In 1971 I was a staff writer with the Freedom Fighter. It was a weekly paper published in the old part of the city of Dhaka during the Bangladesh liberation war. It printed reports of the progress of the Muktibahini—Freedom Fighters—against Pakistani military assaults. A broadsheet of only four pages, it quickly became a hit with readers because of its inspiring writing. Lutfuzzaman Babul, its editor and publisher, said it was regularly being smuggled into Bengali refugee camps in various Indian territories, where the Muktibahini received guerrilla training before moving to the front. He said members of the Bangladesh government in exile who were based in India read every word of it. In the absence of Sheikh Mujib, leader of the liberation struggle, who was imprisoned in West Pakistan for treason, it was considered one of the most important nationalist voices in the country.
I believed him. I believed in the vision of the paper. That’s why, although it was published by a small media company with limited and irregular income, I decided to stick with it. Sometimes I wanted to take a rifle and go to the front. But Lutfuzzaman Babul said I was already at the front; reporting during such a primitive war was not an easy task, it was a fight in itself. He was sure the Freedom Fighter would accomplish more than what killing a bunch of Pakistani soldiers would; it would redefine the entire ruling class of Pakistan by rousing their conscience against genocide. He told me to write with passion, to fill my columns with love for our people, so that every Bangladeshi upon reading my words would be imbued with an enormous sense of patriotism.
In all my articles, I attacked and insulted the Pakistani rulers—present and past. I ridiculed them, invented stories about them, misspelt their names and designations to make them seem eccentric and trivial. They were cockroaches. Tikka Khan, the army commander in East Pakistan, should be massaged with fourteen spices and marinated for three nights before being roasted for hungry dogs on Pakistan’s national day. We published Pakistan’s flag with a Nazi swastika logo instead of the traditional crescent and star; superimposed mammoth, bloody, terrorizing horns on Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan’s head. In emotionally charged language, I narrated how Pakistanis had jumped upon us like beasts with sharp claws and teeth and would not give up until they had sucked the last drop of our blood and turned our country into a wasteland.
In article after article I wrote against those who collaborated with Pakistan and smuggled out valuable security intelligence. ‘Hang Them Twice’, I titled one of my articles, which argued these traitors should be hanged along with our enemies because of their misdeeds, and then hanged again for betraying us while being a part of us. Bangladesh would never forgive them, I said; they were not sons of our motherland, they were aliens, Bedouins, Jews, agents of the CIA. They were the damned, awaiting severe punishment for their actions in the people’s court. When the country would be free, we would find them; we would find all those zombies even if they hid under the rubble, in the bed of the silent seas, above the clouds, and in the shadow of Iqbal, and hang them one by one in public squares. Traitors! We would dance in their blood.
I specifically criticized the poet Iqbal because Pakistanis regarded him as their wisest man. They called him Allama, the Scholar. He dreamt of a unified homeland for all Muslims in the subcontinent, thus opposing the concept of the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan. By talking about an integrated Pakistan, he only wanted to immortalize Bangladesh as West Pakistan’s peaceful colony. I said that, although I knew even Gandhi had sung his song Saare jahan se achchha—Better than the entire world—to express his love for the subcontinent. Iqbal died long before the British rule came to an end; nonetheless, I attacked him as if he were alive today, alive and well and advising Pakistan’s generals on homeland integration affairs, sitting in some fortified palace inside the Karachi cantonment. Because he was their precious poet, we needed to bully him, the way they bullied our precious leader Sheikh Mujib.
In September 1971, Lutfuzzaman Babul called a meeting in his office. We—all eleven reporters, proofreaders and administrators—gathered around his table. From four thousand copies in April, the circulation of the paper had grown to twelve thousand in six months; four pages had become eight. He told us there would be no scarcity of investment to take the paper to the next level once the country was liberated. By the next level he meant to give it an institutional shape, to make it a real business venture so that all its employees had a permanent job in the new country. It would not be surprising if Sheikh Mujib’s government wanted to acquire it for its communication department. In that case, we would all automatically be turned into public servants. We loved our country and becoming public servants was the best thing that could happen to us. He advised us to redouble our efforts in inspiring our people to kill Pakistani forces wherever they were found. Kill, kill, kill—that was the message; kill them; eat them alive.
We published a victory issue of the paper following Pakistan’s surrender on 16 December 1971, ending the nine-month war. Including supplements, it was sixteen pages. We printed patriotic poems and stories, pictures of children running down the street waving flags, female students of Dhaka University singing ‘Our country has plenty of grains and riches’; noted intellectuals contributed essays on the themes of nationalism and the Bengali psyche, the evolution of the Bengali cultural tradition, and the history of the Bengali renaissance in the twentieth century; a professor analysed ideas of rebellion in our folk literature.
But the main attraction was the picture of a smiling Sheikh Mujib, wearing a heap of garlands around his neck. The article that followed praised him for his determination, conscientiousness and towering social influence. He was one leader who ardently stated he did not want to be the prime minister of Pakistan, and instead wanted to see Bangladesh free. We printed details of his political career along with several pages of pictures.
Sheikh Mujib was more popular with Bangladeshis than Mohammad the prophet; he was supported by people of all religions and creeds. On 10 January 1972, he returned to Dhaka to form a government, after being released from Pakistani custody. ‘There is not another leader like him in the world,’ people said. ‘There won’t be another leader like him in the future.’ A new cabinet was sworn in immediately. Military and border security forces, police and other institutions were created and organized as quickly and adequately as possible. Mass graves were discovered in different parts of the country. The buried were exhumed and reburied. Roads were cleansed. Walls were washed to make room for new graffiti. Pakistani tanks, weapon carriers, personnel carriers, ambulances, helicopters and supply trucks—burnt out, blood-spattered and broken—were removed from the streets. Offices and marketplaces hoisted new flags. Educational institutes and courts opened. Government documents published in Urdu, the language of Pakistan, and Urdu–Bengali dictionaries were gathered together and set ablaze in the national park. Muktibahini members returned from the front, wept for deceased fellow fighters, got married, and joined in victory parades in every city, town and village. The smell of loss gradually began to fade.
Sheikh Mujib delivered a special message to the Freedom Fighter shortly after he came to power. He was such a busy person; the whole country was waiting for his directions; Russian president Brezhnev was waiting to meet him; British foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home was waiting. But he made time to take pen in hand to write a few lines on his newly printed letterhead in his most direct language. ‘My brothers,’ he wrote, ‘the enemy is gone. It is your country now. Forget your differences. Transform your hate into action. Build this nation. Joy Bangla.’
The message was recognition of our hard work, Lutfuzzaman Babul said. It was an inspiration for us as well as for every man and woman in the country. Now that the country was free, he did not speak about the Freedom Fighter becoming the government’s mouthpiece. I knew him; I had no doubt he believed a paper must be free even in a free country—particularly in a free country.