Unheard Voices

The first general election in what is now Bangladesh took place in 1937. People, well about 10 per cent of adult population, voted for the legislative assembly of the British Indian province of Bengal. Elections were held under communal electorates. Indian National Congress became the largest party, but it fell well short of a majority. More importantly, it performed very poorly among the Muslim majority of the province. Muslim seats in the assembly were divided between AK Fazlul Huq’s Krishak Praja Party (KPP), HS Suhrawardy’s Muslim League, and independents, with KPP having the most seats.

KPP and Congress were both committed to secularism (by which they both meant pluralism), and Mr Huq expressed an interest in forming a coalition government with Congress. Provincial leaders of Congress were keen on the idea, but it was vetoed by their all-Indian leadership. Huq formed a coalition with the League. Within three years, he would be moving the Lahore Resolution. Within a decade, Bengal would be partitioned. What if Congress had taken up Huq’s offer?

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Zia has gone through an almost Darwinian process of selection through the war with Pakistan and coups in Bangladesh. He has never denigrated politicians as a class - which is itself typical of the present day military rulers of many third-world countries. On the contrary, he has shown adroit political skills in bringing together diverse political groups and accumulating political power though coalition-building.

That’s from the last paragraph of Prof Talukdar Maniruzzaman’s ‘The Bangladesh Revolution and its aftermath’. This post is about some puzzle, lesson and tragedy about the legacy of the president assassinated 27 years ago today. Looking forward to a good discussion. (Please keep comments relevant - spurious comparisons with Mujib or personal attacks etc will be heavily moderated).

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Today is 7 March. On this day 37 years ago, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman made the most well known speech in Bangla. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t get the goosebumps listening to …amader keu dabaye rakhte parbe na… There is absolutely no denying the fact that the speech marks a milestone in Bangladesh’s quest for freedom. But 37 years on, we’re still waiting for the next speech that never got made.

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Tentative Programme: Conference on Genocide, Truth and Justice
1-2 March, 2008 (Venue : Brac Centre Inn, 75 Mohakhali, Dhaka 1212) (more…)

These days, on February 14, Valentines Day is celebrated in Bangladesh with great fanfare. The students and teen/ post teen generation as well as the older ones use their energy; ingenuity in doing thing to convince their loved ones.

Exactly 25 years ago on the 14 the February, I was about to finish my high school in Dhaka. I had no clue what Valentine day was. Then during the rest of student life in colleges throughout the 80s, I still did not know or do much with Valentines Day.

However 14th February remained a special day for us, the students and young people in the 80s. When the military establishment illegally captured state power on 24th March 1982, on this day, 14 the February the following year i.e. 1983, students lodged a large scale protest against the military occupation of governance. Five students – Zafar, Dipali Saha, Jainal, Mozammel and Ayub – were killed in the police firing, leading to the formation of Chhatra Sangram Parishad (students’ action council), the first politically organised platform against the military junta. The following year, on the same day during a student procession marking the event, the military rulers ran a truck on the peaceful procession instantly crushing Selim and Delwar to death.

Over the next six years, many more lives were lost. We invoked the names of Dipali Shaha, Mozamel, Selim, Delwar millions of times. Students were followed by trade unions followed by professionals and they gloriously defied the military rule. Politicians joined hands and later the civil service stepped in. Military had no options but to surrender and retreat back to the cantonment.

With restoration of democracy, along with many other things, we also forgot those who shed their lives for the democracy. And we badly mangled up militarycracy with a person Ershad. Ten years after fall of Ershad, he came back with a significantly limited capacity of a small political party leader. This time his power was not the military establishment. Ironically the people of his region were his principle force.

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