When my mamas (maternal uncles) first found out that I was involved in journalism, they asked me to write about Shaheed Asad, a martyred brother of theirs; and yes, a martyred “mama” of my own, whom I haven’t met for obvious reasons. But I didn’t write any piece.
When another cousin of mine also embarked on professional journalism, our mamas again asked us both to write about Shaheed Asad. But we didn’t write any piece. Our collective procrastination turned into cumulative indifference … and time went on.
Yet another January 20 has come, yet another mourning procession has started to march at the wee hours of the day towards a dilapidated Asad’s monument in front of the Dhaka Medical College, yet another “Shaheed Asad Dibosh” (Shaheed Asad Day) is all set to be commemorated … and yet another foggy winter morning has come and no one really cares. Why should they?
We didn’t care much for long. Until today. It took my cousin nearly 290 days of “conscious” journalism to write about him. Me? A little over 1,846 days and six hours.
Writing about Asad isn’t something that I don’t care, or I didn’t care about. I do care. It’s not that I don’t have enough facts or information to write a decent piece. My mamas are right there to share their anecdotes. One of my mamas is even a history professor who has also been planning to write about him for long.
But he never did. He, however, had participated in seminars and talk shows to talk about Asad … but never attempted to write about him even though he possesses a solemn fervency on the issue.
Maybe that explains something. Asad was a martyr of 69 mass upsurges, a part of our nation’s history that we are blissfully oblivious to. When there is a liberation war and the death of hundreds of thousands just two years later, a mass upsurge and the death of a few might get superseded.
That’s excusable. After all, history is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
But the problem is, when the whole nation is supposedly on the frenzy of being ignited with the spirit of liberation war, a failure to acknowledge the “event” that led to the war seems hypocritical.
Is there anyone, with the slightest bit of historical consciousness, who can deny the fact that the mass upsurges of 69 paved the way for the liberation war of 71? Is there any valid point of subduing the glorified story of the perfervid emotions that was instigated among people learning about one death?
Can anybody deny that Asad Gate was Ayub Gate even on the morning of January 20, 1969? Does history truly do justice to Asad, to the mass upsurge?
It really doesn’t matter though. Asad wouldn’t have cared. He was too busy with his work to care about such mundane human traits. He didn’t do politics to get recognition or power. He didn’t visit almost every peasant’s house in his own village to ask for votes, he didn’t start a night school in the village to get popularity, he didn’t spend sleepless nights thinking about an oppression-free society as he had insomnia, he didn’t tell his sister that he wanted to earn a lot of money just because he wanted to get rich rather than distribute that money among the poor.
He didn’t join the so-called mainstream political parties albeit having necessary popularity, he didn’t become a leading coordinator of the communist revolution in the then East Pakistan to get funding and political “pat on the back” from the communist “big brothers” of the polarised world of the 70s.
He didn’t do any of those things to get a lot of things. He did those things because he believed in them.
Some people make headlines, others make history.
