He could have been an outstanding academic. He had it in him to inaugurate a socialist order in the country. Perhaps he might have, had he lived longer than his 50 years, played a prominent role in the Socialist International.
There is that other, more credible thought: He was one man who had it in him to pick up the banner of national leadership in the darkness that descended on the country with the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
In Tajuddin Ahmad, the quality of leadership, by the time he was done to death by the agents of darkness in November 1975, had already been tested to its utmost limit. He was the one political leader, once the Pakistan army launched its genocide in Bangladesh and the Father of the Nation had been spirited away to West Pakistan, who knew that the call of history had to be answered.
History of course had been part of his life, the studies of it, and his interpretations of the moving chronicles of time. With Bangabandhu, he formed a powerful team, being the follower of the great man. Where Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the visionary, the seer pointing out the Promised Land to his people, Tajuddin Ahmad took care of the details, the more prosaic part of the story.
It was in handling the details of politics and the complexities of administration that Tajuddin excelled. He barnstormed the country popularizing the Six Points. In the nine months of the War of Liberation, it was mettle he displayed in guiding a guerrilla movement to freedom.
He did the job with finesse, bringing into it the dexterity no one had quite expected in a politician who had never before had the good fortune of administering a ministry or being part of a government. But that lifelong study of history, that scholarly approach to politics was what came in handy. The government that operated in Mujibnagar was surely a collective affair, but it was essentially an enterprise that had its seeds in Tajuddin’s imagination as he moved out of a burning Dhaka in March 1971.
For Tajuddin Ahmad, the 1971 war was his finest hour. His formation of the administration, his leadership in shaping and strategizing guerrilla warfare against the Pakistan army, his astuteness in smelling intrigue and putting would-be conspirators in place, his coolness in the face of opposition even as he headed the government-in-exile were all factors that steeled him in his pursuit of politics.
His tours of the fields of war, his concern for the welfare of the ten million refugees taking shelter in India, and his coordination of activities with such stalwarts as Moulana Bhashani, Prof Muzaffar Ahmed, and Moni Singh during the war cemented his leadership of the struggle.
Foreign newsmen were awed by his humility and his clarity of thought. Indira Gandhi respected him; and so did all Bengalis who worked under him, both in Mujibnagar and abroad, in the terrible times the country was faced with.
In post-liberation Bangladesh, Tajuddin Ahmad served the nation with distinction as minister for finance. The integrity in the man never wavered, not even when it was the matter of a promotion for a civil servant who had abandoned his wife and children to unforeseen dangers in the early hours of the genocide.
Integrity underlined his vow to stay away from his family as long as the nation remained engaged in its twilight struggle against the enemy. When a group of government officials, having returned home from a tour abroad, would not clear customs duties on the goods they had come back with, he was firm in the position he adopted. They would have to pay that amount at the airport or they would forfeit their goods. They paid the money.
It did not worry Tajuddin Ahmad that he often was constrained to deal with cabinet colleagues who thought nothing of indulging in acts that compromised their dignity. When Khondokar Moshtaq insisted that the government cough up the money he had put into an insurance firm in pre-liberation times, it was Tajuddin who picked up the phone, to tell him politely but firmly that in a country where millions of citizens had lost so much more, it was less than ministerial to ask for that insurance amount.
Moshtaq did not forget that reprimand. He was already riled over Tajuddin’s decision to stop him from flying to New York in September 1971. He would avenge it all. But he could not beat Tajuddin’s firmness of leadership.
Principled politics was the foundation of public service in Tajuddin’s career. It was for him untrammeled faith that Bangladesh did not need to seek aid from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Tajuddin’s principles were a bulwark against the many temptations that came his way when, in deference to Bangabandhu’s wishes, he made his way out of government.
He did not defy his leader, but left quietly; he did not join the Communist Party, where he would have been a powerful force. He was dismissive of the efforts made by the JSD to enlist him in its ranks.
He would not contemplate cobbling into place a party of his own. The rift that had developed between him and his leader was uncomfortable both for him and Bangabandhu, but Tajuddin kept his peace and his silence.
His loyalty to the Father of the Nation was intact. Even so, he did not fail to register his dissent on the fourth amendment to the constitution. It was principles again that governed his decision to stay away from Baksal.
A brilliant student in youth, Tajuddin Ahmad graduated to being a formidable intellectual force in Bangladesh’s politics. He demonstrated a no-nonsense attitude to the political questions of the day. As prime minister in 1971, his overriding goal was to see the war end in triumph for his people. As finance minister, it was socialistic austerity he practised, up to a point, before he walked away from power.
He was a formidable presence at the roundtable conference in Rawalpindi in 1969; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, wary of the man, warned Yahya Khan to keep his sights on Tajuddin Ahmad at the political negotiations in Dhaka in March 1971.
Tajuddin gave the young economists who presented the draft of the Six Points to Bangabandhu and the Awami League leadership sometime in 1965 a tough time with his probing queries on their presentation.
As Foreign Minister Kamal Hossain bade Bangabandhu farewell before setting out on his European tour at the end of July 1975 and made for the door, the Father of the Nation called him back. “There is good news,” he told the nation’s chief diplomat, a broad smile playing all over his face. “Tajuddin is coming back to government.” A happy Kamal Hossain left Ganobhaban.
But that was not to be. Mischief was already afoot. And conspiracy was abroad in the land.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
