Non-fiction
Those bursts of gunfire . . .
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stone places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palaces and reverberations
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead … ----T S Eliot What is now the aftermath of the thunder we had generated in 1971? In 1971, we ceased to be governed by alien rulers, because we had become ungovernable by outside authority. Self-assertion, self-determination was too strong. But Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who bequeathed to us our country while living is now dead, brought down by assassins.
TS Eliot also wrote, "April is the cruellest month ..." For us, August is the cruellest month' as a nation. The president of the country and Father of the Nation was assassinated on August 15, 1975. Almost exactly thirty years after, a public meeting addressed by his daughter, on August 21, was bombed. Also on August 17 of another year, there was bombing by extremist groups throughout the country. "The sole country under the sun that is endowed with imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land all men desire to see and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined." Mark Twain wrote this about the Indian subcontinent in 1897, but for all of us it might well have been said about Bangladesh. We ceased to be governed by alien forces because we had become ungovernable by outside authority. Self-determination was too strong. Under the inspired and prophetic leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, dissent had a sophistication, had a resulting force far in excess of what could be mobilized by the opposing alien forces. One could not have known about the residential area that is Dhanmondi even if one wanted to. From the 1960s, it was everywhere. It was in books, in newspapers. Sometimes it seemed that everything that happened in Dhaka, happened in Dhanmondi. That was where ministers issued their statements, and unnamed but reliable diplomats confided in reporters. That was where Sheikh Mujibur Rahman lived and it was there that he died one morning when he stepped out to confront his assassins, unable to believe that they, clad in the uniforms he had given them, would turn their guns on him, their liberator. Those first bursts of gunfire, which brought down the Sheikh's bodyguard, and then the guns and tank assault that sent the leader's body crashing down the stairway, leaking blood and the annihilation of the whole family and other families in Dhaka, at the same point in time, are etched in the memories of those living nearby, as was myself. Justice Latifur Rahman in his book on his days as Chief Adviser has written about how Gandhi and then Jinnah rose above all political philosophy to be known as creators of their respective nations. Of course Gandhiji rose to a stature in the world. Justice Rahman says that with the creation of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman should have been really established as the Father of the Nation. He should not have been made part of the politics and philosophy of a political party but should have been known as the creator of Bangladesh. Mere news and views cannot wipe away the role of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the fact that August 15 was a day of tragedy that killed the Father of the Nation. We have to know that he did not "... die in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." Let our tears flow for a nation that has lost its father but needs to be reborn through our guardians --- the faceless, nameless all enduring voter. That would be the real harvest of the spring that was 1971 and prove to us and the world that Bangabandhu lives amongst us, in our souls, and forever in minds, ours and those of generations of Bengalis.
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