Mujib-the tragic hero of history -- Professor Abdul Mannan : The Sun, 15 August 2014 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is now crystal clear that the seed for the death of the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheik Mujib was sown during the nine month long War of Liberation in 1971. It is true when the majority of the people of Bangladesh were fighting for its independence there was also sizeable number working against this. This not only included the members of Muslim League or Jamaat-e-Islami but also a handful of members of Awami League (AL). AL was never a revolutionary party, but a party which was established by a petty bourgeoisie Bengali middle class with its inbuilt characteristics. At best it could be termed as a left of the middle political party and as opposed to Muslim League, which represented the Bengali ‘upper class elites’ AL was a party of the masses. The word ‘Awam’ meant ‘people.’ Over its more than 64 years of existence the party faced challenges of survival, was banned on number of occasions, suffered leadership crisis and one of its founder, Sk. Mujib spent more than 12 years in prison in 23 years of united Pakistan. He was the only political leader in this sub-continent who faced death sentence on two occasions and finally he was assassinated by the very people whom he loved and trusted as his own. During the month of July 1971, when the War of Liberation was in the formative stage, Khondakar Mustaque, one of the founder of AL and close associate of Bangabandhu, who was made the Minister of Law and Parliamentary Affairs in the Mujibnagar government (Kissenger termed him as ‘Foreign Minister in his book, ‘White House Years’) secretly sent an emissary, Zahirul Quaiyum, an MP elect from Comilla to the US Consul General in Calcutta with the message that they are ready to call of the war provided US negotiated the release of Bangabandhu from Pakistan prison. Mustaque did this on his own, backstabbing the independence movement. Highlighting this incident the eminent American journalist Christopher Hitchens in his best seller book ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ wrote ‘in 1971 Henry Kissinger had attempted the impossible by trying to divide the electorally victorious Awami League, and to dilute its demand for independence. In pursuit of this favor to General Yahya Khan, he had initiated a covert approach to Khondakar Mustaque, who led the tiny minority who were willing to compromise on the main principle. A recently unearthed “Memorandum for Record” gives us details of a White House meeting between Nixon, Kissinger and others on 11 August 1971, at which Undersecretary of State John Irwin reported: “we have had reports in recent days of the possibility that some Awami League leaders in Calcutta want to negotiate with Yahya on the basis of giving up their claim for the independence of East Pakistan.” Soon Tajuddin Ahmed, the Prime Minister of the Mujibnagar government came to know about this conspiracy going on behind his back and put Mustaque under house arrest in October 1971, and that the American political officer who contacted him, George Griffin, was declared, persona non grata by the Government of India (Hitchens). To remove an elected and legal government of a country through conspiracy, intrigue, assassination and coup a proper stage must be set. The coup of 15th. August 1975, the killing of Bangabandhu and his family members were the outcome of one such choreographed staging of the tragedy. For carrying out such an act of treachery nothing works better than rumours based on half truth, lies and fabricated stories. For this two institutions can be used. The first one is opposition political party or parties and the second one public media. On return of Bangabandhu from the Pakistan prison on January 10, 1972 he immediately went to work to put back the war devastatated country on its feet. Though he returned as the President of Bangladesh soon reshuffled the cabinet and took the responsibility of the Prime Minister. The tasks facing him were of immense challenges. Ten million returning refugees from India and few hundred thousand internally displaced people during the war had to be rehabilitated. There were no food grain in any public warehouse and the bank vaults were all empty. The retreating Pakistani soldiers either looted all the vaults or made a bone fire of all the currency notes. They blew up the two major railway bridges of the country, Hardinge and Bhairab, besides destroying about four thousand bridges and culverts. The two major sea ports, Chittagong and Mongla, were left unusable because of thousands of floating mines. The airports of Dhaka and Chittagong also were full of potholes due to allied bombing during the final days of the war. Thousands of Freedom Fighters were carrying arms and they had to be disarmed. There were no experienced bureaucracy or administrative staff and members of the law enforcing agencies, including the border security forces, the erstwhile East Pakistan Rifles (EPR) practically became non existent. The Police and the EPR put up the first armed resistance when the Operation Search Light was launched on the night of March 26 and they suffered the heaviest losses in terms of men and materials. The staple food of the Bengalis is rice and most of the farmers were displaced during the war and they even did not have enough money to buy the inputs to till their fields. From sowing to harvesting of paddy the usual time taken is three to four months and during this time the people had to be fed. Taking advantage of the situation some unscrupulous hoarders resorted to hoarding of whatever rice was available in the market. This sent the price of rice spiraling. When Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation the country had three political parties, namely NAP (Bhashani), NAP (Muzaffar) and CPB. There were couple of underground parties like Purba Bangla Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) and Bangladesh Communist Party (M-L). Shiraj Sikder floated his own clandestine party, Purba Bangla Sarbahara party. When the government banned the Jamaat and Muslim League in Bangladesh most of their dreaded killers who collaborated with the Pakistani Army in their killing missions found refuge in these underground parties. Some were sheltered by NAP (Bhashani). All these underground parities began looting banks and setting fires to jute godowns and killing the workers of AL. As reported by the Hindustan Standard on April 8, 1972 two clandestine radio stations were found operating inside Bangladesh with the name of ‘Bidrohi Bangla Radio and ‘Swadin Muslim Bangla Radio.’ On February 25, 1972 with the patronage of Maulana Bhashani one Syed Irfanul Bari launched a weekly tabloid titled ‘Hoq Kotha,’ which survived on gossip, rumour, and hearsay and fabricated stories. They continuously fed its readers that Bangladesh is still occupied by Indian soldiers and smuggling of thousands of tons of rice is going on in full swing. Sure there were smuggling of many things from Bangladesh, but not necessarily rice as Bangladesh did not have that much of rice at that time for smuggling. Bangabanhdu had a special respect for the Maulana, and he was the founder President of AL. To make things worse the oil producing Arab countries raised the oil price manifold after the 1973 Arab-Israel War. They thought that it will harm the interest of the western nations that helped Israel during the war. Sure it hurt these nations but most hard hit were the third world countries like Bangladesh, which was struggling to rise from the ashes of 1971. 1973 and 1974 Bangladesh saw successive floods causing immense damage to its crops and taking advantage of the situation US stopped shipment of food grains to Bangladesh under PL-480 programme under the pretext that Bangladesh sold jute bags to its ‘enemy country’ Cuba. Bangladesh even was not aware of any such pre-conditions (not having any economic relations with Cuba) to receive food aid under the PL-480 programme. Food was never used in modern history as a devastating weapon to teach an ‘errand country’ as was in the case of Bangladesh. All these resulted in the famine of 1974. Though the government desperately tried to contain the situation, thousands of people died. They were victims of a man-made famine. To more destabilize the situation in the early years of independent Bangladesh, a political party, Jatiyo Samajtantrik Dal or JSD was floated in 1972 by the Rasputin of Bangladesh politics, Sirajul Alam Khan, Major (Retd) Jalil, A S M Abdur Rob, Hasanul Hoque Inu and others. All of them, except Major (Retd) Jalil either had AL or Chatra League background in their earlier political career. Khan was believed to be a master in conspiracies and intrigues and the mystery man of Bangladesh politics. JSD floated a daily newspaper of their own-the daily Gonokontho. It thrived more or less on the principle of ‘Hoq Kotha.’ The slogan of the party was ‘Scientific Socialism,’ and many youths of the country were drawn in rank and file of the party. JSD also organized an armed wing called ‘Gono Bahini’ whose aim was to kill AL workers and leaders, which they did, and overthrow Sk. Mujib. They preached Mujib was unfit for democracy and only the mantra of ‘Scientific Socialism’ can save the country. ‘Gono Bahini’ transformed many young people into a bunch of hoodlums and destroyed their lives. Both `Gonokontho’ and `Hoq Kotha’ spread rumours like Sk. Mujib’s son was involved in looting Bangladesh Bank and kidnapping the wife of Major Dalim, Rakkhi Bahini was formed comprising of Indian army to undermine the authority of Bangladesh army. The truth was Sk. Kamal along with some of his close friends was on a joy ride at night on the streets of Mothijheel and when the police attempted to stop their car they tried to speed away prompting the police to open fire on the car, thus injuring the Sk. Kamal. It had nothing to do with looting Bangladesh Bank. Major Dalim’s wife was teased by the son of Gazi Gholam Mustafa an AL leader in a social function. The son was also a friend of Sk. Kamal. Dalim who happened to be very close to Bangabandhu family complained to Bangabandhu who summoned Gazi Gholam Mustafa and rebuked him for his son’s behaviour. Not satisfied Dalim went to latter’s house and misbehaved with the family. The army headquarter did not take the matter in good earnest and fired Dalim from service. Rakkhi Bahini was formed as a para-military force comprising the freedom fighters who were unemployed but did not have the requisite qualifications to be inducted in the regular forces of the country. Interestingly after the killing of Bangabandhu, Zia amalgamated the entire force into the Bangladesh military without any screening. He also included the Food Secretary Abdul Momen Khan (father of Dr. Moin Khan, the BNP leader) of 1974 as a member of his council of advisors. While all the stage preparations were going on other acts were going on behind the stage. Mujib went to US in 1974 to attend the UN General Assembly session. He had a brief interview with the US President Gerald Ford where Kissinger was conspicuous by his absence. In November of 1974 Kissinger came to Bangladesh on an 8 hour visit and at the end of the trip he had a three minute press briefing. When one of the attending journalist tried to ask him why three years earlier US decided to sent USS Enterprise from its 7th. Fleet during the closing phase of our War of Liberation, Kissinger instead of replying ended the briefing session and walked away. According to Hitchens soon after Kissinger departed few officials of the US Embassy in Dhaka established contacts with some mid-ranking army officers of the Bangladesh army, which included Col Farookh and Lt. Col. Rashid. Rashid was a close relative of Mustaque. In an interview given to British journalist Anthony Mascarhenas in London for Granada TV after the killing of Bangabandhu, both Farookh and Rashid confessed that they also had close contact with General Zia and Mushtaque, starting from March of 1975. Zia just told them as senior army officers they cannot actively involve themselves in any coup but the junior officers could go ahead. Zia, a servant of the Republic was duty and honour bound to disclose such a conspiracy to appropriate authorities which he intentionally did not. Ultimately it was Zia who emerged as a complete beneficiary of the killings of 15th. August. In 1975 David Eugene Booster was the US Ambassador to Bangladesh. Hitchens writes Booster knew about the coup plans but refrained from asking his staff from keeping any contact with the conspirators. Boster also knew the CIA Station Chief of the Embassy was playing an important role in the entire game. In 1978 another US journalist Lawrence Lifschultz tried to know from Cherry about his role in Bangladesh in 1975. Cherry evaded the question and said usually politicians in any country tries to maintain contacts with the Embassy staffs. The assassination of Bangabandhu was a collective effort by many, which included people like NAP (Bhashani), JSD, some trusted bureaucrats like Mahbubul Alam Chashi, Abdul Momen Khan, Shafiul Azam, the US Embassy in Dhaka, and most importantly some very close confidants of Bangabandhu. When his mortal remains were lying in pool of blood in Dhanmondi Road No. 32 residence 25 of the people he trusted went to join the Mustaque cabinet. True some were taken at gun points but most went willingly. Mujib was a good man, sacrificed his entire life for the good of the people of this country. But he was not any angel as many would like to portray him. He had his own shortcomings. He trusted the people around him without exception. He trusted them too much and ultimately paid a heavy price. He may be dead but his legend lives on for posterity and as long as Bangladesh lives his name will be remembered along with the heroes of history like Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln or Salvador Allende. Heroes never die. Mujib was a tragic hero of history. Let us pray for those fallen on the dark night of August 15, 1975,. The writer is a former Vice-chancellor, University of Chittagong. Currently he teaches at ULAB, Dhaka. August 13, 2014- See more at: daily-sun/details_Mujib-the-tragic-hero-of-history_947_5_70_1_0.html#sthash.zqVSgCJN.dpuf
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 06:37:26 +0000
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