We begin this chapter with two songs beloved in Bangladesh. The first, the Bangladeshi national anthem, “Āmār Sonār Bānglā” (“My Golden Bengal”), consists of several lines of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, who spent eleven years of his life (1890–1901) in what is now the Kushtia District of Bangladesh, managing his father’s estates in Shilaidaha. During this period he traveled the region widely and wrote numerous short stories and poems set in its lush, riverine countryside. The poem excerpted for the national anthem was written in 1906, during the agitation over the first partition of Bengal. The song was adopted as the national anthem in 1972, after Bangladesh became independent. Tagore is thus claimed and beloved by India and Bangladesh: both countries have chosen one of his songs as their national anthem.
The second, a marching song, “Cal Cal Cal” (“March on, march on, march on!”), is by Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), known as the “Bidrohī Kabi” (“Rebel Poet”), who spent his active literary life in the western parts of Bengal in the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote nearly three thousand songs on themes of patriotism, romantic love, the evils of bigotry and fundamentalism, and Hindu–Muslim harmony (he married a Hindu woman, and in addition to songs on Islamic devotional practices wrote many devotional songs for Hindu deities). He was a good friend of Tagore, a passionate anti-imperialist, and, by early 1942, a critic of the idea of partition. In 1942 he was struck with what might have been some form of Pick’s disease, and lived the last thirty years of his life without verbal or mental capacities. In 1972 Bangladesh obtained permission from the government of India to bring Nazrul to live in Dhaka, where he was made an honorary citizen and eventually the National Poet.
Here Bengal is likened to a verdant motherland, or Ma.
My golden Bengal
I love you.
Your skies, your air
forever play in my heart
like a flute.
Oh Ma,
in spring the scent from the mango groves
intoxicates me,
thrills me.
Oh Ma,
in autumn I see
sweet smiles in the ripened fields.
What brilliance, what shade,
what tenderness, what enchantment
you spread like a cloth
at the roots of banyan trees
and along the banks of rivers.
Ma, a word from your lips
is like nectar to my ears,
thrills me.
Ma, if sadness ever darkens your face
My eyes will brim with tears.
The song reproduced here was composed in the early 1930s, became popular during the 1971 war, and is today still sung in military contexts. The “peacock throne” of the last stanza refers to the Mughals’ legendary seat of power, a throne carried off to Persia by Nadir Shah in 1739.
March on, march on, march on!
Drum beats sound in the sky,
and the earth below is restless.
Youth of the new dawn,
march, oh march, oh march!
March on, march on, march on!
Breaking down the doors of dawn
we will usher in a reddened morning
and shatter the night of darkness;
not even the Vindhyas will obstruct our path.
We shall sing of the new and the young,
bringing life to the cremation ground,
a new heart,
new strength to our arms.
March, new soldiers, listen,
tune your ears to the call to life
at the gates of death.
Break, oh break them down;
March, oh march, oh march,
March on, march on, march on!
On high a thunderbolt booms its commands:
Open up your bedrooms; come out
dressed as soldiers and martyrs;
enter the military parade.
“When will the lost empire return?
I still crave it today.”
So you walk, singing melancholy songs,
tears streaming from your eyes.
No, leave behind the peacock throne;
wake up, wake up from your faint.
You see how many Persias, how many Romes, Greeces, and Russias
sank—and they all rose again.
Rise, feeble ones!
We will build a new Tajmahal from the dust.
March on, march on, march on!
[Nazrul Islam, “Cal Cal Cal.” Bengali original taken from The Poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam in English Translation, vol. 1, ed. Mohammad Nurul Huda (Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 1997), 485–486. Trans. R. F. McDermott.]
Although Bangladeshi history proper does not begin until the birth of the nation in 1971, the periods between 1905 and 1947, when what is now Bangladesh was part of the British Raj’s Bengal Presidency, and between 1947 and 1971, when it was East Pakistan, are significant—especially insofar as they contain the seeds of the divisiveness that led to the breakup of Pakistan. In addition, Lord Curzon’s partition of Bengal (1905–1912), as a result of which the regions comprising modern-day Bangladesh and Assam were separated off from western Bengal and parts of Bihar into a separate province, foreshadowed the territorial splits of 1947 and 1971.
No one could have foretold, during the age of the Moderate politicians of the late nineteenth century, that Bengal would eventually split apart on the basis of popular support for Hindu and Muslim communal identities. Elites of both communities had more in common with each other than with their respective co-religionist masses, and rural Hindu and Muslim cultivators likewise shared a common context—although, as the riots of 1906–1907 showed, it must be remembered that Muslim peasants probably always fared worse, since most of the landlords were Hindu.
It was the partition of Bengal in 1905 that first made Hindu and Muslim elites both aware that there was irreconcilable conflict between British and Indian interests: they began to mobilize the masses around a program of passive resistance and boycott of foreign goods. Some politicians tried to reconcile Hindu and Muslim political imagery, but after 1905 the furor over the partition created a growing feeling of separation between Hindus and Muslims, as Muslim elites acclaimed the decision to split the Presidency. Led by Nawab Salimullah (1871–1915) of Dacca, 1 they formed the Muslim League on December 30, 1906, on a policy of loyalty to Britain and protection of Muslim political rights and aspirations. They were rewarded for this loyalty by the granting of separate electorates for Muslims in the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909, which exacerbated communal political rivalry. Although at the provincial level there was some Hindu–Muslim antagonism during the period, in particular the 1906–1907 riots in Mymensingh when Muslim peasants rose against their Hindu landlords, the anti-partition agitation largely failed to develop into a mass political movement.
When the partition was revoked in 1911, Muslims felt betrayed; the decision galled Nawab Salimullah; the League called it “an utter disregard of Muslim feeling”; and traditional Muslims politics, relying as they did on concessions and loyalty, were at an end. Salimullah’s political successor, Fazlul Huq (1873–1962), called Sher-e Bangla (“Lion of Bengal”), became Bengal’s Muslim League president in 1914. He championed the middle and lower classes, favoring them over elite zamindar politicians whose interests, he felt, were bound to the British.
The nine years from 1916 to 1925 witnessed several attempts, some of them uniquely Bengali, to form a rapprochement between Hindus and Muslims. In the Lucknow Pact of 1916, Hindus and Muslims agreed to work together for separate electorates and the equitable distribution of offices. Various events and decisions by the government between 1919 and 1922 afforded the two communities additional occasions for united political agitation: the Government of India Act of 1919, which provided for a dual form of government, or “dyarchy,” apparently for the sake of giving Indians more scope for self-governance; the agitation over the post–World War I fate of the caliphate; the oppressive Rowlatt Bills of 1919; and the killing of innocent people at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. Many Indians of all backgrounds joined Gandhi’s non-cooperation and mobilization movements of 1920–1922, which ushered in a whole new style of mass politics. Finally, the formation in Bengal of the Swaraj Party by C. R. Das, who was trusted by members of both communities, presented Hindu and Muslim politicians with notable opportunities to work together. The height of this honeymoon period was the Bengal Pact of 1923 (see chapter 7), according to which Muslims were assured of receiving more than 55 percent of the positions in the Calcutta Corporation and other government offices, until such time as they had a share equal to their percentage of the population.
However, in the mid-1920s, after Das’s death, the Turkish abolition of the caliphate, and Gandhi’s decision to call off the Non-Cooperation movement, attempts to keep communalism out of Bengali politics faltered. Huq founded the Krishak Praja Party in 1928 to play down religious differences and to emphasize economic disparities instead, but all-India incidents and actions by the British only served to heat up the political atmosphere. As a result of the Communal Award of 1932, which divided political power among rival groups of Indians on the basis of loyalty to Britain, 2 the Hindu bhadralok (elite) was awarded a minority of legislative seats in Bengal, and in order to shore up their political power they chose to reach out to the Depressed Classes.
The crucial events in Bengal during the decade prior to Independence, 1937 to 1947, were World War II and the Japanese bombings of Calcutta from 1942 to 1944; the Famine of 1943 and resultant migrations of desperate people into Calcutta; the political decline of the Hindus and ascendancy of the Muslims; and the spread of the Pakistan movement. Each of the four Bengal ministries of the period was led by a Muslim—Fazlul Huq (1937–1941 and 1941–1943), Nazimuddin (1943–1945), and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (1945–1947)—although Muslim politicians were not always in agreement, especially when Bengali interests were seen to clash with pan-Indian, or incipient Pakistani, ones. Fazlul Huq’s lower-class Krishak Praja Party campaigned against, and beat, the elite Muslim League in 1936. In spite of the fact that the Bengal Congress requested him to form a coalition in 1937, Gandhi vetoed such an alliance and Huq joined forces with the League, giving it a mass base and effectively handing Bengal to Jinnah. By 1941, however, there was disaffection between the two leaders. Huq refused to call Jinnah the Quaid-e Azam, described him as a “political dictator,” and stated that “Bengal does not count much in the counsels of political leaders outside our province, although we constitute more than one-third of the total Muslim population of India.” 3 Jinnah expelled him from the League. Huq then reached out again to the Congress, but by this time, politics had hardened: Sarat Bose was imprisoned; Congress came increasingly to be identified with dominant Hindu, not secular, interests; and Muslim-dominated Bengal ministries were felt to be partisan. Huq’s second government (1941–1943) did include some Hindu politicians, most prominently the Hindu Mahasabha leader Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, but this government too was dissolved. Thereafter it proved impossible to form a Congress–Krishak Praja Party coalition. The Calcutta riots of August 16, 1946, called Direct Action Day by Jinnah to protest against the Cabinet Mission Plan for the independence of India, caused massive loss of life, of property, and of communal goodwill in the city; Suhrawardy, by then premier of Bengal, was widely blamed for failing to prevent the carnage and for suppressing media coverage of it (see Azad’s and Ikramullah’s documents in chapter 7).
In February 1947 the prime minister of Britain, Clement Atlee, announced that the British were going to leave in the summer of 1948 and would hand over power. In a last attempt to keep Bengal together, in April 1947 Suhrawardy—supported by Sarat Bose—raised the slogan of an undivided sovereign Bengal, which could decide later whether to opt for Pakistan, to opt for India, or to remain independent. This free state of Bengal would have joint electorates and equal numbers of Hindus and Muslims in the ministry. Suhrawardy, fearful of domination by North Indian Muslims and following upon his understanding of the Lahore Resolution, which allowed for regional variations in the formation of states, appealed in his arguments for the free state to Bengali character and sentiment. But United Bengal never had a chance. Neither Jinnah nor Nehru supported it. Most Hindus feared a united independent Bengal: in none of the four Muslim-led ministries since 1937 had they enjoyed any significant political power. By March 1947 most Hindus, upper-caste and so-called “Depressed” alike, wanted a separate West Bengal. Suhrawardy’s proposal earned him the antipathy of Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, the latter calling him an “Indian dog let loose by Jawaharlal Nehru,” 4 and in 1947 he was passed over for the job of chief minister of East Pakistan. About three million people were displaced in greater Bengal due to Partition.
Almost from the beginning, the relationship between East and West Pakistan, or the east and west wings (or zones), as they were called, was troubled. While West Pakistan had almost six times as much territory as East Pakistan (310,403 vs. 55,126 square miles, respectively), East Pakistan had more people (42.06 million vs. 33.78 million, according to the 1951 Census), and hence expected to be treated as an equal partner. But West Pakistanis were passionately committed to a strong central government, which they physically situated in Karachi, refusing to convene meetings of the Constituent Assembly in Dacca even once a year. East Bengal was very much underrepresented in the central government, in the civil service, and in the military (Bengalis were said to be weak, whereas Punjabis were naturally martial); it received disproportionately low amounts of foreign aid and development projects; and all the banking was in the hands of West Pakistan. East Pakistanis were also accused of being naturally seditious, due to Hindu and communist influences.
The issue that encapsulated all others was language. East Pakistani pleas for the inclusion of Bengali as a second state language for Pakistan, equal in status to Urdu, were repeatedly denied (the subsequent 1951 Census confirmed that only 1 percent of the Bengali people could read Urdu). Indeed, from the beginning the language issue became a fulcrum for East Pakistani resentment; disagreements over the status of Bengali began in 1948 and culminated in the partition of Pakistan in 1971.
On February 25, 1948, Dhirendra Nath Datta, a Hindu member of the Constituent Assembly, moved an amendment that Bengali be added to English as a language to be used in the House along with Urdu. His principal argument was one of fairness: East Pakistanis outnumbered West Pakistanis in the State of Pakistan, and thus Urdu should not take precedence over Bengali. Datta was supported by other Hindu and Muslim representatives from East Pakistan. The prime minister and minister for defense, Liaquat Ali Khan, argued against them, alarming the non-Muslim members of the Assembly by his equation of Pakistan with a Muslim state; his view easily prevailed.
The news of the defeat of Datta’s amendment caused agitation in East Pakistan. Jinnah, however, did not take it seriously, because he was led by his advisors to think that it was fomented by a conspiracy of disgruntled political adversaries, Hindus, communists, and anti-Pakistani groups operating from Calcutta.
In his address in Dacca on March 21, 1948, Jinnah warned against provincialism.
But let me make it clear to you that the state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Anyone who tries to mislead [you] is merely the enemy of Pakistan. Without one state language, no nation can remain tied up solidly together and function. Look at the history of other countries. There[fore] so far as the state language is concerned, Pakistan’s language should be Urdu; but, as I have said it will come in time.
Jinnah’s statement was not well received. In 1949, partly as a result of East Pakistani frustration with policies formulated by Jinnah and the Muslim League, veteran Bengali politicians such as Suhrawardy and the left-leaning Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani turned away from the League and formed their own political party, the East Pakistan Awami League. They purposely avoided incorporating the word “Muslim” in the title, for they wanted the party to be truly national. One of their demands was the recognition of Bengali as a state language. To force the government to recognize Bengali as a state language, students and League members organized, demonstrated, and called for a national boycott on February 21, when Khwaja Nazimuddin, the new prime minister of Pakistan, was due to visit Dacca. In clashes with the police on that day, four students were killed on the University of Dacca campus. They became the first “martyrs” of the language movement, and February 21, or “Ekushey February,” has been immortalized in Bangladeshi history as the real beginning of the Independence movement. In 1963 a monument called the Shahid Minar was erected in Dacca in honor of the slain. In 1999 UNESCO internationalized the commemoration by declaring February 21 to be International Mother Language Day.
The following, “Āmār Bhāier Rakte Rāngāno” by Abdul Gaffar Chaudhuri (b. 1934), is perhaps the most famous of many poems commemorating the event. It is still sung nonstop every year on February 21, from midnight to noon, on the University of Dhaka campus. A nāginī here means a female soldier; Baishakh is the hot month of February–March. Rajanī gandha flowers are sweet-smelling tuberoses.
The twenty-first of February was reddened by my brother’s blood,
Can I ever forget that;
This February was built on the tears of hundreds of mothers who lost their sons.
Can I ever forget that;
This February, reddened with the blood of my golden land,
Can I ever forget that.
Arise all you nāginīs, arise, arise, oh violent winds of Baisakh.
Let the earth tremble today out of grief for her slain children;
They have murdered the sons of this golden land and thwarted the claims of man,
And when these times will change, then will you all escape?
No, no, no, no, in murder-reddened-history this final judgment was made
By the twenty-first of February, the twenty-first of February!
On that very day at the end of winter, underneath blue skies,
The moon smilingly bestowed a kiss,
And on path after path bloomed rajanī gandha flowers, as if a heavenly garden,
At that time the storm arose, wild and crazily.
The faces of those beasts of darkness are now well-known,
Mothers sisters and brothers all hate them with a passion.
They fired on those lives and frustrated the country’s demands,
They crushed the breast of Bengal underfoot;
They are not of this land
But instead sell the fate of this very country,
They have snatched away food, clothing, and the peace of man,
Oh twenty-first of February, twenty-first of February.
Arise, arise today, arise today, oh February twenty-first;
Still today in the prison of oppression die heroic men and women;
The souls of my martyred brothers are calling,
Arise, oh dormant force of man throughout market-place, field, and river-bank—
We shall once again fire up the month of February with our anger’s intense heat:
Oh twenty-first of February, oh twenty-first of February.
[Translated in Lyric Poetry by Qazi Abdul Mannan and Clinton B. Seely (New York: Learning Resources in International Studies, 1974), 17–18.]
Although the symbolic status of Bengali continued to be a rallying cry for the next nineteen years, the language movement did achieve its stated purpose: on February 29, 1956, the new Constitution of Pakistan (Clause I of Para. 214 of the State Language section) confirmed that “The State Languages of Pakistan will be Urdu and Bengali.”
One year after the slaying of students in the University of Dacca grounds, three respected politicians joined forces to oust the Muslim League in Bengal; by 1953 the League had become a complacent organization that had not supported the language movement and was out of step with popular aspirations. Fazlul Huq merged his Krishak Praja Party with the Awami League of Suhrawardy and Bhashani, forming the United Front Party on December 4, 1953, with a historic twenty-one point program as its election manifesto. This United Front Party was so successful that by 1956, and thereafter for a brief two years, East Pakistan came the closest it ever would to achieving parity with West Pakistan, for Suhrawardy assumed the position of prime minister, in Karachi.
Note the attention given here to economic, linguistic, educational, and military parity between the east and west wings. The “black laws” in point 11 refer to a Pakistani ordinance that totally deprived of their autonomy all the universities believed responsible for the 1952 uprisings. Point 19 was the most radical: it amounted, in the eyes of West Pakistanis, to incipient secession. This program became the basis of all subsequent political and constitutional movements in East Pakistan until December 16, 1971.
The United Front Party, if voted to power, will fulfill the following program within the next five years of its regime:
There will be no enactment in the House which is repugnant to the fundamental principles of Holy Quran and Sunnah, and provisions will be made for the citizens to live their lives on the basis of Islamic equality and brotherhood.
1. To make Bengali one of the state languages of Pakistan;
2. To abolish without compensation all rent-receiving interest in land and to distribute the surplus lands among the landless cultivators and bring down the rent to a fair level and abolish the certificate procedure for realizing rent;
3. To nationalize jute trade, to make arrangements for giving to jute-growers fair price of jute and to investigate into the jute-bungling during the Muslim League regime, to punish those who will be found responsible for the bungling and to forfeit all their properties earned thereby;
4. To introduce co-operative farming and to improve the conditions of cottage industries and manual works;
5. To start salt industries, both cottage and big, in order to make East Pakistan self-sufficient in the supply of salt;
6. To immediately rehabilitate all refugees, particularly those who are artisans and technicians;
7. To improve the irrigation system and save the country from flood and famine;
8. To industrialize East Pakistan and to guarantee the economic and social rights of industrial labor, according to the I.L.O. [International Labour Organization] conventions;
9. To introduce free and compulsory primary education and to arrange for a just pay and allowance for the teachers;
10. To reorient the entire secondary system by abolishing the discrimination between Government and private schools, and to introduce only the mother tongue as the medium of instructions;
11. To do away with all the reactionary black laws of Dacca and Rajshahi Universities and to make them autonomous institutions;
12. To make an all-out curtailment of the Administration and to rationalize the pay scale of high and low-paid Government servants; United Front Ministers shall not accept more than Rs. 1,000 as their monthly salary;
13. To eradicate corruption, nepotism, and bribery, and with this end in view, to take stock of the properties of all Government officers and businessmen from the year 1940 onward and forfeit all unexplained properties;
14. To release all security prisoners who are detained in jail under various public safety acts and ordinances and to guarantee freedom of the Press, speech and associations;
15. To separate the executive from the judiciary;
16. To convert Burdwan House for the present into a students’ residence and afterwards to a research institute of Bengali language and literature;
17. To erect a martyrs’ monument to commemorate the sacred memory of those who gave their lives for the Bengali language and literature;
18. To declare February 21 as “Shahid Day” and to observe it as a public holiday;
19. In accordance with the historic Lahore Resolution, to secure full and complete autonomy and bring all subjects under the jurisdiction of East Pakistan, leaving only defense, foreign affairs, and currency under the jurisdiction of the center. Even in the matter of defense, arrangement shall be such as to have the headquarters of Army in West Pakistan and the headquarters of Navy in East Pakistan and to establish ordnance factories in East Pakistan, with a view to making East Pakistan self-sufficient in the matter of defense and also to convert the present Ansars into full-fledged militia;
20. United Front Cabinet shall on no account extend the life of the Legislature and the Ministry shall six months before the general election arrange for a free and fair election through the agency of an Election Commission;
21. All casual vacancies in the Legislature shall be filled up through by-elections within three months of the date of the vacancies, and if the United Front nominees are defeated in three successive by-elections, the Ministry shall voluntarily resign from office.
[From A. K. M. Shamsul Huda, The Constitution of Bangladesh (Chittagong: Rita Court, 1997), 1:69–71.]
In the 1954 elections Huq led the United Front Party to a landslide victory over the Muslim League; of the 309 seats in the House, the United Front won 228, and the Muslim League only 7. But the Centre in West Pakistan refused to allow the party to form a government, and while the parties were waiting and agitating, the glue holding the Front together came unstuck, with Huq, Suhrawardy, and Bhashani in disagreement on the implementation of several of the twenty-one points. Two years later, in 1956, when the Awami League (the “East Pakistan” prefix was dropped from the party’s name after it briefly joined the United Front) was finally invited to form a coalition government in Karachi, it was Suhrawardy who became prime minister. His term in office, 1956 to 1958, was the only period in which a Bengali assumed the supreme position of power in Pakistan.
In some ways Suhrawardy (1892–1963) was the ideal Bengali candidate for this job. Although born in Midnapur, western Bengal, he had grown up in an Urdu-speaking aristocratic household of Persian ancestry, had been called to the bar in London, and was a polished orator with a lively, even haughty brilliance; moreover, for about twenty years prior to Independence he had been a Muslim League supporter. However, Suhrawardy’s tenure at the Center was not untroubled. The United Front platform had been very specific, with calls for the nationalization of the jute industry, for instance, and the punishment of corruption; but he focused less on practical matters than on ideological concerns. With the language issue resolved and hence off the agenda, the Awami League’s political attention was focused on joint electorates. With Hindus comprising nearly 20 percent of the population of East Pakistan, Bengali politicians felt that separate electorates would only be divisive.
The following are excerpts from a historic speech on the subject that Suhrawardy gave before the Dacca Provincial Assembly on October 10, 1956. The “great man” of whom he sarcastically speaks is Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi—who, although he had been an early opponent of the Pakistan movement, was now insisting on retaining the separate electorate system.
It is true beyond a doubt that the practice of separate electorates was an excellent weapon for Muslims in a united India. … In order to create the nation of Pakistan, Muslims in those regions of India where they were in the majority relied upon the weapon of the two-nation idea. But since the establishment of the nation, that notion of the two nations is useless. If it were followed today, the result would be the further division of Pakistan, and the establishment of a new state where non-Muslims are in a majority. This idea is so horrible that if he thinks of it, every Pakistani will tremble in fear. … Today within our country we do not wish to create any separatist tendency, for developing one nation is our compulsory duty. …
A few people say that joint electorates are opposed to Islam, and that if the National Assembly passes the bill it will be a deed against Islam. My own belief, and that of all the world’s Muslim countries, is that there are no rules in Islam relating to elections; trying to stretch Islam to defend such a view is futile. But apart from any question of my belief, according to the present constitution, the final responsibility for deciding what is in accordance with Islam and what is not lies with the state, and its constitutional committees and national assemblies. …
A few ulema, especially one who leads the movement against joint electorates, pronounce some things as Islamic and others as un-Islamic, according to their own convenience. You may remember that this “great man” at one time announced the idea of Pakistan to be the creation of un-Islamic powers, the West, and weak-minded peoples, and he issued a fatwa that people should work with all energy against the Pakistan movement. Now it is his opinion that Pakistan is an Islamic state. … I would also like to remind you that this same gentleman said that the Quaid-i-Azam does not know the abc’s of Islam. He also denounced Khwaja Nazimuddin … as an enemy of Islam because he was in favor of giving the vote to women and the freedom of religion to all citizens of the state. … In our current constitution, not only have women been given the vote but there are rules for election deputies from among them; moreover, the freedom of religion has been accepted as a fundamental right. … For this reason I am against our constitution wearing an Islamic badge. Before taking up any other matter I want to reiterate these words of caution: if we affix an Islamic label on anything it will not be easy to erase it. I make this public plea to everyone: do not drag the holy name of Islam into this controversy. …
Furthermore, is Pakistan the world’s only Muslim land? In Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, and Afghanistan, the Shariah is the proclaimed law. Are these not Muslim countries? Do any of them have separate electorates? At the time of their subjugation by imperial governments, one or two of these countries did have the practice of separate electorates. But who did not know that this custom was preserved for the purpose of dividing people? As soon as they got independence, they lifted all divisions among Muslims and non-Muslims and took the path of joint electorates. If one listens to the fatwa, “Joint electorates are un-Islamic,” what will be the reaction in those countries? What will they think of Pakistan and its “great man”? …
In the creation of one national feeling and one country, joint electorates will be helpful and will render null and void all divisive inclinations. However much we might want to avoid it, separate electorates will ignite the fires of religious difference. … The current demand for separate electorates derives from a deep suspicion or lack of trust, even hatred, of non-Muslims. I know that the wounds of Partition still have not healed. Perhaps some men will have to pass on before they can be healed. But we must begin here to be freed from this sickness. …
Those who support separate electorates say that as a result of joint electorates Hindus will come to dominate Muslims, will take control of seats, and will do bad things to Muslims. This argument is promulgated in areas of Pakistan where there are very few Hindus. It is quite amazing that the people of West Pakistan who are completely ignorant of East Pakistan attempt to impose this political remedy on us and give the impression that they are the saviors of East Pakistan, when they do not know anything of the sentiments of Muslim East Pakistanis. …
I will give a few examples of joint electorates in the life of East Pakistan in order to prove the insignificance of the arguments of these supposed saviors. In the Faridpur district board, where according to separate electorates there were supposed to be 25 Muslim and 11 Hindu seats, in actual joint elections 32 Muslims and only 4 Hindus were elected. In Dinajpur, where, according to separate electorates based on total population, there would be 12 Muslims and 9 Hindus, in actual elections 21 Muslims were elected, and no Hindus. … If arrangements for joint electorates cause any people to suffer loss of self-interest, it will be the Hindus. Then why do Hindus support them? … Hindus believe that as a result of separate electorates they will always be a minority, from the constitutional viewpoint. … It would be to their benefit if we dropped the term “minority community” entirely. … Although Hindus are at present generous, they could change into people who distrust and hate the majority. Then it will not be possible for Muslims not to harbor unfriendly feelings toward them. The facts that Hindus today are not snatching away a disproportionate number of seats and are willing to take a kindly perspective on one nation, unity, and trust demonstrate their political foresight.
I believe that there will come a time when talk of the differences of religion for the benefits of Muslim and non-Muslim peoples will be forgotten and that we will get to work in every corner of the country, joining together shoulder to shoulder.
[From “Yukto Nirbācaner ‘Ki’ o ‘Keno’?,” in Ganatantrer Mānasputra Hosen Shahīd Sohrāoyārdī, ed. Saiyad Toshāraph Ālī (Dhaka: City Publishing House, 1998), 179–187. Trans. R. F. McDermott.]
During Suhrawardy’s term in office, joint electorates were mandated in both wings of Pakistan. Many West Pakistanis, particularly the moribund Muslim League, saw joint electorates as a challenge to the very idea of the state, founded as it had been on the existence of two separate cultures. Suhrawardy was unpopular in the West for other reasons as well: as a Bengali, he was not trusted; like most of the elite at the time in Bangladesh he was secular; he had an independent power base in East Pakistan; and he tried to curtail the power of the army. Over time, Bengalis also felt betrayed by his leadership, since he had come to power on an Awami League platform contesting the act of 1955 in which the four provinces (Punjab, Northwest Frontier Province, Sindh, and Baluchistan), the capital, several former princely states, and the tribal areas of West Pakistan were to be consolidated administratively into “One Unit.” The Awami League saw this as an abrogation of provincial autonomy, but as prime minister, Suhrawardy had to champion it. The Awami League in East Pakistan, from 1964 under the new leadership of Suhrawardy’s political protégé, Sheikh Mujib, denounced the One Unit idea and demanded full economic regional autonomy for East Pakistan. While Suhrawardy managed to calm his opponents in both wings, the resulting stability was short-lived.
In July 1957 Maulana Bhashani broke from the Awami League to form the National Awami Party, with local chapters in both East and West Pakistan. Bhashani had always stood to the socialist left of his colleagues, even using Marxist language to champion the downtrodden peasant; his new party called for the breaking of military ties with Western countries, political and economic autonomy in the provinces (he too was against the 1955 act consolidating West Pakistan into “One Unit”), and the abolition of the zamindari system (in which hereditary aristocrats owned large tracts of land and taxed the peasants who worked on it)—without compensation to the landowners. Such infighting in East Pakistan, as politicians squabbled with each other over their own power bases and failed to address the real concerns of their political constituents, was so destructive of social order that the September 1958 meeting of the East Pakistan Assembly dissolved into scuffles and even murders of parliamentarians.
Using the disorder in the province as an excuse, on October 7, 1958, President Iskander Mirza dismissed Suhrawardy and his Awami League government, abrogated the Constitution of 1956, and gave all power to the army under Field Marshall Ayub Khan, who placed the country under forty-four months of martial law. Since the army was dominated by the western wing, this arrangement further impaired the balance between East and West.
In retrospect, the strictures that Ayub Khan implemented in order to keep Pakistan under control almost guaranteed the complete loss of fellow-feeling between the two wings of the country; indeed, under his aegis, between 1958 and 1969 Pakistan moved inexorably toward division. Khan abolished political parties, banned student bodies, enacted in 1962 a new constitution in which all power was vested in him as president, and led the country into war with India over Kashmir, in 1965. The decision to enter this conflict was taken by West Pakistan without consulting the East, which wanted improved relations, not war, with India. In fact, Khan had no interest in East–West relations, and even the little representation of East Pakistan at the Centre that had existed under Suhrawardy was lost during his regime. After Suhrawardy’s death in 1963 there was no national leader who could garner support in both wings for a return to democracy, so when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who succeeded Suhrawardy as leader of the Awami League in 1964, made the historic demand for his “Six Points” in 1966, five of the six were presented as Bengali demands, for the benefit—indeed, autonomy—of the east wing.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) came from the Faridpur district in eastern Bengal, and soon found his métier in politics. After joining the Bengal Muslim League in 1943, he grew close to Suhrawardy, and it was under the latter’s patronage that he rose in East Pakistani politics as a student leader. In 1949 he left the Muslim League to join Suhrawardy and Bhashani in forming the Awami League; in that same year he was elected joint secretary. By 1956, after four years in jail for his support of the Bengali Language Movement, he joined the Awami League Cabinet and served until 1958 in the second Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. When Ayub Khan suspended the Constitution and imposed martial law in 1958, Sheikh Mujib went underground with a group of student activists to oppose Khan’s regime. His Six Point Formula reflects his long-standing commitment to political autonomy and popular uplift. Following his announcement of the six points, his followers began to refer to him as Bangabandhu, “Friend of Bengal,” and it was he who coined the name Bangladesh (“Land of Bengal”), in December 1969. This new name was a symbolic severance of ties with Pakistan and a reminder of the Bengali nationalism that characterized the liberation movement.
The following excerpts are taken from an appeal issued by Sheikh Mujib as president of the Awami League on March 23, 1966, after the Six-Point Formula had been formally adopted by the party.
6-POINT FORMULA—OUR RIGHT TO LIVE
Point 1
The Constitution should provide for a Federation of Pakistan in its true sense on the basis of the Lahore Resolution, and Parliamentary form of Government with supremacy of Legislature directly elected on the basis of universal adult franchise.
Point 2
Federal Government shall deal with only two subjects, viz: Defense and Foreign Affairs, and all other residuary subjects shall vest in the Federating States.
Point 3
I recommend either of the following two measures with regard to our Currency, viz:
A. Two separate but freely convertible currencies for two wings may be introduced, or
B. One currency for the whole country may be maintained. In this case, effective constitutional provisions are to be made to stop flight of capital from East to West Pakistan. Separate Banking Reserve is to be made and separate fiscal and monetary policy is to be adopted for East Pakistan.
Point 4
The power of taxation and revenue collection shall vest in the federating units and the Federal Centre will have no such power. The Federation will have a share in the state taxes for meeting their required expenditure. The Consolidated Federal Fund shall come out of a levy of [a] certain percentage of all state taxes.
Point 5
(1) There shall be two separate accounts for foreign exchange earnings of the two wings;
(2) Earnings of East Pakistan shall be under the control of East Pakistan Government and that of West Pakistan under the control of West Pakistan Government;
(3) Foreign exchange requirement of the Federal Government shall be met by the two wings either equally or in a ratio to be fixed;
(4) Indigenous products shall move free of any duty betwixt the two wings; and
(5) The Constitution shall empower the unit Governments to establish trade and commercial relations with, set up trade missions in, and enter into agreement with, foreign countries.
Point 6
I recommend setting up a militia or a para-military force for East Pakistan.
An Appeal
Now, before concluding, I want to submit a few words to my West Pakistani brethren:
Firstly, they should not run away with the idea that whatever I have stated above I have done in the interest of East Pakistan only. It is not so. In each of my 6-points is inherent a corresponding benefit to my West Pakistani brethren. …
Secondly, when I speak of East Pakistan’s wealth being flown to and concentrated in West Pakistan I only mean regional concentration. I do not thereby mean that this wealth has reached the masses of West Pakistan. … I know there are millions like us in West Pakistan who also are unfortunate victims of economic exploitation. …
[In his third point he asks West Pakistanis to consider how they would be feeling if the roles were reversed, with the Center of the country in Dacca. Fourth, he reminds them that Bengalis have made many concessions to the West, out of a brotherly spirit.]
Fifthly, … We believe that this feeling of absolute equality, sense of interwing justice and impartiality is the very basis of Pakistani patriotism. Only he is fit to be a leader of Pakistan who is imbued with and consumed by such patriotism. A leader who sincerely believes that the two wings of Pakistan are really two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two rows of teeth, two hands, and two legs of the body-politic of Pakistan, a leader who feels that to make Pakistan healthy and strong one must make each one of these pairs equally healthy and strong, a leader who earnestly believes that to weaken any one of these limbs is to weaken Pakistan as a whole, … is the only person entitled to claim the national leadership of Pakistan.
Sixthly, let me humbly remind my West Pakistani brothers and sisters that when we demanded Bengali to be made one of the two State Languages of Pakistan you condemned it as a move to undo Pakistan. When again we demanded joint electorates particularly in the context of parity in representation demanded by you, you condemned our demand to have been inspired from across the border. Both of these two demands have now been accepted, but there has been no undoing of Pakistan due to their acceptance. Does it not put you to shame that every bit of reasonable demand of East Pakistan has got to be secured from you at tremendous cost and after bitter struggle as if snatched from unwilling foreign rulers as a reluctant concession? Does it do you any credit? Please put a stop to such attitude once for all. Please be brothers instead of rulers.
[From Bangla Desh Documents (New Delhi: Ministry of External Affairs, 1971–1973), 1:24–32.]
The West Pakistani reaction to Sheikh Mujib’s six points was naturally unfavorable, and both Ayub Khan and Zufikar Ali Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, formed in 1967 in opposition to military rule, condemned them as tantamount to secession. Khan’s leadership could have withstood the criticism from East Pakistan, but Bhutto’s rising popularity, combined with the disaffection of the army, led to his political demise. In March 1969 Yahya Khan, commanderin-chief of the army, toppled Khan, imposed martial law again, and took over the running of the country.
Yahya’s rule was regarded by Bangladeshis as violating all canons of national justice and human rights. An authoritarian who allowed no dissent or discussion, in East Pakistan he was widely perceived to have handled the devastating cyclone that hit the area on November 12–13, 1970, sluggishly and ineptly. His ignorance of public opinion was demonstrated in the elections of December 1970, which he confidently assumed would hand power back to an army-sponsored government. Instead, the majority of the 138 seats representing West Pakistan went to Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, and all but two of the available 162 seats in the East were netted by the Awami League. This gave Sheikh Mujib the majority, and he claimed the right to become prime minister of the country.
However, no one in West Pakistan—Yahya, Bhutto, or West Pakistanis in general—was willing to concede this change in leadership. Bhutto announced that no constitution could be framed nor government run at the center without his party’s cooperation. In all of this sparring, Sheikh Mujib refused to compromise: he would not show his draft constitution, tone down any of his six points, or budge an inch in talks with Bhutto. Although he had congratulated Mujib on his victory, Yahya stalled, delaying the Assembly session at which the new government would take over. Strikes, some of them bloody, erupted in East Pakistan, and the East Pakistani Bihari community, widely believed to be sympathetic to West Pakistan, was targeted and massacred. When Yahya arrived in Dacca on March 15, 1971, for talks with Mujib and Bhutto, the province was in a state of anarchy. The talks were acrimonious and inconclusive. Yahya announced that the National Assembly would meet in Dacca on March 25, 1971.
Mujib used the celebration of March 23, or Pakistan Day (when the Lahore Resolution had been adopted), to call for a Resistance Day; his supporters raised the new Bangladesh flag and burned Pakistani flags and effigies of Jinnah. On March 24, Yahya authorized the army to put “Operation Searchlight” into effect. As he and Bhutto secretly flew back to Islamabad on March 25, the Pakistani army in East Pakistan enforced martial law, arrested Sheikh Mujib, banned the Awami League, expelled foreign journalists, attacked Awami League supporters all over the country, and targeted East Bengali regiments of the West Pakistani army such as the East Pakistan Rifles, who were assumed to be disloyal. The survivors formed the backbone of the Mukti Bahini, or Bengali freedom fighters. Yahya’s broadcast to the nation on March 26 announced the breakdown of order and the necessity of martial law. Major Ziaur Rahman, claiming to represent Sheikh Mujib, proclaimed from Chittagong the birth of an independent Bangladesh.
The ensuing nine months of guerilla warfare—even civil war—were brutal. Although East Pakistani fighters did manage to target and kill West Pakistani soldiers, it was East Pakistanis who suffered disproportionately, with horrific experiences of civilian displacement, torture, and death. For instance, on the very first night of the crackdown more than two hundred students in University of Dacca dormitories were indiscriminately massacred. Indeed, many Bangladeshi historians use the term “genocide” to describe the intent of West Pakistani forces during this period. The Pakistani army crushed resistance in the cities fairly quickly, but they were unable to penetrate deeply into the countryside, which was held by the Mukti Bahini. The West Pakistani army relied on collaborators, since the army personnel could not even read the local road signs; most of these came from rightist groups, including Ghulam Azam’s Jamaat-e Islami; they formed the volunteer group Al-Badar. Between March and December 1971 perhaps ten million people, 80–90 percent of them Hindus, were displaced and turned into refugees, flooding the northeastern states of India. An estimated two hundred thousand women were raped, some in army “rape camps.” As for the dead, estimates vary wildly, from hundreds of thousands to three million.
The Indian government provided shelter, military training, and arms to the East Pakistan resistance. Indira Gandhi, buoyant after a landslide election victory in India in March 1971 and responding to genuine Indian expressions of support for Bengalis after the crackdown, issued statements of her “deep anguish” for the “people of Bangladesh,” and in June told the Indian Parliament that India would not accept a solution to the Pakistan crisis that entailed the death of Bengali aspirations. Indian troops attacked Jessore on November 20, and by December 3 there was all-out war. Yahya appealed to the Chinese and to the United States, both of which countries gave lip service assurances of support, but within days it was clear that the Pakistani army would have to surrender. On December 16, Pakistani general A. A. K. Niazi surrendered to Indian lieutenant-general Jagjit Singh Arora, and Bangladesh was born.
December 1971 witnessed some of the worst atrocities of the war. Once it was clear that Pakistan would lose, paramilitary groups, principally the Al-Badar, the armed wing of the Jamaat, executed a calculated liquidation of more than two hundred leading Bengali intellectuals (journalists, doctors, and professors). Although to a significantly lesser degree, West Pakistani loyalists also experienced fear and death; military mémoires describe the week between December 16 and 22, when the provisional government returned to Dacca, as one of jubilant and vengeful killings by members of the Mukti Bahini. Indian army forces, however, remained until March 1972, and helped to reduce such violence.
Some of the most moving testaments to the horror and despair of 1971 are preserved in novels, short stories, and poetry. The first excerpt below is from the published diaries of Jahanara Imam (1929–1994), who spent her life in higher education as both headmistress of a girls’ school and professor in the Teachers’ Training College in Dacca. Following the army crackdown on March 25, her son Rumi joined the liberation struggle. To help assuage her anxiety about his welfare, Imam kept a diary during the nine months of the war. Rumi did not return, and her husband, Shariful Alam Imam Ahmed, died after having been picked up for questioning by the Pakistani army. After Imam published her diary in 1986, she was famed as Shahīd Jananī (“Mother of Martyrs”).
Thursday, 25th March, 1971
After the remarkable success of the Resistance Day on 23rd March, there was a shadow of gloom. Only disturbing news came from everywhere. The meetings between Yahya, Mujib and Bhutto failed to find a solution. Sheikh Mujib carried on his meetings with the President and after the meetings continued to repeat to the journalists that the talks were progressing. At the same time he asked the people to carry on with their struggle. He called upon them to build fortresses in every house.
For the last few days there have been rumours afloat that thousands of Pakistani troops were landing at Dhaka airport in plain clothes. I didn’t want to believe it but still it created a sense of unease in me. Some friends telephoned from Chittagong and informed us that shiploads of weapons have arrived from West Pakistan. The Bengalee porters of the port refused to unload this cargo and built barricades on the street. To prevent them the army shot at them at random.
There is a two-day-old stubble on Rumi’s unshaven face. Clutching a handful of his hair, he said: “You know Mother, the Mujib–Yahya talks are bound to fail. It is only a Pakistani ploy to gain time. They will never give us independence on a platter. We will have to win it through armed struggle.”
I shuddered. “What are you talking about? The Pakistani army has got all the latest weapons. What would you fight them with?”
In an excited voice Rumi replied, “Exactly, I fully agree with you. Sheikh Mujib is going to the President’s House everyday in his white car flying the black flag, but there is no progress in the talks. Meanwhile, thousands of Pakistani troops are landing in plain clothes at the airport and ships loaded with weapons are anchoring at Chittagong port. At the same time the so-called Bengalee heroes armed with bamboo staves are marching to Bangabandhu’s house to salute him. After returning home they have a feast of rice and fish and take a siesta with the satisfaction of having done their duty. At the Paltan grounds, they are parading with dummy rifles. Are we still living in a land of fairy tales? There must be a limit to naivety.”
“What is the solution then?”
“I don’t see any, Mother.”
A cold wave of fear and terror ran down my spine. “No, no, don’t say that. You are saying that only because you don’t support Sheikh’s political moves. You hot-blooded young people are itching for a fight. Sheikh is guiding the movement in the right direction. Even if the talks with Yahya fail, the non-violent, non-cooperation movement will lead us to our goal.”
“Mother, you are still living in a fool’s paradise. Just look at these few facts—whatever has happened to East Pakistan is directed against the Pakistan Central Government. In normal times these would have been considered acts of high treason. The President of the country is in Dhaka but East Bengal is following the directives of Sheikh Mujib. Offices, courts and banks do not obey the Government. They obey Sheikh. Then look at the humiliation of the Pakistani government. Tikka Khan could not become the governor because no judge agreed to give him the oath. He had to be satisfied with the post of Martial Law Administrator. The President landed in Dhaka and there was a demonstration in front of his house. No Bengalee is selling any foodstuff to the armed forces any more. They are virtually surviving on bread and water. They even had to get food from West Pakistan by plane. In the face of acts of such defiance the Yahya government has been extremely tolerant. Don’t you see why? They are only buying time. These discussions are nothing but eyewash. The Sheikh is too late. This is not the way of survival.”
I was getting impatient. I said, “Go shave and take a cold shower. That will cool you down.” Rumi got up to go to his room. I was quite demoralised, as if I had lost all strength. …
I was fast asleep. Suddenly I woke up at a very loud sound. Rumi and Jami came rushing to our room. “What’s the matter?” Deafening sounds of heavy guns, the intermittent sounds of machine guns, the whistling sound of bullets filled the air. The tracer balloons brightened the sky. We all ran up to the roof. South of our house, across the playground, are the University Students’ dormitories—Iqbal Hall, Mohsin Hall and a few other buildings of the University quarters. All the noise came from that direction. There were screams of anguish and heartrending cries of the victims along with the sound of weapons. We could not stay there for long because of the sparks. Rumi quickly lowered the black flag and that of independent Bangladesh.
Suddenly I remembered that Barek and Kasem were in the outhouse on the ground floor. We all rushed down. As soon as we opened the wooden door to the courtyard our Alsatian dog Mickey rushed in and started moaning pathetically and rolling on the ground. I called Barek and Kasem. They came in quickly. I told them to bring their beds and sleep in the drawing room.
Mickey refused to move out of the room. It seems that all the noise of the guns and the light of the tracer balloons had badly shaken him. Rumi lovingly patted his head and said: “Don’t be afraid, Mickey. You will stay with us upstairs.” But he refused to go upstairs either. He was looking for a corner. Finally he crept into a dark corner under the staircase and curled up quietly there.
I lifted the receiver. The phone was dead. Hearing Baba’s voice, Rumi was holding his hands and telling him something in a whisper.
There was no sleep for the rest of the night. I went upstairs again. There was fire visible at a distance. We could still hear the sound of the different types of guns, big and small. The tracer balloons continued to inflame the sky. There were sounds of people crying for help all around. The pillars of fire were getting bigger and higher in the North, South, East, and West.
Nobody uttered a word. Rumi and Jami opened up the polythene packets and unloaded the contents into the commode, a little at a time lest it got blocked, and then pulled the flush. Jami washed the mortars and pestles very carefully with dish-washing powder to remove the smell of chemicals.
After that, Rumi packed all his books on Marx, Engels as well as Mao Tse Tung’s military writings into a polythene bag. We did not know where to keep them. We didn’t want to bury them underground because it would spoil the books. Then I remembered a gap between Barek’s room and the boundary wall. We threw the packets of books in there as soon as the faint light of dawn appeared on the horizon. Rumi covered the packet with a few dried fronds of palm.
Friday, 26th March, 1971
At six o’clock in the morning I heard a faint voice calling me. I ran to the window and looked out nervously. I saw Kamal Ataur Rahman, curled up under a tree in the garden. Kamal is an Honours student at the Dhaka University and stays in the Mohsin Hall. I rushed down and opened the door. Rumi and Jami helped me to bring the semi-conscious Kamal indoors. He had spent the night with a few other students in a bathroom in the Hall. Due to the bright tracer balloons he did not dare to come out at night. As soon as the morning light appeared they all left the bathroom and fled in different directions.
After some nursing and breakfast, Kamal felt a little better. We switched on the radio. After recitation of the Holy Quran only one piece of music was being played over and over again—the instrumental rendering of a popular patriotic song. A 7 o’clock in the morning I went to our neighbor, Dr. A. K. Khan’s place to use their telephone but it was also dead. Gradually some more faces appeared at the windows of our neighborhood. There was terror on every face. Everybody had spent the night awake and nobody knew what was really happening. All the telephones were dead. …
At 9 o’clock, the instrumental music suddenly stopped and a harsh voice was heard on the radio. Curfew was announced all over the city until further orders. People were also reminded of the punishment for violating curfew. Martial law was announced and all the articles of the martial law were read out. The announcements were made in Urdu first and then in English. The pronunciation, style and accent betrayed the Army background of the announcer. Probably the military government could not find any more suitable person at this time.
Curfew for an indefinite period! Even without curfew nobody would dare to go out amidst the shootings and firings. There was no end to the sound of the gun shots. The pillars of fire were getting bigger and bigger and now we could see them from our windows. The dark smoke covered a large part of the bright blue sky over the city.
Mickey continued his moaning all morning. His Alsatian nature had been changed by the sound of non-stop gun-shots. We all in turn tried to cheer him up and feed him but to no avail. …
Just before evening the electricity went off. Our cup of misery was full to the brim. There was some respite in the sound of gun shots. Mickey also appeared somewhat more composed. He went out and sat on his favorite wooden box in the left of the courtyard. He also ate some food.
I took out some candles and lit them. I placed them at different places on the ground floor and the top floor. Barek and Kasem have stayed indoors the whole of today. In the evening I told them to bring their beds into the guest room and asked them not to go out into the courtyard at night. Gratefully, they brought their beds inside. I felt as if we were all sitting in Noah’s Ark. …
It is hard to get the BBC. … All India Radio has so far only said that there are troops on the streets in Dhaka and nothing more. Dhaka TV station is closed. There was nothing to do and so we had early dinner. As we were leaving the dining room, Rumi suddenly remarked: “Mickey is rather quiet. Looks like he has finally overcome the shock.”
Jami said: “We should bring him inside.”
We opened the door and went to the courtyard. In the flickering candlelight we saw Mickey lying in the courtyard. He was dead.
Saturday, 27th March, 1971
The sound of gun shots, pillars of fire and clouds of smoke kept us awake last night also. There was some relief in the morning. The noise stopped for a little while. People started peeping out of their doors. Barek and Kasem opened the main door and stepped out. Soon they ran back and said: “Madam, there are people and traffic on the road.”
I was surprised because there had been no announcement of lifting of the curfew in the radio. It is 7:30 now. I quickly raised the volume of the radio and went to my room to change.
At 8:30 after breakfast as soon as the lifting of the curfew was announced on the radio, Rumi and I went out in the car. Kamal left for his brother’s place. Jami stayed home with his grandfather. Sharif said, “I will take a rickshaw and go to Banka’s place.”
I suggested, “Rumi, let’s go to Mother’s place first and then to the hospital.”
Rumi said, “Mother, I will need the car for a couple of hours.”
“Okay, but before that let us finish the important errands.”
Near the vegetable and fruit market, Rumi suddenly stepped on the brake pedal and the car stopped with a screech. He cried out: “Oh my God!”
We found the entire market burnt to ashes. Coils of smoke were still rising from the glowing embers. I screamed: “Look! Look! There are charred human bodies!”
Rumi switched on the ignition and pressed the accelerator. He said, “Mother, don’t look there.” He took a turn to the right toward Mirpur. …
Before entering the hospital Rumi again cried out: “Oh God!” and stopped the car. The Shaheed Minar was razed to the ground. All the pillars had been pounded with heavy guns. There were tears in my eyes. What had they done? They had desecrated the Martyr’s memorial that was raised in memory of the students who were killed during the Bengali Language movement in 1952. There were troops guarding the area with combat helmets on their heads covered with net. I whispered to Rumi: “Let’s move. There isn’t much time.”
After parking the car we ran along the long corridor of the hospital. It was crowded. Some had come with their injured friends and relations, some in search of their near and dear ones. Many people had taken shelter in the Hospital corridor. As we were climbing the stairs we saw Anisa Begum, widow of Professor Hai of the Bangalee Department; her daughter Haseen Jahan; her elder brother with his wife and others. They were all standing in the corridor. Anisa and Haseen Jahan embraced me and started weeping. Prof. Hai had died in a train accident a few years ago, but his family was allowed to stay in the university quarters in a flat in building No. 34 besides the Shaheed Minar. Haseen Jahan in a sobbing voice said: “Aunty, soldiers entered our building and killed Professor Moniruzzaman. Professor Jotirmoy is badly injured.”
I was shocked. I asked, “Is it Professor Moniruzzaman of the Bengalee Department?”
“No, he was from the Department of Statistics. There is blood everywhere in our building, Aunty.” …
As we entered our house … Sharif brought some news about the events of the last two nights. … The University Cafeteria which has traditionally been the centre of student politics is no longer there. The owner Modhu has been shot dead and the canteen has been burnt. Besides Prof. Moniruzzaman of the Statistics Department, many other professors have been killed, including Dr. G. C. Dev, Dr. F. R. Khan, Dr. A. Muktadir. The Calcutta radio announced the deaths of Prof. Nilima Ibrahim and Begum Sufia Kamal. When I heard it could not check my tears. …
I felt dizzy. I went upstairs and lay down. Tears rolled down my cheeks. After a little while Rumi came and sat near me. He held my hand and said, “You don’t even have the whole picture, Mother.”
I looked at him and asked: “What do you mean?”
“I have visited only a few places and talked to some people. Nobody has the complete picture. I am trying to piece together all the information and it will be quite some time before we have the composite picture. I suspect that the situation is much more horrifying and gruesome than it looks.”
I cried out aloud. In a choked voice I said, “I don’t want to know any more. Whatever I have known so far is breaking my heart. Oh God! What curse have you brought upon us? Are they human beings or beasts?”
“They are worse than beasts, Mother. They won’t have a place even in Hell for what they have done.”
[From Jahanara Imam, Ekatterer Dinguli (lit. “The Days of Seventy-One”), trans. Mustafizur Rahman as Of Blood and Fire (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1989), 36–48.]
The Liberation War inspired some of the most moving poetry of Bangladeshi history. Presented below are selections from three of the most famous poets of the country: Shamsur Rahman, Jasim Uddin, and Sufia Kamal.
Shamsur Rahman (1929–2006), journalist, radio broadcaster, and political commentator, was at the time of his death also the leading poet of the nation. From 1963 until 2006 he published more than fifty collections of poetry, numerous novels, and several collections of his news columns. His poems on the Liberation War were so inspiring that they were recited in the camps of the freedom fighters.
The following poem, “Uddhār,” was written in August 1971.
SALVATION
At times from my porch
I used to see the beautiful full-grown rose;
I used to watch the shadows softening the summer’s heat,
I used to stare at the Buddha sculpted in wood
Sitting on my shelf.
And I thought how all my years I have
Hated war and yearned for peace.
When my little girl sits in a corner,
And with great care dresses her dolls,
And seeing the toy-bear dance bursts into peals of laughter,
Drives the dinky little cars, the puffing locomotive
All over the room, I am persuaded that
I am against war and have always been
For peace.
At the end of the long day after her endless chores
The lady of the house lies down beside me
Overcome by fatigue, her very presence revives
Without exchange of any words a shared past of ineffable charm.
And I am once again convinced that I am against war
And have prized peace all my life.
War I have abhorred all my life,
The rattle of the swords has ever sent
Blood coursing madly through my veins.
My father was a skilled hunter and yet I have never shot
A single bird with an eager gun.
No, not on the river banks
Not on the lake teeming with wild ducks.
From the prow of a boat or, standing neck-deep
In the ice-cold water, truly speaking
I’ve never handled a live cartridge.
I am not a Gandhiite
But have always dreaded violence.
Whenever war breaks out I am plunged into despair.
All my life I have detested war—
For, as they say,
Famine and pestilence, like the mythical horseman
Follow in the wake of war.
The young, the old, the hapless women
Tumble down the precipice into the canyon of death.
The tree of eternal values is uprooted by its ancient roots.
Doom blows its ram’s horn throughout the blighted land:
How I have hated war all my life.
Yet in this stricken city under alien occupation
Ask any old man who has lost his son,
Ask any young maiden raped by the soldiery,
Ask the newly-widowed worn out by her endless tears,
Ask the poet struck dumb by unbearable agony,
Ask him, who, beholding the heap of Bengalee dead,
Mutters to himself constantly
Now bursting into demented laughter
Now into unprovoked tears,
Or, finally ask the lonely child
Of our desolate, silenced neighborhood
Who lost its mother in a hail of bullets,
And now wanders aimlessly hither and thither.
Alas, ask all the peaceable gentlefolk,
And today they will all declare
With one voice—
“In war alone lies salvation.”
[From The Devotee, the Combatant: Selected Poems of Shamsur Rahman, trans. Syed Najmuddin Hashim (Dhaka: Pathak Shamabesh, 2000), 70–75.]
Jasim Uddin (1903–1976), a poet and litterateur originally from Faridpur, was known as the pallī-kabi, or folk poet, of Bangladesh, for he wrote about rural Bengal with its village life, folk traditions, shared Hindu–Muslim culture, poverty, and agricultural hardships. He published sixteen volumes of poetry, and was an ardent socialist and nationalist. In 1967, after the Indo-Pakistan War, when the Pakistan government, equating Bengali, Hindu, and Indian culture, attempted to stop the broadcasting in East Pakistan of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs, he protested boldly.
The following poem describes the fate in the 1971 war of a wooden chariot used in Krishna’s Ratha Jatra festival in the village of Dhamrai, Dacca district.
THE CHARIOT OF DHAMRAI
The Chariot of Dhamrai, engraved so beautifully
Over how many years by what old carpenter of ancient times
Whose skilled hands took hold of the blade
And curved over the hard wood
Images of fairies and flowers and forests,
In front of the chariot, a pair of horses
Are on the run from time immemorial,
They are still running and have not stopped ever since
Then came the folk painter whose touch of fine brush
Brought down from heaven many gods and goddesses
And encaged them on the body of the Chariot
With the magic color and lines to live forever.
What a great consolation he has created
On the body of this mortal world!
Krishna is leaving Mathura, the milkmaids
Lay underneath the Chariot wheels
Begging Lord of Love, do not leave us in pretence.
And this beloved Radha, alas, her sorrows
Surpassing years and years
Are still pouring forth through the lines
Of the rural painter.
Twice a year fairs were held around the Chariot
Shops and stalls and circus parties
Gathered on those occasions
To the tune of gazi songs;
Accompanied by the sweet sound of earthen drums
Many kings and queens used to roam about.
And they created the atmosphere of glorious deeds,
In the folk tunes the ideology of morality and justice
Soothed the ears of young and old,
Who was the enchanter who built this temple out of scanty wood?
What depth of affection evoked from his heart
That millions of people made pilgrimage to see the Chariot
And light the lamp of devotion?
The guardians of Pakistan in the guise of false saviours
Burnt this beautiful Chariot down to ashes.
What a great consolation for generations and generations
For the work that had come from the hands of the artist.
What barbarian destroyed the solace forever!
[From Selected Poems of Jasim Uddin, trans. Hasna Jasimuddin Moudud (Dhaka: Oxford University Press, 1975), 49–50.]
Sufia Kamal (1911–1999) was born in Barisal to an aristocratic family. She spoke Urdu at home, learned Bengali on the side, and was brought up in purdah. She met and was inspired by Gandhi and Nazrul, and was lifelong friends with Jasim Uddin, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Subhas Chandra Bose, Sheikh Mujib, and Rabindranath Tagore. In her adulthood she joined her cousin Rokeya Hossain’s Muslim Women’s Association, and became involved in the Shanti Committee, to promote Hindu–Muslim friendship. During the 1971 war she kept a poetic diary, “Where My Darlings Lie Buried,” some of the poems from which were broadcast from Calcutta.
The poem chosen below is the signature poem from that collection, “Mor Yāduder Samādhi Pare,” written on December 27, following the liberation of Bangladesh on December 16.
WHERE MY DARLINGS LIE BURIED
The shivering cold nights of wintry Poush5 have passed.
And now dewdrops of a morning
are like tears shed by mothers, sisters, widows,
as they gaze forlorn at the mounds
where their darlings lie buried.
For the last nine months
the soil of this land was drenched with bubbling blood.
And now the fecund earth
lies under the warm and golden sun,
and brings forth her dower of flowers of the season.
There is a smell of ripening harvest in the air.
Drowsy with this atmosphere,
or through sheer weariness,
our dear ones have dropped off to sleep.
No, I shall not disturb them in their slumber.
I shall leave for them, instead,
a kiss on the green mounds.
As I touch the grass tenderly
I seem to feel the clasp of millions of eager hands,
and millions of merry voices speak to me:
“Don’t you feel proud of us, Mother,
that we have liberated our Bangladesh?”
Ah, my daredevil darlings, that you have indeed done—
In the comity of nations
you have indeed laid out for your Mother Bangla
a bright carpet,
dyed with your ruby-red blood.
Now, and through the ages,
Mahakal6—the great God of time—
will stand at attention to pay you homage
for the marvel you have done.
Ah, our dear ones, you are deathless!
[From Sufia Kamal, Mother of Pearls and Other Poems, ed. Sajed Kamal, trans. Kshitish Roy (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 2001), 135.]
The exhilaration over the birth of Bangladesh was real, but short-lived. Sheikh Mujib was returned via London and Delhi to Dhaka (officially renamed from Dacca) on January 10, 1972, after ten months in jail and near-execution in West Pakistan. He and Indira Gandhi pledged undying friendship between their two countries, and Mujib thanked India for harboring ten million refugees during the Liberation War. From the beginning, Mujib vowed that the four guiding principles of state policy would be nationalism, socialism, democracy, and secularism (see the Preamble to the Constitution below). By “secularism” he indicated that he meant to abandon Pakistan’s conception of a Muslim state; indeed, he banned the Jamaat-e Islami party, and had the support, within the Awami League membership itself, of all minorities except tribals in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, who had never identified with Pakistan as an idea or with the struggle for independence from the western wing.
For many, the emergence of Bangladesh was the vindication of an ideal cherished since the 1940 Lahore Resolution, which had called not for an independent state but for independent Muslim-majority states to be carved out of British India. One eloquent spokesperson for this view was Abul Mansur Ahmad (1898–1979), a renowned litterateur, lawyer, journalist, and Bengali statesman, who held prominent posts in the United Front cabinet under Fazlul Huq and in the Awami League government of Prime Minister Suhrawardy. He spent four years in prison during Ayub Khan’s imposition of martial law from 1958 to 1962. Famed for his satirical writing, he was a pioneer in progressive journalism, and promoted secularism.
The following statement was written in March 1972.
At first sight the emergence of independent Bangladesh may seem to be an act of disruption. Obviously it has broken Pakistan into two pieces. To break up an organic unity, whatever the motive or necessity, is an undesirable phenomenon. … Fortunately that is only a superficial view of the matter. … What the recent tragic events in Bangladesh have proven is not the failure of the plan designed by our political forebears but of the deviation from that plan. So we need not be ashamed of our forebears but should be proud of them. That plan was such a well thought out and farsighted one that any deviation therefrom was bound to prove fatal. So the emergence of independent Bangladesh became inevitable. It has but logically followed. It is just an end of a betrayal. …
The formula [that led to Partition] was based on the famous Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League passed in 1940, which was subsequently known and observed as the Pakistan Resolution. It was so known, despite the fact that there was no mention of the word “Pakistan” within the four corners of the Resolution. … Whereas the Lahore Resolution visualized independent “states” in two zones, Pakistan was constituted as one single State with its capital at Karachi situated in the Western zone. … The Muslims in their rejoicings, the Hindus in their sorrowful but dignified resignation, and the British Govt. in their proud sense of impartiality, all heaved a sigh of relief that the apparently never-ending Hindu–Muslim dispute that was plaguing the political life of India has now been permanently solved, enabling both to start a fresh life of democratic progress and prosperity.
That hope, however, has not been fulfilled. This failure was due to two deviations in Pakistan: one internal, the other external. Both ultimately proved to be fatally suicidal betrayals. The internal one was a deviation from the Lahore Resolution. The external one was a deviation from the Spirit of Partition.
As regards the internal deviation, … Qaid could, if he so wanted, have set up two Govts. for the two regions, making himself Governor-General of both, spending six months in Karachi and six month at Dacca. He did not. As a result, all state powers including those of the East wing along with those of the provinces, naturally centered about the father of the new State. … This was evidently an unreal situation which could give East Pakistanis, incidentally the majority of Pakistanis, only a colonial position to be ruled from a foreign territory. The natural adverse consequences that were inevitably to follow from such flagrant ignoration of geographic reality seem to have been overlooked by all the successive rulers of Pakistan, who were mostly West Pakistani or dictatorial or both. …
The external betrayal was equally suicidal. … The successors of Qaid-i-Azam … started harping on “Islamic state” of Pakistan and of “Muslim nationhood” instead of a secular democratic Pakistan and a Pakistani nationhood. They fell willing or unwilling victims to their own deceptive propaganda carried on both before and after the creation of Pakistan. … As political propaganda … this demand for Pakistan very soon gave rise to an almost universal, though mistaken, notion that the proposed Muslim state was surely going to be a theocracy instead of a secular democracy and that the proposed scheme was going to be a communal division of India. … The result was that the Hindu–Muslim problem was not solved, but aggravated. The minorities of both the states became helpless. From a communal problem it grew into an international one. What was a clash between Hindus and Muslims, the Congress and the League yesterday, has become a clash between India and Pakistan today. … The net result is that the Partition of India has utterly failed to solve the Hindu–Muslim problem. …
If and when … West Pakistan (now Pakistan) gracefully acknowledges the reality and recognizes Bangladesh and adopts a secular democracy instead of harping on the transparent hypocrisy of “Islamic ideology” and “Muslim nationhood,” the political super-structure of the sub-continent will have been fully restored, as wisely visualized in the Lahore Resolution. That would be the first step towards the establishment of lasting peace in this area. …
The sub-continent in that event will compose of three friendly and cooperating neighbors, viz. Bangladesh, Bharat, and Pakistan, all respecting and guaranteeing one another’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This will have permanently solved the Hindu–Muslim problem, which had been and still is plaguing the body politic of the sub-continent as a cancerous disease. The Non-Muslims of Bangladesh and Pakistan, and the Muslims of Bharat, will live as honorable citizens exercising all political and social rights equally with the majority communities of their respective States, as all three will have become secular democratic states. In the language of Qaid-i-Azam: “Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims,”—of course, politically. Along with it defense expenditures of all the three will be reduced to the minimum. A joint defense system may be possible. … A common market in the line of the European common market may be found attractive. Even Afghanistan, Nepal, Ceylon, and Burma may ultimately join such an economic league. A through train from Peshawar to Chittagong as dreamt by our great leader Suhrawardy, may turn out to be a reality.
[From Abul Mansur Ahmad, “Preface,” End of a Betrayal and Restoration of Lahore Resolution (Dacca: Khoshroz Kitab Mahal, 1975), 1–7, 9–11, 17–18. Slightly emended for English usage by R. F. McDermott.]
The optimism evinced by Ahmad’s vision of the future for South Asia was not shared by all political commentators of the mid-1970s. An example of a stinging critique of Sheikh Mujib and his Awami League constitution is the voice of Badruddin Umar (b. 1930), noted Bangladeshi political scientist, politician, and voluminous essayist (he has written nearly seventy books, in English and Bengali). The son of Abul Hashim, a politician who supported Sarat Chandra Bose and Huseyn Suhrawardy’s bid for a united Bengal in 1947, Umar has followed his father’s communist tendencies by becoming one of Bangladesh most fiercely left-minded intellectuals. In the 1970s Umar wrote a series of radical articles, of which the following is a part, in the Dhaka periodical Holiday, chronicling political developments in East Pakistan and then in the new state of Bangladesh.
The following class-analysis of Mujib’s “four pillars” was written on October 22, 1972.
THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION: A FUNDAMENTAL MEASURE AGAINST SOCIALISM, DEMOCRACY, SECULARISM, AND NATIONALISM
A constitution for Bangladesh has been proposed by the Constituent Assembly by the Awami League government. Since there is very little to distinguish between the Awami League Parliamentary Party and the Constituent Assembly it can be said with certainty that with minor changes here and there the proposed constitution will become the fundamental law of our land within a very short period of time. …
In the preamble of the draft constitution, nationalism, socialism, democracy, and secularism have been proclaimed as the fundamental principles of state policy. And the 153 articles of the constitution are supposed to be the fundamental guiding rules of that policy. But in spite of this claim of the Awami League government it can be clearly shown that these articles have been framed very carefully to frustrate all the aspirations of our fighting people. It can also be shown that the provisions of the proposed constitution are, in fact, a very substantial measure against the fundamental principles which they have proclaimed in the preamble.
It will be better if we begin with socialism. There is a “pious” declaration in Article 10 regarding the establishment of socialism but nowhere in the constitution is there to be found any declaration to the effect that private property will be gradually abolished. Even to a stark idiot it is clear that any constitution which does not provide for the total abolition of private property cannot have any claim to socialism. … In the context of what has actually been provided for private property in the various articles of the constitution it sounds like [an] “ownership of everything belongs to God”–type of provision as it obtained in the Pakistani constitution of 1956 and also in the infamous Ayub constitution of 1962. Previously, during the Pakistani period, all property belonged to God in an abstract manner and actually “the servants of God” used to exploit and appropriate the fruits of the labour of the toiling masses. Here also the draft constitution has assigned in a general and abstract manner ownership of the machineries and means of production to the people, while providing enormous scope for the expansion of private interests and property and for exploitation of the people by the ruling classes, the “servants of the people.” …
The draft contains bombastic expressions like “agrarian revolution” and “liberation of the workers and peasants” but refrains from saying anything regarding [the] abolition of feudal relations and of private property in land or about [any] fundamental change in the land system. In this context the declarations concerning the rights and welfare of the peasantry (Articles 14–16) are nothing else but an empty exercise in political propaganda. …
And here we find the demolition of the third fundamental principle—democracy.
In Article 63 (3) a very extraordinary provision has been inserted with consummate cleverness. Lumping together war, aggression, and armed revolt it has been provided in the Article that for public safety and protection of the state the Parliament will be able to exact any law and during such enactments the various other provisions of the constitution will not, in any manner, restrain the Parliament from making such laws. Or, in other words, under that kind of situation the constitution will stand suspended! Who has ever heard of a constitution like this? It even puts to shame the much-criticized Article 16 of de Gaulle’s Constitution of the Fifth Republic which was framed under the shadow of their Algerian war. …
Apart from this extraordinary Article there are quite a number of other ones in which the constitution grants fundamental rights to the people almost invariably with conditions. And for the inclusion of these conditions such rights of the people are nothing but paper rights. What they have proposed to give to the people with their right hand, they have attempted to take away with their left hand. …
And in that kind of situation what will happen to secularism? If by secularism is meant that the government of Bangladesh will not declare this state as an Islamic state then certainly Bangladesh will remain a secular state. Because in future no one, not even the exploiting classes, can gain anything, politically or otherwise, by that declaration. But if by secularism is meant that the government will not make any political use of religion (Article 12c) then it can be said with certainty that Bangladesh will not remain a secular state. How can any government which has not the slightest regard for any other fundamental right normally enjoyed by citizens of a democratic state be democratic enough not to create contradictions among the people which are politically profitable? Is it not a fact that in spite of the demolition of the social basis of communalism the latter survives at the level of superstructure? If that be so, then the secularism of the present government will necessarily consist not in trying to eliminate religion from political life but to encourage and keep alive all sorts of religious practices of all sorts of religion and then suitably play one religious community against another according to the needs of the situation. And since such practices are never done legally and openly they will be done conspiratorially and secretly. But above all the constitution actually envisages a political system in which not only the government in power but also other communal elements in the opposition will try to act in the same secret and conspiratorial manner whenever and wherever it would suit their purpose. Are we not witnessing that phenomenon here in Bangladesh even after such a bitter and arduous struggle against our national enemies?
[From Badruddin Umar, Politics and Society in East Pakistan and Bangladesh (Dacca: Mowla Brothers, 1974), 211–217.]
Sheikh Mujib was indeed a better insurgent than he was a peace-time leader. Even though Mujib’s idea of socialism was democratic rather than Marxist, Umar did correctly predict some of the problems that plagued the Awami League government in its first three years in power, 1972 to 1975. Mujib did not resolve law-and-order problems, did not respond well to the human misery caused by famines and floods, was widely believed to be authoritarian, corrupt, and nepotistic, and handled opposition by declaring a state of emergency in December 1974. In January 1975 he took all political power into his own hands, amended the Constitution to make himself president, and limited the powers of the judiciary and the freedom of the press. His numerous, vociferous critics were led by Maulana Bhashani, then in his eighties, who championed Islamic socialism. Along with other Islamic parties, he attacked Mujib’s Awami League government and its pro-India stance. The relatively innocuous friendship treaty with Indira Gandhi proved a terrible liability for Mujib.
Bhashani, popularly known as Mazlūm Jananetā (“Leader of the Oppressed”), is the patron saint of leftists in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the closest one gets in these countries to communism in a revered political leader. Trained both by a Sufipīr [teacher] and at Deoband, noted for its progressive views and commitment to social welfare, Bhashani had three lifelong ideological commitments: to class politics and the uplift of the downtrodden, to the socially emancipatory element in Islam, and to Bengali nationalism and autonomy. A seven-week trip to then-Peking in 1963 left him enthusiastic about Chinese socialism; back in East Pakistan, in return for Ayub’s support of his political party, he helped the Pakistani leader better his relations with Communist China.
In 1968 he penned a short booklet called “Māo Tse Tunger Deshe” (“In the Country of Mao Tse Tung”), in which he described his amazement at the social leveling achieved by the socialist philosophy. The following excerpt is from its opening.
We speak of our country as bounteous in water, fruits, rice, and vegetation. But day by day the deep green is fading fast from our country. When I got off the plane at the Peking airport I saw a great mass of green. On each side of the road going into the city from the airport there are lakhs and lakhs of trees, almost all of which have been newly planted. It was my impression that within ten years those trees will be worth millions of taka. In my travels to the provincial areas within China I have seen huge industries of tree plantations throughout whole regions. I have heard that in the last fourteen years seventy million people have planted two hundred million trees. In the last ten years the natural appearance of the entire country has been changed. …
Here in our country and right before leaving it I heard that in a communist country there is no individualism, nor any individual life or dignity. The Communist Party has sacrificed individual independence on the stake of collectivism. In socialist countries like Russia and China each person is only a screw in the large state machine. One cannot speak openly in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. However, having visited China I now see that there was never a bigger lie. Outside their places of work, whether one is a rickshaw puller or a university chancellor, it is not possible to recognize one Chinese person as different from another. The self-respect and dignity that Mao Tse Tung and his Chinese revolutionaries have given is totally unthinkable in our country.
Let me tell you about an incident that will make what I have been saying easier to understand. After getting sick I had to spend a few days at the Union Hospital in Peking. The Prime Minister, Chou En-lai, came to see me there. He had in his hands a bunch of flowers. When he entered my cabin a male nurse was seated, talking to me. He was off-duty at the time, and was smoking as we talked. As is the custom in our country, I frantically hurried to get up and greet the Prime Minister. But Chou En drew up a chair and sat down and asked about my health. He stayed and talked with me for about half an hour. During that whole time the male nurse neither got up from his seat nor extinguished his cigarette. Moreover, he did not even seem that interested that the Prime Minister Chou En-lai was sitting in the chair next to him. I did not see even in one word the sort of effort to show respect to a chief minister that one would expect according to the custom prevalent in our country. To me, his conduct seemed not only unbecoming but even insulting. When the Prime Minister and the nurse had left, I called the young superintendent of the hospital and narrated the whole incident to him. My voice perhaps indicated the anger I felt. After listening to me, the superintendent smiled. He said, Chairman Mao and Prime Minister Chou—they are not only our leaders and rulers; they are our friends.
Even after this, should I believe that in socialist countries there is no dignity of the individual, no liberty of the individual?
[From Saiyad Ābul Maksud, Maolānā Ābdul Hāmid Khān Bhāsānī (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1994), 649–650. Trans. R. F. McDermott.]
Bhashani did not share China’s political philosophy; what resonated for him in the Chinese social project was the equality between humans that Islam also preached. Marx and Islam could meet in social justice, he felt, or in his brand of Islamic socialism. This is why, when he revived the National Awami Party after independence had been achieved in February 1972, he called Mujib’s government to account for failing in its stated goal of promoting social and economic liberation for the poor.
The Awami League government did not, in fact, live up to anyone’s expectations. In August 1975 Mujib and all the members of his family except for his daughters Hasina and Rehana, who were away in Germany at the time, were murdered in their home by a group of army officers. His party collapsed, and the reins of government were taken up by a career military man, Ziaur Rahman (1936–1981). Since 1975 the military has played a major role in Bangladeshi politics.
Few grieved for Sheikh Mujib as the leader of the country, but many mourned the loss of the vision and hope that his leadership had promised in 1972 and feared for the future of democracy and secularism under a military dictator. One such mourner was Nirmalendu Goon (b. 1945). Goon emerged as a poet in the 1960s, a period that witnessed the increasing separation between the neo-rich and the abjectly poor, and his poetry urges the overcoming of human barriers with love and a commitment to freedom. He was one of the few people to protest the assassination of Sheikh Mujib in a time when even mentioning his name was considered dangerous. After 1975 his poetry emphasized communist ideals, and since 1989, with the fall of the Soviet Union, his publications have breathed a more religious, mystical spirit.
In the following poem, palash and krishnachura are flowers that bloom in spring; the former is bloodred. Samakal was a literary periodical of the time.
I HAVEN’T COME TODAY TO ASK FOR BLOOD
Like everybody assembled here
I too am greatly greatly fond of roses.
Yesterday as I walked past the race-course
a rose from among all those roses urged me
to speak of Sheikh Mujib in my poems.
I have come today to speak of him.
Yesterday a blood-spotted brick that fell
off the Shaheed Minar
urged me to speak of Sheikh Mujib in my poems.
I have come here to speak of him.
Like everyone assembled here
I too am greatly fond of the palash.
Yesterday as I went past the Samakal office
a freshly blossomed palash whispered into my ears,
and asked me to speak of Sheikh Mujib in my poems.
I have come to speak of him.
The swirling fountain at Shahbagh
begged me in a stricken voice
to speak of Sheikh Mujib in my poems.
I have come to speak of him.
Like everyone assembled here
I too am partial to dreams,
in fact, I am in love with them.
A bold dream that I had in the small hours
of last night urged me to speak of Sheikh Mujib in my poems.
I have come to speak of him.
Let these grieving people assembled
at the foot of the banyan tree be my witness.
Let these dry broken unready Krishnachura
buds hear this with all the secret warmth
of their heart. Let this black cuckoo know it
at this moment of gathering dusk.
With my feet firmly planted on this sacred soil
I am doing today what the rose urged me to do;
I am doing today what the palash asked me to do,
I am doing what my dream urged me to do.
Today I haven’t come to demand anybody’s blood,
I have come to speak of my love.
[From Selected Poems of Nirmalendu Goon, ed. Khondakar Ashraf Hossein and trans. Kabir Chowdhury (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 2001), 71–72.]
The period from 1975 to 1990 was marked by the authoritarian dictatorships of two military leaders, Ziaur Rahman and Hussain Muhammad Ershad (b. 1930). Of the two, Zia was the more popular, and the more successful: he was charismatic, and partially consolidated and rejuvenated Bengali society through his nineteen-point program of industrialization and development, which emphasized not socialism but agricultural expansion and a healthy rural economy, national self-sufficiency, public works, primary and adult education, and family planning.
One of Zia’s biggest contributions was in foreign policy; after 1976 Bangladesh started to play a dynamic role in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), and in 1980 Zia launched the South Asia Regional Conference (SARC)—to become the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation in 1985—among the seven countries of South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan). Addressing nationalists’ fears that Bangladesh was too reliant on Indian economic and military aid, Zia moved away from ties with the Soviet bloc, developed closer relations with the United States and Europe, took steps to normalize relations with Pakistan, and harmonized ties with Saudi Arabia and the People’s Republic of China, who had not agreed to recognize the creation of Bangladesh until 1975.
He remained, however, under pressure to restore democracy, and after declaring himself president and then winning a referendum in 1978, he allowed the functioning of democratic party politics; his own newly created party, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), won an easy majority in the parliamentary elections of September 1979. At this point he formally lifted martial law, appointed Gen. Hussain Muhammad Ershad as his army chief, and became a civilian leader.
Other aspects of his leadership were not so liberal. By Zia’s own admission, more than four hundred military officers were executed at his orders for suspected disloyalty; he did not attempt to punish Mujib’s killers, instead pardoning them under an Indemnity Act; he rehabilitated individuals who had supported the Pakistani army, including several in his cabinet; he attempted to knit together all ethnic groups in the country by supporting Bangladeshi over Bengali nationalism; and he moved to de-secularize and re-Islamicize the government, reinstating the Jamaat-e Islami Party, which had been banned under Mujib. He was assassinated in Chittagong on May 30, 1981, in a military conspiracy yet to be fully understood but certainly fueled by his pardon of collaborators, which drew the ire of members of the Mukti Bahini, now in the army, and by his bloody purge of army personnel for supposed insubordination. After a brief stint under an elected caretaker government, another military coup, this one by Ershad, returned an army chief to power, in March 1982.
Ershad did not have Zia’s charisma, and kept power in 1986 and 1988 by an obvious manipulation of the electoral system. He banned political parties, controlled the press, and imposed martial law. He continued Zia’s Islamization program by maintaining mosques with government funds; declaring Friday to be a weekly holiday; making English and Arabic compulsory in primary schools; shifting the Islamic University to Dhaka; and increasing attempts to enhance cordial diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Yet Ershad was not liked, due to his autocratic suppression of civic freedoms, and by November 1987 mass uprisings and strikes by the opposition parties forced him to declare a state of emergency and to dissolve the Parliament. In April 1988 he lifted the emergency, allowed the Parliament to convene, and took the opportunity to get passed into law his Eighth Amendment, whereby Islam was declared the state religion. This brought his new party, the Jatiyo Party, closer in ideology to the Bangladesh National Party, the Jamaat-e Islami, and other smaller fundamentalist parties. Such a move did not, however, ensure the longevity of his rule, as the Jamaat did not find his initiatives sincere, and criticized him for his personal loyalty to a Sufipīr. Furthermore, several high court justices declared his amendment to be unconstitutional. In 1990, after weeks of peaceful civil agitation, the Awami League and the Bangladesh National Party joined hands to oust him from power.
The five selections below—Syed Ali Ahsan on the lost opportunity of a united Pakistan, Zia’s nineteen-point program, Khondakar Abdul Hamid on the value of Bangladeshi nationalism, changes under Zia and Ershad to the Constitution, and selections from Ghulam Azam on the virtues of Islamization—all speak to the question of the relationship between religion and the state; implied in many of them as well is a discussion of the proper relation between Hindu and Muslim, India and Bangladesh.
It is important to remember that, in spite of near-ubiquitous patriotic zeal in Bangladesh after 1971, not everyone in the East Pakistan of 1947 to 1970 had wanted to see East and West Pakistan split apart. Indeed, after having realized their aspirations in 1947 for a separate, Muslim-majority state, many Bengali Muslims wanted the new country to succeed. Even though the inequities experienced by the eastern wing caused eventual disillusionment among many, eroding their commitment to a united Pakistan, the alternative to a West Pakistani military dictatorship was not necessarily seen as secularism or socialism. Nor was Islam, per se, perceived as the problem.
One can read pride in the new state, as well as a nostalgia for the failed potential of Pakistan, in the words of Syed Ali Ahsan (1920–2002), a poet, essayist, and scholar of Bengali language and culture who had worked for the formation of Pakistan while a student, and who spent six years teaching at Karachi University, in West Pakistan, during the 1950s. He then taught at various Bangladeshi universities after 1971, and was honored in 1989 with the post of National Professor.
The following thoughts date from 1977, when he was vice chancellor of Rajshahi University and chief minister of the country’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs. His knowledge of area history enables him to argue forcefully for the distinctiveness of the region—by claiming, in what becomes a common trope, that India’s West Bengal is culturally dissimilar.
Today the consciousness of our national existence is becoming more of a reality. We know ourselves chiefly as Bangladeshis. During the Pakistan era we did not build up this identity. Because of the great geographic distance we could not be one with the whole of Pakistan. Today we have gained a defined geographic existence, and this is also our national existence. Upon this has our sense of nationhood been constructed. There may be divisions of people in our country, as well as differences of religion, but we are all one, for in terms of national boundaries we are unavoidably Bangladeshis. …
At the time of the Pakistan movement, even though Mohammad Ali Jinnah spoke again and again of a Muslim nationhood, in his first speech as the leader of free Pakistan he emphasized a nationhood based on the land, not on religion. He clearly wanted Pakistani citizens to be known as Pakistanis, not as Muslims, Hindus, or Christians. Because of his health, Jinnah Saheb could not bring this type of nationhood into being. Moreover, the particular ingredients necessary to create such a nationhood were absent in Pakistan. One component is geographic unity. Pakistan did not have this. East Pakistan was geographically cut off from West Pakistan. Another essential component is anthropological unity. This too did not exist. The third ingredient is linguistic unity. … Besides this, from a long time back various ethnic groups had appeared in the area of West Pakistan. Greeks came, Shakas came, Aryans came, Turks from Central Asia came, and hence lots of ethnic communities entered in this manner. … Thus there is no one nationhood in Pakistan anyway. …
In the Pakistan period, … the only bond was a religious one. As unfortunate as it is to admit, it is true that this religious bond was not sufficient to build mutual trust between people in the two areas of the country. Mutual trust comes from sacrifice, sensitivity, and support. None of this was present in either part of the country. Thus the idea of a religious nationhood was reduced to a falsity. As a result, until the end, a territorial nationhood could not arise. … It would have been possible if, in their own spheres both areas could have been made completely self-governing in arrangements for administrative and economic allotments. But from the first, the rulers of Pakistan placed more importance on the central government and made the provincial governments dependent upon the center. …
We see that in the case of Pakistan, a nationhood based on religion was not able to be transformed into one based on geography. … But today in Bangladesh we have achieved this geographic nationhood. From ancient time West Bengal has been cut off from the eastern areas. It was different in terms of peoples and climate. From an early period the west felt the influence of the Aryans, but since the eighth century [BCE] present-day Bangladesh was outside the Aryan vortex; people from here were refused participation in the Vedic sacrifices. In addition, from the eighth to the twelfth centuries [CE], present-day Bangladesh had its own independent geographic existence under the Buddhist Palas, with very similar borders to what now pertains. …
We can find pride in our borders.
[From Syed Ali Ahsan, “Bāngladeśī Jātīyatā,” in Āmāder Ātmaparicay eban Bāngladeshī Jātīyatā (Dhaka: Bad Publications, 1996), 69–73. Trans. R. F. McDermott.]
The nineteen-point program of Ziaur Rahman, which says nothing about a theocratic state, has become a bit of an embarrassment for the Bangladesh National Party of Zia’s widow, Khaleda Zia (prime minister 1991–1996 and 2001–2006), whose power has depended in part upon its alliances with the Jamaat-e Islami and other Islamist support.
1. To preserve the independence, integrity and sovereignty of the State at all costs.
2. To reflect in all spheres of our nation’s life the four fundamental principles of the Constitution, i.e., complete faith in and reliance on the Almighty Allah, democracy, nationalism, and socialism, meaning economic and social justice.
3. To build ourselves into a self-reliant nation through all possible means.
4. To ensure people’s participation at all levels of administration, development programmes, and in the maintenance of law and order.
5. To strengthen rural economy and thus the national economy by according priority to agricultural development.
6. To make the country self-sufficient in food and ensure that nobody has to starve.
7. To step up cloth production so as to ensure supply of at least coarse cloth for everybody.
8. To take all possible measures so that no one remains homeless.
9. To rid the country of the curse of illiteracy.
10. To ensure minimum medical care for everybody.
11. To place women at their rightful position in the society and to organise and inspire the youth for nation-building.
12. To give necessary incentives to the private sector for the economic development of the country.
13. To improve the condition of the workers and develop healthy employer–worker relations in the interest of increased production.
14. To create an urge for public service and nation-building among the government employees and improve their financial condition.
15. To check population explosion.
16. To build up friendship based on equality with all countries and especially strengthen the relations with the Muslim nations.
17. To decentralize the system of administration and development and strengthen local government.
18. To establish a social system based on justice and fair play and free from corruption.
19. To safeguard the rights of all citizens irrespective of religion, colour, and sect, and consolidate national unity and solidarity.
[From Abdul Latif Masoom, Dilemmas of a Military Ruler: A Political Study of the Zia Regime (Dhaka: Afsar Brothers, 2000), appendix C, 251–252.]
Although liberation from Pakistan had been achieved through a pro-Bengali platform that stressed the uniqueness of Bengali history, language, and culture, within a very few years the call was heard for a nationalism based not on Bengali but on Bangladeshi identity. The English term “Bangladeshi-ism,” as opposed to “Bengali-ism,” was first coined by Abul Mansur Ahmad, but it was journalist-politician Khondakar Abdul Hamid (1918–1983) who argued for its political use in government policy. This type of nationalism resonated with Zia’s own proclivities; in his public speeches and policies, Zia began expounding Bangladeshi nationalism, and emphasizing the national role of Islam, as practiced by the majority of Bangladeshis. In opposition to Mujib’s secular Bangla, from the early 1970s the slogan “Muslim Bangla” came into vogue among right-wing advocates as a description of Bangladesh. Note, for contrast, that Ahsan, quoted above, also writing in the mid-1970s, used geography, not religion, to define Bangladeshi nationhood.
The following is an address given at the Bangla Academy on February 15, 1976.
WHAT IS NATIONALISM?
Nationalism is the nation state’s most important abstraction. …
In one nation there may be many ethnic groups, cultural groups, and religious groups. But they cannot remain cut off from the mainstream ideal of the national mood or from a perception of the nation’s integrity. If they remain cut off for too long and feel their aspirations blocked, they will become national minorities.
In other words, nationalism is: an unbreakable consciousness of and a great concern for the temper, blood, thoughts, passions and feelings, hopes, desires, culture, customs, and love for the country among a great family of people in an independent, universal nation. Wherever one sees these qualities together, one finds nationalism.
WHAT IS BENGALI NATIONALISM?
What is Bengali nationalism, exactly? In speaking of this, “multi-state nationalism” comes to mind, because there are lots of Bengalis outside Bangladesh; can we consider these Bengalis the same as those in Bangladesh? Without risking the question of mixed governments, could we conceive of this thing, pan-Bengalism or super-nationalism? No. And that is why we cannot name our nationalism “Bengali nationalism.” If we do so, there will be a technical mistake, and it will be politically dangerous.
There is something else. It is likely that people from Bangladesh, West Bengal, and other Bengali-speaking areas derive from the same stock. All may be Bengali-speakers. All may share the same food, and there may be some similarity between their customs and deportment. But are they one, without a difference, in culture, national essence, and country-feeling? Historians like Dr. R. C. Majumdar agree that the fundamental distinctions between the two, west and east, that existed thousands of years ago still exist. And in the historians’ opinion, the idea that both share one culture and one nationalism is by no means true.
There is a place called Rajbari-Bahar when the Padma and the Meghna Rivers meet, but in one body there is no actual fusion. In spite of flowing next to each other for one thousand years there is none. The Meghna’s water is gritty black. The Padma’s is always muddy. Between the Bangla of “this side” and “that side” there is always this separation. This difference consists of temper, blood, mind, thought, passion, experiences, religion, actions, worship customs, name, flags, heritage, inheritance laws, dress, etiquette, manners [lehāj], artistic conventions, and the feelings, stream, philosophy, and practices of life. For a long time there have been no bonds of heart-felt feeling between the two sides. Even the Bengali language, although originally one, outside the living rooms of the elite and the literature of the learned, the language of the people is different, like the difference between British and Yankee English. This is so much the case that in some places one country’s speech is another’s obscenity.
As a result, “Bengali nationalism” is not only wrong from a political perspective, it is also unrealistic from a historical perspective. Indeed, its worthlessness as a political suggestion is well known. “Bengali nationalism” is thus a misnomer.
BANGLADESHI NATIONALISM
Calling our nationalism “Bangladeshi,” however, is appropriate and reasonable. Bangladesh is a single, universal, independent nation-state or race-rule. …
This nation proudly introduces itself through its name and flag, inheritance rules, heritage and culture, faith, belief in harmony, language, Arabic, art, literature, architecture, music … all of this. Bangladesh has its own life-feeling, life-stream, psychological make-up, and stream of emotion. There is also a particular community frame of mind, with its passions and desires, and there is a common melody of happiness and sadness in the sound of the heart strings, a common jingling of passion and feeling. In the lives and thought-worlds of Bangladeshis there are so many innumerable distinctions that give them uniqueness the world over, even in comparison with other countries and places where Bengali is spoken or where Islam is followed. Regarding Islam we have to say that in this country 85 percent of the people are Muslims.
These distinctive elements are the ingredients of “Bangladeshi nationalism.” They are not the bark of the tree but its true sap. And this sap is the true strength, foundation, and ground of Bangladeshi nationalism.
[From Khondakar Ābdul Hāmid, “Bānglādeshī Jātīyatābād,” Spashtabhāshīr Kalām (Dhaka: ADL Prakashani, 2006), 2:107–110. Trans. R. F. McDermott.]
In 1971 few political commentators would have thought that Islam as a political factor had any future in Bangladesh. But Mujib’s secularism was imposed from the top, and when expectations of a “golden Bengal” did not materialize, Islamists came to the forefront, and military regimes found them a convenient tool to use in legitimizing their rule.
For instance, Zia introduced Islamic studies as compulsory in the first through eighth grades, encouraged state patronage of Islamic festivals, uttered the Bismillah, or profession of faith, before speeches, strengthened his country’s ties with Saudi Arabia, and founded the Islamic University at Santidanga-Dulalpur in Kustia in 1979. Most far-reaching were his alterations of the Constitution, which took place in 1977; secularism as an ideal was replaced by Islam.
The original constitution was passed by the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1972, and contained a preamble, 153 articles, 11 parts, and 4 schedules. When it was amended in 1977 by Martial Law Proclamation, several articles were changed or suspended, and in others words were added, dropped, or changed.
The excerpt to follow is from the Preamble; what was added is underlined, and what was dropped is in brackets [].
PREAMBLE
BISMILLAH-AR-RAHMAN-AR-RAHIM! (In the name of Allah, the Benefi-cent, the Merciful)
We, the people of Bangladesh, having proclaimed our Independence on the 26th day of March, 1971, and through a historic war [struggle] for national independence [liberation], established the independent, sovereign People’s Republic of Bangladesh;
Pledging that the high ideals of absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah, nationalism, democracy, and socialism (meaning economic and social justice), [and secularism,] which inspired our heroic people to dedicate themselves to, and our brave martyrs to sacrifice their lives in the war for national independence [the national liberation struggle], shall be the fundamental principles of the Constitution;
Further pledging that it shall be a fundamental aim of the State to realise through the democratic process a socialist society, free from exploitation—a society in which the rules of law, fundamental human rights and freedom, equality and justice, political, economic, and social, will be secured for all citizens;
Affirming that it is our sacred duty to safeguard, protect, and defend this Constitution and to maintain its supremacy as the embodiment of the will of the people of Bangladesh so that we may prosper in freedom and may make our full contribution toward international peace and cooperation in keeping with the progressive aspirations of mankind;
In our Constituent Assembly, this eighteenth day of Kartik, 1379 B.S., corresponding to the fourth day of November, 1972 A.D., do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution.
[From A. K. M. Shamsul Huda, The Constitution of Bangladesh, 2 vols. (Chittagong: Rita Court, 1997), 1:192–193.]
No discussion of Islamization, or of the post-1971 years in Bangladesh, would be complete without attention to the Jamaat-e Islami, for although there are many Islam-oriented political parties and groups in Bangladesh, the Jamaat is the most powerful and visible.
The Jamaat was founded in August 1941 in Lahore by Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (see chapter 9). Even though he had initially argued against the idea of Pakistan because he feared that it would not be run on Islamic lines, once it became clear that the birth of Pakistan was inevitable, he worked toward implementing an Islamic government for the new country. It was the Jamaat that was primarily responsible for the declaration in 1956 that Pakistan was an “Islamic state.” However, Maududi and the Jamaat labored for the restoration of democracy after the withdrawal of martial law in 1962—because they perceived democracy to be prerequisite to an Islamic social order—and they championed the removal of disparities between East and West Pakistan.
Indeed, Ghulam Azam (b. 1920), the Jamaat’s most influential Bangladeshi leader, joined the language movement of the early 1950s, although he did not support the breakup of Pakistan. At a press conference in Dacca in May 1970, as the newly elected president of the East Pakistan Jamaat, Azam denounced the Bengali nationalism of Mujib’s six points as a great threat to the integrity and solidarity of Pakistan; the only boundaries that counted, he said, were not territorial ones, but those between believers and nonbelievers. Nationalism was not his only target: he felt secularism, capitalism, and socialism to be dangerous political deadweights. Only democracy, if understood and practiced along Islamic lines, could be healthy for a country. Azam’s philosophy thereby contravened three of Mujib’s four original principles.
The Jamaat is the most prominent representative of politicized Islam in Bangladesh, but many other organizations work in the social and cultural spheres for the dissemination of Islamic ideals and values. One example is the apolitical Tablighi Jamaat. This group, founded in India in the 1920s, works to spread Islam primarily by teaching Muslims to live lives of greater piety and orthodoxy, patterning themselves on the pure vision of the Prophet’s example. Although transnational and anti-Western, the Tablighi Jamaat has no political agenda for any one country. Another example is the Islamic Foundation, founded in 1975 as an autonomous organization that builds and maintains mosques and Islamic centers and academies, publishes books and organizes conferences, conducts research on Islam, and promulgates world fraternity, tolerance, and justice. Other Muslim institutions finance the founding of madrasas, lobby to Islamize banking, and provide aid to development projects through Islam-inspired NGO-like organizations. The success of the “Islam-loving” groups, whether political or not, cannot be ascribed simply to disillusionment with the corruption and ineptitude of the democratically elected governments since 1991, although this certainly aids the cause of those critical of the status quo. In the post-1971 political arena, Bangladeshis have valued prosperity, law and order, and a functioning civil society based on traditional values, which an influential minority has defined in terms of a High Islam linked with Saudi Arabia and purified of “Hindu,” Indian influence.
There are also Islamic groups that are much more militant and threatening than the Jamaat, which, being a political party, has to maintain a certain control for electoral purposes. For example, there are several outlawed militant Islamic organizations, one of which, the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)—claiming to wage jihad against secularists and leftists for the establishment of an Islamic state under Islamic law—was responsible for coordinated explosions throughout Bangladesh in 2005, when hundreds of bombs detonated within an hour of each other in all but one of the country’s administrative districts. The two top leaders, Sheikh Abdur Rahman, an original signatory of al Qaeda’s fatwa against the West, and Siddiq-ul Islam, alias Bānglā Bhāi (“Brother of Bengal”), were arrested in March 2006 and executed in March 2007.
Azam has been a symbol in Bangladesh for conflicting ideas over the place of Islam in the ideal government, the judgment of history concerning the 1971 war, relations with Pakistan, the treatment of pro-Pakistani supporters, and Bangladeshi patriotism. As a pro-Pakistani “collaborator” in the Liberation War, Azam had no choice but to flee to West Pakistan in November 1971, and from there to London, where he stayed until 1978, during which time the Mujib government canceled his citizenship, along with that of thirty-nine others. General Zia permitted him to return, although he did not issue him a passport, and by 1979 the Jamaat had been allowed to function again. In 1991 Azam was elected president of the Jamaat (he stepped down in 2000), and in 1994 the High Court gave him back his citizenship. In 1980, shortly after returning home to Bangladesh, in order to counter accusations that he was not loyal enough, Azam wrote a booklet called “Āmār Desh Bānglādesh” (My country Bangladesh), in which he wrote glowingly about his birth place and his love for his mother tongue, as shown in his support of the language movement.
The following essay, also included in the volume Bānglādesher Āzādī (The freedom of Bangladesh), expresses his anti-Indian stance, his fear that a Bangladesh too like West Bengal would be swallowed up by India, and his conviction concerning the importance of Islam to the national character. This essay makes an interesting comparison with the thoughts of Syed Ali Ahsan and Khondakar Abdul Hamid, quoted above.
In the map of the world, Bangladesh is accepted as an independent state, and Bangladesh has the second largest Muslim population of any country in the world. The position of Bangladesh in terms of its members on the Security Council in the UN is also increasing. The active role of Bangladesh in the Islamic Secretariat, the enthusiasm of Bangladesh in the gathering of representatives for the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and especially the universal popular response in Bangladesh against Russia’s interference in Afghanistan, have caused respect for this country to increase among Muslim countries of the world. Although the people of this country were nourished through the grace of India, they do not wish to remain so. Bangladesh is by no means prepared to be controlled by a beckon from India or to live under foreign rule. The Bangladeshi people want to live with a full sense of the dignity of freedom, as citizens of an independent country. Everyone in the world now realizes how the domestic and foreign policies of the Sheikh Mujib government completely rejected the people.
OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR MAINTAINING OUR FREEDOM
It is much more difficult to keep one’s freedom than to achieve it. This is true in all countries, but at this time in Bangladesh it is especially important. The reasons for this are several:
(1) As a result of the fact that in our county there are so many political organizations that desire to link themselves to foreign countries, foreign powers are becoming intent on gaining positions of power here. If the people involved in these organizations came to know about this, perhaps they would not wish to be made dependent. But they are naturally motivated in their willingness to be influenced by promises of foreign aid and support. However, if one country is successful in placing a particular group in power in another country, for its own benefit, then the host country’s government will find it extremely difficult to maintain its freedom. …
About those in Bangladesh who claim to value the ideal of Bengali nationalism and who believe that the culture of this Bengal and that Bengal are the same, while valuing their belief I am bound to say this, that Bangladesh’s independence and separate existence are by no means safe in their hands. The freedom of Bangladesh demands its own nationalism defined in terms of territorial boundaries. In spite of the fact that our language is the same, the nationalism of West Bengal is quite different from ours. Through Bangladeshi nationalism it is possible to refuse Bengali nationalism. But who does not know that in our country there are active organizations which do not accept Bangladeshi nationalism? Even worse, instead of the language spoken among the majority of Bangladeshis, they much prefer to follow the style of Bengali spoken in West Bengal. …
(2) Second, … there is a foreign philosophy that is chiefly against Bangladesh’s own ideal for itself. It is known as secularism. There are two types of secularists. One group favors keeping religion bounded within their own personal lives. They do not deny religion. Some of them practice religion to a certain extent. They ceremoniously perform nāmāz and roshā, etc., but in their social lives they do not wish religion to enter into politics, economics, or other social matters. They want to be driven by their own discrimination and intelligence. Even though they are recognized as Muslims they are not willing to accept as rules for their whole lives the examples of Allah, the Qurʾan, or the Prophet.
Another group of those professing secularism believes that religion is contrary to progress, and that religion has no place in one’s personal life. Even though they are naturally against religion, they give the open pretense of being secularists.
Both of these types of secularists are able to work side by side in the political arena. …
But it is necessary to judge whether Bangladesh’s freedom and security are truly possible in their hands. If Bangladesh wishes to live with a separate existence from West Bengal, or India, then the secularism of India must certainly be abandoned. If Bengali Muslims had agreed to the demand for the creation of only one independent state of undivided India on the basis of secular policies during the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru, then today Bangladesh would not exist. In such a circumstance, Bangladesh would have been a region within an undivided Bengal in an undivided India. The majority of Bengali Muslims gave up Congress’s secular philosophy on the basis of Muslim nationalism and as a result of being partners in the Pakistan movement created a West Bengal and an East Bengal. If East Bengal had not been split off from India there would be no Bangladesh today. This the secularists are also bound to admit. Today if independent Bangladesh takes up secularism it will become one with West Bengal, and we will have started down the path of losing our freedom. …
That is why the doctrine of secularism is very lethal for Bangladesh. Only that Muslim nationalism, … the two-nation theory that caused the creation of Pakistan, can take care of Bangladesh. And the new form of Indian secular nationalism is Bengali nationalism. …
(3) Third, owing to Bangladesh’s territorial condition, arrangements for the defense of the country are beset with problems. If Bangladesh were surrounded by several states, even if there were bitter relations with one, this would be compensated for by close relations with other neighbors. But Bangladesh is surrounded by only one country on three and a half sides, and a small state does not receive good behavior from a big neighbor. No matter how Bangladesh tries to maintain good relations with such a powerful neighbor, one who thinks of itself as our custodian, there is no other means of self-preservation apart from constant vigilance.
In an armed conflict with India it will never be possible for Bangladesh, no matter how strong its armed forces, to win. There is only one means of liberation from the supremacy of India, and that is the arming of all the people and those in the armed forces with an earnest and vigorous conviction of a nationalism that is different from that of India. …
The first word on this country’s freedom is national character. And in order to build it up, a few basic ingredients are necessary. These basic ingredients are the creation of man’s fundamental faith.
Even this country’s non-Muslims are not against religion, are not secular. In their daily lives the influence of religion is obvious. If one wants to build up their character also, it will have to be on the basis of religion. And to build up the character of Muslims, one needs to establish a context in which a firm faith in Allah, the Prophet, the Qurʾan, and the last days can flourish. Men have various lapses regarding all of these fundamental beliefs, for various reasons. The main reason is the lack of education about the Qurʾan. Even so, ninety-nine out of one hundred Muslims believe in the Qurʾan. If we were to attempt to build character by investing in this faith, then we could begin working today. …
Those who have political power in Bangladesh should especially consider that if they attempt to initiate in this country any view or path that conflicts with the nation’s fundamental Muslim beliefs, they will be wasting the nation’s strength in mutual antagonisms, let alone uplifting the country. In such a situation it will be completely impossible for them to safeguard our country’s freedom.
[From Ghulam Azam, Āmār Desh Bānglādesh (Dhaka: Boi Kitab Prakashani, 1980), 22–29. Trans. R. F. McDermott.]
The Jamaat and other pro-Islam organizations also have their detractors, people unconvinced that Islam is the ideal bedrock of a Bangladeshi nationalism. Indeed, after Azam was elected president of the Jamaat in 1991, Bangladeshi citizens such as Jahanara Imam, alarmed by the increasing power of those who had worked actively against the liberation struggle of 1971, established a “people’s court” (gana adālat) to try “collaborators” for their alleged war crimes. Azam and others were convicted in Suhrawardy Park on March 26, 1991, and sentenced to death. Although the court was a symbolic protest, the verdict led to months of controversy, protests, and even killings among supporters and detractors of the Jamaat. By December 1992, however, the movement had lost steam in the wake of the political repercussions of the destruction of the Babri Masjid in India. All political parties tried to use this to their advantage, and in comparison with the deaths of more than a thousand Muslims in India, the fiery debate over the fate of Ghulam Azam receded to the background for another two decades.
Bangladeshi secularists claim a venerable tradition that goes back to the language movement of the early 1950s and the liberation struggle of the 1960s; both were waged on the basis of Bengali culture and regional distinctiveness, not Islam. “Monuments” to the secularist ideal are the Shahid Minar on the Dhaka University campus; the National Monument to the Martyrs of 1971 in Savar, outside Dhaka; the various literary and cultural events sponsored by the Bangla Academy; the yearly celebration of Pahela Baishakh, the Bengali New Year; the historic contribution of Hindus, Christians, and tribal peoples to the development of the nation; and the love of the people for the songs of Rabindranath Tagore and Nazrul Islam. Secularists also point to the diversity of Muslim identity in Bangladesh; not everyone agrees with the global (Saudi-influenced) ideal of the Jamaat, or with their attempts to purify Bangladeshi Islam of its strong tradition of Sufisaint veneration.
In this section we give two quite different examples of the secularist perspective. The first is by Maulana Bhashani: although as a pious Muslim he approved of those who sided with socialism as a philosophy because it coincided with principles enshrined in Islam, he also believed firmly in the separation of religion and the state, hoped for a nation in which different religions could live side by side, and was vehemently critical of the Jamaat’s potential compromise of Bangladesh’s autonomy through its continuing loyalty to Pakistan. Azam and Bhashani were, indeed, ideological enemies. The Jamaat criticized Bhashani as a kafir [unbeliever], and this caused Bhashani to declare that he was a better Muslim than Maududi because he stood for Islamic socialism.
On September 22, 1976, two months before his death, Bhashani penned the following warning, “Jāmāte Shibire Ranasajjā” (“War Preparations in the Jamaat’s Camp”), for the newspaper Hakkathā. Shibir (“battle camp”) is also the name of the Jamaat’s youth wing, which is more militant and violent than its parent organization.
Recently the Jamaat-e Islami has once again begun to work. We have come to know that under their patronage the volunteer Al-Badars are preparing the camps for battle. For this purpose apparently liberal international aid is on its way.
The Jamaat-e Islami, a group of Islamic fascists, has been trying since the British period to prick the politics and political movements of this country with poison. At the time of the Pakistan movement, they armed themselves, even though they were against the creation of Pakistan. Their plots were very important in keeping British imperialism alive. They snubbed the popular united movement [for Pakistan], but the Jamaat-e Islami’s own ideas ended without success, for historical reasons. After the establishment of Pakistan they expressed themselves in a new fashion. They attempted to delude the religiously naive people of the country with a capitalist extortionist theory of Islam. Then, though various movements, their anti-people behavior became clear. In the Liberation War of 1971, they wore this behavior nakedly and, having formed the Al-Badar, together with the Pakistan-raider army division murdered the country’s intellectuals and progressive politicians. In the merciless judgment of history, their plots did not in the end prove successful. Then these murderers, whom we know by face, together with Ghulam Azam, fled to Pakistan where they now live. But the Pakistani government is also unsettled by their plots. In 1975 Bhutto’s Pakistan government examined their papers and accounts and proved the involvement [in their activities] of foreign capitalists.
The upheaval in the Bhutto government has given quite a bit of help to the daring rise of the Bangladesh Jamaat followers. And in the meantime they and their leaders have been able to decide what their political “line” or platform is.
Gaining strength from this “line,” they are gradually beginning to uncover their faces. Certain people are forming political groups under the cloak of the Jamaat and openly introducing the language of armed threat into the Jamaat platform. Prior to this, in 1976 they planned an armed resurgence with the help of the then-air force chief M. G. Toyab. … By the grace of Allah that conspiracy proved unsuccessful.
In any event, in recent days the fascists in the Jamaat-e Islami are once again more clearly active. In this regard they are using the cover of religion to shield themselves. During the last Ramadan, in Chattogram, Cox’s Bazaar, and several other cities, in the name of protecting the holiness of Ramadan they set about annoying poor, harmless people by raiding small hotels. This was their initial maneuver.
In the meantime they have begun to establish organizations all over the country. They have apparently set to work with a master plan of creating salaried armed cells in four thousand unions all over Bangladesh. We learn through dependable sources that they have received sixty million taka from their international connections for this purpose.
[From Maksud, Maolānā Ābdul Hāmid Khān Bhāshān, 526–527. Trans. R. F. McDermott.]
Perhaps the most prominent spokesperson for secularism in Bangladesh today is Anisuzzaman (b. 1937), professor of Bengali at the University of Dhaka (1959–1969, 1985–2003) and the University of Chittagong (1969–1985). He has authored nearly thirty books, branching out during his long literary career from literature to culture, education, politics, and controversies over national identity, and he has been associated with research projects of the United Nations University.
The following excerpts are taken from a speech, “Secularism and Bangladesh,” delivered on June 26, 2005, at a function in Dhaka in honor of Jahanara Imam.
The word dharmanirapekshatā [secularism] in the Bengali language is so new that perhaps it still has not been admitted into many Bengali dictionaries. However, if one searches in an English-Bengali dictionary for the Bengali translation of “secularism,” then one may occasionally find dharmanirapekshatā (disinterestedness or impartiality toward religion), or ihajāgatikatā or ihalaukikatā (this worldliness). We will speak in a little while about these latter two Bengali translations. But at the very least one may say that dharmanirapekshatā is the Bengali equivalent of the English word “secularism.” Even in English the word “secularism” is not very old, but “secular” has been in existence for five or six hundred years. The Latin word that forms its base first appears in Christian writings to indicate something not associated with religion, something associated with this world. Any building that is not constructed with the intention of worship is secular; an education that does not give lessons in religious subjects is secular; a line of thinking that is limited to this-worldly matters, leaving off the other world, is secular. That is why ihajāgatikatā is one Bengali rendering of “secularism.”
In the Constitution of Bangladesh, we have rendered secularism into Bengali as dharmanirapekshatā. The reason for this is that dharmanirapekshatā has been current as a translation for “secularism” for a long time in our country. Its use is no mistake. The etymological meaning of nirapeksha is “devoid of interest or partiality”—hence, lacking an affinity for work, devoid of purpose, indifferent. When we speak of a non-aligned state or an individual who does not belong to any party then nirapeksha is suggested in that very sense … In the same way, where a subject has no association with religion, it is dharmanirapeksha; a state without concern for religion is a dharmanirapeksha [secular] state. …
[Here he reviews the European, humanistic origins of the notion of secularism. …]
In 1949, when the Constitution of India was adopted, there was no mention of socialism or secularism among the guiding principles of the state. In the Preamble to the Constitution the country was stated to be a sovereign democratic republic. Only in 1977, in the 42nd Amendment, was the country designated as a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic. But from the beginning Indian leaders spoke of socialism and secularism. Apparently some understood secularism to mean the separation of religion from the state, whereas others assumed that the state would protect each religious group present in the country or would treat them all equally.
Although the Muslim League claimed that the Indian Muslims were a separate nation [jāti], and demanded the establishment of an independent state of Pakistan for them, its leaders never hinted that Pakistan would become a religious state. More than once Jinnah said that the form of the projected state would depend on the wishes of the people’s representatives. As for himself, he thought of Pakistan as a modern democratic state. … While inaugurating the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, he said several times that religion was an individual’s private affair; it had nothing to do with the state.
[Next he discusses examples of increasing Islamization (Islāmikarana) in Pakistan: the 1949 Objectives Resolution, the 1956 and 1962 Constitutions, and the Legal Framework Order of 1969.]
Soon began the liberation war of Bangladesh. That the national character of this country would not be religious was indicated by the Proclamation of Independence on April 10, 1971, when Bangladesh was declared as a sovereign people’s republic. That Bangladesh would be a secular [dharmanirapeksha] country was often underscored by the leaders during the liberation war. … When Bangabandhu, released from a Pakistani prison, returned to Bangladesh as the head of state and addressed the crowds at the racecourse, he stated clearly that the fundamental principles of the state policy of Bangladesh, the second biggest Muslim state in the world, would be democracy, socialism, and secularism. Later, in 1972, he added another principle: nationalism. …
[He describes the loss of this vision in 1975 and the Islamicizing vision of Ziaur Rahman and General Ershad, particularly the latter’s Eighth Amendment.]
Did something happen in Bangladesh society that led us to abandon secularism and adopt a state religion? There is no doubt that on an individual level the tendency toward the adherence of religious rites and customs has increased. The number of religious and partly religious functions, like Milād [the birthday of the Prophet], Urs [the commemoration of the death anniversary of a holy person], and Siratun Nabi [recitation of the life of the Prophet], has multiplied. … The number and influence of pīrs is also on the rise. … The number of madrasas is proliferating, together with the mosques and their adjoining maktabs [primary schools]. The majority of these have turned into centers for religiously based political parties, especially the Jamaat. … The influence of resurgent Islam in West Asia in the 1970s was felt in Bangladesh, and one noticed the presence of diplomats from North Africa and West Asia in various types of religio-political functions in Bangladesh.
Just as in 1971, so also after: communal power was engaged, and slowly slowly communalism returned. Nevertheless, no demand ever arose from the general public for the establishment of a religious state or for the eradication of secularism. Those holding state power did it for their own objectives and by their own efforts. Ziaur Rahman made his constitutional changes under martial law; that is why there was little opportunity for challenge. But there was such a public outcry against Ershad’s introduction of the state religion that cases challenging the provision were filed in the Supreme Court. …
However, it must be said that even after the introduction of the state religion, there was no change in Bangladesh’s laws, and one noticed no effort to bring back Islamic custom or heritage. But discrimination was encouraged by it, and we saw the results of this during the communal persecutions of 1990, 1992 and of 2001 when the limits were surpassed. As a result, such uncertainty and instability arose in the minds of the oppressed that they left their homes to seek shelter elsewhere in the country; some were compelled to leave the country altogether. The communalism of the majority always gives birth to that of the minority. That is why many among the religious minorities are thinking today about how to protect their community interests—they worry about the preservation of their seats in the Parliament, so much so that they tend to opt for separate electorates to safeguard their representations. Those who practice politics with religion have encouraged the minority to consider these things—so that the separate electorate once demanded by the Muslim League and the communalization of politics may again return to national life. Now the victims of communal oppression are also the Ahmadiyyas: as in Pakistan, so also in Bangladesh, it is claimed that they are non-Muslims, and Ahmadiyya mosques, centers, and houses are frequently attacked. During these attacks, the passivity of the law-enforcing agencies, and sometimes their aid of the rioters, has bewildered the citizenry. The Shias are also claimed to be non-Muslims, but at least they are not noticeably attacked, though when the Ahmadiyyas’ turn is over, it will be their time.
Members of civil society, even with limited power, have stood against this communal oppression. But the secular political powers have not been successful in mounting a united opposition. Rather, secular political parties have been most interested in holding onto their own group’s, or leaders’, or workers’ religious images. Herein is our great difficulty. … Even when we have had favorable circumstances, we have not been able to hold onto the ideal of secularism. … Those of us who believe that without secularism there is no democracy and that without democracy the forward movement of Bangladesh is impossible, our duty is to fight against communalism with all our might and to try to return secularism to our national life.
At a time of incurable disease, Jahanara Imam took this national responsibility on her shoulders, attempting to reestablish the consciousness of the liberation war and to express political and social perturbation against those who had opposed it. Inherent in that was the task of returning us to secularism. That work still remains. The people of Bangladesh must understand that religion is a personal matter—if one pulls it into politics there will be no gain except to harm both religion and the state, both the individual and the collective. This ideal is inseparably linked with the welfare of Bangladesh.
[From Anisuzzaman, “Dharmanirupekshatā o Bānglādesh,” 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11–12. Trans. Anisuzzaman and R. F. McDermott.]
After the ouster of General Ershad, two landmark amendment acts were passed regarding the Constitution. The first, the Twelfth Amendment Act of August 1991, amended fourteen articles so as to reintroduce the parliamentary form of government to Bangladesh and ensure the participation of people’s representatives in local government bodies. The second, the Thirteenth Amendment Act of March 1996, made provision for a nonparty caretaker government to aid a nonpartisan Election Commission in its support of free and peaceful parliamentary elections after the term in office of one government had come to an end. In practice, however, the caretaker government is not always trusted to be credible or unprejudiced, as was evident in the lead-up to the 2007 elections.
Since 1991 there have been alternating series of democratic governments in Bangladesh, the two most prominent so far being led by female political heirs of slain former politicians: the Bangladesh National Party, headed by Khaleda Zia, General Zia’s widow, and the Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina Wajed, Sheikh Mujib’s daughter. The ideological basis of the Awami League once tended to favor socialism, secularism, and Bengali nationalism, and was frequently construed as pro-Indian, while the Bangladesh National Party had been founded to promote private enterprise, the Islamic lobby, and Bangladeshi nationalism, sometimes resulting in friendly overtures to Pakistan. Khaleda Zia formally received Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf to Dhaka in July 2002, the first visit of a Pakistani leader to Bangladesh since the split in 1971. Because of her party’s reliance upon the electoral strength of the Jamaat, her government introduced or continued several Islamizing practices, one prominent example being the compulsory study of religion in Arabic in primary schools.
However, despite the theoretical contrasts between the two parties, the Awami League made election pacts with radical Islamists in 2006, and in the 2001 election the Indian government worked hard to engage with the Bangladesh National Party. Moreover, their “democratic” claims notwithstanding, both parties have failed to control the law-and-order problems in the country, deliver on promises to the poor, or stem the tide of political communalism. Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government returned to power for the second term in 2008 (her first term was 1996–2001), with promises to restore the 1972 constitution, bring to trial war criminals from 1971, and boost economic development.
Indeed, the economic and social problems besetting Bangladesh are legion. Forty-five percent of Bangladeshis are below the poverty line, and, excluding city-states like Hong Kong and Singapore, Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world, with nearly 150 million people living within 55,126 square miles. The usual challenges besetting poor countries with inadequate social services all must be confronted here—low literacy rates, especially for women; the inability to respond to environmental disasters, such as yearly flooding and consequent agricultural shortages; and difficulty of access to quality health care. Since 1993 much Bangladeshi well water has been found to be contaminated with natural arsenic, and so the nearly ten million tube wells drilled in the 1970s by UNICEF-sponsored teams in an effort to eradicate cholera and other water-borne diseases have, ironically, created other health tragedies. Refugees—into Bangladesh from Myanmar and India’s northeastern states, and out of Bangladesh into India during periods of political instability—remain a severe economic and political issue, aggravating cordial Indo-Bangladesh relations. “Minority” problems internal to the country are particularly troubling. Although estimates vary, and are a source of heated debate, it seems clear that the Hindu community is slowly declining in terms of absolute percentages; and reports of harassment and worse, especially at the hands of pro-Islamic elements, are rife.
The people of the 2 percent of the country officially listed as “tribal” have had a particularly frustrating history within Bangladesh. Their homeland is the Hill Tracts near Chittagong, an important port ceded to Pakistan in 1947; thus they are citizens in a country whose raison d’être they cannot share, since the majority of them are Hindu, Buddhist, or “animist,” not Muslim. In fact, the eleven multilingual ethnic tribes of the Hill region agitated to be incorporated into a “native state” in 1947. Resentful after Independence of increasing migration into their territories, which comprise 10 percent of the land of Bangladesh, the utilization of their hydroelectric power and timber, and their own marginalization in Dhaka’s political circles, a delegation headed by Manobendra Narayan Larma called on Mujib after his accession to power in 1971 to demand autonomy for the Chittagong Hill Tracts, with its own legislature; the retention of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Manual from 1900, which accorded local chiefs power over customary matters; and a ban on new Bengali settlers. Mujib rejected their demands, advising the Hill people to assimilate to the new nationalist Bengali identity. In response, in 1972 Larma formed the Jana Samhati Samiti (United People’s Party), which began waging an armed struggle for political autonomy.
Claiming to promote an inclusive national identity, Zia reached out to non-Bengali minorities, such as the Santals, Garos, Manipuris, and Chakmas, and appointed a Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Commission in 1976, and a tribal convention in 1977 to promote a dialogue between the government and tribal groups. However, he was not open to discussion of autonomy and cultural self-preservation, and the tribal groups were alienated by his promotion of a politicized Islam. By 1992, in addition to its earlier demands the United People’s Party was pressing for the complete relocation, out of the Hill Tracts, of settlers who had moved since 1947; for the withdrawal of the military; and for the designation of three districts as one unit to be called Jummaland. Eventually, in December 1997, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government brokered a peace accord with the United People’s Party. It provided for the creation of three Regional Hill District Councils, which were to have broad powers over land and land management, taxes, law and social justice, youth welfare, environmental protection and development, local tourism, business licensing, census taking, and cultivation. The government also agreed to allow the return and rehabilitation of tribal refugees who had fled to the Indian state of Tripura; to provide funds for the advancement and preservation of uniquely tribal culture; and to give amnesty to armed members of tribal organizations against whom criminal cases had been lodged. In 1998, when the accord still had not been implemented, the Rangamati Declaration was issued by a number of Chittagong-based tribal, political, and human rights groups, urging the government to act on its promises. In 2013, the accord still had not been fully implemented.
Their grievances are expressed by the following document.
Ideology: Humanitarianism is the ideology of the Jana Samhati Samiti.
Principles: Nationalism, Democracy, Secularism, are the main principles of the Jana Samhati Samiti.
Aims and Objectives: … The achievement of the right of self-determination of the various small nationalities, such as the Chakma, Marma (Mogh), Tripura, Bom, Mrung, Pankho, Khumi, Chak, Kheyangang, and Lusai, is the main aim and object of the party, that is:
1. In order to be free from Islamic fanaticism, expansionism, exploitation, oppression, deprivation and perpetual rule of Bangladesh and to safeguard the national entity and homeland for the various multilingual nationalities—(a) to ensure the separate entity status of CHT with a constitutional guarantee, (b) to establish regional autonomy with a legislative assembly;
2. CHT is the homeland of various multilingual small nationalities. Therefore—(a) to do away with difference, oppression, exploitation, and deprivation among the various multilingual small nationalities; (b) to develop culture and language of the various small nationalities. …
Strategy and Tactics on External Help: Jana Samhati Samiti, irrespective of caste, creed, and religion, would welcome and be ready to accept unconditionally every help extended from any nation, humanitarian society, UNO, humanitarian and political organizations, which are sympathetic to our cause and believe that would accelerate the movement for the right of self-determination. Especially PCJSS expects help and cooperation from world humanitarian and democratic states in preserving the national entity and homeland of the Jumma people. It also expects every kind of help from the UNO along with other world humanitarian organizations, namely—Amnesty International, IFOR, Survival International, and Anti-Slavery, etc.
[From Amena Mohsin, The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh: On the Difficult Road to Peace (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003), appendix 2, 127–128.]
In Bangladesh, feminist critiques go back at least to Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (see chapter 4). Nowadays her legacy is both reaffirmed and questioned. Indeed, while December 9 is celebrated as Rokeya Day, the honor-driven phenomenon of purdah, which she fought to eliminate, is seeing a revival among some orthodox Muslims.
More recently, since the 1980s, two literary names have become synonymous with tension in Bangladesh over the position of women in society, freedom of speech, communalism, and the secular-socialist vs. Islamist ideal form of civil society. The Jamaat and associated organizations have attacked various Bangladeshi litterateurs since independence—Humayun Kabir, Daud Haider, Rafiq Azad, Syed Atiqullah, Simon Zakaria, and even Shamsur Rahman—but perhaps none are as well known as Taslima Nasrin and Humayun Azad.
Nasrin (b. 1962), a physician-turned-writer, radical feminist, and human rights advocate, has drawn criticism from Islamists for her writings which showcase the hypocrisy of the powerful and their abuses of women and minorities. In 1995, during the first government of Khaleda Zia, Nasrin was forced to flee from Bangladesh to India and Europe because of protests, book-bannings, and death threats over her novel Lajjā (Shame) (1993), which described the persecution of Bangladeshi Hindus in retaliation for the destruction in India of the Babri Masjid. Others of her books—Āmār Meyebelā (My Girlhood) (1999), Utal Hāoyā (Wild Wind) (2002), Ka (Speak) (2003), and Sei Sab Andhakār (Those dark days) (2004)—have also been banned.
Like her novels and memoirs, the following poems are about social and political injustice. In her attempt to publicize and combat the mistreatment of women, she joins the struggles of many women’s social, legal, and political organizations, most prominent among which is the Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (The Association of Bangladesh Women).
SHAME, 7 DECEMBER 1992
The plan was that Satipada Das would come to my house that morning
and have tea and snacks. He would play chess and gossip
to his heart’s content.
Satipada comes every day, but not today, the news came that
a gang of men with tupis [caps] on their heads stormed into Satipada’s house,
poured gasoline over everything in the rooms, the tables and chairs,
the beds, wardrobes, pots and pans,
clothing, books.
Then they quickly lit a whole lot of matchsticks and tossed them
in all the gasoline-soaked places.
As the fires flared up, Satipada stood stunned in the courtyard and watched
the black smoke spreading over their Tatibazar, over
Tatibazar’s patch of indifferent sky.
In the evening I went to Satipada’s house and saw
Satipada sitting alone upon the ash and charred wood
of his forefathers’ ancestral home, blood running down
his body, dark bruises on his chest and back.
Out of shame I could not touch him.
[From The Game in Reverse: Poems by Taslima Nasrin, trans. Carolyne Wright, with Farida Sarkar, Mohammad Nurul Huda, and Subharanjan Dasgupta (New York: Braziller, 1995), 51.]
Nurjahan, the subject of the next poem, was a woman stoned to death for alleged adultery, in accordance with the decree of a local mullah issued independently of state institutions, in January 1993.
NOORJAHAN
They have made Noorjahan stand in a hole in the courtyard,
there she stands, submerged to her waist with head hanging.
They’re throwing stones at Noorjahan,
those stones are striking my body.
Stones are striking my head, forehead, chest, and back,
they’re throwing stones and laughing aloud, laughing and shouting abuse.
Noorjahan’s fractured forehead pours out blood, mine also.
Noorjahan’s eyes have burst, mine also.
Noorjahan’s nose has been smashed, mine also.
Through Noorjahan’s torn breast, her heart has been pierced, mine also.
Are those stones not striking you?
They’re laughing aloud, laughing and stroking their beards,
there are tupis stuck to their heads, they too are shaking with laughter.
They’re laughing and swinging their walking sticks;
from the quiver of their cruel eyes, arrows speed to pierce her body,
my body also.
Are those arrows not piercing your body?
[From The Game in Reverse, 54.]
Humayun Azad (1947–2004) is one of the most recent victims of intolerance in Bangladesh. A prolific writer and scholar, with over seventy titles to his name, he was a trenchant critic of what he perceived to be the degeneration of Bangladesh civil society under the extremist influence of communally minded Islamists and their dictatorpatrons. He also decried male chauvinism in Bengali society, even in revered writers such as Tagore; his book Nāri (Women) was banned in 1995. The ban was lifted in 2000 as a result of a legal battle Azad won in the high court. In August 2004, following the publication of his novel Pāk Sār Jamin Sād Bād, a story about religious groups who collaborated with the Pakistani army during the 1971 war, he was brutally attacked by people affiliated with the Jamaat on the campus of University of Dhaka. He died in Germany five months later.
The following excerpts derive from an earlier essay written in 1981, ten years after Independence and the year in which Zia was assassinated and the country thrown into disorder. The text illustrates the tone of despairing sarcasm common to much of Azad’s writing: despair at the punctured hopes ushered in by the freedom of 1971, and sarcasm at the hypocrisy and self-serving nature of the country’s leaders. Note that he calls attention to the “foreign,” Arabic derivation of shahīd, the Bengali word for “witness,” or “martyr.”
A PRAYER FOR FORGIVENESS TO ALL UNKNOWN PEOPLE WHO DIED IN THE LIBERATION WAR
I have not seen you, I have not seen your corpses; in ten years, heaps of your strong, capable, freed bones have found peace at the bottom of some cold river of Bengal, or beneath the concrete of a city, or in the shelter of the silted earth of some green hamlet, intertwined with the creepers of the forest. You used to have names that sounded in the voices of youths in the neighboring houses, in the voices of your mothers and sisters; but now, ten years later, only your slain bones are here. You have no names; the reputations you used to have were honored more than the fame of any emperor. Now, ten years on, you are only screams decomposed by time; you have no reputation. I beg your forgiveness; I want forgiveness. Perhaps in one of the thousands of villages with sweet names like Radikhal, Kanaksar, Kadamtali, and Baghra you grasped the plough with strong hands, dreamed of rice like golden clusters; before you and behind you stretched the silted earth—and when the call came, you listened. Perhaps you made your living in a casting machine factory or a jute factory, and when the time came you heard the call and stood in line. Perhaps at the time the summons came you were going to school, a great school, a university. Perhaps you were lying, tired, beside the road in a city with your handbarrow, or near your colored rickshaw; when the high alarm sounded you saw, amazed, a rifle in your hand. Or you were out of work because the country had not given you any employment, you were having a nightmare about being engaged in a conflict with a victorious enemy, or you were just idle; and then at that moment you saw your country standing before you, whom you had a responsibility to save. …
All of Bengal is your grave. Wherever a flower blooms anywhere, that is for you; whenever a flower trembles by the touch of the breeze it does so on top of your grave. I have not spoken of your martyrdom. I had said that you are dead, because you desired the truth. I also want that, and I know that this foreign word cannot confer on you any greatness. When countless killers—steel and gunpowder—entered the clothes covering your chest, when your blood spilled out from your veins, you did not wish for any title, you did not seek any throne; you only wished to hold on with your fingertips to the earth and grass of Bengal. No helper came to operate on you, no helicopter or stretcher arrived. You fell without fanfare in a nameless place. Everyone has forgotten you. I seek your forgiveness.
I want to ask you a few things. Why did you seek liberation? Why did you go to battle? Why did you accept a stain on that hand, that hand that held the plough, the rickshaw handle, the pen, the book, the wheelbarrow wheel, or the hand of your wife or beloved? Why were weapons necessary? Did you have a bad dream? Was there a vision, a hint? Was independence necessary for you because you did not have it? Did you want your own country, with a particular society you did not have under the barbaric Pakistanis? When you started singing, “Jay Bānglā,” or “Sonār Bānglā,” or “I love you,” was that only a thing of the moment, or did it issue from your heart, as a plant comes from it own seed? Did you only give a new name to 56,000 square miles of land, or did you wish to change it completely? … You did not see independence; well before December 16 you were a dream. You never knew that Bangladesh would be liberated. …
Death is the end of all things; that is why you have no more vision, why you no longer get to see the state of Bengal. But if you could see it, would you be cheerful, thinking that you had wasted your blood to no purpose? Now there is animosity against you on all sides, just as there was in 1971; but in 1971 you were victorious. Your defeat began soon after. You are now vanquished in all parts of Bengal; your dreams are laughing matters. The slogans you shouted to put strength in your muscles are almost forbidden; there are conspiracies against the songs you loved more than your own selves. I know that you were not from any particular group; you belonged to Bengal. But now it is not completely safe to live in Bengal. Creatures of the dark rise up in all directions; they are the ones who searched for you with daggers in their hands in 1971. Afterward they had to flee into the netherworld, but now again the time is good for them. Your aim was the future, even though you yourselves were gone, but we who still live, our aim is the past. We are backward-facing; we run eagerly toward the past. …
If I inform you that the country of your dreams is now the country in the world that has most gone astray, is most addicted to bad policies, is most lacking in ethics, and is most poor, destroyed, corrupt, and unhealthy, would you be sad? Angry? … Bangladesh has seen more than one worthless dictator in the last ten years, and she has given them a blood-smeared lease. But this lease has resulted in no flourishing. Still today Bangladesh is slipping like a ball down a sloping field, and who knows in what hell it will stop? We have seen that some people wish to wear Bangladesh like an anklet, some wish to turn her into their personal treasury, some strong men have wanted to build her up, making her a star in their uniform or wearing her like a boot on their right or left foot. We who are living helplessly pray for your forgiveness. …
Capital piles up in the hands of one group, “democratic socialism” has now become hackneyed speech, colloquial words in Bengali are ridiculed, everywhere English expressions are respected, and Arabic enters Bengali. Now, apart from illiterate farmers, no one speaks Bengali any more; even the downtrodden are learning foreign languages in various tutorials. But when any blockhead youth takes up an old song, it is only your words that come from his lips. I pray for your forgiveness, and I meditate on you in this evil time.
[From Humayun Azad, “Nāmparicayhīn Ye-kono Ekjan Nihata Muktiyoddhār Kāche Kshamāprārthanā,” in his Nirbācita Prabandha (Dhaka: Agami Prakashani, 1999), 148–153. Trans. R. F. McDermott.]
We conclude this chapter with the words of perhaps the most prominent Bangladeshi activist for the poor, Muhammad Yunus (b. 1940), who was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his initiative in founding the Grameen Bank. He then toyed briefly with the idea of founding his own reformist political party in Bangladesh, but instead joined Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and others on a committee of global “elder statesmen” pledged to speak freely about major world issues. The micro-credit Grameen Bank was established in 1983 after Yunus had spent nine years of informal attempts to help bring dignity and freedom to the lives of poor women borrowers; in 2006 it was catering to seven million borrower-owners, 97 percent of whom were women, in 73,000 villages in Bangladesh. The model has become so successful in raising borrowers and their children above the poverty line that Grameen Bank policies and techniques have been imported to many countries around the world. Yunus’s work rests on the propositions that poverty is a threat to peace and a denial of human rights, that the excesses of free-market capitalism need to be corrected by a social consciousness, which he calls “social business,” and that poverty can, as he puts it, be “put in the museum.”
In the excerpt below, Yunus explains how he began his work.
In the year 1974 Bangladesh fell into the grip of famine.
The university where I taught and served as head of the Economics Department was located in the southeastern extremity of the country, and at first we did not pay much attention to the newspaper stories of death and starvation in the remote villages of the north. But then skeleton-like people began showing up in the railway stations and bus stations of the capital, Dhaka. Soon this trickle became a flood. Hungry people were everywhere. Often they sat so still that one could not be sure whether they were alive or dead. They all looked alike: men, women, children. Old people looked like children, and children looked like old people.
The government opened gruel kitchens. But every new gruel kitchen ran out of rice. Newspaper reporters tried to warn the nation of the extent of the famine. Research institutions collected statistics on the sources and causes of the sudden migration to the cities. Religious organizations mobilized groups to pick up the dead bodies from the streets and bury them with the proper rites. But soon the simple act of collecting the dead became a larger task than these groups were equipped to handle.
The starving people did not chant any slogans. They did not demand anything from us well-fed city folk. They simply lay down very quietly on our doorsteps and waited to die.
There are many ways for people to die, but somehow dying of starvation is the most unacceptable of all. It happens in slow motion. Second by second, the distance between life and death becomes smaller and smaller, until the two are in such close proximity that one can hardly tell the difference. Like sleep, death by starvation happens so quietly, so inexorably, one does not even sense it happening. And all for a lack of a handful of rice at each meal. In this world of plenty, a tiny baby, who does not yet understand the mystery of the world, is allowed to cry and cry and finally fall asleep without the milk she needs to survive. The next day she may not have the strength to continue living.
I used to feel a thrill at teaching my students the elegant economic theories that could supposedly cure societal problems of all types. But in 1974, I started to dread my own lectures. What good were all my complex theories when people were dying of starvation on the sidewalks and porches across from my lecture hall? My lessons were like the American movies when the good guys always win. But when I emerged from the comfort of the classroom, I was faced with the reality of the city streets. Here good guys were mercilessly beaten and trampled. Daily life was getting worse, and the poor were growing even poorer. …
I was lucky that the village of Jobra happened to be close to the campus. In 1958 Field Marshall Ayub Khan, then president of Pakistan, had taken power in a military coup. Because of his fear of rebellious students, he decreed that all new universities be situated away from urban centers. His fear of political agitation meant that the new Chittagong University, where I was teaching, was built in a hilly section of the rural Chittagong District, near to Jobra village. …
My repeated trips to the villages around Chittagong University campus led me to discoveries that were essential to establishing the Grameen Bank. The poor taught me an entirely new economics. I learned about the problems that they face from their own perspective. I tried a great number of things. Some worked. Others did not. One that worked well was to offer people tiny loans for self-empowerment. These loans provided a starting point for cottage industries and other income-generating activities that used the skills the borrowers already had.
I never imagined that my micro-lending program would be the basis for a nation-wide “bank for the poor” serving 2.5 million people or that it would be adapted in more than one hundred countries spanning five continents. I was only trying to relieve my guilt and satisfy my desire to be useful to a few starving human beings. But it did not stop with a few people. Those who borrowed and survived would not let it. And after a while, neither would I. …
It took six months of writing back and forth to get the loan formalized. Finally, in December 1976, I succeeded in taking out a loan from the Janata Bank and giving it to the poor of Jobra. All through 1977, I had to sign each and every loan request. Even when I was on a trip in Europe or the United States, the bank would cable or write to me for a signature rather than deal with any of the real borrowers in the village. I was the guarantor and as far as the bank officials were concerned I was the only one that counted. They did not want to deal with the poor who used their capital. And I made sure that the real borrowers, the ones I call the “banking untouchables,” never had to suffer the indignity and demeaning harassment of actually going to a bank. …
My work became a struggle to show that the financial untouchables are actually touchable, even huggable. To my great surprise, the repayment of loans by people who borrow without collateral has proven to be much better than those whose borrowings are secured by assets. Indeed, more than 98 percent of our loans are repaid. The poor know that this credit is their only opportunity to break out of poverty. They do not have any cushion whatsoever to fall back on. If they fall afoul of this one loan, they will have lost their one and only chance to get out of the rut. …
Some critics argue that our rural clients are too submissive and that we can intimidate them into joining Grameen. Perhaps this is why we make our initiation process so challenging. The pressure provided by the group and the exam help ensure that only those who are truly needy and serious about joining Grameen will actually become members. Those who are better off usually do not find it worthwhile. And even if they do, they will fail our means test and be forced to leave the group anyway. We want only courageous, ambitious pioneers in our micro-credit program. Those are the ones who will succeed.
Once all members pass the exam, the day finally comes when one of them asks for a first loan, usually about twenty-five dollars, in the [nineteen-] eighties. How does she feel? Terrified. She cannot sleep at night. She struggles with the fear of failure, the fear of the unknown. The morning she is to receive her loan, she almost quits. Twenty-five dollars is simply too much responsibility for her. How will she ever be able to repay it? No woman in her extended family has ever had so much money. Her friends come around to reassure her, saying, “Look, we all have to go through it. We will support you. We are here for just that. Don’t be scared. We will all be with you.”
When she finally receives the twenty-five dollars, she is trembling. The money burns her fingers. Tears roll down her face. She has never seen so much money in her life. She never imagined it in her hands. She carries the bills as she would a delicate bird or a rabbit, until someone advises her to put the money away in a safe place lest it be stolen.
This is the beginning for almost every Grameen borrower. All her life she has been told that she is no good, that she brings only misery to her family, that they cannot afford to pay her dowry. Many times she hears her mother or her father tell her she should have been killed at birth, aborted or starved. To her family she has been nothing but another mouth to feed, another dowry to pay. But today, for the first time in her life, an institution has trusted her with a great sum of money. She promises that she will never let down the institution or herself. She will struggle to make sure that every penny is paid back.
[From Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), i–iii, 57–58, 64–65, and 67–68.]