When heritage collides with modernity, the casualty is history. When iconic structures are struck down and replaced by state-of-the-art buildings, there is a sense that a rich past is being frittered away in favour of a non-descript present.
And that has been the story of what we have been trying to do to Suhrawardy Udyan. Chopping down trees to build a restaurant, to have in place what are known as amenities for people is a scandal. And it is a scandal because killing those trees was not just an assault on nature. Pulling them down was also colossal ignorance on the part of those, politicians as well as bureaucrats, whose sense of history is either extremely poor or simply non-existent. Perhaps the higher judiciary will now resolutely bury the crude ambitions of such elements and give us the chance to reclaim our past.
This assault on Suhrawardy Udyan was not the first of its kind. In the early phase of the genocide by the Pakistan army in March 1971, the Kali Mandir, a significant landmark at what was then known as the Race Course, was blown up because the soldiers would not tolerate anything that was a reminder of Hindu culture in Bengali secularism.
The Kali Mandir should have been rebuilt after liberation. And in the post-August 1975 period, General Ziaur Rahman, obsessed with erasing all traces of Bangabandhu and his place in history, set aside a huge chunk of space in the udyan for the Shishu Park to be built. Today, not many people are aware of where exactly is the spot from where Bangabandhu spoke to the nation on March 7, 1971 and on January 10, 1972.
History is a whole lot more than a reading of textbooks. Nations around the globe, and that includes India, have had the sculptures of iconic personalities installed in all major cities. We in Bangladesh have a poor record here. All over Bangladesh, there should have been the statues of the Father of the Nation, of the leaders of the Mujibnagar government, of our renowned writers, poets, academics, and scientists. Our children would have grown into adulthood with a powerful sense of patriotism through coming in contact with all such sculptural manifestations of national history.
There are other spots that ought to have been preserved intact in the interest of succeeding generations in this country. The old Ganobhaban adjacent to Ramna Park served in the 1960s and early 1970s as the President’s House. It was here that the political negotiations involving the Awami League, Pakistan People’s Party, and the Yahya Khan regime took place in March 1971.
Following liberation, it served as the office of the prime minister, in this case Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It should have been preserved as such. The room where the 1971 talks took place, the office room where Bangabandhu worked, the hall where he received visitors -- domestic and foreign -- ought to have been there for citizens to visit and feel the presence of the past.
The old Ganobhaban is today the Foreign Affairs Academy. A visitor taking a tour of the building today will have no idea about the way it was at a decisive phase in national history. And that is a pity, for in all our putative preoccupation with history we remain indifferent to the many ways in which we are presiding over an obliteration of historical sites. Recall the residence of Tajuddin Ahmad on Satmasjid Road in Dhaka. It was a powerful embodiment of national history, for all the key figures involved in the rise of Bengali nationalism met at this home at critical moments in the country’s history.
It was from this home that the nation’s first prime minister was hauled away to prison by the men who murdered Bangabandhu and would murder him. That home does not exist anymore, for it has been replaced by a modern structure. The Tajuddin home should have remained in the way Bangabandhu’s 32 Dhanmondi home remains as a powerful expression of our sovereign nationhood. Perhaps Satmasjid Road should have been renamed Tajuddin Ahmad Road rather than the one named after him in Tejgaon?
The beauty of the Crescent Lake at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar was deliberately marred through turning the park adjoining it into the burial ground of Bangladesh’s first military ruler. Justice Abdus Sattar and General HM Ershad, the army chief at the time, will forever remain condemned for the gross manner in which they ruined the beauty of the place. In similar fashion, the cemetery which occupies a large tract of space on the grounds of parliament, at the beginning of Manik Mia Avenue, remains an eyesore. At Chandrima Udyan and at the cemetery, it was not only history that was given short shrift. It was also the aesthetic beauty of the spots that came under grievous assault.
For a very long time, the Bibi Mariam cannon in Gulistan served as a point of reference in the nation’s capital. It was history, for citizens a poignant reminder of times past. In the era of General Ershad, it was not merely democratic aspirations which were brutalized but history that was sent packing. The cannon was moved to a barely noticeable spot at Osmany Udyan opposite the Secretariat. And then there was Paltan Maidan, which once bore the footmarks of Bengali nationalist politicians articulating their thoughts on the future of their people. It has ceased to exist, walled off as it is to house a stadium.
A half century ago, the call of freedom went out from Suhrawardy Udyan. Today it is drug dealers and drug takers and other questionable characters who occupy a goodly portion of it. Pseudo-capitalists and hungry-eyed would-be profiteers dream of doing business in it. Must we allow that? Indeed, must we go on watching philistines strike away, in frenzy, at the broad structure of history we have built all over this land?
Heritage is not a fairy tale. History is not a newspaper that has been read and will be thrown away. The soul of a nation dies when its traditions are not remembered, are indeed strangled to a slow death.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
