This morning, close to a half century since the cataclysm which descended on this nation on August 15, it is the old tales of grandeur we will dwell on. It is the epic story of the superman in our lives we will reflect on. It is that tragic moment in the history of this nation when we once again recall Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, our Bangabandhu, the father of our nation, and revive the glory that was his and therefore was ours as well.
Think back on the roadmap to freedom Bangabandhu sketched for us on March 7, 1971. Rare have been the instances in history when a political leader, through powerful oratory before a million-strong crowd, indeed before the world, could rise to being a statesman. On that day at the Race Course, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman informed the world that his people would be free, that he would power their irrepressible urge for liberty into the actuality of freedom.
Think back now on the two dictators his politics brought down. Ayub Khan thought he could destroy Sheikh Mujibur Rahman through the malicious instrument of the Agartala Conspiracy Case. That was not to be. Before that special tribunal, designed to convict Bangabandhu and his co-defendants to death and perhaps long prison terms, the future founder of Bangladesh knew of the way history would turn out. “One who wishes to live in Bangladesh,” he proclaimed loudly before the tribunal, the judges cowering before him, “would have to speak to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.”
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did not walk the gallows, but he walked into the premises occupied by his tormentor Ayub Khan, to inform him in so many words that the future was his, that the dictator was a man of the past. Within weeks, the self-proclaimed field marshal was gone. The future beckoned East Bengal’s greatest spokesman. And Bangabandhu let us know, in December 1969, that henceforth there would be no East Pakistan, that there would be Bangladesh. Two years later, the province Bangladesh would reinvent itself as a sovereign republic.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the quintessential politician, a thorough political being who knew of the nature of the strategy that would run men like Yahya Khan out of town. Pakistan’s second military ruler thought he could do what his predecessor could not -- finish Bangabandhu off on the gallows. In the end, it was Yahya Khan who was sent packing, because his soldiers had bitten the dust in Bangladesh. In the end, again, an incarcerated Bangabandhu, in solitary confinement a thousand miles away from his beloved country, put paid to the inordinate ambitions of politicians of the Bhutto brand.
This was our leader, our superman. In Rawalpindi for the round table conference in February 1969, he let it be publicly known that on the streets of Pakistan’s western province it was the smell of his jute and his tea that he experienced, for the foreign exchange accruing from the export of the two items had the west shining bright but left the east trapped in poverty. When in Quetta a future Pakistani attorney general complained to him that his Six Points would destroy the state of Pakistan, Bangabandhu’s retort came sharp and quick: ‘You have sucked our blood for twenty-three years. Now you must face the music.’
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s home has been burnt to ashes in barbaric manner in these present times. But the idea that was Bangabandhu, the symbol that was and will forever be Dhanmondi 32, are today deeply embedded points of powerful history. Remember that at the gates of this home, Bangabandhu waved Bangladesh’s flag in March 1971 and reassured the thousands come to see him that freedom was on the way. He was the embodiment of leadership, the one man in our history who brought a whole nation together, for he reached out to all 75 million Bengalis.
Those of you who were around in 1971 will not forget that the War of Liberation was waged in his name, that on Shwadhin Bangla Kendra it was his bojro kontho which initiated the day’s programs. You will of course remember all the songs composed and sung in his honour through the nine months of the war. You will surely recall the millions of hands which went up in prayer, in occupied Bangladesh in Ramadan 1971, for Bangabandhu’s safety, for his life. On Eid day we did not celebrate, for we spent the day in prayers for the Father of the Nation.
Bangabandhu was a colossal presence in the world. He was our universe who strode through the councils of the world speaking of our dreams, our aspirations and of the country we were trying to lift out of poverty with the advent of freedom. He minced no words in informing Saudi King Faisal why Bangladesh was a secular state. He silenced with sarcasm Yakubu Gowon when the Nigerian wondered if Pakistan could not have been a powerful state had Bangladesh not broken away from it. In him was a true, indomitable nationalist. His Bangladesh mattered beyond and above everything else.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman forgave but did not forget the sins committed by his rivals or by those who had tormented him. Tikka Khan had him arrested in March 1971 and yet it was the same Tikka Khan, as Pakistan’s army chief, who saluted him at Lahore airport in February 1974. Lahore, if you must remember, was the place where the resolution for a division of India and the creation of Pakistan was adopted in 1940. It was in Lahore that Bangabandhu sounded the call for a future Bangladesh through his Six Points in February 1966. Here, then, was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman creating history again.
Bangabandhu has been in his grave for 49 years and yet he remains the most potent presence in our lives. In life, his voice conveyed to us the poetry which enveloped his politics. All these years since his death at the hands of treachery, it is that same voice we hear, the same idealism which powers our yearning for a rebuilding of the secular state we envisioned in 1971. In this era of the mediocre and the sinister, it is the banner carrying the message of Bangabandhu we hold high.
You will not have occasion to come by another superman. In Bangabandhu, it was the peasant of Bangladesh who mattered, the worker who found his voice. In his mind, in his heart, was the entirety of Bangladesh --- its hamlets and villages and small towns, its rivers and streams, its songs and folklore. He remembered faces; he recalled names. His was a reassuring presence in the lives of his people. His laughter came from deep within.
This morning, as we march to the burnt shell of Dhanmondi 32, we will know that the light that was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman shines bright, in the depths of our souls. It is light which frightens the enemies of the state. It is energy, the heat of which will run each and every vandal, every ghost creeping out of the dark woods, out of town.
Bangabandhu lives. Joy Bangla will forever be sounded from the ramparts, to strike fear into the hearts of the barbarians at the gate.
(Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, born on March 17, 1920, was assassinated on August 15, 1975).
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
