Editorial
March 7 was a defining moment
We soared, with Bangabandhu
It was a defining moment for the Bengali nation when Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman rose before a million-strong crowd on the afternoon of this day in 1971 to speak to us of the future. In a very formal sense, the man who was soon to be Father of the Nation informed us, through twenty minutes of profound oratory, that freedom was the goal for the people of Bangladesh, that the spirit which underscored the non-violent non-cooperation movement in place since the first day of March 1971 was sure to propel the nation toward the attainment of absolute sovereignty.
Of course, when Bangabandhu spoke on that day, indeed even before he began to speak, it was the weight of the world he seemed to carry on his shoulders. And he did the job well, for through his long struggle, through the remarkable electoral victory he had obtained months earlier, he had earned his place as the undisputed leader of seventy five million Bengalis. In the event, the March 7 address turned out to be the finest in his long, tortuous political career. He spoke without notes. He came forth with a recapitulation of the history of Bengali suffering in twenty three years of Pakistan. And he was under no illusion that the struggle for liberty would be hard and long, demanding yet more sacrifice than what the nation had expended till that point of time. It was a speech laced with reason and underlined with necessary emotion. Bitterness had no place in it; and passion resting on patriotism was all. Bangabandhu did not give Pakistan's military junta a chance to pounce on his people on the ground that they were parting from Pakistan through secession or a unilateral declaration of independence. Neither did he leave his fellow Bengalis in any doubt about the course of freedom he was setting for them.
The struggle this time, he made it clear on March 7, 1971, was the struggle for emancipation. And then came the clincher: the struggle was for freedom. If politics immediately prior to March 7 had been at a crossroads, on March 7 Bangabandhu pointed, in firm, decisive manner, to the route we needed to take. And we did.
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