Tajuddin Ahmad would be 90 years old today.
He was a mere 50 when he died. Yet, in those five brief decades of his life, Tajuddin Ahmad achieved a feat rare in the history of political men. He rose to the peaks of leadership in the brilliance emitted by Bangabandhu and remained there till almost the very end. In between, he managed to pull off what was certainly the most significant success for the Bengali nation, the formation of the very first Bengali government in history and the liberation of Bangladesh.
In recent years, a necessary revival of interest in the life and career of Tajuddin Ahmad has served to add the missing links to Bangladesh’s national history. Much of the revival is again a result of the strenuous efforts put into the story of the wartime leader by his daughters Sharmin Ahmad and Simeen Hussain Rimi. They have been instrumental in having Tajuddin’s life, in the form of biographies, letters, and diaries, researched and transcribed in Bangla and published in immaculate form.
Beyond Maidul Hasan’s Muldhara ’71 and Faruk Aziz Khan’s Spring 1971, not much has emerged to expand on the contributions Tajuddin Ahmad made to history in South Asia, indeed around the globe. Sharmin and Rimi, in recent years, have served as the driving forces behind a necessary retelling of the life and contributions of Tajuddin Ahmad in Bangladesh’s history.
Their works are touching tributes to the humble, austere man who has, especially since his assassination in 1975, become an icon for students of history. They have offered his legacy anew to a nation that might well have been blown off course had he not been around to take charge.
Back in March 1971, the risk for Bengalis was double-edged. On the one hand, there was the spectacle of a captive Bangabandhu. On the other, there was no clear sign of anyone else in the Awami League hierarchy, at least up to that point, taking control and reassuring the country that everything was on course, or soon would be.
The call of duty was one that Tajuddin Ahmad heard loud and clear. By the time he found himself on Indian soil, he knew that exile, his and that of everyone else in those times of horror, would need to be purposeful. He lost little time in meeting Indira Gandhi and laying out before her his plans of leading Bangladesh to liberation.
Tajuddin was clearly not happy at being relegated to the job of finance minister once Bangabandhu took charge as prime minister, but his acute sense of loyalty precluded demonstrating any hint of his displeasure. Discipline was a lesson he had learned early on in life. He was not inclined to verbosity. He was not an orator. It was his organisational abilities which complemented the inspirational leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
These two men, more than all those others in the party, were the reason why Bangladesh needed to be. On their watch in the early 1960s came the Six Points. In early March 1971, as Yahya Khan and ZA Bhutto resorted to chicanery, it was the elemental Mujib-Tajuddin strength that kept them at bay, until the junta let loose the dogs of war.
That was not the only tragedy. Somewhere between cobbling the Mujibnagar government into shape in 1971 and making his way out of government in 1974, Tajuddin was a lonely traveller.
Sheikh Fazlul Haque Mani and his band of Mujib loyalists took it upon themselves to undermine the nation’s first prime minister even as he defined military strategy for a nation at war. There were other troubles as well. Tajuddin had to constantly look back, behind his shoulder, for there was a smell of conspiracy in Khondaker Mostaq.
Tajuddin’s loneliness took on newer dimensions in early 1972. The men who had never forgiven him for taking control of the liberation struggle now drove a wedge between him and his leader. Bangabandhu never sought to know from Tajuddin how he had organised the armed struggle.
It seared the soul in the battlefield leader to know that the Father of the Nation had little time for him. Worse was his feeling that Bangabandhu had opted for a definitive shift in foreign policy. A clear trend towards developing ties with the United States and towards closer association with donor institutions such as the World Bank left Tajuddin perturbed.
He had studiously ignored Robert McNamara in Delhi in early 1972. And yet it was McNamara he was compelled by circumstances to meet in 1974, a time when famine stalked the land and socialism did not appear to hold out much promise for Bangladesh.
There was something abrupt about Tajuddin’s departure from government. He spoke of resignation and told perhaps a lot of people about it. In the end, the satisfaction of leaving the government voluntarily was not to be his. It was Bangabandhu who asked him, in the larger national interest (as his brief note to Tajuddin pointed out), to submit his resignation.
Tajuddin Ahmad complied with the directive. Between that low point in his life and the end of life itself, he would lapse into silence. The assault on pluralist democracy, through the rise of the one-party BAKSAL system of government in January 1975, appalled him. It was the statesman in him that informed him of the tragedy ahead.
Bangabandhu would destroy himself, he reasoned. And with Bangabandhu gone, Tajuddin and everyone else would be pushed towards doom. And that was precisely the way things happened. As he went down the stairway of his residence in August 1975, a man in army custody, Tajuddin told his wife he might be going away forever. He was to return in November, shot and bayoneted to an ugly death.
It is the quiet legend of the man that was Tajuddin Ahmad we recall today. In the darkness that swept across the country on August 15, 1975, there were yet the intimations of light at the end of the tunnel. Someday, Tajuddin Ahmad might again take charge, as he had taken charge in April 1971, and restore the nation’s self-esteem.
But that was not to be. That has been our long agony, our own Greek tragedy.
