’s recalling of the circumstances leading to the formation and growth of the All India Muslim League in December 1906. While it was a significant development for British-ruled India, it was equally important that the party took shape in Dhaka, to branch out into a wider landscape over time. Rashid brings alive such illustrious figures in his telling of the tale as Nawab Salimullah, the Aga Khan, Syed Amir Ali, A.K. Fazlul Huq and others.
Note is taken of the fact that the Muslim League came into existence twenty one years after the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. Curiously enough, both organizations emerged under the patronization of the British colonial power. The difference between the Congress and the League, Rashid appears to be suggesting, is the rise of the latter with the definitive purpose of demonstrating fealty to the colonial authorities through a pursuit of politics that had for its goal peaceful co-existence with the British.
Harun-or-Rashid, whose earlier historical works remain acclaimed affairs, moves with alacrity through history in his presentation of the ideas which have shaped politics in today’s Bangladesh. He goes beyond a chronological enumeration of the realities that have led to the construction of the historical mass in the region. And he does it through offering his own assessment of why or how events in Bengal or Bangladesh have occurred the way they have. An instance is his considered view of the Bengal partition of 1905 and its annulment in 1911. Rashid’s take is that the division and then the reunification were to create a condition where Muslims and Hindus would see a wall come up in their perceptions of their places in the sun. Bengalis, despite centuries of a unity of cultural heritage, would see cracks develop along communal lines.
The work is indeed a march of history. Rashid moves on, to offer readers his views on such political movements as the Khilafat Movement. The details are important; and as the writer takes the reader by the hand through the labyrinthine passages of Bengali history, the years and decades and personalities instrumental in its making manifest themselves along the way. Rashid does not miss the little stones even as he spots the boulders on the road. The work at a point graduates into being a record of the chaos as also the excitement which accompanied the partition of India in August 1947. Murder and mayhem are then followed by a swift emergence of Bengali nationalism within the parameters of the new state of Pakistan, a political process that could only culminate in the rise of Bangladesh as a sovereign entity.
The Language Movement, the undermining of democratic rule in Pakistan by extra-constitutional forces, the Six Point programme, the general election of 1970 and Bangladesh’s War of Liberation are among the factors that add substance to Rashid’s work. The refreshing bit about Rashid’s endeavour is that, unlike so many historians in the country, he does not have his narrative stop at the surrender of the Pakistan army and the rise of a free Bangladesh. He goes beyond 1971, which is significant because it is a presentation of post-liberation history he considers to be of critical importance and for the right reasons. The traumatic course Bangladesh has followed since the end of the war, especially in the years following the assassinations of its liberation leaders and freedom fighters, adds rich substance to the work. The many experiments with caretaker governments, the periods of military and quasi-military rule, the various attempts toward the creation of a revisionist version of history are Rashid’s extension of the narrative.
The work is a rich point of reference for history buffs. The political scientist in Harun-or-Rashid links one chain to another, to give readers a sense of the destiny they share in the Bangladesh nation-state. He connects the dots. And the dots then give shape to the chronicles symbolized by the sovereign state of Bangladesh as it happens to be.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer. His books include From Rebel to Founding Father: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (published by Niyogi Books).
