The history behind a maker of history
Three scholarly books on Bangabandhu impress Syed Badrul Ahsan
Literature on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has been copious, especially in the last decade. Analyses of his life and politics --- and do not forget that he began to loom large over our political horizon from the mid-1960s onward, a position that has only been strengthened over time --- have continued to delve deep into the personality and leadership qualities of the man. For all the attempts made by his detractors since his assassination in 1975 (and those detractors have been many and vicious), Mujib has remained even in death a pivotal force in Bangladesh's politics. His place in history assured, there is today an endless interest in assessing all that he stood for in his life. That is certainly reassuring, given the many instances between his fall in 1975 and the rise of his daughter Sheikh Hasina to power in 1996 when he was sought to be airbrushed out of Bengali history. Those attempts have clearly not succeeded, as these books under review would suggest. In Ei Desh Ei Mati, a refreshing new approach has been taken to studies of the Mujib persona. If in earlier times essays and books on the Father of the Nation were largely appreciative and yet weak studies on his career (gushing appreciation is always a huge disappointment), there is in this work a new Mujib who comes alive. The subtitle says it all. It is a composite collection of the writings, speeches and statements the Bengali leader made especially between the announcement of the Six Point plan for regional autonomy in 1966 and his death in 1975. Those nine years were at once a formative and a decisive stage in Bangabandhu's life, seeing that he effectively launched a movement for autonomy and soon, through sheer determination and grit, led his people to political freedom outside the parameters of the military-communalistic Pakistan dispensation. His star rose to remarkable heights with the Agartala case in 1968. By 1971 he was a meteor racing across time. In a social setting where record keeping does not always come up to the standards considered acceptable by students of history,AMA Muhith, AAMS Arefin Siddique and M Zahid Hossain as editors do a creditable jobof binging to light the moments in which Bangabandhu dominated politics in this part of the world. With an array of critics constantly on the lookout for what he did not say or do but should have said or done (observe the young politician who recently noted on television that Bangladesh's parliament in 1972 did not pay tribute to the martyrs of 1971!), this is a work that sets the record straight. Bangabandhu Lalitkala Academy has surely done a splendid job of going through the archives of old newspapers, journals and documents and retrieving material that greatly adds a lot more intellectual flesh to Mujib studies in this country. And that endeavour is then taken a very appreciable way forward in Abdul Matin's Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib: Koekti Oitihashik Dolil. Matin, as ever an indefatigable writer with a mission to keep readers in touch with the many diverse moments of Bangladesh's history, sifts through material as diverse as Keesing's, Lifschultz's The Unfinished Revolution, US State Department reports, interviews of Bangabandhu's assassins and myriad other documents to present the case for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The materials covered in Dolil are simple translations in Bengali from the originals in English. Obviously, it has been painstaking work and yet it is work that others ought to have done before Matin undertook to do it himself. A perfectionist when it comes to a narration of historical facts, he has often been disturbed by people making references to history without taking the precaution of verifying their reports. That naturally explains the reason behind this present endeavour. More significantly, the writer has clearly achieved a first in that he has brought before the general reading public in Bangladesh, especially those who are not attuned to English or do not have much access to the English language materials Matin translates, facts and documents which can only give them a deeper insight into the politics and the conspiracies which went around Bangabandhu, eventually destroying him. He quotes from Stanley Wolpert's Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan, to bring to light the conspiracies Bangladesh's rightwing as well as pro-Beijing political classes engaged in in association with Pakistan's Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Abdul Haq's letter soliciting Bhutto's help in overthrowing the Mujib government reaches the Pakistani leader in January 1975. An elated Bhutto decides to respond positively. Such are the nuggets Matin places on the table, for a people who, worryingly, may actually be forgetting important segments of their history. And history is again at the core of Mohammad Shahjahan's Bangabandhur Shadhintoa Ghoshona. Shahjahan's work follows a pattern similar to those employed in the two books reflected on earlier. He has simply made it his job to come up with evidence that early on 26 March 1971, Bangabandhu did make a declaration of independence before he was carted off into arrest, which state he was to be in for the subsequent nine months. There is a profusion of eyewitness accounts of the days and moments before the Pakistan army went into Operation Searchlight, the code name for the genocide it was to perpetrate for months before Bangladesh would become a free nation. Among the accounts Shahjahan presents in the work is one from Begum Fazilatunnessa Mujib. As the one individual (and her children were with her) who saw Bangabandhu being taken away by the soldiers even as Dhaka burned, she is in an eminent position to recount the events of what was to become a celebrated as well as horrifying night for Bengalis. The celebration was in taking the path to freedom; the horror was in the scale of genocide let loose. A unifying strand in these three works is the factor of research. All three books are an outcome of the meticulous attention to detail paid to their preparation. That is what underscores the works and gives them, as it were, substance that is as rich as it is historically imperative. In a larger way, these books are a clearing of the path in the interest of further, and future, research in the field of Mujib studies. One hardly needs to be reminded that all reflections on Bangabandhu are essentially an understanding of the background to the struggle for and emergence of Bangladesh. The authors and editors have fulfilled a historical need. And they have done something more. They have emphasised the scholarship that must be brought into any writing of Bangladesh's history. The point is well taken. Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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