Mohiuddin Ahmad certainly represents a new and vibrant generation of historians in Bangladesh. His thoroughly researched works on the Awami League, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, apart from other history-related works, have been good eye-openers in our times. His new work, Bela Obela (published by Baatighar), maintains the detachment and objectivity he brought into his earlier works.
Bela Obela is rather a unique work in that it dwells on the period between early 1972 and end-1975, a phase that has been little covered in historical research. While studies of Bangladesh’s history have by and large focused on the period prior to or during the War of Liberation—and justifiably too—there has been scant interest, or so it would seem, among researchers and historians to delve into the particular historical phase that was essentially dominated by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the government he presided over.
There is little question that the period between 1972 and 1975 was as decisive as it was troubled. Decisive because it was a call for the country to get its act together after a traumatic war for political freedom. Troubled because it tested Bangabandhu’s leadership to the extreme on a number of fronts. Mohiuddin Ahmad’s work is a good and necessary reminder of the idealism as well as the despair which characterized the period. Bangabandhu’s return home from incarceration in Pakistan in early January 1972 was correctly regarded as a proper end to the war and a phase where the work of economic reconstruction could get underway. Ahmad of course notes that while certain sections of people, including politicians, expected the Father of the Nation to exercise moral authority in Gandhi-like manner and leave the administration in the hands of Tajuddin Ahmad, the wartime prime minister, circumstances were to turn out differently. In the first place, the general feeling was that Bangabandhu’s active involvement in governance was an imperative. In the second, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was himself not much inclined to stay on the sidelines, even if it was in a role reminiscent of Gandhi’s.
Mohiuddin Ahmad does not mince words in his narrative of the times. He notes the positive aspects of governance, among which are the achievements of Bangabandhu’s government at home and abroad. The various steps taken to organize the state structure and have a working administration in place, together with the adoption of a constitution within a year of liberation, are highlighted in the work. The country was well on its way to a liberal democratic future through the parliamentary form of government it promised to conduct itself on. As for reconstruction, Bangabandhu was emphatic in his belief that he needed three years to bring Bangladesh to a reasonable state of stability.
Of course, those three years—and more—that Bangabandhu had in hand were to be times of intense travail for him and the country. Ahmad goes back to the record through citing newspaper reports on the corruption indulged in by elements of the ruling Awami League, a truth Mujib repeatedly drew attention to at public rallies. But if corruption threatened to undermine the goals of the government, the many intrigues which were underway against it could not be ignored either. Renegade military officers like Ziauddin and virulently anti-government elements like Col Abu Taher, encouraged no doubt by a worsening of the political atmosphere, were busily engaged in conspiracies to bump the government off. Added to these were such men as Abdul Haq, Mohammad Toaha and Siraj Sikdar, who separately had their extreme leftists employ terroristic means, such as the organized murder of ruling party politicians, to destabilize the government.
If that was the underground, on the ground was the JSD, fundamentally a revolt against the government. Mohiuddin Ahmad wonders, and so do many of his readers, if Bangabandhu should not have stayed away from aligning himself with either faction of the Chhatra League in July 1972. Indeed, it was a surprised Sirajul Alam Khan who, having concluded that Bangabandhu would stay away from the rallies of either faction, came to know that indeed Mujib would be taking part at the rally organized by Nur-e-Alam Siddiqui’s Chhatra League. To what extent that decision galvanized opposition to Bangabandhu’s government remains a question historians like Ahmad will grapple with in future. But what Ahmad projects in his work is the role of such figures as Sheikh Fazlul Haq Moni, who as the nephew of the prime minister and as the founder of the Jubo League, exercised an outsize influence on Bangabandhu.
The writer’s objectivity comes through also in his reflections on the growing differences between Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Tajuddin Ahmad. The two men, having been close allies in the Awami League all the way up to the collapse of political negotiations with the Yahya Khan regime in March 1971, began to drift apart within hours of Bangabandhu’s return from Pakistan. The Young Turks who had participated in the war, Mohiuddin Ahmad concludes, successfully convinced Bangabandhu of Tajuddin’s ‘perfidy’ in taking charge of the Mujibnagar government when it was these self-same young radicals who should have led the war from the front. Tajuddin was relegated to being finance minister and was eventually asked to leave the government in October 1974. Curiously enough, even as Tajuddin was shown the door, the government failed to take notice of the wider conspiracy gathering pace against him among a coterie of serving and retired mid-ranking military officers. Khondokar Moshtaq and Taheruddin Thakur were active in conspiratorial planning. Bangabandhu, of course, was always dismissive of the thought that his Bengalis could harm him.
The writer dwells exhaustively on Baksal, a political experiment he notes many in the Awami League were uncomfortable with but were afraid to challenge Bangabandhu on. His reflections on Ziaur Rahman and KM Shafiullah are noteworthy. Bangabandhu’s intention of placing General Khwaja Wasiuddin as army chief of staff once the officer was repatriated from Pakistan was scuttled by opposition from freedom fighter officers. Ahmad’s reflections on the famine of 1974 as also on the Bangabandhu government’s diplomatic successes are good food for thought.
The work concludes on a depressing note. Between August and November 1975, efforts were underway to turn the clock back for the country in the aftermath of the assassinations of the Father of the Nation and the four leaders of the Mujibnagar government.
Bela Obela should be a point of rich reference for researchers and students of the early phase of independent Bangladesh.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer. His books include From Rebel to Founding Father: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (published by Niyogi Books).
