Forty-eight years ago, on January 20, the alleged murder of a student leader by the police turned a seemingly innocuous student movement into a mass upsurge. Many people believe that the upsurge of 1969 paved the way for the Liberation War of 1971. However, Prof. Munir-uz Zaman, a former principal of Anandamohan College and brother of that martyred student leader Amanullah Mohammad Asaduzzaman, who is popularly known as ‘Shaheed Asad’, thinks that the country’s history has not done justice to Asad’s memory. On ‘Shaheed Asad Dibash’ yesterday, Zaman, a professor of history, told The Independent that subsequent governments have failed to honour the memory of Shaheed Asad.
“Right after Asad’s death on January 20, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had come to our house. He had told my mother that her son was not dead. He would be another Asad to her. The people of this country would bear the legacy of Asad,” he recalled.
But 48 years later, very few people are aware of the significance of the mass upsurge of 1969. “Very few people now know about the sacrifices Asad made,” said Zaman.
He said the Ershad regime of the 1980s had pledged to build a memorial to Asad on the Dhaka Medical College campus where the police had shot Asad dead on January 20, 1969. Both the BNP and AL governments of the 1990s had planned to incorporate the life of Asad in the national educational curriculum.
“But such promises have not been kept. We fail to recognise that the independence of our country might have been delayed had Asad not sacrificed his life,” said Zaman.
“The mass upsurge of 1969 has become a mere footnote in our country’s history. But the truth is that without it, the Liberation War of ’71 might never have taken place,” he added.
Students led the mass movement in the then East Pakistan against the autocratic regime of iron-fisted ruler Ayub Khan. “Nobody would have thought then that the autocratic throne of Ayub Khan could be shaken. But student leaders like Asad thought otherwise,” Zaman stated.
FM Rashid-uz-Zaman, project engineer of the Parliament building and another of Asad’s brothers, said Asad was not only a student organiser but also an earnest social worker. “Whenever Asad went to our ancestral village (Ghatla, under Shibpur upazila, Narshingdi), he never stayed at home. He went to the houses of poor farmers, talked with them, ate with them and tried to make them aware of their rights,” he added.
He formed a powerful peasant organisation across Shibpur-Hatirdia-Manohardi and the neighbouring areas of Narsingdi. “A man of fierce fighting spirit, Asad considered democracy to be the only path for our people to attain emancipation. He also believed that to uplift the oppressed people, it was necessary to educate them,” said Rashid-uz-Zaman. For this, Asad had demanded that primary education should be made free and compulsory. He had established a night school with the help of the students’ union in Shibpur to educate the poor people and labourers of the area.
Rashid-uz-Zaman said that Asad’s political activities were not limited only to students’ and peasants’ organisations or programmes for mass education. He was aware of the necessity of a party with developed political ideas. “In 1968, Asad wrote in his diary about the formation of a study circle to carry on the politics of the ‘sarbahara’ (have-nots) class. He was a leading organiser of the Coordination Committee of the Communist Revolutionaries of East Bengal, which had been working to form a sovereign state and an exploitation-free land since 1968,” he added. “Asad’s role in the 1969 movement and his other contributions are beyond the pages of history books. Asad envisaged an oppression- and exploitation-free nation and that was what he gave his life for. He deserves much more than the homage we pay him,” Rashid-uz-Zaman said.