How a Terrible Beauty was Born

Writing about a war one had fought as a young man more than forty years ago is never easy, as memory begins to play tricks and conflicting emotions threaten to cloud judgement. And if the war happens to be one that was fought to free one's motherland, these emotions can be pretty strong, disrupting narrative coherence, and transforming many of the facts and realities into myths. It is difficult for combatant-chroniclers to maintain strict objectivity or manage the tightrope walk between impersonal and private feelings or between historical documentation and insertion of personal accounts. A Qayyum Khan has, admirably, achieved that feat.
I am reminded of the famous Yeatsian paradox of a 'terrible beauty' being born when an armed uprising for a country's freedom begins as I look at the title of Khan's account of our liberation war, Bittersweet Victory: A Freedom Fighter's Tale, published by the University Press Limited and launched during the Hay Festival here in November 2013. In 1971, Khan had just got into the undergraduate programme of Dhaka University, when momentous events began to unfold and the Bengali nation, under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, braced for a long fight for freedom. On 7 March, in his stirring speech at the Suhrawardy Udyan, Bangabandhu made, what many commentators describe as a strategic declaration of independence. The familiar world fell apart. Our cultivated everydayness was replaced by frenzied activities that turned even the most complacent of the souls into a rebel. And when on the night of 25 March Pakistani tanks rolled out and their guns and mortars began a killing spree, the nation took the resolve to do or die. Bangabandhu sent a wireless message declaring independence. And in the next few days, all young men's thoughts turned to war. Khan was one of them.

What happened in the next nine months was something that was both heroic and tragic. Freedom fighters comprising students, farmers, workers, day labourers, professionals, women, political activists and Bengali military personnel, organized in different groups and fought. A military plan was put into place and sectors and subsectors were created. Eventually, on 16 December, the mighty Pakistani armed forces with all their myths, manufactured lies and maleficence were brought down to their knees, and a proud nation was born. But throughout these nine months, countless lives were lost, women raped, children butchered, houses burnt and property looted. The Pakistanis, with the help of their local collaborators or Razakars carried out one of the worst genocides in history. The tragedy was overpowering.
The true history of our liberation war was indeed written collectively by the people – the combatants, victims and sufferers – event by event, incident by event. Yet, barely a decade after the war, controversies began to appear. And in course of the next three decades, attempts were made to distort our liberation history beyond redemption. What the powers that be did with our history is nothing but a collective shame.
Yet the history that has been created by the people cannot be erased by the dictates of power. Khan's Bittersweet Victory reminds us of that. The book is a refreshing attempt to reconstruct a part of that collective history. In the process it raises many questions, but instead of pointing fingers, places these questions in the larger historical and political perspective of the time, so that his readers can find the answers themselves. Was there adequate preparation for the war? What role did the politicians play during the war? Why was it that immediately after the war, there was looting and plunder when the country needed to pull all its resources together to build a new nation? These are but some of the questions that emerge from his 'bitter' experience during the war and immediately after it. The instances of high handedness, incompetence and lack of commitment that he saw among many of those who mattered frustrated Khan, at times disillusioned him, yet he shows no acrimony towards anyone. His bitterness has roots in his idealism, and his wish to see everyone pursuing a common goal with dedicated and selfless devotion. It is to his credit that he did not allow bitterness to affect the sweetness that he felt when freedom was finally achieved.
A Qayyum Khan's main focus is the war of liberation. In retelling it, he begins at the very beginning – his own childhood. He was one of the post-midnight children, whose lot was thrown with a strange country full of paradoxes. Its two wings were two worlds apart, yet its founding fathers believed that a common religion (although 30% belonged to other religions) and a minority language (spoken by less than 10%) could bridge the gap. They also believed that military might is right. Khan's family background and his schooling in a Pakistani dominated ambience provide important clues as to why the war became inevitable after 24 years of living through those paradoxes.
Bittersweet Victory is a tale that weaves four different narratives like a fine braid. His first narrative is a summary of the historical, political and social developments in the province leading to the climactic month of March 1971 and beyond; the second one, the more substantial one, is his account of the war, beginning with the day he decided to join it as a liberation fighter and ending with the uneasy months before the outbreak of the famine of 1974. The third narrative involves Khan's reading of the politics, policies and pragmatics that guided the Bengalee's fight for freedom as well as their misapplications and deviations while the fourth one is a reflection on how the international actors influenced the events of 1971. The narratives often overlap, which is quite natural, as the events of 1971 were shaped as much by fighters like him on the ground as by policy makers in Mujibnagar, Delhi and elsewhere. One nod of Mr. Nixon's or Mr. Kissinger's head for example, emboldened Pakistani rulers to intensify their slash and burn drives defying world opinion, or steered the seventh fleet towards the Bay of Bengal: something like what Chaos theory implies – the fluttering of a butterfly in one part of the world leading to a tsunami somewhere else. Khan also invests a lot of his effort in recounting his time in the Murtee training camp and his Sector 7 fighting days. These experiences shaped him and steeled his resolve to fight.
Khan weaves the four narratives with skill, forthrightness and poise. He begins by showing how the war was forced on us, that it was bound to happen given the scale of arrogance and colonial highhandedness the Pakistanis showed. It is important to locate his combatant self in the history of protest and resistance that was a part of the Bengali psyche from well before the 1947 partition. Once Khan took up the formal role of a military combatant, he didn't allow the conscientious objector in him to sleep. He critiqued misguided policies, personalized histories and abuse of authority both during the war and after. One may not agree with all his observations or opinions, but one has to appreciate his frustration since petty power plays and misguided ambition of a few contrasted so sharply with the self-effacing patriotism of the fighters on the ground. Similarly, his account of MAG Osmany's activities during the war may not go well with many who grew an admiration for him but one has to admit the fact that Khan's concern was purely of a fighter who wanted nothing short of efficient coordination and mobilisation of resources by top leaders.
Bittersweet Victory is thus an uneasy read if one takes Khan's often pointed critique of the mismanagement and lapses that he saw in certain pockets of leadership – both civil and military, and the general deterioration of the law and order situation after the war. But the book is inspiring in its account of the wisdom and dedication of most other leaders, and the courage and resolve shown by every freedom fighter and the countrymen in general. Khan has the highest of praise and respect for Bangabandhu, and admiration for the pragmatic leadership of Tajuddin Ahmed. He never allows his frustration to affect his judgement, neither does he claim that his views are the only authentic ones. The readers thus find an ample scope to maintain a dialogue with him, all the while enjoying his crisp and elegant narrative. In the end, Bittersweet Victory is a satisfying read.