The mood will be joyous this Victory Day at the Army Parade Ground, when Bangladesh attempts to break the record for the world’s largest human flag. More than 30,000 people will lift their arms above their heads to hoist their piece of red or green.
But the mood on March 3, 1971, when the flag was first hoisted at Dhaka University, was entirely different.
Just four days before Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s famous call for independence, the resistance movement was already well underway.
The Pakistani military junta led by Gen Yahya Khan had ordered the inflow of the Pakistani Army to Dhaka at a rate of one Boeing 707 filled with Pakistani soldiers every day.
Yahya Khan had been delaying the convening of the Pakistan national assembly, a move seen by East Pakistan as a plan to deny Sheikh Mujib from taking charge, despite having won the elections by a landslide in December 1970.
Anticipating imminent Pakistani onslaught, the executive committee of the Bangladesh Chhatra League – led by ASM Abdur Rab, then Vice President of Dhaka University Students Union – hastily called an emergency meeting, at midnight on March 2, at Modhur Canteen in Dhaka University.
Rab reasoned that there was no alternative but to hoist the national flag of independent Bangladesh, which had been designed as an insignia during Sheikh Mujib’s campaign.
On March 3 at 11am, at the Dhaka University premises popularly known as Bat-Tala, students from all over the campus gathered to witness the historical moment.
Rab pulled down the Pakistani flag and burned it. Moments later, he hoisted the flag of independent Bangladesh.
It was an unknown Awami League worker who hoisted the flag at Ramna Racecourse on March 7, where Sheikh Mujib declared Bangladesh independent, and called for armed struggle against the Pakistani occupation army.
Sheikh Mujib hoisted the flag at his own residence in Dhanmondi on March 23.
After the Liberation War, the national flag was officially adopted on January 17, 1972. For simplicity, the yellow map of the country was omitted.
The flag of Bangladesh was first hoisted at the United Nations in New York in September 1974. China had twice used its veto against the admission of Bangladesh in the UN in 1972 and 1973. But at last the new country was recognised.
The hoisting of the flag is more than a mere emblem of Bangladesh’s nationhood. It is also a symbol of recognition for the pride, sacrifice and blood that gave Bangladesh its place on the world map.
