The enduring legacy of Bangabandhu
The killers of Bangabandhu eliminated him physically but they have failed to destroy his ideology which will remain to inspire us
Farhad Hossain
The name of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has been analogous to the existence of our dear Motherland Bangladesh. The gradual feeling in my mind created by the study of his commitment through his whole political career, I am provoked to make a comment that without Jinnah, Nehru and even Mahatma Gandhi, India and Pakistan might have the way of emerging as independent dominions but without Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh was an impossible phenomenon. The case-study on the history of Bengal bears a testimony that Bengal region was a land subjugated by the foreign power for long years except a silver lining during the reign of Sasank who, as it is narrated in the history, defeated Harshabardhana, the imperial king of North India, and ruled Bengal sitting in his glorious capital Karnasubarna presently Murshidabad. I dont like to do negative advocacy that no one except Bangabandhu wanted the independence of Bangladesh. Yes, many sons of this soil desired to have and enjoy fresh air of independent Bangladesh. But their lack of commitment and sagacity in motivating the whole nation with the spirit and aspiration of freedom and liberty made them unable to lead the nation to create an epic on the battle of independence. Bangabandu created an epic for himself and for the nation by his commitment, tenacity and quality of being a leader to fight for the nation till death.
The nation recently celebrated his 97th birthday on 17th March. If he would be alive still to-day, I strongly believe that Mahathir Mohammad could not be only figure to have the credit for driving Malaysia to the peak stage of development comparing to the tigers of Asian Nations. I could envisage it that if Bangabandhu would live till to-day, the lounges of the airports of under-privileged countries of the word would be found full of passengers with a view to taking available flights for Bangladesh to earn foreign exchange getting better employment facilities in this Dravidian land.
Bangabandhu, after the independence took the governing leadership of a country of dismal and disdained picture of rampant damages due to the nine-months reckless destructions by the occupying Pak army who only demanded land but not a single human-being or any movable property. At the initial stage the new born country Bangladesh was unrecognized by many mighty nations of the world. Islamic countries carrying the message of Umma sensing Muslim Brotherhood, being shocked and disappointed at the disintegration of Pakistan did not extend their helping hands to our newly independent country even with a skeletal financial support out of their flamboyant income of dollars from oil expert to the western countries.
Rather many of our brotherly Muslim countries left no stone unturned to make impediment or intervention on the way of emerging Bangladesh as an independent country.
Bengali people were in greater number to determine the major demographic picture of Pakistan and they are Muslims having the formidable belief in Muslim Ummah. Notwithstanding the aspiration of a major community to be independent through creating a state, they were not supported by major Muslim countries of the Arab world. After independence, most of the countries of Arab peninsula maintained constraint policy to recognize Bangladesh and not only that by the persuasion of Pakistan some Arab countries did not like Bangladesh to have UN membership.
The emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country was treated by the leadership of mightiest country America as their diplomatic defeat in the context of global politics directed by bipolar system of world order prevailing during our war of independence. Dr. Henry Kissinger, the then secretary of state under Nixon administration, managed a trip in Beijing by the mediation of Pakistan ignoring the long ideological differences between the two countries. The object of that visit of Kissinger to China was to convince her to deploy troops in the North-west frontier line between India and China to make a militancy pressure on India as she providing all civil, military and diplomatic supports were expediting the independence of Bangladesh. But Chinese premier Zhou Enlai showing diplomatic maturity remained unconvinced and discarded the idea of deploying troops of making any pressure on India since this sort of military measure would go against the spirit of the then defence agreement between India and USSR. All diplomatic failure and disappointment exited America with great anger which was being exposed to make Bangladesh a dysfunctional state after independence. Even to make Bangladesh a stagnant human habitation, American administration took a sinister decision of creating an artificial famine to retreat us the ship carrying foodstuff to Bangladesh in 1974. The objective was to damage the image of Bangabandhu in international arena by showing the Somalia famine- panorama in newly independent Bangladesh. Bangabandhu exposing his unusual charisma and unbelievable courage could have tackled the intrigue and conspiracy of destabilising his government sponsored by the then Nixon Administration.
After the utter failure of taking all attempts to eliminate Bangabandhu from the world scenario, America took her uglier attempt to create internal disturbance in Bangladesh and the result of which we see the abrupt appearance of a political party organised overnight propagating their so-called philosophy of establishing social justice in infant Bangladesh by communism. Today the political critiques are putting opinion that the leader who took political apprenticeship treating Bangabandhu as their teacher became communist changing their political ideology within a very small procrastination. Unfortunately the political mentor of those so-called communists is conducting classes in a university in America erasing past memory of communism. These so-called communist leaders once learned politics sitting at the feet of Bangabandhu. Those so-called communists as the political critiques comment today are the by-product of America manipulated to create lawlessness in Bangladesh. Bangabandhu faced them forming a national government consisting of scholars, intellectuals and patriots who made formidable contributions to nation-building. Today some of those visionaries of communism are found to go under their old umbrella to share state power.
All attempts made by America failed and Nixon administration revised its policy to topple the government of Bangabandhu which was followed by their traditional brutal policy of killing the nationalist leader which included the murder of Bangabandhu in 1975.
Nowadays from various comments from American statesmen including Dr. Henry Kissinger we find that their dark and heinous scheme of killing nationalist leaders which they continued from 60s and confirmed till 80s was diplomatically a blunder that paved the way of rising Islamic radicalism challenging the present world order.
The killers of Bangabandhu eliminated him physically but they have failed to make him disappeared from the deepest core of our hearts. Generation after generation Bangabandhu shall be remembered as a creator of a state for a distressed community as an epic hero who acted on the final stage of the final drama that is independence of Bangladesh. We remember him with love, respect, affection, gratitude as the children pay their homage to a father.
The writer is a freelancer
