Mahatma Gandhi a Magician: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

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Both Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten wanted to become Governor General of Pakistan, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman wrote in his just-out memoirs in which he mentioned Mahatma Gandhi as a “magician” who had a great capability of casting an influence on people.

Written during Mujib’s stay in jail as a state prisoner between 1967 and 1969, The Unfinished Memoirs begins with his recollections of his days as a student activist in Kolkata in the run-up to the movement for Pakistan in the early 1940s.

They cover the 1952 Bengali language movement, the first stirrings of the movement for Bangladesh independence and self-rule, and convey the uncertainties as well as the hopes that dominated the time. The last notebook ends with events accompanying the struggle for democratic rights in 1955.

When Mujib’s diaries came to light in 2004, it was an indisputably historic event. His daughter, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, had the notebooks – their pages by then brittle and discoloured – carefully transcribed and later translated from Bengali into English.

Describing about a time “when Muslims were being attacked every now and then” and an occasion when Gandhi did not speak to anyone or give speeches as he did on Sundays, Mujib wrote, “The Mahatma wrote something for the occasion and his secretary read it out. The man was a magician. People cried out immediately, ‘Muslims and Hindus are brothers.’ The whole atmosphere changed instantly.”

Mujib, who was was assassinated in a military putsch on August 15, 1975, cited another instance when rioters pledged not to indulge in violence after Gandhi told them that he would resort to a hunger strike if they did so.

The architect of Bangladesh’s freedom, also wrote that just prior to India’s independence, Viceroy Lord Mountbatten was helping Congress covertly in all sorts

Collected from Bangabandhu’s unfinished Biography. @rrajowan

Bangabandhu A great lover of Mankind

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WHAT IS YOUR QUALIFICATION? I love my people. What is your fault? I love them more. Do you love the Bangalees more than your life and your family? Yes; first time my people, then my family and my life.” These were some excerpts between an English journalist and Bangabandhu when he came out from Pak imprisonment in January 1972. This was the man brutally killed along with all the members of his family on August 15, 1975. The enemies of our independence wanted to uproot the architect of the nation from the history of Bangladesh, for the last 21 years our constitution, our history, our heritage have been marred. The killing of the Father of the nation changed the course of the nation’s history plunging the country into a black chapter of military rule, coups, autocratic regime and political instabilities. August 15 is the most unfortunate and unbearably painful day of a dreadful remembrance making the darkest chapter of indelible stain? The holy soil of the country was soaked by the blood of Bangabandhu and his family members as well as of other patriotic sons of the soil on this day. The people were kept in the complete darkness; the young generation could not know the true history of Liberation war and the hero of this great epic. Students were deprived of knowing of the identity and heritage of this nation. Our liberation war and independence has a long coherent incident.

Bangabandhu was the protagonist of that long incident. In 1966 he declared six points charter of demands which were predominantly significant for the freedom of Bangladesh. It was like planting a sapling of liberty and finally Bangabandhu’s dream matured towards materialization in December 16, 1971. He was a farsighted political leader. From the marathon meetings for consecutive days during the early march in 1971 Bangabandhu guessed that the Pakistani junta was ratching plots against the people of Bangladesh. So, Bagabandhu without delay, at once declared the independence on 7 March 1971 “Our struggle ‘ for freedom, our struggle for independence’ at historic race course maidan rally. And finally on March 25 he sent message all over Bangladesh by declaring the independence. Before arrest, Bangabandhu had every scope to escape to India, but, he could not do that job of a coward. He boldly faced the situation and oppression in Pak jail. After his release from Pak Imprisonment on January 8, Bangabandhu came to London. English journalist David Frost asked Bangabandhu “Why did you not escape to India? Bangabandu said, I can’t; I am committed to my people’. But in the present situation leaders giving commitment to the people being elected showing thumb to the people. Bangabandhu had a strong bridge with the common people and distress humanity. Common people had easy access to Bangabandhu’s doorstep. He did not stay at Bangabhaban. He stayed at 32 Dhanmandi residence and led a very simple life. He also shedded the last drop of blood for the welfare of his people. His treatment towards party worker was like a father’s, a brother’s, and a friend’s. He had wonderful memory. We saw him to remember the name even of an ordinary party worker irrespective of time and place. The National Mourning Day making the 22nd death anniversary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheik Mujibur Rahman is being observed officially on August 15. 1997 for the first time. The Nation mourns dastardly assassination of the Father with a renewed pledge to materialize his cherished dream of establishing an exploitation free self reliant Bangladesh. The present government headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, eldest daughter of Bangabandhu came to power after 21 years winning the people’s mandate in the last general election, refreshes its commitment to lead the country to the path of prosperity and stability to implement the unfinished task of the Father of the nation.

 Author : ABM Abul Kashem MP

Bangabandhu-A Pluralist Dreamer

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A gorgeous reception accorded by the cross-section of people after his return to homeland from Pakistan jailIN COLONIAL TIMES, religion and colonial imposition of Pakistan remained locked into the political order as a whole. It is only with the onset of Bengali nationalism that this interlocking was gradually split off from public life. Nationalism had sought to carve out for itself a discursive space within colonial society, in which a newly forming public opinion could be consolidated into a political force. Correspondingly cultural nationalist leaders launched a programme of cultural regeneration or moral force within the crevices of the existing political system.

Deprived of a voice within the colonial Pakistan state, the nationalist Leadership of the emergent Bangali middle class built instead their own alternative channels for circulating discourse and disseminating values. The cultural forms of the nationalism were thus harnessed to radical political ends. Culture was called upon to play the formative, unifying role. The shift from religio-politics to culture is accordingly one from state to nation.

Bangabandhu skillfully made nationalism a spiritual principle before it is a political programme-a discourse of nation rather than state. At the same he elevated nationalistic sentiment from private experience to political principle. Nationalism is at one, with Bangabandhu in elevating the life world’ over the system; and the kind of fulfillment one reaps from belonging to a community of national sentiment.

What is at stake in Bangali nationalism’s encounter with Pakistani sovereignty is not simply a political conflict, but the clash of two opposed conceptions of the political. Because of colonial imposition, culture was one of the few remaining repositories of a national consciousness. A people deprived of their own political institutions had to make do instead with the imaginary identity which culture could bestow upon them-an identity to which no political reality corresponded. This skewing of the cultural and political is the novelty of Bangabandhu’s nationalistic position. Politics would be the imaginary resolution of real contradictions. The tension between a committed and consensual idea of nationalism is distinct in the thought of Bangabandhu, for whom nationalism is both spiritual ideal and political force. Bangladesh was both more politically militant and more culturally idealist, and both tendencies converge in its aestheticized cult of nationalism.

Bangabandhu called for a history of Bangladesh from below; but if he wished the past to be remembered, he also desired its religious and political eleavagers to be forgotten. If he played up the notion of a distinctive Bangali people when confronting the Pakistani he played it down within Bangladesh itself. Bangabandhu was intent on fostering a pluralist Bengali cultural nation.

Author :  Dr. B.K. Jahangir

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Bangabandhu with his family members: (from left) Sheikh Kamal, his oldest son, younger daughter Sheikh Rehana, youngest son Sheikh Russel on his lap, wife Fazilatunnesa, second son Sheikh Jamal and daughter Sheikh Hasina. All of them were brutally killed on the night of August 15, 1975, except Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana.

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War tapes disappeared after killing of Bangabandhu

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Officials of the state-run Bangladesh Betar have said that a number of politically crucial tapes, many containing evidence of crimes against humanity during the War of Liberation, were destroyed or disappeared after the August 15, 1975 carnage.

“Many of the wartime documents containing the statements of top collaborators and leading perpetrators of crimes against humanity disappeared after the carnage,” Bangladesh Betar Director General AKM Shamim Chowdhury told the news agency.

Shamim believed that many of the missing tapes could have been used as evidence at the International Crimes Tribunal.

The then Radio Pakistan was used as a “propaganda machine”, broadcasting statements of the Pakistani junta’s several top collaborators including Ghulam Azam and those who spearheaded a massacre of Bangalees, he added.

Betar’s Deputy Director Akhtar Jahan Dolon said a senior official of Betar had removed several recorded statements of Bangabandhu and interviews of his family apparently on orders from an influential quarter after the carnage.

“These tapes were never found,” he said.

Former Betar regional director and Independence Award recipient Ashfakur Rahman said some military personnel led by Bangabandhu’s convicted killer major Dalim seized Bangabandhu’s recorded statements and locked those inside a cabinet after August 15, 1975.

“In 1994-1995, the tapes were recovered from an abandoned cabinet on a third-floor corridor,” he said.

Betar Transcription Director Kamal Ahmed said his section collected several audio documents containing issues on Bangabandhu and War of Liberation and converted those into digital format.

Source : Bss, Dhaka