The revolution brought about by Bangabandhu’s statesmanship, by the Mujibnagar government, by the Mukti Bahini, and by the people of Bangladesh in 1971 liberated us. That is the unassailable truth. We are free citizens today because our liberation was our revolution, because our independence reshaped our world in accordance with our wishes.
Revolutions do something unique: They change the world, change the way we think of life and all our aspirations which come associated with life. Revolutions reorder life. They mean to lift nations out of existential crises and reassure them that the future is theirs to savour and build on. Revolutions change the structure of geopolitics.
And that is precisely what Bangladesh’s War for Liberation achieved in 1971. It was a revolution, the outlines and substance of which were carried through to a successful culmination by Bangbandhu’s party leadership through the Mujibnagar government.
That revolution was not about a mere change in the power structure. It was not because it was a concerted political and military campaign which sought to create a nation-state out of a dispensation that had been an instrument of repression and deprivation in the twenty-three years following the partition of India in 1947. The Bangladesh Revolution reconfigured history in Bangladesh and beyond.
There have been similar revolutions, notably the American Revolution of 1776, when a British colony decided in its wisdom to throw off the shackles of foreign dominance and branch out on its own. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were among the leading figures who knew that without freedom there would be no enlightenment for the people of the land that would soon be transformed into the United States of America.
There is little question that the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity which underscored the French Revolution, covering the decade between 1789 and 1799, would in time become symbolic of the right of people to choose governments they believe will uphold their collective interests. Of course, given the truth that revolutions sometimes consume their heroes -- Robespierre and others -- revolutions can often be messy affairs before things settle down.
And here in Bangladesh, we do not forget that the 1971 revolution consumed its heroes.
Had Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose succeeded in leading his Indian National Army all the way to triumph in Delhi, it would have been a spectacular Indian Revolution that would have thrown the British colonial power lock, stock, and barrel out of the country. Fate decreed otherwise for Netaji, but there is always the thought of the kind of India that would have shaped up if the revolutionary in Netaji had fulfilled the promise inherent in “chalo chalo Delhi chalo.”
There are revolutions which are sprung on the world in moments people do not really anticipate. The Egyptian Revolution of 1952, involving officers of the army led by General Naguib and Col Nasser, caused a sea change in the Arab world. The overthrow of a decadent monarchy and the sending out of the message that feudalism was gone and that Egyptians were free to carry themselves not as subjects but as citizens was a signal to the rest of the world that life could change for the better when idealistic soldiers caused the overthrow of monarchical regimes that had for ages exploited successive generations of people.
An enduring revolution has been that which propelled Fidel Castro to power in Havana in 1959. The Cuban Revolution was a powerful expression of the dedication which revolutionaries could bring in their assessments of the nature of national aspirations. With Castro were men like Che Guevara, whose belief in revolution being an extra-territorial affair remained paramount right till the end.
Revolutions have, by and large, been movements against regimes hostage in the hands of the corrupt and the disgustingly feudal. The Russian or Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was one such revolutionary act. It gave a whole new meaning to people’s rights. That socialism was the engine which would transform the world was the light emitted by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. And 32 years down the line, in 1949, it was the Communist Revolution in China which shook up the world.
The dignity of citizens was also a moot issue in Iran, where the oppressive rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi had left people gasping for breath. The Shah, whose restoration to the throne in the early 1950s following a brief uprising led by Mohamed Mossadegh was brought about by America’s Central Intelligence Agency, had turned into an epitome of arrogance who did not think his throne would someday be shaken to its core.
There have been revolutions in the past and there will be revolutions in the future. Kemal Ataturk brought about a necessary end to the Caliphate in the early 1920s and launched Turkey on the path to modernity. In his own way, Hugo Chavez inaugurated the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela in the 1990s which, despite repeated attempts by foreign powers to bring it down, has survived.
Revolutions often run into roadblocks caused by internal dissension or extraneous forces. But history has demonstrated that revolutions survive, they endure and they are happenings which leave nations enriched materially and intellectually.
It was such a revolution which came into our lives, here in Bangladesh, in 1971. It was liberation which informed us of our place in the world as secular Bengalis and as a nation proud of our place in the world. The 1971 Revolution has endured.
Revolutions do not die.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
