Tofail Ahmed rounded off 80 years of his life quietly on Sunday. In any assessment of Bangladesh’s history, he will have a pivotal place. And that will be because of the immense part he had in the making of the Bangladesh narrative, beginning with his role as a fiery student leader, a driving force behind the mass movement against the Ayub Khan regime in the late 1960s.
In those heady days of anti-authoritarian struggle against the entrenched civil-military bureaucratic complex in Rawalpindi, Tofail Ahmed was a Bengali nationalist in whom was symbolized the aspirations of the Bengali young, those who ardently believed in the need for democracy to send dictatorship packing.
As students in school, my generation watched in fascination the way in which Tofail Ahmed linked the movement of university students in what yet was East Pakistan to the demand not only for Bengali autonomy but also for the release of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and all others accused of conspiracy in the Agartala Case.
Those were dramatic times. Tofail Ahmed not only inhabited those times but also shaped them, speeding up the coming collapse of the Ayub Khan regime. When the Agartala Case was withdrawn on February 22, 1969 and all the accused, save Zahurul Haq who had been killed by security forces in Dhaka cantonment, were released, it was fundamentally Tofail Ahmed’s task to organize the rally where a freed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would speak to the nation.
Tofail Ahmed, to public acclamation, honoured the freed leader as Bangabandhu, friend of Bengal. It was a new and formal dimension to how the young Dhaka College student Rezaul Haq Chowdhury Mushtaq in 1968 had referred, in a magazine write-up, to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as Bangabandhu. Tofail Ahmed gave it the approval of history.
Navigating the political landscape
Tofail Ahmed’s journey in Bangladesh’s political landscape has gone on since those tumultuous moments in the making of history. In the mid-1980s, as I walked into what was then known as the PG Hospital to see a friend dying from cancer, I happened to pass by the ward where Tofail Ahmed was a prisoner.
Those were dictatorial times and Hussein Muhammad Ershad made sure that no opposition could be mounted against him. Tofail Ahmed, ever the rebel, was standing in the ward, which was under lock and key. I salaamed him and moved on. He probably did not recognize me.
Why would he? It had been years since I first had the privilege of being in his brief company. He was on the Awami League team which accompanied Bangabandhu on his whirlwind election campaign trip to West Pakistan in June-July 1970.
Invited, to my intense happiness, by the Balochistan branch of the Awami League to a dinner it had arranged for Bangabandhu on July 1, I made my way there. I was yet in high school, preparing for my Senior Cambridge examinations the following year. To cut a long story short, after dinner and obtaining Bangabandhu’s autograph, I moved off toward the gate as I needed to be home before it was too late.
The young Tofail Ahmed was in deep thought and walking up and down by the gate. I went up to him and asked him, in English, if I could have his autograph. He happily agreed and while he was writing in the autograph book, I mentioned to him, again in English, that I was a Bengali student in Quetta.
He looked up and said -- and this I have always remembered -- in a gentle voice, “tumi amar shathe Bangla-e kotha bolchho na keno?” (why aren’t you speaking to me in Bengali?). Properly contrite, I discarded English and went into Bengali. Tofail Ahmed will probably not remember this little episode, but I have not forgotten that evening in Quetta.
A staunch patriot
Tofail Ahmed’s patriotism has been without blemish. His principles, those which were shaped in him all the way from school to university in the 1960s, have never wavered. Many of the young student leaders with whom he interacted in those decisive years of growing Bengali nationalism were to move away from the original ideals and link up with political classes which were antithetical to the ethos of Bangladesh.
Tofail Ahmed held fast to the ideals. His participation in the War of Liberation solidified his place in national history. To what extent the Young Turks, of which he was a part, caused the divide between them and Tajuddin Ahmad’s Mujibnagar administration is a question which historians will need to research on.
In the period following the end of the war and with the return of Bangabandhu from Pakistani incarceration, Tofail Ahmed made it known where he stood. He was there for Bangabandhu. Not for him any deviation from principle. Not for him the urge to turn his back on his leader, in the way the proponents of a so-called scientific socialism were to do in the early 1970s. Bangabandhu loved him beyond measure. And at an age when politically ambitious young people were learning the ropes, the young Tofail Ahmed took charge as political secretary to the prime minister, who of course was Bangabandhu.
It was, at a later stage, also Tofail Ahmed’s oversight responsibility for the Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini. In the aftermath of August 15, 1975 and even today, he has taken much flak for what has been perceived as his failure to organize resistance to the coup d’etat. It is unfair criticism, considering that all the three-armed services and the police with alacrity declared their loyalty to the usurper Moshtaq regime within hours of the assassination of the Father of the Nation.
It’s all about principles
In the post-August 1975 period, Tofail Ahmed suffered through spells in prison. But he could not be made to abjure his loyalty to principles, to Bangabandhu. When the Dark Age ended in June 1996, Tofail Ahmed served as a minister in the Sheikh Hasina government. His loyalty to Sheikh Hasina has been beyond question.
One could be quite certain that he has his reservations about certain policies of the Awami League government, but he has, like the sophisticated political leader he has always been, kept them to himself. His relegation to a role not commensurate with his contributions to history must have disturbed him, but he has not complained.
My respect for Tofail Ahmed was reinforced when a few years ago he firmly silenced a former BNP lawmaker on a live program on Channel Ekattor television. I was part of the discussion along with Toufique Imrose Khalidi. The BNP man, clearly on a mission to denigrate Bangabandhu, had a file which he said contained proof that the Father of the Nation had taken Shah Azizur Rahman with him to the Islamic summit in Lahore in February 1974.
Note that Tofail Ahmed was a member of the Bangladesh team at the summit. He came online and roundly condemned the BNP man, asking him how he had come by the lie that a notorious collaborator of the Yahya Khan junta could accompany Bangabandhu to Lahore in 1974.
The BNP man insisted he had a photograph to prove that Shah Aziz was there with Bangabandhu in Lahore, but he refused for many long minutes to show us the picture. When he finally did, we were left stupefied by the ignorance of a man who had been a lawmaker for a party which had done and was doing everything possible to airbrush Bangabandhu out of history.
The picture in question showed Bangabandhu, flanked by Pakistan’s President Fazle Elahi Chaudhry and Prime Minister ZA Bhutto, at Lahore airport. Chaudhry had a Jinnah cap on and this BNP man was trying to pass him off as Shah Azizur Rahman. Tofail Ahmed gave him a good, severe tongue-lashing for his ignorance as well as his malevolence.
At 80, Tofail Ahmed is ailing. He lives with memories. And we live with memories of the dramatic and decisive role he has played in Bangladesh’s history.
His story, together with those of many others of his generation, needs to be disseminated to the younger generation of Bengalis; to people who are in serious need of an understanding of the movement for a sovereign Bangladesh and a comprehension of how political illegitimacy between 1975 and 1996 sought to turn the clock back on all that we have seen and known and experienced in our journey to a free people’s republic.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
