Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury symbolized an era of assertive woman power in Bengali nationalist politics. Her passing brings to an end an age which was instrumental in a voicing of unbridled Bengali aspirations in this country going back all the way to the struggle for self-expression in pre-1971 Pakistan.
For political leaders like Sajeda Chowdhury, the objective was obvious -- that the people of Bangladesh, united under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, were in grave and imminent need of clearing a path for themselves to sovereignty.
And a sovereign Bangladesh was the result of the dedication to principles which personalities like Sajeda Chowdhury epitomized. She was among those fortunate women who found themselves invested with the historic opportunity of adding substance to the politics of the Awami League at a time when the people of this country needed to come together.
The moment was opportune with Bangabandhu at the helm, his courage of conviction and his clear goal of leading his people to the Promised Land never in doubt.
In Sajeda Chowdhury’s passing goes a defining era. At this remove from the brilliant and yet tortuous politics which underpinned the national struggle for freedom, it makes sense to delve into the times when power women in the Awami League made a difference in the writing of national history. Note that all these women, having marched in the demand for freedom, were also individuals who stepped up to fulfill their responsibilities once Bangladesh emerged free of Pakistani occupation.
Nurjahan Murshid and Badrunnessa Ahmed yet draw forth from us abiding respect for the principled politics they brought into play in post-liberation Bangladesh. In government, they were part of the team engaged in national reconstruction. They died rather early but, even so, the national historical narrative is replete with tales of the arduous struggle they engaged in to uphold the cause of a nation.
The good fortune of the Awami League and indeed of the nation has been of women like Sajeda Chowdhury, Nurjahan Murshid, and Badrunnessa Ahmed enriching its politics, thereby informing the world that Bengali aspirations were grounded on a comprehensive participation for the attainment of objectives by the nation’s men and women.
It was, in effect, politics attuned to modern times that these bold women in the Awami League represented. The truth cannot be ignored that all these women, in the pursuit of their politics, came into prominence on their own, through clear demonstrations of their skills and ability to relate with the people of Bangladesh.
None of them was imposed from above but every one of them convinced the nation that they were qualified enough to speak for their constituencies and for the country on their own. Sajeda Chowdhury’s hard-hitting responses to the forces of anti-history, in the darkness foisted on the country with the assassinations of the Father of the Nation and the four national leaders, were symptomatic of the power that women in the Awami League have historically exercised in defence of democratic rights.
A remarkable power woman in the Awami League, one focused on a reassertion of the popular will in the face of efforts by anti-national forces to upend historical truth in the country, was Zohra Tajuddin. She took charge of the party at a time of all-enveloping despair, imbued the nation with hope, all the while letting people know that the darkness would pass, that the lost light of freedom would shine in renewed brilliance under the leadership of the party which had caused that remarkable sea change in the region in South Asia in 1971.
Zohra Tajuddin’s personal grief, having lost her husband to assassination, was intense. And yet in public she put it aside, for of much bigger import was the nation’s future. Sheer will power and a determination to put dictatorship out to pasture defined her politics. In the days preceding the arrival of Sheikh Hasina on the scene, she kept hope alive. She was our voice.
Women associated with the Awami League and its nationalistic cause have paid for their dedication with their lives. The death of Ivy Rahman in the aftermath of the bomb blasts of August 2004 brought to a tragic close a career of activist idealism in Bangladesh’s politics. For Ivy Rahman, whose career began through the inspiration of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, professionalism was what politics was all about.
In the darkest days of the Awami League, like so many others in the party, she did not waver. Neither did she fall silent. And that was again a sign of how she meshed with the party, going out to the country to convey the message that there was a future beyond the unhappy present the nation had been hurled into. Her pronouncements carried conviction.
It remains an undying shame that the elements conspiratorially involved in the carnage of August 2004 pushed Ivy Rahman’s life and those of so many other dedicated party workers to death that left the nation bloodied and maimed.
Back in the 1960s, with the Ayub Khan regime decidedly on the warpath against the Awami League in light of the Six Points, the senior figures of the party were carted off to prison one after the other. It was left to those who escaped the police dragnet to carry the movement forward. History, always unassailable, has recorded the diligence with which Amena Begum disseminated the message of the Six Points throughout what was yet the eastern province of Pakistan.
Amena Begum’s was one of the earliest instances of the woman power which subsequently would be a major factor in a reconfiguring of Bengali nationalist politics, enough to have the country move beyond the Six Points and to a single point, that of sovereign statehood for Bangladesh.
In Motia Chowdhury, the country has had one of the most successful of individuals to hold ministerial office. As minister for agriculture, she has presided over a remarkable transformation in the rural landscape of the country. Her understanding of farmers’ needs has been comprehensive.
Her performance in office is yet the subject of positive discussion among those who have observed the way she carried out her responsibilities and by those who have had cause to observe the evolution of her politics from her student days all the way to her linking up with the Awami League.
Motia Chowdhury, consistently a rebel with a cause, has under Sheikh Hasina’s leadership been the necessary weapon the party has wielded in promoting its visions of the future.
The passing of Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury is that quiet moment when the nation needs to reflect on the women who have powered the national cause, have looked dictators in the eye, have not blinked and have moved on to a fulfillment of their goals with grim determination.
In her story, as in the stories of all the women involved at various levels of Bengali politics, is embedded a message: That given political commitment, a difficult present invariably opens a window to a future resting on a regeneration of national objectives.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
