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Huda, Noor shot Bangabandhu

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Huda, Noor shot Bangabandhu Says statement of witness Quddus

A witness of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman assassination case has said in his statement that convicts Bazlul Huda and Noor Chowdhury shot Bangabandhu with Sten guns on August 15, 1975.

Barrister Abdullah-al Mamun, counsel for convicts Bazlul Huda and AKM Mohiuddin, yesterday placed the statement of witness Abdul Quddus before the Supreme Court while delivering his submission on the third day’s hearing on appeals of five convicts who challenged their death sentences in the case.

In 1975, Abdul Quddus was a guard at the official residence of Bangabandhu on Road-32 in Dhanmondi.

In his statement, Quddus said on the day of the incident, Major AKM Mohiuddin with his lancer sepoys went upstairs of Bangabandhu’s house. When they were bringing down Bangabandhu to the ground floor Major Noor said something in English. Mohiuddin and his companions stepped aside and Captain Bazlul Huda and Major Noor shot Bangabandhu, who then fell on the staircase and died.

Quddus, the fourth prosecution witness in the case, said he and other guards heard continuous shooting from the lakeside on the south of the house while hoisting the national flag on August 15 morning.

At one stage the shooting stopped and then sepoys in black and khaki dresses entered the house through the gate saying “hands up”. Quddus said he then saw convict AKM Mohiuddin and two other army officers at the gate.

The court adjourned the hearing until 9:30am today.

Barrister Mamun will continue his submission today before the five-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Justice Md Tafazzal Islam.

In his submission, Mamun placed the findings of the High Court judgment delivered by Justice Md Ruhul Amin over the matters of convicts Sultan Shahariar Rashid Khan, AKM Mohiuddin and Bazlul Huda.

He yesterday started reading the part of the judgment on the involvement of another convict Mohiuddin Ahmed.

The five convicts–dismissed army personnel Syed Faruque Rahman, Sultan Shahariar Rashid Khan, Mohiuddin Ahmed, AKM Mohiuddin and Bazlul Huda who are in jail now–filed the appeals with the SC in October 2007.

After the hearing, Mamun told The Daily Star that he would place the verdict delivered by High Court Judge ABM Khairul Haque after delivering the part of the judgment on Mohiuddin Ahmed’s involvement.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told journalists at his office that the state counsels would make their submissions after the convicts’ counsels conclude their submissions and arguments.

Authorities yesterday set up metal detector at the door of the courtroom. Mahbubey Alam said the measure was taken to ensure security during the hearing of a sensational case like the Bangabandhu murder case.

A number of counsels for both the state and convicts of the case, law officers and journalists were present at the court during the hearing.

Staff Correspondent / Daily STAR

A historian searching roots

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I do remember him, like most of his living acquaintances, who interacted with him in any phase of his not-so-long life of seventy two years. He is Abdul Huq Chowdhury, a humble folk researcher and historian, attired in white lungi and kurta, as far as I recall his figure. He departed twenty two years back, on 16 October 1994, leaving a legacy of his own as a peerless scholar growing out of grassroots outfit on the fertile soil of Chittagong, the gateway of the East that has been harboring the ethos of diverse races and cultures since time immemorial. The seventh descendant of the illustrious poet Koreshi Magan in the middle age, who authored a long verse narrative entitled `Chandravati’, Huq was born on 24 August 1922 to the wedlock of Alhaj Sharfuddin Engineer and Momena Begum Choudhurani in Nowazishpur village under Raojan thana of greater Chittagong. He started and completed his schooling in his birth-village, and subsequently took the profession of teaching there in a primary school at the age of eighteen, following the untimely death of his father. Thereafter he came into close contact with Abdul Karim Sahityavisharad, the pioneering folklorist and collector of medieval manuscripts of Muslim poets in the main, a venture that compelled our literary historians to reconstruct the history of Bengali literature as a whole. Furthermore, Huq was a classmate as well as a close associate of Professor Ahmed Sharif, who contributed enormously in deciphering and interpreting rare puthis or medieval verse manuscripts, collected by his uncle and literary guide Shahit­yavisarad. This interaction proved rewarding in multiple ways to A Huq Chowdhury, who was inspired to dedicate his life to collect and record rare documents and confessions by living tradition bearers roaming around the rural and urban areas of Chittagong and adjacent areas. Though Huq never received college or university education as per prescribed syllabus, he studied and practiced the method of close reading as well as documentation in his humble manner, resulting in a paradigm of his own, characterized by clarity, accuracy and poignancy of thought and wisdom. He was slow and steady all along and waited till the fiftieth year of his life before gathering himself to draft the manuscripts on the history, culture and allied disciplines, mostly relating to his known regions, where he grew up. The first title he published was ‘Chattagramer Itihas Prasanga’ (About the History of Chittagong) in two volumes in the year 1976. And then onwards he wrote and published as many as eleven book-length research works on diverse issues and perspectives. These are Chattagramer Ithas Prasnga (second edition 1980), Chattagramer Samaj Sangskriti (1980), Syleter Itihas Prasanga (1981), Shahar Chattagramer Itikotha (1985), Chattagramer Samaj Sangskritir Ruprekha (1988, Bangla Academy), Chattagram Arakan (1989), Chattagramer Itihas Bishayak Probandha (1992), Prachin Arakan, Rohingya, Hindu O Barua, Budhdha Odhibashi (1994, Bangla Academy) and Bandar Shahar Chattagram (1994, Bangla Academy). Bangla Academy published his last title Probandha Bichitra : Itihas O Sahitya posthumously in 1995. His magnum opus is undoubtedly Chattagramer Samaj Sangskritir Ruprekha (Outline of the Society and Culture of Chittagong), with new findings and insight into the traditional history of the region he belonged to. A veteran freedom fighter, he was arrested by the Pakistani occupation army on 11 August 1971. He was recognized for his contribution by the father of nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Bangabandhu Sangskriti Sebi Kalyan Trust was generous enough to extend monetary grant for publication of his first book.
Besides, he won a number of awards for his original contribution towards redefining the individual and national identity of the people of Bangladesh, now a nation-state. However, he deserves to be decorated with highest state honor such as Swadhinata Padak or Ekushe Padak posthumously for his invaluable achievements as a self-trained researcher and historian searching roots.

Author / Source : Mohammad Nurul Huda, The author is a leading poet of Bangladesh.

Books on the life, career and times of Bangabandhu

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Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in his library

On his final night alive, hours before he was assassinated, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman spent time reading George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman. Thirty four years after the murder of the Father of the Nation, and the members of his family, Syed Badrul Ahsan makes note of some of the books that have been written about Bangabandhu since 1975. Of course, there are other books as well. But the offering here is a sample of the vast literature which has grown up around the historical personality of Bangladesh’s founding father.

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Koekti Oitihashik Dolil
Abdul Matin
Radical Asia Publications
Abdul Matin has been researching Bangabandhu’s life and politics since the early 1970s. He has perhaps some of the most widely sought after documents relating to the Father of the Nation. In this work, he draws extensively from documents previously in the hands of foreign governments, notably the United States, to explain the circumstances that led to the assassinations of August 1975. There are too some rich pickings from Keesing’s, those that will be of immense help to anyone interested in studying the history of Bangladesh. Matin’s is one of those books that stay away from panegyrics and instead focuses on the core issues he feels need to be discussed within Bangladesh and outside. It is especially the conspiracy that led to the killing of the Father of the Nation that arouses his interest. Included in the work under survey are some hard truths, those that political authors have sometimes pointed out. Among them are details pertaining to the letter purportedly written by the leftwing Bengali politician Abdul Haq to Pakistan’s prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto seeking assistance in the matter of pushing Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s government from office.

Sheikh Mujib, Triumph and Tragedy
S.A. Karim
The University Press Limited
The work is to be read for a special reason, which is that it happens to be one of those rare studies in the English language of Bangladesh’s founding father. For years there has been a vacuum where presenting Bangabandhu to the outside world is concerned (not that much headway has been made in the matter). So what S.A. Karim, who served as a leading Bengali diplomat in the early years of a free Bangladesh and who saw many of the dramatic events unfold before his very eyes, does here is present an image of Bangabandhu and his leadership of the country in as realistic a manner as possible.
The writer does not shy away from criticism of Mujib he feels is deserving. He appreciates the manner of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s rise on the national scene and dwells at length on the history behind the emergence of the man who would eventually be Bangabandhu. Mujib’s role in the movement for regional autonomy and his leadership of the independence movement, which really commenced in early March 1971, are commented on in great detail. And then Karim moves on to the sensitive issue of why Mujib went for a change from multi-party democracy to one-party rule in early 1975. In the manner of so many others, the author does not appreciate the transformation and ends up giving the impression that Baksal was a bad move for which Bangabandhu paid dearly. Karim, like so many others, happens to be rather correct in his observation of the events which were to lead to the carnage of August 1975. A good book, this. Perhaps a better one will find a place on coffee tables in the years ahead.

Shorone Bangabandhu
Faruq Choudhury
Mawla Brothers
The former diplomat is, like millions of people in Bangladesh and elsewhere, in awe of Bangabandhu. In this slim volume, he reflects on the politics of the Father of the Nation and, more importantly, on the human qualities of the man. The language is simple and lucid and Choudhury properly gives out the impression that he is hugely impressed by the charisma of the leader.
Faruq Chowdhury’s work does not go into the intricate details of how Bangabandhu governed or how his government functioned. But that the government was confronted with a plethora of difficulties from day one to the end of Bangabandhu’s life is made clear. And, of course, the vast conspiracy that was always at work in order to destabilize the government is broadly hinted at. The book makes cool reading.
Sheikh Mujib, Bangladesher Arek Naam
Atiur Rahman
Dipti Prokashoni
One of the newest works on Bangabandhu’s politics, it promises much to those who plan to research the evolution of East Pakistan into Bangladesh. The life of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, so Atiur Rahman conveys the impression and justifiably too, is fundamentally the history of Bangladesh, of the struggles its people have carried on through generations.
The author does a marvellous job of bringing together all the significant events of Bangabandhu’s political career. But surely the beauty of the work lies in the detailed, chronological presentation of facts he engages in. It is thus that the Six Points, Eleven Points, Declaration of Independence, et cetera, come to readers in a form that enable them to understand the movement of history in this part of the world. Atiur Rahman is of course gushing in his praise of Bangabandhu and consciously stays away from taking a critical stand. But that, given the whole tenor of the book, is understandable. On balance, it is a useful work, not to be ignored.
Shotrur Chokhe Bangabandhu
Dr. Mohammad Hannan
Anupam Prakashani
A work that is rather different from the usual assessments that are made of the Father of the Nation and his politics. Mohammad Hannan focuses on the views people not kindly disposed toward Bangabandhu happen to express about him. In a way, one could say, the author is coming forth with the other side of the picture, that which Mujib’s opponents have drawn up of his politics.
You may not be convinced by what Bangabandhu’s detractors have to say about the Bengali leader here. But it is worth a try reading the book. The book is, once again, quite a departure from works which usually flood the markets. Try reading it. You might end up liking it.
Bangabandhu, Rajniti O Proshashon
Bangabandhu Parishad
Bangabandhu Parishad has been an intellectual forum for the Awami League or, more appropriately, its followers. As such, this work is in its totality a collection of essays from a wide range of individuals on the diverse aspects of Bangabandhu’s politics and administration. Obviously, the write-ups are appreciative of Mujib’s positions on the various issues he faced. You may not agree with everything, but you surely will get the drift of what the Father of the Nation tried to achieve during the brief three and a half years he was in power.
For anyone who cares to go into the nature of the policies Bangabandhu’s government pursued between 1972 and 1975, this can truly be regarded as a notable point of reference.
Ekatturer Muktijuddho Roktakto, Moddho August O Shorhojontrer November
Col. (retd) Shafayat Jamil
(with Shumon Kaiser)
Shahitya Prokash
The book makes intensely sad reading. Shafayet Jamil was a key player in the dramatic events that were to unfold in November 1975. As part of the team led by Khaled Musharraf to reclaim the state from the predators who had commandeered it barely three months earlier, he was instrumental in forcing Khondokar Moshtaq to resign and the killers of Bangabandhu and the four national leaders to quit Bangabhavan.
This is an exciting book, covering as it does three events. There is the history, in however brief a fashion, of the war of liberation. That is followed by a comprehensive discussion of the tragedy of August 1975. And then, of course, comes an explication of the incidents and events leading from 3 November to 7 November 1975. Jamil is a survivor, a fortunate one. All the other leading figures of the Musharraf-led coup perished in the counter-coup spearheaded by Colonel Abu Taher. Ziaur Rahman emerged as the eventual beneficiary, with such disastrous results.
It is truly a gripping work and ought to be on shelves at home and in libraries.
Father of the Nation
Bangabandhu Memorial Trust
An admirable album of photographs and images of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, beginning with his schooldays and ending with the end of his life in August 1975. The pictures are interspersed with quotes from the Father of the Nation, all expressive of his thoughts regarding the course Bangladesh should be taking on its journey to the future.
Copies just might yet be had at Bangabandhu Memorial Museum on Dhanmondi 32, the spot that is today part of Bangladesh’s history — of its glories, of its dark tragedies. The images evoke a sense of wonder about the past. It also causes huge sadness to well up in your heart.
Ekatturer 26 March
Bangabandhur Shadhinota Ghoshona
Mohammad Shahjahan
Bangla Prokashoni
Mohammad Shahjahan’s focus, as the title of the book makes clear, is on the events surrounding the declaration of independence in March 1971. With various quarters trying to stir up controversy over what actually happened on 26 March and especially with the rightwing attempting to build up Ziaur Rahman as the man who formally announced the country’s independence, the author presents the facts he thinks settle the issue once and for all.
Shahjahan comes forth with documents, with news reports of the period in question and thus adds substance to his assertion (one that is shared by millions across the country) that Bangabandhu did indeed send out the message of freedom to the country before he was taken into custody by the Pakistan army in the early hours of 26 March 1971.
It is a good read. It makes perspectives pretty clear.
Geneva-e Bangabandhu
Abdul Matin
Radical Asia Publications
Once again it is Abdul Matin, this time with an account of Bangabandhu’s stay in Geneva following surgery in London in mid 1972. The Father of the Nation was in a state of convalescence in Switzerland, but that did not deter him from meeting any and every Bengali who came calling on him. Matin provides a fascinating account of all the men and matters that came to Bangabandhu’s attention during that time — the genuine ones, the insidious ones and the plain hangers on.
And, by the way, you just might get a peek into things that were to worsen things for Bangabandhu in the years ahead. It is always good to go back to matters that in hindsight should have alerted everyone to what was about to happen.
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Sharokgrantha
Jyotsna Publishers
This is a rich collection of articles on the life and achievements of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It comes in three volumes and brings together a rich assortment of ideas from diverse personalities, all of whom are united by a common position on the 1971 war of liberation and the ideals set by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman through the 1960s and 1970s.
The volumes, in an overall sense, testify to the many facets of the Mujib character, those that have always made him stand out in the crowd and stand apart from his contemporaries. You really must appreciate the endeavour of those behind the compilations.
Bangabandhu O Muktijuddho
Amir Hossain
Adorn Publication
Bangabandhu was in solitary confinement in Pakistan during the entire course of the war of liberation. And yet there has never been any question that he had thoroughly prepared the Bengali nation for the imminent struggle for freedom. It was a remarkable point in history that the war of liberation was waged by the Mujibnagar government in Bangabandhu’s name.
In this well researched work, Amir Hossain brings a whole range of ideas into focus to explain the role that Bangabandhu played in the making of Bangladesh’s history. Anyone ready to study Mujib’s place in history will surely benefit from this work.
Bangladesh,The Unfinished Revolution
Lawrence Lifschultz
Zed Press
The work comes in two segments. Lifschultz dwells at considerable length on Colonel Abu Taher and his ultimate end on the gallows in one. In the other, his subject is the personality and government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the difficulties it came up against and the conspiracies which proved to be its undoing. Lifschultz writes with considerable bravery, which is again natural considering his status as a foreigner. He focuses on a number of salient points about the coup of August 1975 and while doing so points the finger at foreign governments he suspects clearly knew, if they did not exactly take part, in the programme to eliminate Bangladesh’s founder.
Sadly, though, the work has run out of print. Not even the internet has any idea about it. But it remains a seminal work on the Bangladesh revolution, an unfinished one, as the author suggests. One could not possibly disagree with his assessment.
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
Christopher Hitchens
Verso
This surely is an acclaimed book, not least because Hitchens has made a reputation for himself as a plain-speaking writer. The work is divided into several chapters, the better to explain the nature of Henry Kissinger’s sinister policies in places as diverse as Chile and Bangladesh. Where the matter is one of Bangabandhu’s assassination, Hitchens leaves little doubt that the American establishment knew all about it before it happened. He comes down hard on then US ambassador to Bangladesh, Davis Eugene Boster (he misspells the name as Booster).
The bigger significance of the work is the author’s focus on Kissinger’s deep hatred for Bangladesh, a nation that had the audacity to break away from the American client state of Pakistan. Kissinger snubbed Mujib in Washington by not being present at the White House meeting between the Bengali leader and President Ford, but a short while later he sought to make amends, by visiting Dhaka and calling on Bangabandhu and holding a sham of a news conference. It is a revealing book, a collector’s item.
Ponchattorer Roktokhoron
Major Rafiqul Islam psc
Afsar Brothers
Rafiqul Islam’s book traces the entire history of the conspiracy that lay at the root of what happened on 15 August 1975. He names names and is often surprised that the very men who worked diligently for Pakistan in the days of rising Bengali nationalism or even after Bangladesh declared its independence in late March 1971 were chosen by Bangabandhu to be near him, and literally at that.
It was these very men who destroyed the Father of the Nation. The sadness is in the thought that he did not recognize them for the villains they were.
Who Killed Mujib?
A.L. Khatib
Vikas Publishing House
One of the earliest books on the tragedy of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the work was published in 1981), it explores the wide network of conspiracy that was to take the life of the Father of the Nation in 1975. A.L. Khatib, a prominent journalist with roots in Sri Lanka but based for the better part of his career in the South Asian subcontinent, brings out some intricate details of the plans shaped to do away with Bangabandhu. The criticism is there that the book was written in haste. Perhaps, but what certainly is of importance is that there is hardly any instance Khatib cites about the tragedy that one can be dismissive of. A whole range of characters people the book. Apart from Bangabandhu, there are all the other characters, notably the ‘little sparrow of a man’ that was Khondokar Moshtaq as also the political figures who constantly used to be around Mujib but at dawn on 15 August were found in the usurper’s company. The author dwells in fascinating detail on the conspiracy that went on at the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD) in Comilla, the presence there of Moshtaq and others with distinctly pro-Pakistan leanings. You read the book and as you do so, you realise just how closer to doom Bangabandhu was getting to be every day.
Copies of the work are obviously not available. That is a pity, for it deprives many of the chance of arriving at truths that the Mujib government was blissfully unaware of in those darkening days of conspiracy.

Founding father under siege . . .

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Abdul Matin’s persistence in keeping the historical record straight for Bangladesh is admirable. More to the point, it has been a necessary truth in the collective life of the Bengalis. You could suggest that if Matin were not around to keep us focused on the politics of Bangladesh as it was forged and pressed forward in the 1960s and the 1970s, there would be a huge need to go looking for someone of his kind. Obviously, Matin has done his job well. His preoccupation with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman remains, a particular reason being his understanding that the founding father of Bangladesh has, directly as also indirectly, been under unremitting siege since his assassination in August 1975. To be sure, over the years, Bangabandhu’s legacy has regained some of its earlier lustre, thanks principally to the particularly strong niche his daughter Sheikh Hasina occupies in national politics and thanks also to the concerted struggle his party, the Awami League, has waged over more than three decades to restore his reputation as the man behind the creation of Bangladesh.

The work under review is fundamentally an addition to the position Matin has adopted, through his earlier books, on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He believes, and quite rightly too, that the slings and arrows which have been hurled at Bangabandhu are of a nature that ought not to be taken seriously and yet cannot quite be ignored because of the fair degree of consistency with which his detractors have been trying to run him down posthumously. Many have been the instances when Mujib was castigated for the way he administered the country between 1972 and 1975. It is such criticism which Matin counters in this work. And in doing so, he makes sure that his arguments are backed by necessary documentary references. An instance of it relates to the declaration of independence on 26 March 1971 moments into the genocide launched by the Pakistan army in Dhaka. Matin quotes from United States government documents to underscore the point that Bangabandhu made the call for freedom soon after the army fanned out to different locations in the city.

Obviously, a good deal of what the writer presents here is by now the historical truth. The difference between Matin and the others who remain aware of national history as it developed after March 1971 is that the former bases his statements on well-founded recorded material. He never misses giving readers the footnotes that scholarly work demands, something that a large number of Bengali chroniclers of national history have generally failed to do. It is against such a background that the reader is given to understand the circumstances behind Mujib’s release by the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in early 1972 and his subsequent flight to freedom. Matin admires the sagacity in the Bengali leader, a sign of which comes through in the withdrawal of Indian troops from Bangladesh in March 1972. Without saying as much, the writer conveys the impression that the withdrawal could not easily have come to pass had Mujib not been around. In bare terms, the physical presence of Bangabandhu on the Bangladesh scene was to prove pivotal in a good number of ways. The upshot of it all is that Matin appears to be convinced that the troubles Bangabandhu’s government faced in those formative years of Bangladesh’s history were in more ways than one the result of the conspiratorial politics his government could not quite put its finger on. To a very large extent, he is right. But then comes the matter of the rift between Bangabandhu and Tajuddin Ahmed. It is here that Matin appears to be sailing against the wind when he asserts that in quite a number of ways the man who led the wartime Mujibnagar government as prime minister dealt some bad body blows to Mujib even as he served as finance minister in Bangabandhu’s government. Contrary to popular belief that Tajuddin Ahmed found himself increasingly sidelined in Bangabandhu’s government, largely because of his enemies getting better access to the prime minister, Matin is excoriating about what he considers to be the finance minister’s perfidy in finding fault with the way Bangabandhu ran the administration. Matin’s considered opinion is that Bangabandhu’s Second Revolution was essentially what the Father of the Nation said it was: that the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (Baksal) was a platform that brought together the nation’s political parties together in the larger national interest. Tajuddin had a different perspective on the development, of course.

There are some bare truths Matin reveals here. The story of how Serajur Rahman, he of the BBC’s Bengali Service, was thwarted in his attempts to come by a job in Bangabandhu’s government is what the writer relates, no holds barred, in the work.

Read the book. It adds to your understanding of the forces which shaped politics in Bangladesh in the early 1970s.

. . . Symmetry of the grand and the banal
ASAFUDDOWLAH’S has been a vibrant presence on the Bengali social and bureaucratic scene. His is and has always been an articulate voice. As a civil servant, he was known for his sense of independence, to a point where many thought twice about coming across him. Rare was the individual who wished to fall foul of him, for Asafuddowlah did not mince words when it came to offering an opinion on men and matters. It was always strength of character that defined the man. And it is something that continues to underpin his perspectives on things around him. On television chat shows, he offers his own clear assessments of political conditions, some of which may not go down well with his detractors. They may, indeed do, find him abrasive at times.

The point here is that Asafuddowlah remains indifferent to all such expressions of sentiment about him. His outspokenness is all. And with that comes the other side of his personality, that which keeps him riveted to the world of music. Even as he has pursued a career in the civil service, first in Pakistan and then in Bangladesh, he has made sure that songs have remained close to him, or he to them. He has composed music, he has lent his voice to songs and he has discoursed on them. His rendering of ghazals has been remarkable. Anyone who has heard him sing the old Jagmohan number, ik baar muskura do, will know of the artistry he is capable of calling forth. In his wider social ambience, Asafuddowlah is the quintessential conversationalist, with an interplay of serious thought and humour that make him stand out as the star in the crowd.

And this is the background against which Of Pains and Panics must be read. Asafuddowlah falls into the mould of those who came of age in an era of enlightenment and then went on to reshape the era according to their specifications. Like many of his social club, he has believed in approaching life from an intellectual point of view. Just how much of suavity he has brought into his observations of life comes through in this eminently readable compendium of his thoughts on an array of subjects not many would care to spend time on these days. There are clear divisions of the essays into wide-ranging swathes of territory. Begin with music. There is a sense of certainty, for obvious reasons, with which he approaches the many strands of the subject. He takes the BBC to task, for all the right reasons, over its selection of historically notable Bangla songs. It is pretension he slices through here. And then he moves on to pay obeisance to the artistes who have with regularity enhanced the quality of Bengali music. Protima Banerjee is one he reveres. Another is the all-encompassing Kamal Dasgupta. The music director, he informs us, remained self-effacing right till the end. And as the end approached, as he was being wheeled into hospital, the officer on duty had an asinine question: was Dasgupta a class one officer? Ah, artistes lose out, often if not always, to the bureaucracy!

Some of the most touching of articles in this collection connect Asafuddowlah to those he was once close to, until death intervened to take them away. He writes with deep affection on his mother and then reflects on his father. Perhaps a coruscating part of the tribute to Khan Bahadur Moulvi Mohammad Ismail is the praise he showers on his niece Komli (‘…his youngest daughter’s youngest daughter, Komli, who he used to adoringly call ‘Chand di’, nursed him in his fading days with a kind of special devotion I have never witnessed in my life’). It is a vast world of thoughts Asafuddowlah covers in the work. His views on America are a sharp response to Washington’s actual behaviour on the global scene. In Bangladesh, he wonders aloud at the swift decline in the quality of politics, almost to a point where the powerful begin to think of themselves as little gods. There is a symmetry he establishes between the grand and the banal. How else would you observe his tribute to Ustad Salamat Ali Khan and then his consternation at the presence of so many ministers in the government of as small a country as Bangladesh?

Asafuddowlah is combustive by nature. That is his assessment of himself. Just how combustive — and combative — he can be is an exercise you might as well opt for through reading these pieces. He is not being didactic; he carefully avoids scaling the Olympian heights that lesser men always strive for. He gives you the workings of his mind as they happen to be — blunt, irreverent but playing with ideas all the same.

Two reviews from Syed Badrul Ahsan / Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.

The day Bangabandhu came home

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The day Bangabandhu came home

THE crowds began converging in front of Tejgaon airport at dawn. By early morning, the place was dense with people — young and middle aged, with a smattering of the aged — come to welcome the founding father of the new state of Bangladesh, back home from ten months of captivity in Pakistan. It was January10, 1972. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was flying home from London, whence he had been flown by the Pakistan authorities a couple of days earlier.

The whole of Bangladesh was in celebratory mode on the day, indeed had been since news had first come in of Bangabandhu’s arrival at London’s Heathrow airport from Rawalpindi. On January 8, though, when Bengalis first heard of their leader’s departure from Pakistan, a certain kind of panic and a sense of apprehension set in about his safety. That was again natural, for ever since his arrest by the Pakistan army in the early hours of March 26, 1971, he had not been seen in public.

He had been flown to the then West Pakistan and placed in solitary confinement in Lyallpur jail. In Bangladesh, the genocide organised by the military regime of Yahya Khan was well underway, thanks to the ruthless Tikka Khan. In the nine months between March and December of the year, 3,000,000 Bengalis were murdered and 200,000 Bengali women were raped by the soldiers of the Pakistan army.

No one in occupied Bangladesh knew if Mujib was dead or alive. The first indication that he had not been put to death came on August 9, when state-owned Radio Pakistan put it about that the Bengali leader would be placed on trial on August 11 on charges of treason before a military tribunal whose proceedings would be conducted in camera. The eminent Pakistani lawyer A.K. Brohi, it was revealed, would be Mujib’ defence counsel. In the subsequent weeks, Yahya Khan made quite a few references, all derogatory, to Bangabandhu in the course of some media interviews.

By late November, as was to be known later, the tribunal had found Bangabandhu guilty of treason, with the very likely possibility of the judgement soon leading to his execution. But then came the Indian entry into the war between Bengalis and Pakistanis on December 3, prompted by Pakistani air force jets striking Indian cities on the border with West Pakistan. By December 16, all was over for Pakistan, as Bangladesh stood liberated through the surrender of 93,000 Pakistani soldiers.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who took over as Pakistan’s new president from Yahya Khan on December 20, ordered the placing of Bangabandhu, who had triumphed over him at the general elections of a year earlier, under house arrest on December 22. On December 27, Bhutto turned up at the rest house where Mujib had been placed on his orders. It was the first meeting between the two men after the abortive political negotiations in Dhaka in March.

Bhutto’s goal was clearly to extract promises from Bangladesh’s leader about some form of links between Pakistan and its now free eastern province. Mujib did not oblige him.

On January 3, 1972, addressing a public rally in Karachi, Bhutto rhetorically asked his audience if they would permit him to free Mujib. The crowd roared its approval. As the night deepened on January 8, Bhutto accompanied Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to Rawalpindi’s Chaklala airport. Mujib was being freed, along with his constitutional adviser Kamal Hossain and family (Hossain had been arrested in early April 1971 and placed under detention in West Pakistan). Senior officers of the Pakistan military accompanied Bangladesh’s founder on the special PIA flight taking him to London.

Bangabandhu was received at Heathrow by officials of the British Foreign Office as well as the senior-most Bengali diplomat of the time, M.M. Rezaul Karim, and other members of the Bangladesh mission in London. Soon after his arrival, he called on British Prime Minister Edward Heath and opposition leader Harold Wilson. He called his family in Dhaka and also spoke to Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmed on the phone. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called him and greeted him on his release from imprisonment. In the evening of January 8, Bangabandhu addressed a packed news conference at Claridge’s hotel and paid tributes to his nation on attaining victory in an “epic war of liberation.”

Bangladesh’s president, for that was the position Bangabandhu occupied as a result of a decision by the provisional government at Mujibnagar on April 17, 1971, left London late the next day on a special aircraft put at his disposal by the British government. The next morning, January10, he broke journey in New Delhi, where he was warmly welcomed by President V.V. Giri, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, members of the Indian cabinet, and civil and military officials. He addressed a public rally thanking Indians for their support to Bangladesh’s liberation struggle. And then he took off, this time for home.

He arrived in Dhaka at 1.40 in the afternoon to a rapturous welcome from his people. The truck carrying him, in the company of Bangladesh’s government leaders, to the Race Course took nearly three hours to reach its destination. At the Race Course, Bangabandhu broke down in tears as he paid tribute to the millions who had sacrificed their lives for freedom.

He was happy his Golden Bengal was finally free, happy that Bengalis had emerged free of Pakistan. It was twilight when he and the million strong crowd made their way home after what been a dramatic day.

Source : The Daily Star