The place of General Ataul Gani Osmani, whose birth anniversary was observed a few days ago, in Bangladesh’s wartime history is an assured one. As the chief of the country’s liberation forces in 1971, Osmani dedicated himself to the task of cobbling a guerrilla force, the Mukti Bahini, into shape in the country’s darkest hour. It was not the kind of job he had been trained for in the Pakistan army, a force which did not give him the rank and honour he deserved. Retiring as a colonel, Osmani never let go of the notion that the military was part of his life.
It was life which came alive in the heady days of March 1971, when he exchanged thoughts with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the probability of a Bengali force being raised to go into action against the Pakistan army should the occasion warrant it. By then a member-elect of the national assembly, as an Awami League nominee, elected on an all-Pakistan basis in December 1970, Osmani was astute enough to know that the civil-military establishment in Rawalpindi was determined not to hand over power to the Awami League. He prepared for the worst.
Osmani’s skills were on full display when, despite having been part of a conventional army, he went into the job of fashioning guerrilla resistance to the enemy. The segmentation of the battlefield into eleven sectors, with responsibility for the sectors handed over to commanders, was a feat for which he will always be remembered. Osmani worked in coordination with Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad, deferring to the wartime leader where important decision-making was concerned. He acquitted himself well.
But there are too certain questions about Osmani, notably about his whereabouts on the day General Jagjit Singh Aurora and General A A K Niazi initialled the Instrument of Surrender of Pakistan’s forces on December 16, 1971. By any standard, as commander-in-chief of the Mukti Bahini, Osmani, at that point still holding the rank of colonel, ought to have been present at the Race Course and should have affixed his signature to the surrender document on behalf of Bangladesh. To this day, questions about his absence on the day, about the actuality of where he was and why no effort was made to bring him to Dhaka have hung in the air.
Promoted to the rank of general and then retired from military service, Osmani joined Bangabandhu’s government as minister for inland water resources. One would have thought he would serve as minister of defence in the new country, but that did not happen. Indeed, except for a minister of state in Bangabandhu’s last cabinet, there has been no minister of defence in independent charge in Bangladesh. The portfolio has regularly been held by the head of government. Osmani did not get that ministry; and there has always been a feeling that at the ministry he was appointed to, he was not quite happy. But he did his work in diligent manner.
In temperament, Osmani adhered to the tradition set by the British-Indian army in pre-partition India. The English language, in crisp military style, was the mode he generally adopted in his conversations with others. He had little time for nonsense and was a stickler for discipline, a martinet as it were. And then there was the element of courage he demonstrated when, unable to accept the fourth amendment to the constitution and the formation of the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (Baksal) in early 1975, he chose to give up his place in the Jatiya Sangsad. In his final words before walking out of the chamber, he made it known that though he had known Ayub Khan, a reference to the dictatorship of Pakistan’s first military ruler, he was not willing to see a Mujib Khan in Bangladesh.
It is noteworthy that in the period between January 1975, when he quit the Jatiya Sangsad, and mid-August of the year, General Osmani lapsed into silence. The silence broke when he, to the nation’s surprise and disappointment, agreed to serve the usurper Khondokar Moshtaq Ahmed as defence advisor. There is no record of his having made any move to question the coup d’etat of August 15 or issue a statement mourning the assassination of the Father of the Nation. The shock lay in the fact that while Osmani was brave enough to resign from parliament in protest against Bangabandhu’s Baksal move, he proved happily willing to serve a man who had ascended to power through bloodletting and in violation of the constitution.
It was certainly Osmani’s efforts which in early November 1975 prevented Shafaat Jamil and his men from causing bloodshed at the cabinet meeting presided over by Moshtaq at Bangabhaban. It would be the final such meeting before the usurper would be shown the door by General Khaled Musharraf. Osmani’s appeals to Shafaat Jamil for calm prevented what could well have been one more addition to the litany of Bangladesh’s blood-stained history. After the counter-revolution of November 7, 1975, Osmani went silent. It seemed that his political career had effectively come to an end.
Not until a combined opposition led by the Awami League nominated him as its presidential candidate against General Ziaur Rahman in 1978 did General Osmani emerge into the limelight again. Interestingly, along with a large opposition team, he made a pilgrimage to Tungipara in May of the year and offered prayers for Bangabandhu at his grave. That was a departure from his position between August 1975 and his presidential nomination in 1978. In all that entire period, Osmani failed to make a trip to Tungipara. In the darkness following 15 August, neither he nor the members of the cabinet, all of whom had been appointed by Bangabandhu, showed any inclination of paying homage to the Father of the Nation at his grave. That collective failure remains a blot on the conscience of this independent nation.
General Osmani, in the final phase of his life, kept himself relevant through his Jatiya Janata Party. The party made little impression on the public mind, but was enough of a vehicle to keep people focused on Osmani’s role in the history of the country. In June 1978, he lost the presidential race to General Zia, who had worked under him as a sector commander during the War of Liberation and about whom he once complained to Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad. Osmani had little chance against Zia in the election, for Zia was in power and therefore was able to have the machinery of government work for him as it had worked at the so-called referendum legitimising his seizure of the presidency from Justice A S M Sayem in April 1977.
Osmani could have done more, achieved more for the country in the troubled period following the August 1975 assassination of Bangabandhu and his family. He could have exercised firm leadership, even as Moshtaq’s defence advisor, by forcing the assassin-majors and colonels back into the cantonment and thus have the chain of command in the army restored before the chaos of November 3 to 7.
It is surprising that a bold military-cum-political figure like him was unable or unwilling to call forth the courage to condemn the tragedy of August 15. For him as for so many others who had risen to prominence under Bangabandhu, the Father of the Nation was a forgotten man, a non-person after his assassination. A supremely incorruptible man in personal life, a bachelor, a politician who was quick to come down hard on wrongdoing and wrong policies, Osmani’s acts, contrary to the principles he held dear, after August 15 have remained inexplicable.
Postscript: The reputed journalist and researcher Abdul Matin notes in his work, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib: Koyekti Prashongik Bishoy, that on a visit to Britain in December 1976, Osmani addressed a gathering of Bengalis in east London.
When asked why he had not protested the killing of Bangabandhu and his family, his response was: “Before calling for justice for Bangabandhu, it is necessary to ask for justice for the killings committed before and after Bangabandhu’s murder.” Asked if he considered Bangabandhu the Father of the Nation, Osmani replied: “B D Habibullah has written in his book that Fazlul Huq is the Father of the Nation. How many Fathers of the Nation do you need?”
A full report on the meeting was carried by the London-based Bengali weekly Banglar Dak on December 26, 1976.
General M A G Osmani’s life and career are a tale scripted in the zone straddling light and shadow.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
