Bangladesh’s Second ‘Liberation’

Over the past five years, I have travelled to Bangladesh on at least four different occasions—to the point where I had identified a trusted sari in the Vasundhara shopping complex in Dhaka from where I could buy the unceasing demand for Jamdani saris from India. Since all visits were under the cover of conferences and strategic dialogues with members of the strategic community in Dhaka, there was a strong whiff of officialdom about them.

Each visit also involved a guided tour of sites associated with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The most important of these was the visit to 32 Dhanmondi, the Dhaka residence of Bangabandhu where the civil resistance to the government in Islamabad was plotted and, tragically, the place where he and his entire family were gunned down in the early hours of August 15, 1975. The place operated as a national shrine, and it was a miracle that the building and the living quarters of the family had remained undisturbed through the decades of unfriendly administrations.

The miracle was perhaps too good to endure. On August 5, within hours of Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and ignominious departure from Dhaka, the Bangabandhu shrine in Dhanmondi was vandalised by vengeful mobs and burnt down. The shell of the building remains in place, and it may be possible to restore it, but the invaluable contents, including many of the personal possessions of Mujib, have either been looted or destroyed. No one has claimed direct responsibility for the vandalism, but the people now ruling Bangladesh have been squeamish in condemning this destruction. Their argument is that Mujib too had become too identified with the authoritarianism of Hasina. Hence it was inevitable that the hatred for her would rub off on the legacy of her father.

I don’t know whether a similar destruction took place at Mujib’s burial site in Gopalganj. To reach Mujib’s modest village, we had to first travel over the new expressway that has linked central Dhaka with the airport and then drive over the awesome bridge over the mighty River Padma. The Padma Setu wasn’t affected by political troubles in Bangladesh and will remain a permanent monument to Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule (2009-2024). As for the Mujib mausoleum in Gopalganj, I don’t know if the student vandals got to it or showed some elementary respect to the man Bangladesh still describes as its ‘father of the nation’. Certainly, they showed no respect for the Liberation War Memorial in Dhaka which was vandalised. I also wonder what fate awaited the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka that houses the bones of the intellectuals who were killed by the Al-Shams and Al-Badr activists just 24 hours prior to the entry of Indian forces into Dhaka on December 16, 1971.

As someone interested in how history is moulded by contemporary politics, I am curious to know how Mujib will be viewed by the caretaker government of Muhammad Yunus and its elected successor. The portents are not encouraging. On August 15 this year, students professing allegiance to the new dispensation harassed and humiliated those brave souls who came to 32 Dhanmondi to pay tributes to Bangabandhu. This implies that it was only a matter of time before the 1971 Liberation War was downgraded from its pivotal role in the personality of Bangladesh.

There is a possibility that if the Bangladesh National Party led by Begum Khaleda Zia comes to power in the foreseeable future, the role of Mujib will be overshadowed by the part played by General Ziaur-Rahman in the formation of Bangladesh. However, this change will not be accompanied by any outright denial of the liberation war. It will merely calibrate the role of Mujib, the Awami League and, most importantly, India. It will also stress Bangladesh’s Muslim credentials without, at the same time, overdoing the Islamic polity bit.

If the students continue to maintain the upper hand in the power structure, we are likely to witness a radical overhaul of Bangladeshi nationhood. 1971 will be replaced by the upsurge of 2024. The reasons for this are many, and probably linked to the new lot wanting to maintain a distance between the Joy Bangla of the Awami League and the Bangladesh Zindabad of the BNP. However, far more important, the comfort level marking August 5 as the day of Bangladesh’s Second Liberation is almost exclusively on account of the zero role of India.

For a new generation that has acquired its self-identity loathing India on account of its success and its Hindu personality, the personality of Bangladesh must be India-free.

BangladeshBangladesh’s Second LiberationGeneral Ziaur-RahmanKhaleda ZiaSheikh Hasinaviolence