Editorial
Remembering the four national leaders
Their supreme sacrifice must not go in vain
The nation mourns today the passing of the four leading lights of the 1971 Mujibnagar government -- Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmed, M. Mansoor Ali and A.H.M. Quamruzzaman -- on a night of conspiracy and murder most foul thirty five years ago. These men, all close associates of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, each of them a pivotal presence in the articulation of Bengali national aspirations in the 1960s and instrumental in the waging of a hard-fought guerrilla war against the Pakistan occupation army in 1971, remain potent symbols of our secular democratic aspirations. They symbolise, all these years after their death, the dreams of pluralism and national self-esteem which originally impelled us into a movement for autonomy and then an all-encompassing war of national liberation.
The murder of the four national leaders in 1975 was part of a well-laid, deep-rooted conspiracy to deprive the Bengali nation of effective leadership in the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Bangabandhu in August of that year. It was aimed at crushing any sign of the nation reasserting itself through restoring the constitutionality which had been rudely interrupted by murder and mayhem. In its totality, the murder of the four leaders in the putative safe confines of Dhaka central jail was a body blow to the very principles on which the state of Bangladesh was established through the sacrifices of millions during the struggle against Pakistani occupation. The fact that these leaders were killed in prison, where they had been confined for the preceding three months by the usurper regime of Khondakar Moshtaque Ahmed, remains one of the darkest episodes in the tortuous history of this country. Worse, that justice has not been done through tracking down the architects of their murder (despite a judicial process that was as inconclusive as it was intriguing) is for the nation a grave reminder that unless the full truth behind their tragic end is revealed, it cannot reasonably be expected to move ahead towards fulfilling its goals of attaining economic progress and political stability.
In the darkest moments of Bangladesh's history, in the absence of Bangabandhu, the four national leaders took upon themselves the onerous responsibility of forging the first ever Bengali government in history and through that seminal move charting our difficult path to freedom. In the post-liberation period, all these men, under Bangabandhu's leadership, expended their sagacity and their energy in the task of rebuilding a country shattered by war and convincing the world that Bangladesh was coming level with the rest of the world.
We remember them, today and always. History has already accorded them a high niche in its wide spaces. It is for us to pick up from where they left off and immerse ourselves in the task of building a happy, prosperous country -- for ourselves and for future generations of Bengalis.
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