>> War of Symbols: How today's generation remembers 1971
>> By: Meghna Guhathakurta
Professor
Dept. of International Relations
University of Dhaka

If one were to take a stroll down the campus of Dhaka University or the
adjoining campus of the Bangladesh Engineering and Technology during the
past couple of weeks (Autumn 2002) one would be in for a shock. In place of bubbling
students going about their business of studying or simply chatting away with
friends or waiting for the bus, one would be met with the sight of
student-less campuses filled with blue-clad policemen and women dressed to
the hilt in riot gears. Curiously, they would be clustered around monuments,
which dot the campus of Dhaka University, commemorating historical struggles
such as the Language Movement of 1952 (the Central Shahid Minar) and the
Liberation War of 1971 (sculptures such as Aparajeyo Bangla and Shopardo
Shadhinota). The background to this story is the following.

The triggering incident, which led to a mass upheaval of general students of
Dhaka University, (i.e. students who are not cadres of the two mainstream
parties, BNP and Awami League) was a police raid of a female student's
dormitory (Shamsunnahar Hall) during the night of 24th July 2002. The
incident led to the injury and arrest of several innocent girls alongwith
trumped up charges against them and the provost of their hall. It was
allegedly reported that the provost who had been appointed during the Awami
League regime and whose term was due to end in September had been unduly
ousted by the new administration, and that she and some of her cronies had
started a movement against the University administration and the government
party cadres (Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dal) which led to a law and order
situation which in turn compelled the police to raid the hall. These
allegations were proved false in the course of time, but what did happen was
that the police worked in compliance with University administration and
Chhatra Dal cadres to attack and abuse innocent girls in the middle of the
night. No doubt from the next day onwards, streams of protest rendered the
air as students from all quarters demanded justice for the police atrocities
and accountability of the University administration. As demands for the
resignation of the Vice Chancellor and the Proctor rendered the air, the
administration decided to close the University for an indefinite period,
with the order for immediate vacation of residential halls. Usually such
steps are taken to defuse situations such as these, but this time the
general students were not to be daunted.
Picture: Monir Hossain

Instead of simmering down the movement gained ground as students defied
police barricades and took position in the Central Shahid Minar and declared
a programme of fasting to death unless their demands were met. In the face of
many threats from the police and Chattro Dal cadres, they stuck to their post
and finally success came with resignation of the VC and the proctor on 31st July.

In the meantime students' movements were going on at the adjoining campus of
the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology demanding the trial
of the murderers of Soni, a female student who fell victim in the cross
firing between factional rivalry of the Bangladesh Chhatra Dal in the campus
several months ago. But instead of taking any positive steps towards
resolving the issue, the University administration committed the mistake by
giving show cause notice to the students who demanded justice for Soni's
murder. This angered the students even more and though a new VC was
instated, he proved just as intransigent to the demands. The situation at
the BUET campus became even more volatile as the administration made use of
the 1961 Act of the University, which prohibited any teacher or student to
participate directly in politics. In the case of Dhaka University this law
was revised by the Act of 1973, which constituted Dhaka University as an
autonomous institution. However in the case of BUET and Dhaka University,
the government was trying to use the situation in an attempt to ban students
politics on campus and hence the police had direct orders to quell any
demonstration by using force. This power was exercised by the police when
with the growing involvement of civil society, their movement fuelled into
the gherao of the administrative building. The police responded by lathi
charging and tear-gassing, until the halls were vacated and BUET too closed
down for an indefinite period.

But unlike the Dhaka University movement, which gained strength even after
the closure of the University, the students of BUET were marched off the
campus under strong police vigilance and were not allowed to re enter the
campus area and take up position anywhere. Nor were any other demonstrators
or processions (be they students, cultural activists, or civil society)
allowed to use the central Shahid Minar as their platform, which is
something unheard of in the whole history of Bangladesh... or perhaps not
the whole history! This is where I reread the events mentioned above in the
light of the history of democratic practice in Bangladesh.

The students' movement in Bangladesh has always been in the vanguard of
progressive democratic protests against militarization, cultural repression
and economic exploitation. This is witnessed by the role they played during
the Language Movement of the fifties, the Mass Uprising against the Ayub
regime of 1969, the Liberation War of 1971 and the anti autocratic movement
against the Ershad regime in 1990. Monuments commemorating these events,
such as the ones mentioned above, have therefore time and again served as
platforms to remind and inspire people to fight against regimes of
oppression. There has therefore been a progressive tradition linked to these
monuments. They provided cultural activists a platform to speak of a secular
culture and practice in an environment overshadowed by fundamentalist
fervour. They provided writers a space to speak about their rights to
freedom of speech and beliefs. They provided students with a focal point
through which to gain inspiration from history and to think critically and
constructively about their future, about the kind of society they would like
to see themselves living in. Any establishment, which was bent on domination
by force would naturally find these spaces of resistance, challenging to its
authority and threatening to its existence. Hence their aim would be to
restrict or even eradicate them as symbols of resistance from the minds of
the people. This was exactly what the Yahaya regime of 1971 had in mind when
they brought in the Pakistan army and started blowing up the Shahid Minar
and cutting down the banyan tree (botgaach) beneath which students used to
congregate. By the same logic (sic) they even massacred the family of Madhu
who used to own the famous canteen on campus called Madhu's canteen, where
student leaders use to meet and plan their demonstrations! Is it not
therefore in the same vein that current BNP-Jamaat led coalition government
is instructing the police to make these spaces out of bounds for the
students and the organized public at large! The evidence definitely points
that way. Let us look at some of the antecedents and implications of the
Dhaka University students' movement to explore this matter in depth.

Although the police raid on Shamsunnahar Hall was the immediate triggering
factor to the student's protest movement, certain incidents on campus had
been responsible for generating sparks of dissent against the new
administration, even prior to this incident. These incidents were
essentially campus-related but had links with the overall ideological bias
of the newly elected Government formed by the BNP-Jamaat alliance. First,
the new administration had systematically tried to 'clean' the Teachers
Students Centre, which was a focal point for cultural activists, e.g. poetry
recitation groups, theater groups etc. , of all outsiders. It was mentioned
that only those who were currently students and possessed ID cards would be
able to hire rooms for rehearsals or even sit in the adjoining premises. As
benign as this step sounded in the language of administrative practice, it
could not be denied that such measures also contained an ideological
element. Cultural activism or the cultivation of secular and progressive
ideals through various art forms have had a significant contribution towards
the practice of democracy and free thinking in Bangladesh. As such they have
often been in clash with religious orthodox thinking in politics and
society. The struggle to uphold these values therefore constituted a site of
contestation in itself. For example early this year, when the pro- Jamaati
media started writing against the celebration of the first day of Spring
(Boshonto Utshob) or the Bengali New Year (Pohela Boishakh) as being
unislamic, students and young people celebrated in the streets with a
vengeance, defying these strictures. Students have also been demonstrating
in the campus against the cutting down of trees by the University
administration in order to build a center for the learning of Persian art
and culture. It seems that the University was given a donation by the
Iranian Cultural Centre for this purpose. The protest of the students was
not only based on environmental considerations but also against the
unplanned way that the decision was taken. The final build-up was provided
by another administrative measure, which angered the general student
populace. This was the planned way in which the Proctor's Office tried to
get rid off boy and girl couples sitting together around the campus (the
infamous juti-uchhed obhijan). Dhaka University area has always been a place
where there was lesser segregation between the sexes than in other public
places. The administration tried to invoke a proctorial law from the
colonial period, which stated that if a boy was seen to be talking to a girl
without prior permission, he was to be fined. The evolution of Bangladeshi
society has by nature overgrown the uses of such a law, and its unjust
invocation and crude implementation in the name of morality by the
University administration fuelled the anger of the students. Many girls
protested and were given a show cause notice by the proctor. At this point a
police raid in a girls' dormitory for whatever reasons, proved to be the
last straw on the camel's back!

The fact that the student's themselves invoked the basic premises of
democratic practices, which was upheld by the symbol of our Liberation War,
(the right to freedom of speech, the right to form groups and practice ones
own cultural beliefs) was therefore an inevitable outcome of the whole
situation. Many girls, who were residing in Shamsunnahar Hall at the night of
the raid, expressed their fears in the following manner: "We were not born
in 1971 and had not witnessed the Liberation war ourselves. But we had heard
stories from our parents about the terror they felt when they heard the
boots of the military marching outside or the dreaded thumping on the door."
One girl said, that she felt that same dread when they heard the boots of
policemen on the corridor. Many girls had locked their rooms from the inside
and when the police started shouting abuses and banged on the doors, their
minds made a connection with a period of history which they personally had
not witnessed but was engraved deep in the collective unconscious mind of an
oppressed people. It was little wonder therefore that in the protest marches
that followed students did not give partisan slogans, but they did raise
their voices against the collaborators of the 1971 war.. the Jamaat-e-Islam
and Shibir it's student branch. They broke the police barricades to form
what they called the muktanchal (the liberated area) near the sculpture of
Shopardo Shadhinota. A daughter of a friend, a medical student, when passing
by this area witnessed spontaneous performance of street theatre by the
students of Fine Arts Department. They were drawing satirical portraits of
the power relations between the University administration and the ruling
party cadres. The girl (in her early twenties) later admitted that she had
felt she had been transported to a 'muktanchal' of the Liberation War, i.e.
the areas which were liberated of Pakistani Army Occupation by the
Muktibahinis ( the freedom fighters).

Thus one can understand that when after the closure of BUET, the police and
at times BDR forces were stationed in and around these historical monuments,
it demonstrated a siege not only of those sites where students might rally
round in protest, but also a siege of the very symbols of democratic
practice and resistance which the people have cherished in their memory for
so long.; memories which have a capacity to release the flood gates of
consciousness. This is something to be dreaded by power-driven
establishments. Milan Kundera in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting had put
it very succinctly: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of
memory against forgetting!" The Pakistanis with all their military might had
not been able to curb this memory. How can it be possible for a host of
policemen and their masters to accomplish such a task?

© Meghna Guhatakurta

reprinted from http://www. meghbarta.org