Editor's Pick

Two reviews from Syed Badrul Ahsan

History, with all the facts . . .

25 December 2009, 17:00 PM
BOOK REVIEWS

Abdul Matin's interest in history and in Bangladesh has never wavered. As an expatriate, he has found little reason not to reflect on what has been happening in the home country he left long ago to make a home in the West. From the distance of London he has, with something of determination and with a huge deal of principle, focused on the need to set the history of Bangladesh in the proper perspective. That Matin was on his way to being a commentator on Bangladesh came through as far back as the early 1970s, when he ventured into a work that was to emerge as Geneva-e Bangabandhu. He has come a long way since then. And in all the works he has come forth with thus far, Matin has deemed it refreshingly necessary to play by the rules. And that has consisted in adding to the substance of his works through bringing documentary evidence into it. It is what Matin does in his new work. In Koyekti Oitishashik Dolil, he brings into the public domain once more a theme writers in Bangladesh as well beyond its frontiers have struggled with, especially since August 1975. For Bengali scholars, especially for those who had reason to observe the rise of Bengali nationalism in the 1960s and the emergence of Bangladesh in the early 1970s at close quarters, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman remains not merely a point of reference but also a fascinating study in political leadership. For Matin, as for millions of others, Mujib remains the pivot around which Bengali politics, pre- as well as post-1975, has conducted itself. More importantly, though, Matin's emphasis has been on the dark propaganda, indeed the innuendoes, that have been made about the Father of the Nation by those who came after him or by those who had ample cause to benefit from his assassination. At the same time, Matin has found it necessary (which scholar of history will not?) to debunk the many myths surrounding the fall of Bangladesh's founder. He goes to considerable lengths, in this work as also in earlier ones, to persuade readers that Bangabandhu's death was not a simple matter of some soldiers shooting him down but part of a wider web of conspiracy laid at home and abroad. Abdul Matin deals in facts. And because he does, this work (as also his earlier ones) makes gripping reading. Notice that unlike so many others, he does not take recourse to hearsay when it comes to dwelling on the declaration of Bangladesh's independence. He proceeds headlong into a United States government report (Defence Intelligence Agency Spot Report) of 26 March 1971: Pakistan was thrust into civil war today when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaimed the east wing of the two-part country to be "the sovereign independent People's Republic of Bangla Desh." Fighting is reported heavy in Dacca and other eastern cities . . . And there you have it. The argument of whether Mujib did or did not declare Bangladesh's freedom has no more validity. The truth is set out in that report. That said, a significant part of Matin's work deals with the events that were to shake Bangladesh violently on and after 15 August 1975. The writer goes to Keesing's Contemporary Archives (16 January 1976) to provide readers with an insight into the happenings between 3 and 7 November 1975. Note the chilling comment on the death of the four Mujibnagar leaders in prison: "The Majors" had meanwhile apparently given orders for the killing of the four imprisoned ministers, who were shot and bayoneted to death during the night of Nov. 2-3, although reports differed on whether the deaths took place before or after the coup began . . . Keesing's goes on: Colonel Farook told journalists on Nov. 5 that he regretted the "unnecessary killings" on Aug. 15 but not the murder of President Mujib, which he had himself ordered. It was announced on Nov. 30 that the officers had been granted political asylum in Libya. Matin sets the record straight, through citing all the unimpeachable sources behind the arguments he makes. He reproduces the famous article (Food Politics) by Emma Rothschild and thereby gives Bangladesh's people as well as those who have long held the Mujib government responsible for the famine of 1974 some serious thoughts to mull over. Consider the following from the Rothschild article: . . . U.S. agreements to supply food as aid under the PL 480 program were also delayed, mainly because officials were negotiating in secret as to whether Bangladesh was disqualified from receiving aid because it had sold jute to Cuba earlier in the year. . . By the time the American food arrived in Bangladesh, in December 1974, the autumn famine was over. The appendices in the book make terrifically worthwhile reading. Matin digs up all the old records of Bangabandhu's assassins publicly gloating over their act (re Farook's 'I helped to kill Mujib', et cetera). The writer specifically refers to Stanley Wolpert's work on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to explain how leftists in Bangladesh were busily engaged in the conspiracy to bump Mujib off. Wolpert quotes from a letter written by Abdul Huq, a leftwing underground Bengali politician, to Bhutto (the letter is now in the Bhutto family archives in Karachi): Abdul Huq, general secretary of Bangladesh's Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, had written on 16 December 1974 to "My dear Prime Minister" Bhutto, with "much pain and anguish" to appeal "for funds, arms and wireless instruments" to use against the "puppet Mujib clique . . . totally divorced from the people." That "TOP SECRET/MOST IMMEDIATE" letter reached Zulfi on 16 January 1975, when he minuted on its margin "Important," authorizing "help" for this "honest man," whom Bhutto rated as "fairly effective . . ." Matin goes on to quote Wolpert further: Abdul Malek, another one of Zulfi's agents in destabilizing Bangladesh, travelled to Saudi Arabia for support in the promised 'liberation of 65 million Muslims (of Bangladesh), who are anxiously waiting for your guidance and leadership'. Read on. And you will get a sense of how Bangladesh was betrayed in the years immediately after its triumph on the battlefield against Pakistan. It is a compelling work.

. . . Toil and tears of the poor

Ah, rickshaws! That ubiquity we regularly rail against and yet cannot do without. For Niaz Zaman, an academic who has for as long as we can remember taken huge interest in rickshaws (years ago she wrote on the art fashioned on the bodies of these three wheelers), the work in review was clearly something into which she put her heart and her soul. There is the poignance and the pathos about rickshaws she speaks of here, through bringing to you the innumerable facets of rickshaws and how they have impacted on lives. And not just in Bangladesh. Of Rickshaws and Rickshawallahs is, of course, a whole lot more than deliberations on a mode of transport people have been using for generations. That is the point Zaman makes through stringing together a diversity of thoughts on the subject. And what a pick you have before you. The editor goes back in time, to Rudyard Kipling and ends with the heart-breaking tale narrated by the young Mahfuz Sadique. Begin with Kipling's The Phantom Rickshaw, a story first published in 1885 in Quartette, The Christian Annual of of the Civil and Military Gazette. And then you move on, stopping at Dilip Sarkar's poem, The Rickshawallah's Song. Ever been on a rickshaw? Sense then the pain that oozes from the man who pulls this vehicle for a lifetime, yes, a lifetime: We eke out our lives in this country / Men labouring like cows and horses / We wither away, struggling all our lives / Others get rich without labouring! / Is this the game of destiny? You wonder, even as you observe nonchalantly the traffic constable landing his baton on the back of the rickshawpuller or letting the air out of his tyres for a misdemeanour that even the gods will ignore. But go beyond the pain and sift through the romance a rickshaw ride with the one you love can be. Kaiser Haq speaks for you in A Freshman's Unsent Billet-Doux: The warm length of your thigh / along mine / was it spring or mellow / tropical winter? / … Now all flowers remind me of you / This is my despair / So many flowers / and only one you / and only once / happy chance let me share / an all-too-brief rickshaw ride / with you / the warm length of your thigh / along mine. There is, as Syed Manzoorul Islam notes in Rickshaw Art of Bangladesh, something of the aesthetic about the vehicle. He calls rickshaws (along with the jeepneys in Manila and the tuktuks in Bangkok) 'eccentric forms of public transport that add colour and a certain anachronistic flavour to the city traffic.' Islam gives you a rundown on the history of Bangladesh's, especially Dhaka's, rickshaws. And he adds into the telling of the story the demands made by human rights bodies for an end to the human exploitation involved in the pulling of rickshaws. Isn't reality being ignored here? And have the lives of rickshawpullers and their families not been trifled with already through important thoroughfares being closed off to rickshaws? Islam moves on from such existential questions, to let us take a peek into what he calls moving picture galleries. That is the spin he puts on rickshaws. His reflections on rickshaw art, indeed on the various ways in which such art has evolved over time, are indeed a commentary on contemporary life. Note his comment: 'Rickshaw painting also promotes male power in the images of hunting and chase. A tiger pouncing on a deer, or a woman pursued by a man (he may be a lover or a villain) have been favourite themes since the early 1970s. In Hafiz and Abdul Hafiz, Mahbub Talukdar comes up with ironies. The rickshawpuller Abdul Hafiz recalls the Persian poet Hafiz: For six hundred years the whole world has known him / has known him as a poet . . . / Sir! His name is Hafiz. I am Abdul Hafiz / If I die today no one will remember me tomorrow / Six hundred years? Abu Rushd's The Driver makes painful reading and so does Humayun Ahmed's The Rickshawpuller. In the latter, the tale of the two Ishaks, one the puller and the other his passenger, crashes into a tragedy of the former breathing his last, but not before begging the latter to take care of his rickshaw. You get a glimpse into the human condition here. And you brood. Clearly one of the best entries in this volume is Mahfuz Sadique's Shattered Dreams on Three Wheels. Sadique goes visiting rickshawpullers, inquiring into their various states of misery. And he emerges with tales that will leave you writhing in agony. Azhar Mondal encapsulates the tragedy that is a rickshawpuller's life. And why do so many young men in Bangladesh turn to such a laborious occupation? Ask Shamsu Miah, the fifty-plus rickshaw karigor Sadique meets in Tangail. He answers your question with one of his own: 'What else is there to do?" Read these real life stories and the stirring poetry woven around them. Chances are the next time you ride a rickshaw you will find a bit of social history etched on the skeletal framework of the man taking you to wherever it is that you are going.
Syed Badrul Ahsan edits Star Books Review.

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