Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
A rare combination of charisma and courage
Syed Mehdi Momin
Whether Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the greatest Bengali for the last thousand years can be an interesting subject for debate. However, there cant be an iota of doubt that he was the most charismatic political personality the Bengali nation has ever produced.
Whoever has met him, they did not just meet Bangabandhu, but circumnavigated around the aura the man exuded.
Taller and bigger than the average Bengali, possessing a supremely confident visage and the manner in which he carried himself contributed towards making him stand out among men.
Alongside towering international personalities like Fidel Castro, Marshal Tito, Henry Kissinger, Andre Marlaux, Curt Waldheim, Ne Win, Colonel Gaddafi, Motubo, or Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Bangabandhu never looked out of place or intimidated.
In fact, with the omnipresent pipe in his hand, often it was Bangabandhu who looked the more impressive.
Newsweek Magazine had Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on its cover page on April 5, 1971, and described him as a Poet of Politics. While talking about the great man, the article said, Tall for a Bengali (he stands 5 feet 11 inches), with a touch of greying hair, a bushy moustache and alter black eyes, Mujib can attract a crowd of million people to his rallies and hold them spellbound with great rolling waves of emotional rhetoric. He is a poet of politics. So his style may be just what was needed to unite all the classes and ideologies of the region.
He was usually dressed in long flowing Punjabi, Pyjama and a sleeveless black jacket popularly known as Mujib coat. He was a dedicated leader and an understanding comrade. Famous British journalist Sir Mark Tully had the opportunity to meet and closely observe the Father of the Nation from close quarters. He found him to possess a great charisma. I attended several public meetings addressed by Sheikh Saheb. He had a wonderful voice that could mesmerise the crowd. I could feel that from the reaction of the people when Sheikh Saheb used to address public meetings.
Ved Marwah, former governor of Manipur and Jharkhand, wrote this while recounting his memory with Bangabandhu-- I have met many charismatic personalities during my service career, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and many world leaders, but I must say that among them he (Sheikh Mujib) was the most charismatic personality I had met.
Recalling the time Bangabandhu met India Gandhi in Delhi Airport, Marwah writes Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by nature was a very reserved person. But this occasion was an exception. I had not seen a bigger smile on her face. She was smiling and prancing like a young girl. One could see an immediate personal rapport had developed between the two.
The great journalist of Egypt, Hasnein Heikal (former Editor of The Al Ahram and a close associate of late President Nasser), said, Nasser is not simply of Egypt and the Arab world. His Arab nationalism is the message of freedom for the Arab people. In similar fashion, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman does not belong to Bangladesh alone. He is the harbinger of freedom for all Bengalis. His Bengali nationalism is the new emergence of the Bengali civilisation and culture. Mujib is the hero of the Bengalis, in the past and in the times that are.
Journalist Cyril Dunn once said of him, In the thousand-year history of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujib is the only leader who has, in terms of blood, race, language, culture and birth, been a full-blooded Bengali. His physical stature was immense. His voice was redolent of thunder. His charisma worked magic on people. The courage and charm that flowed from him made him a unique superman in these times.
Bangabandhus legendary courage was simply extraordinary. Poet and journalist Muhammad Nurul Huda writes, Bangabandhu is incomparable because he was courageous, and it was his moral and physical courage combined that was unprecedented in the annals of our historic political struggle. Come to think of it, the man spent almost the best part of his youth in prison for the liberation of his people. The way Bangabandhu conducted himself while confronting the overbearing and scheming top Pakistani military brass in Dhaka in March, 1971, spoke volumes of his courage and sense of honour. Persons who have seen the transcriptions of those historic meetings bear testimony to Bangabandhus bravery and candidness.
The bravery and steadfastness he showed when facing his killers in too well-known to recall here. Embracing Bangabandhu at the Algiers Non-Aligned Summit in 1973, Cubas Fidel Castro remarked, I have not seen the Himalayas. But I have seen Sheikh Mujib. In personality and in courage, this man is the Himalayas. I have thus had the experience of witnessing the Himalayas.
Bangabandhu started his fight against the British colonial overlords and then he directed his wrath against the then Pakistani regime. Step by step he prepared his people for their eventual destination. He was in the forefront of mass movements. From his imprisonment in 1949 he gave active support to the formation of the first mass-based opposition political party, the Awami League, which subsequently spearheaded the struggle for independence.
There is a school of thought in Bangladesh which propagates the view that after returning home from his captivity in Pakistan Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman should have handed over power to someone else and exercised moral authority without holding any government office. Well even if the man entertained this thought for sometime, being a true patriot and the consummate politician that he was, he could foresee what would have happened to the newly born country if he did not agree to become its chief executive. After all, the War was fought in his name and without getting into details of the matter a fierce civil war could have ensued which the nascent nation in its infancy could hardly afford to have.
Some vested quarters have tried to spread the canard Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman government pardoned all the war criminals and he did nothing against them during the relative short time he was in power. The facts show otherwise. In fact, his government started prosecuting the perpetrators of crime against humanity or war criminals immediately after independence and he also passed the Collaborators Act (1972) and the International Crime Act of 1973 that barred re-entry of any collaborators to Bangladesh. He pardoned only those against whom no grievous criminal charges were filed. He did not pardon those who were involved in war crimes like rape, murder, arson and the like. Thousands of these criminals were in prison during his time awaiting trail, and many were absconding abroad including the notorious Ghulam Azam.
Bangabandhu was among the very first Bengali Muslim politicians to come into national prominence from a middle-class background. His father was a government employee at the local court. Bangabandhu was sent to Kolkata for his education and got the first taste of politics there. Sheikh Mujib worked actively for the Muslim Leagues cause of Pakistan and in 1946 he became general secretary of his alma mater Islamia Colleges Students Union.
After the partition of India his phenomenal rise in the political arena in East Bengal, later East Pakistan, is quite astonishing. He was a founding member of the Awami League and still in his 30s became a provincial minister. He gave up that lucrative post, an action which was rare then as it is now, to organise Awami League at the grassroots level in his capacity as the partys general secretary. The fruits of his endeavour are still being enjoyed by Awami League, which has a presence in almost every village of the country.
Bangladesh and Bangabandhu are one and inseparable. Bangladesh and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahmans vision and he fought and died for it. Intelligence, integrity, self-confidence, sociability and determination were remained in the character of Mujib. The names Bengali and Bangladesh will continue to live on. So the poet and writer Annada Shankar Roy wrote As long as the Padma, Meghna, Gouri, Jamuna flows on/ Your accomplishment will also live on, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
It was his mentor Husayn Shahid Surawardi who was the last political leader to have a support base in both wings of Pakistan. In his memoirs Suhrawardi has written about his lieutenant Sheikh Mujibs growing disillusionment with West Pakistani misrule and his determination to do something about it. The genesis of his historic Six-Points programme in 1966 lies there. He called for a federal state structure for Pakistan and full autonomy for Bangladesh with a parliamentary democratic system. The Six-Points became so popular in a short while that it was turned into the Charter of Freedom for the Bengalis or their Magna Carta.
In the meantime he continued his meteoric rise and by the late 1960s became the most popular leader among the Bengalis. It is amazing to think that in his historic 7th March speech he addressed the people of the land as tumi and tomader (the informal you Bengali). One has to remember that he was barely 50 at the time. According to the current writer Bangabandhus becoming so popular and loved by the people lies primarily with three things charisma, courage and his genuine devotion and affection to his people. It is the last factor which is probably the most crucial. Bangabandhu was a genuine peoples leader. It was his love for his people and empathy for his peoples sufferings that made him strive for their freedom. His popularity which reached the stratosphere could not diminish his love for the common people. Till his last breath he never forgot his real source of power the ordinary man and woman of Bangladesh. It was his tremendous love for the people that made him eschew his official residence and continue to live in his Dhanmondi Road 32 residence. Unfortunately, that made things easier for his murderers. n
The writer is an Assistant Editor of The Independent
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