Bangabandhu

The life of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the saga of a great leader turning peoplepower into an armed struggle that liberated a nation and created the world’s ninth most populous state. The birth of the sovereign state of Bangladesh in December 1971, after a heroic war of nine months against the Pakistani colonial rule, was the triumph of his faith in the destiny of his people. Sheikh Mujib, endearingly called Bangabandhu or friend of Bangladesh, rose from the people, molded their hopes and aspirations into a dream and staked his life in the long battle for making it real. He was a true democrat, and he employed in his struggle for securing justice and fairplay for the Bengalees only democratic and constitutional weapons until the last moment. It is no accident of history that in an age of military coup d’etat and ‘strong men’, Sheikh Mujib attained power through elections and mass movement and that in an age of decline of democracy he firmly established democracy in one of the least developed countries of Asia.
Sheikh Mujib was born on 17 March 1920 in a middle class family at Tungipara in Gopalganj district. Standing 5 feet 11 inches, he was taller than the average Bengalee. Nothing pleased him more than being close to the masses, knowing their joys and sorrows and being part of their travails and triumphs. He spoke their soft language but in articulating their sentiments his voice was powerful and resonant. He had not been educated abroad, nor did he learn the art of hiding feelings behind sophistry; yet he was loved as much by the urban educated as the common masses of the villages. He inspired the intelligentsia and the working class alike. He did not, however, climb to leadership overnight.
Early Political Life: His political life began as an humble worker while he was still a student. He was fortunate to come in early contact with such towering personalities as Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy and A K Fazlul Huq, both charismatic Chief Ministers of undivided Bengal. Adolescent Mujib grew up under the gathering gloom of stormy politics as the aging British raj in India was falling apart and the Second World War was violently rocking the continents. He witnessed the ravages of the war and the stark realities of the great famine of 1943 in which about five million people lost their lives. The tragic plight of the people under colonial rule turned young Mujib into a rebel.
This was also the time when he saw the legendary revolutionary Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose challenging the British raj. Also about this time he came to know the works of Bernard Shaw, Karl Marx, Rabindranath Tagore and rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Soon after the partition of India in 1947 it was felt that the creation of Pakistan with its two wings separated by a physical distance of about 1,200 miles was a geographical monstrosity. The economic, political, cultural and linguistic characters of the two wings were also different. Keeping the two wings together under the forced bonds of a single state structure in the name of religious nationalism would merely result in a rigid political control and economic exploitation of the eastern wing by the all-powerful western wing which controlled the country’s capital and its economic and military might.
Early Movement: In 1948 a movement was initiated to make Bengali one of the state languages of Pakistan. This can be termed the first stirrings of the movement for an independent Bangladesh. The demand for cultural freedom gradually led to the demand for national independence. During that language movement Sheikh Mujib was arrested and sent to jail. During the blood-drenched language movement in 1952 he was again arrested and this time he provided inspiring leadership of the movement from inside the jail.
In 1954 Sheikh Mujib was elected a member of the then East Pakistan Assembly. He joined A K Fazlul Huq’s United Front government as the youngest minister. The ruling clique of Pakistan soon dissolved this government and Shiekh Mujib was once again thrown into prison. In 1955 he was elected a member of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly and was again made a minister when the Awami League formed the provincial government in 1956. Soon after General Ayub Khan staged a military coup in Pakistan in 1958, Sheikh Mujib was arrested once again and a number of cases were instituted against him. He was released after 14 months in prison but was re-arrested in February 1962. In fact, he spent the best part of his youth behind the prison bars.
Supreme Test: March 7, 1971 was a day of supreme test in his life. Nearly two million freedom loving people assembled at the Ramna Race Course Maidan, later renamed Suhrawardy Uddyan, on that day to hear their leader’s command for the battle for liberation. The Pakistani military junta was also waiting to trap him and to shoot down the people on the plea of suppressing a revolt against the state. Sheikh Mujib spoke in a thundering voice but in a masterly well-calculated restrained language. His historic declaration in the meeting was: "Our struggle this time is for freedom. Our struggle this time is for independence." To deny the Pakistani military an excuse for a crackdown, he took care to put forward proposals for a solution of the crisis in a constitutional way and kept the door open for negotiations.
The crackdown, however, did come on March 25 when the junta arrested Sheikh Mujib for the last time and whisked him away to West Pakistan for confinement for the entire duration of the liberation war. In the name of suppressing a rebellion the Pakistani military let loose hell on the unarmed civilians throughout Bangladesh and perpetrated a genocide killing no less than three million men, women and children, raping women in hundreds of thousands and destroying property worth billions of taka. Before their ignominious defeat and surrender they, with the help of their local collaborators, killed a large number of intellectuals, university professors, writers, doctors, journalists, engineers and eminent persons of other professions. In pursuing a scorch-earth policy they virtually destroyed the whole of the country’s infrastructure. But they could not destroy the indomitable spirit of the freedom fighters nor could they silence the thundering voice of the leader. Tape recordings of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib’s 7th March speech kept on inspiring his followers throughout the war.
Return and Reconstruction: Forced by international pressure and the imperatives of its own domestic predicament, Pakistan was obliged to release Sheikh Mujib from its jail soon after the liberation of Bangladesh and on 10 January 1972 the great leader returned to his beloved land and his admiring nation.
But as he saw the plight of the country his heart bled and he knew that there would be no moment of rest for him. Almost the entire nation including about ten million people returning from their refuge in India had to be rehabilitated, the shattered economy needed to be put back on the rail, the infrastructure had to be rebuilt, millions had to be saved from starvation and law and order had to be restored. Simultaneously, a new constitution had to be framed, a new parliament had to be elected and democratic institutions had to be put in place. Any ordinary mortal would break down under the pressure of such formidable tasks that needed to be addressed on top priority basis. Although simple at heart, Sheikh Mujib was a man of cool nerves and of great strength of mind. Under his charismatic leadership the country soon began moving on to the road to progress and the people found their long-cherished hopes and aspirations being gradually realized.
Assassination: But at this critical juncture, his life was cut short by a group of anti-liberation reactionary forces who in a pre-dawn move on 15 August 1975 not only assassinated him but 23 of his family members and close associates. Even his 10 year old son Russel’s life was not spared by the assassins. The only survivors were his two daughters, Sheikh Hasina - now the country’s Prime Minister - and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana, who were then away on a visit to Germany. In killing the father of the Nation, the conspirators ended a most glorious chapter in the history of Bangladesh but they could not end the great leader’s finest legacy- the rejuvenated Bengali nation. In a fitting tribute to his revered memory, the present government has declared August 15 as the national mourning day. On this day every year the people would be paying homage to the memory of a man who became a legend in his won lifetime. Bangabandhu lives in the heart of his people. Bangladesh and Bangabandhu are one and inseparable. Bangladesh was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s vision and he fought and died for it.
My practical experience, some of new leaders of BNP (retired amla) wants to be leader. They want to show something to Khaleda Zia in strike period. Want to be talk of the day as like Sadek Hossain Khoka. Khoka hold liquid tomato pack with him and blasted in due time while police caught him on the streets. Remember people? Shamsher Mobin Choudhury Beer Bikram Freedom fighter, I salute for his contribution, but I enjoyed his acting on strike period with police SI. He want to be arrested then news will be like this “Beer Bikram Shamsher Mobin Choudhury didn’t relief from the police tortured.
Good attitude but no need to do this simple acting for growing the attraction of Khaleda. Next time he will be foreign Minister if BNP comes to the power.
Bangabandhu Slideshow for website
BANGABANDHU SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN
The life of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the saga of a great leader turning peoplepower into an armed struggle that liberated a nation and created the world’s ninth most populous state. The birth of the sovereign state of Bangladesh in December 1971, after a heroic war of nine months against the Pakistani colonial rule, was the triumph of his faith in the destiny of his people. Sheikh Mujib, endearingly called Bangabandhu or friend of Bangladesh, rose from the people, molded their hopes and aspirations into a dream and staked his life in the long battle for making it real. He was a true democrat, and he employed in his struggle for securing justice and fairplay for the Bengalees only democratic and constitutional weapons until the last moment. It is no accident of history that in an age of military coup d’etat and ‘strong men’, Sheikh Mujib attained power through elections and mass movement and that in an age of decline of democracy he firmly established democracy in one of the least developed countries of Asia.
Sheikh Mujib was born on 17 March 1920 in a middle class family at Tungipara in Gopalganj district. Standing 5 feet 11 inches, he was taller than the average Bengalee. Nothing pleased him more than being close to the masses, knowing their joys and sorrows and being part of their travails and triumphs. He spoke their soft language but in articulating their sentiments his voice was powerful and resonant. He had not been educated abroad, nor did he learn the art of hiding feelings behind sophistry; yet he was loved as much by the urban educated as the common masses of the villages. He inspired the intelligentsia and the working class alike. He did not, however, climb to leadership overnight.
Early Political Life: His political life began as an humble worker while he was still a student. He was fortunate to come in early contact with such towering personalities as Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy and A K Fazlul Huq, both charismatic Chief Ministers of undivided Bengal. Adolescent Mujib grew up under the gathering gloom of stormy politics as the aging British raj in India was falling apart and the Second World War was violently rocking the continents. He witnessed the ravages of the war and the stark realities of the great famine of 1943 in which about five million people lost their lives. The tragic plight of the people under colonial rule turned young Mujib into a rebel.
This was also the time when he saw the legendary revolutionary Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose challenging the British raj. Also about this time he came to know the works of Bernard Shaw, Karl Marx, Rabindranath Tagore and rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Soon after the partition of India in 1947 it was felt that the creation of Pakistan with its two wings separated by a physical distance of about 1,200 miles was a geographical monstrosity. The economic, political, cultural and linguistic characters of the two wings were also different. Keeping the two wings together under the forced bonds of a single state structure in the name of religious nationalism would merely result in a rigid political control and economic exploitation of the eastern wing by the all-powerful western wing which controlled the country’s capital and its economic and military might.
Early Movement: In 1948 a movement was initiated to make Bengali one of the state languages of Pakistan. This can be termed the first stirrings of the movement for an independent Bangladesh. The demand for cultural freedom gradually led to the demand for national independence. During that language movement Sheikh Mujib was arrested and sent to jail. During the blood-drenched language movement in 1952 he was again arrested and this time he provided inspiring leadership of the movement from inside the jail.
In 1954 Sheikh Mujib was elected a member of the then East Pakistan Assembly. He joined A K Fazlul Huq’s United Front government as the youngest minister. The ruling clique of Pakistan soon dissolved this government and Shiekh Mujib was once again thrown into prison. In 1955 he was elected a member of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly and was again made a minister when the Awami League formed the provincial government in 1956. Soon after General Ayub Khan staged a military coup in Pakistan in 1958, Sheikh Mujib was arrested once again and a number of cases were instituted against him. He was released after 14 months in prison but was re-arrested in February 1962. In fact, he spent the best part of his youth behind the prison bars.
Supreme Test: March 7, 1971 was a day of supreme test in his life. Nearly two million freedom loving people assembled at the Ramna Race Course Maidan, later renamed Suhrawardy Uddyan, on that day to hear their leader’s command for the battle for liberation. The Pakistani military junta was also waiting to trap him and to shoot down the people on the plea of suppressing a revolt against the state. Sheikh Mujib spoke in a thundering voice but in a masterly well-calculated restrained language. His historic declaration in the meeting was: "Our struggle this time is for freedom. Our struggle this time is for independence." To deny the Pakistani military an excuse for a crackdown, he took care to put forward proposals for a solution of the crisis in a constitutional way and kept the door open for negotiations.
The crackdown, however, did come on March 25 when the junta arrested Sheikh Mujib for the last time and whisked him away to West Pakistan for confinement for the entire duration of the liberation war. In the name of suppressing a rebellion the Pakistani military let loose hell on the unarmed civilians throughout Bangladesh and perpetrated a genocide killing no less than three million men, women and children, raping women in hundreds of thousands and destroying property worth billions of taka. Before their ignominious defeat and surrender they, with the help of their local collaborators, killed a large number of intellectuals, university professors, writers, doctors, journalists, engineers and eminent persons of other professions. In pursuing a scorch-earth policy they virtually destroyed the whole of the country’s infrastructure. But they could not destroy the indomitable spirit of the freedom fighters nor could they silence the thundering voice of the leader. Tape recordings of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib’s 7th March speech kept on inspiring his followers throughout the war.
Return and Reconstruction: Forced by international pressure and the imperatives of its own domestic predicament, Pakistan was obliged to release Sheikh Mujib from its jail soon after the liberation of Bangladesh and on 10 January 1972 the great leader returned to his beloved land and his admiring nation.
But as he saw the plight of the country his heart bled and he knew that there would be no moment of rest for him. Almost the entire nation including about ten million people returning from their refuge in India had to be rehabilitated, the shattered economy needed to be put back on the rail, the infrastructure had to be rebuilt, millions had to be saved from starvation and law and order had to be restored. Simultaneously, a new constitution had to be framed, a new parliament had to be elected and democratic institutions had to be put in place. Any ordinary mortal would break down under the pressure of such formidable tasks that needed to be addressed on top priority basis. Although simple at heart, Sheikh Mujib was a man of cool nerves and of great strength of mind. Under his charismatic leadership the country soon began moving on to the road to progress and the people found their long-cherished hopes and aspirations being gradually realized.
Assassination: But at this critical juncture, his life was cut short by a group of anti-liberation reactionary forces who in a pre-dawn move on 15 August 1975 not only assassinated him but 23 of his family members and close associates. Even his 10 year old son Russel’s life was not spared by the assassins. The only survivors were his two daughters, Sheikh Hasina - now the country’s Prime Minister - and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana, who were then away on a visit to Germany. In killing the father of the Nation, the conspirators ended a most glorious chapter in the history of Bangladesh but they could not end the great leader’s finest legacy- the rejuvenated Bengali nation. In a fitting tribute to his revered memory, the present government has declared August 15 as the national mourning day. On this day every year the people would be paying homage to the memory of a man who became a legend in his won lifetime. Bangabandhu lives in the heart of his people. Bangladesh and Bangabandhu are one and inseparable. Bangladesh was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s vision and he fought and died for it.
My practical experience, some of new leaders of BNP (retired amla) wants to be leader. They want to show something to Khaleda Zia in strike period. Want to be talk of the day as like Sadek Hossain Khoka. Khoka hold liquid tomato pack with him and blasted in due time while police caught him on the streets. Remember people? Shamsher Mobin Choudhury Beer Bikram Freedom fighter, I salute for his contribution, but I enjoyed his acting on strike period with police SI. He want to be arrested then news will be like this “Beer Bikram Shamsher Mobin Choudhury didn’t relief from the police tortured.
Good attitude but no need to do this simple acting for growing the attraction of Khaleda. Next time he will be foreign Minister if BNP comes to the power.
Father of the Nation' is an honorific bestowed on individuals who are considered the most important in the process of the liar establishment of a country or a nation. They are instrumental in the birth of their nations by way of liberating them from colonial or other occupation. George Washington is the father of the United States, Peter I of Russia, Sun Yat-sen of China, Sir Henry Parkes of Australia, Miguel Hidalgo of Mexico, Sam Nujoma of Namibia, William the Silent of the Netherlands, Einar Gerhardsm of Norway, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Carlos Mannel of Cuba, Mustafa Kemal of Turkey, Sukarno of Indonesia, Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia, Mahatma Gandhi of India, Don Stephen Senanayake of Sri Lanka and Mohammad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan. So is Bangabandhu, the Father of the Bangladesh nation.
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920-1975) is the architect of our country and the nation by all implications of the term. As a matter of fact, what we now call Bangladesh was never independent in the truest sense of the term before 1971. It was Mujib and only Mujib who gave the nation a real touch of freedom. It was quite a trek into the long way of freedom from all-out oppression through autonomy and home rule in which he gave the active lead. He was the fearless fighter of the Language Movement of 1952; the pioneer of the democratic movement of 1962; the architect of the Six-point Movement of 1966; the life-force of the Mass Movement of 1969; the enviable victor of the election of 1970 and, above all, the greatest hero of the Liberation War of 1971. He is undisputedly the founder of independent Bangladesh and, therefore, the Father of the Nation.
It is really a matter of regret that we are not well aware of this greatest national leader. But who is to blame for that? As a matter of fact, there has been a long chain of conspiracy to make people oblivious of Bangabandhu. It began with his assassination on the inauspicious August night of 1975. Ever since then the country fell mostly under the sway of despotic military rule accompanied by the corrupt politicians, opportunistic bureaucrats, pseudo-democrats and religious fundamentalists. They had one thing in common i.e. Bangabandhu-bashing. They tried to indemnify the killers of Bangabandhu, and rewarded them with lucrative portfolios. They took sustained efforts to erase the image of Bangabandhu from the minds of the people by distorting history. They tried to obliterate the memories of Bangabandhu from the pages of history, inscriptions of monuments and from whatever holds the recollections of Mujib.
The anti-Mujib campaigners are not, however, as powerful as history itself. History takes its own course, maybe after quite a long time. But this is inevitable. So, the anti-Mujib campaigners have vainly tried to change the course of history eventually making a mockery of it. What they had done at best is that they had fooled some people for sometime or what they can still do is that they can fool some people for all time, but they can never fool all people into believing a false story for all time. People must be endowed with a true sense of history today or tomorrow.
To look into one's own history and culture and to go for the quest for national identity and cultural heritage have become an imperative in these postcolonial days. Ours is not a poor socio-political and cultural legacy. We fought valiantly a war of independence under the leadership of Bangabandhu. We can very well come up with this political legacy and assert ourselves more. We can uphold the ideals of Bangabandhu to rebuild our nation.
Mujib is really Bangabandhu, friend of Bangladesh. And hence he could utter: 'Standing on the gallows, I will tell them, I am a Bengali, Bangla is my country, Bangla is my language”. On the black night of March 25, when it was suggested that he go into hiding, he flatly refused and retorted: “I must share the sufferings of my people along with them. I must share. I cannot leave them in the face of fire. I cannot.” Really he did not flee to safety from the war-torn country. Rather he willingly became the first prey to the marauding force. Love for the motherland had prompted him to take such a risk. Afterwards, over nine long months, day after day and night after night in the dark cell of the prison camp, he longed for the freedom of his country. The unbearable suffering of the dungeon could not sap the strength of his patriotism. On his return home on 10 January 1972, addressing a huge gathering in Suhrawardy Uddyan, Bangabandhu declared: "Bangladesh has earned independence. Now if anybody wants to seize it, Mujib would be the first man to sacrifice his life for the protection of that independence". His country was all important to him. He believed it was his calling to do good to his country, not to look forward to anything in return. He often used to mention the famous quote by President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country".
Such a big man was Bangabandhu! The undisputed Father of independent Bangladesh. To be unaware of this is sheer ignorance. To deny this is an offence against history.
Bangabandhu and Bangladesh
By Muntasir Mamun
The inhabitants of Bangladesh had dreamt of a free land for long. Many individuals had sought to materialise this dream in the past. Many had spoken about that land during the first forty years of the last century. That plan was once again drawn during the partition of India. Moulana Bhashani had spoken about an independent territory for the Bangalis during the decade of 1960s. But none could give complete shape to that dream. That dream was finally realized on 16 December 1971 under the leadership of a pure Bangali – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It was he who could erect for the Bangalis the geographic boundaries of a free state. Bangabandhu, Father of the Nation, or Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – in whatever name we may call him – his iconic figure looms large whenever we talk about Bangladesh. That is why; his name has become ingrained in
Our history and because of that we repeatedly reminisce about him. There are numerous claimants to the Bangladesh dream. Many might have dreamt it; many had talked about Bangladesh through signs and gestures; but Sheikh Mujib had completed the task like an architect. Like many others, he also thought of Bangladesh, but preparations for the purpose
Continue up to 1971.
Moulana Bhashani had also spoken about Bangladesh in open forums. But his role was negligible in this field. However, all those dreams and speeches had prepared the people. Journalist Abdul Matin had written in his autobiography: “He met Mujib one day at noon during the military rule of Ayub Khan. Sheikh Saheb said that he did not care Ayub Khan. He knew the minds of the people. After remaining silent for a few moments, he talked about using the Agartala case in the anti-Ayub movement”. It can be said in this context that the Agartala conspiracy case might not have been fully cooked up.
That dark gentleman had emerged from the very midst of our rural paddy culture. His heart was vast like nature itself, and he wanted to cover the Bangalis with that – the whole of Bangladesh. The Bangalis had repaid that gesture as long as he lived. One day on 27 March 1971, a Major suddenly told the Bangalis to snatch freedom and they jumped for that – the Bangalis are not made of such stuff. It took a long time to awaken them and it was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who succeeded in doing that. Consequently, whether one likes it or not, can there be any option other than calling him the ‘architect of our freedom’? And it was not that Sheikh Mujib became ‘Bangabandhu’ overnight in 1970 and ‘Father of the Nation’ all of a sudden in 1972.
It took him three decades to become Bangabandhu. If we consider the period between 1940 and 1974, we shall see that Sheikh Mujib became Bangabandhu and Father of the Nation for several reasons. These were: the vastness of his heart, his humanism and tolerance, his appearance, dresses and words; all of these had demonstrated his intention to maintain everlasting bonds with a huge population. Some information and proofs could be obtained about the long-drawn conspiracies of the villains of 1975 for seizing power. Khandakar Mostaque is an example. Evidence of the conspiratorial mentality of this principal villain in our history could be observed even before the liberation war. The frontline leaders of Awami League had visited Bangabandhu at his Dhanmondi residence on 25 March 1971 and asked him to remain cautious. Only Khandakar Mostaque was not seen there. After independence, he lobbied with Dr. Wazed Miah to become Foreign Minister with seniority.
Later, in 1974, Dr. Wazed Mia saw after going to Khandakar Mostaque’s residence that one Major Rashid was going out of the house after secret talks with him.
There has been much debate about the message of Sheikh Mujib broadcast by Mr. Hannan from Chittagong on 26 March 1971. Dr. Wazed Miah had written: “Bangabandhu’s message was in a taped form. After transmitting that message from Dhaka’s Baldah garden, that brave member
of EPR had sought fresh orders by contacting Bangabandhu’s residence over telephone. Bangabandhu then directed the EPR member via Mr. Golam Morshed to leave that place instantly after throwing the transmitter into the pond of Baldah garden.” I shall not go into the debate on whether this information was correct or not. I understand as an ordinary student of history that the country called Bangladesh was founded at the very start of March 1971 and that had happened at the directive of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Professor Borhanuddin Khan Jahangir highlighted this in a very clear and logical manner in his essay titled ‘Accountability of the State’. He wrote: “The 35 directives issued by Sheikh Mujib had laid the ground for all-out noncooperation with the Pakistani state through resistance and rejection of its authority and complete cooperation of the Bangali masses with their administration through establishment of a pro-people authority. ------ The Bangali people had nurtured the thought of becoming the inhabitants of a separate, different and independent state in their bosom, head and heart even before the commencement of the war.” From the 1960s, Bangabandhu had two objectives. One of those was unambiguous, while another was unclear or something akin to a dream. The clear objective was to build up the Awami League, spread the organization throughout the country and establish a civil society by going to power on Awami League platform. There were infightings within the Awami League, which was natural for a big party. But Sheikh Mujib’s organizational capacity was unique. He had the two qualities of tolerance and flexibility, which were needed for making the party bigger. I have even seen old people in remote rural areas, whose only possession was a tea-stall, who never got anything from the party, but had never left it after coming to the fold of Awami League at the behest of Sheikh Mujib. There are many more self sacrificing Awami Leaguers in the nooks and corners of Bangladesh, who did not leave the party despite becoming destitute. The leaders, however, do not keep track of them. Besides, Sheikh Mujib had such individuals as his companions, without whose help he might not have achieved his cherished goal. As a result, the Awami League became bigger, expanded after the 6- point movement and simultaneously Sheikh Mujib became the undisputed leader of the masses. He also had tremendous self-confidence and courage. The blossoming of the party had also raised his confidence in himself as well as the people. That was why he could transform the 6-points into a 1-point. And this was his unclear vision or dream. That he was unwavering on the question of this objective and had the necessary courage and confidence for materializing this dream were highlighted during the Agartala conspiracy trial. Fayez Ahmed had written about an incident during this trial. He was sitting beside the main accused Sheikh Mujib. They were not allowed to talk inside the court. Sheikh Mujib tried to draw the attention of Fayez Ahmed a number of
times in order to say something. Fayez Ahmed said, “Mujib Bhai, conversations are not allowed. I can’t turn my head. They will throw me out.” A loud reply came forthwith, “Fayez, one has to talk to Sheikh Mujib if he wants to stay in Bangladesh.” - -------He did not know then that this symbolic utterance by Sheikh Mujib was not meant for any individual person; it was a message for the entire people of a country, which could ignite fire.
Sheikh Mujib returned to the Bangladesh of his dream in 1972. Now his role was not that of a wager of movements. Rather, he played his part in materialising the dream of a Golden Bangla. He worked tirelessly with that objective in mind until 15 August 1975. Reconstruction of the country was in full swing and the Constitution was already framed by that time. The biggest achievement of Bangabandhu and the then Awami League government was to endow the country with a Constitution. I do not know whether there is any other example of a country where it was possible to provide a Constitution so swiftly in the aftermath of such a bloody war. The four core principles of the state were proclaimed through this Constitution, which could have been termed as radical in the context of the then realities. These were: Democracy, Socialism, Secularism and
Nationalism. These principles in fact contained those very ideals for which the liberation war was fought. This was especially true of secularism. That is why the military generals had at the very outset struck at these core principles, especially secularism. Besides, the Constitution described the social, economic and political rights of citizens and the philosophy of the state. In other words, it indicated that the liberation war was waged for establishing a civil society in place of a military-dominated one.
The 1972 Constitution had incorporated the necessary institutions for a civil society; it firmly strove to lay the foundation for a vibrant civil society in Bangladesh. In this context, Bangabandhu had said in one of his speeches: “I do not know whether democracy was initiated immediately after a bloody revolution in any country of the world. ----- Elections have been organised. The right of vote has been expanded in scope by lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. Bangladesh’s own aeroplanes are now flying in the skies of different countries; a fleet of commercial ships has also been launched. The BDR is now guarding the borders. The ground forces are ready to repel any attack on the motherland. Our own navy and air-force are now operational. The police force and thanas have been rebuilt, 70 percent of which were destroyed by the Pakistanis. A ‘National Rakkhi Bahini’ has been raised.
You are now the owners of 60 percent of mills and factories. Taxes for up to 25 bighas of land have been exempted. We do not believe in the policy of vengeance and revenge. Therefore, general amnesty has been declared for those who were accused and convicted under the Collaborators’ Act for opposing the liberation war.” But the people were not inclined to appreciate the framing of Constitution, its principles, and the successes of Sheikh Mujib due to rising price of essentials and the law and order situation. Not only was Bangabandhu killed along with his family, the husband of his sister Abdur Rab Serniabat and his nephew (sister’s son) Sheikh Moni were also killed along with their family members. It was quite apparent that intense hatred had worked behind this; otherwise this kind of brutality could not have been carried out in cold blood. The assumption that if any of the family members survived, then he would come forward to provide leadership was also at work. That this assumption was not unfounded has been proved subsequently. Bangabandhu’s two daughters Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana
survived as they were staying abroad. Later, Sheikh Hasina became the leader of the Awami League and is now once again waging a struggle to reinforce the civil society. It is clear from the manner in which the Bangabandhu family was assassinated that there were local and international conspiracies and a long time was spent for planning it. The conspirators took risks and that risktaking paid off. A faction of the Awami League led by Khandakar Mostaque was involved in it. It can be cited as evidence that it was during Mostaque’s rule that the four Awami League and national leaders Tajuddin Ahmed, Syed Nazrul Islam, Mansur Ali and Kamruzzaman were killed inside the central jail on 3 November 1975. Saudi Arabia and China recognized Bangladesh immediately after Khandakar Mostaque came to power. Relationships with Pakistan and the USA also improved. Consequently, the theory that foreign powers had a hand in the killings cannot be dismissed outright. Almost three decades after Sheikh Mujib’s killing, the people can once again feel what Sheikh Mujib really was and why he was awarded the title ‘Bangabandhu’. People can realize today that he wanted to raise the stature of the Bangalis, and one way of doing that was to give back the honour to the unarmed people. Whichever parties and persons might have ruled Bangladesh after his murder, his name could not be erased from the minds of the people. That effort still continues. That is because it is evident today that we got that honour only once, that path was opened for us only once in 1971, when Bangladesh succeeded in ousting all kinds of armed thugs under the leadership of an unarmed Bangali called Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Despite the many flaws and heaps of criticisms levelled against Sheikh Mujib, we should note, just as an opponent of Sheikh Mujib and Awami League – Moudud Ahmed – had written (translator’s translation from Bengali): “The appearance of Sheikh Mujib was the biggest event in the national history of Bangladesh. His burial did not take place through his death. More pragmatic, efficient, capable and dynamic political personalities than Sheikh Mujib might have emerged or may emerge, but it will be very difficult to find someone who has contributed more to the independence movement of Bangladesh and the shaping of its national identity.” He had
endeavoured to uphold the interests of the Bangalis throughout his life and had never compromised until his objectives were attained. That is why the Bangalis gave him the title ‘Bangabandhu’ and ‘Father of the Nation’ out of sheer love and emotion. His lifestyle was like that of an ordinary Bangali of eternal Bengal; that is why he could so intensely connect with the ordinary people and their communities. He possessed all the attributes of an ordinary Bangali.
But his love for his people and country was extraordinary, almost blind. He used to say: “My strength is that, I love human beings.
My weakness is that, I love them too much.” The position of Bangabandhu vis-à-vis other doers in the civil society of Bangladesh will become clear if the events of 1971 and 1971-75 are analysed. It is impossible to write the history of pre and post-independence Bangladesh without mentioning him. The names of two great Bangalis will remain forever shining in the minds of the Bangalis. One is Rabindranath Thakur and the other is Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. One had shaped the Bengali language and wrote the national anthem of Bangladesh. The other materialised the age-old dream of the Bangalis by helping create an independent territory called Bangladesh for an entire nation. I feel proud for this, and my posterity will also be so. The names ‘Bangali’ and ‘Bangladesh’ will continue to live on. And that is why Anandashankar Ray had written:
“As long as the Padma, Meghna, Gouri, Jamuna flows on,
Your accomplishment will also live on, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.”
Translation: Helal Uddin Ahmed
               
Can the execution of Mujib’s assassins finally deliver the country from its darkest chapter ?
By Salil Tripathi
QUARTER CENTURY AGO I met a man who calmly told me how he had organised the massacre of a family. He wasn’t confessing out of a sense of remorse; he was bragging about it, grinning as he spoke to me.
I was a young reporter on assignment in Dhaka, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with Bangladesh, which had emerged as an independent nation after a bloody war of liberation 15 years earlier, in 1971. The man I was interviewing lived in a well-appointed home. Soldiers protected his house, checking the bags and identification of all visitors. A week earlier he had been a presidential candidate, losing by a huge margin.
He wore a Pathani outfit that looked out of place in a country where civilian politicians wore white kurtas and black vests, and men on the streets went about in lungis. He had a thin moustache. He stared at me eagerly as we spoke, curious about the notes I was taking, trying to read what I was writing in my notepad. He sat straight on a sofa, his chest thrust forward, as if he was still in uniform. He looked like a man playing a high stakes game, assured that he would win, because he knew someone important who held all the cards.

His name was Farooq Rahman, and he had been an army major, and later, lieutenant-colonel. He had returned to Bangladesh recently, after several years in exile in Libya. Before dawn on 15 August 1975, he led the Bengal Lancers, the army’s tank unit under his command, to disarm the Rokkhi Bahini, a paramilitary force loyal to President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League party. When he left the Dhaka Cantonment, he had instructed other officers and soldiers to go to the upscale residential area of Dhanmondi, where Mujib, as he was popularly known, lived. Soon after 5:00 am, the officers had killed Mujib and most of his family.
I had been rehearsing how to ask Farooq about his role in the assassination. I had no idea how he would respond. After a few desultory questions about the country’s political situation, I tentatively began, “It has been widely reported in Bangladesh that you were somehow connected with the plot to remove Mujibur Rahman from power in 1975. Would you…”
“Of course, we killed him,” he interrupted me. “He had to go,” he said, before I could complete my hesitant, longwinded question.

FAROOQ RAHMAN BELIEVED he had saved the nation. The governments that followed Mujib reinforced that perception, rewarding him and the other assassins with respectability, political space, and plum diplomatic assignments. One of Mujib’s surviving daughters, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who inherited his political mantle and who was to become the prime minister of Bangladesh, was marginalised for many years. She lived for a while in exile, and for some time, was detained. The political landscape after Mujib’s murder was unstable. Bangladesh has had 11 prime ministers and over a dozen heads of state in its 39-year history. Hasina was determined to redeem her father’s reputation and seek justice, and her quest has larger implications for Bangladesh’s citizenry. Hundreds of thousands—and by some estimates perhaps three million—people were killed during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis now wait for justice—to see those who harmed them and their loved ones brought to account. But the culture of impunity hasn’t disappeared. It took more than three decades for Sheikh Hasina to receive some measure of vindication.
SOMETIME IN THE AFTERNOON of 27 January this year, Mahfuz Anam received a call from an official, saying that the end was imminent. Anam was in the newsroom of Bangladesh’s leading English newspaper, The Daily Star, which he edits. He knew what the message meant: perhaps within hours, five men—Farooq, Lt-Col Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan
Lt-Col Mohiuddin Ahmed, Maj Bazlul Huda, and army lancer AKM Mohiuddin— would be hanged by the neck until dead at the city’s central jail. Anam told his reporters to be prepared, and sent several reporters and photographers to cover the executions.
“We had hints that the end was near, particularly when the relatives of the five men were asked to come and meet them with hardly any notice,” Anam told me during a long telephone conversation a week after the executions. “The authorities had told the immediate families that there were no limits on the number of relatives who could come, and they were allowed to remain with them until well after visiting hours. We knew that the final hours had come.”

Once the families left, the five men were sent to their cells. They were told to take a bath and to offer their night prayers. Then the guards asked them if they wanted to eat anything special. A cleric came, offering to read from the Qu’ran. Around 10:30 pm, a reporter called Anam to say that the city’s civil surgeon, Mushfiqur Rahman, and district magistrate Zillur Rahman had arrived at the jail. Police vans arrived 50 minutes later, carrying five coffins. The anti-crime unit, known as the Rapid Action Battalion, took positions providing support to the regular police force to prevent demonstrations. Other leading officials came within minutes: the home secretary, the inspector general of prisons, and the police commissioner. Rashida Ahmad, news editor at the online news agency, bdnews24.com, recalls: “Many media houses practically decamped en masse to the jail to ‘experience a historic moment’ firsthand.” Anam told me, “By 11:35 pm, we knew it would happen that night. We held back our first edition. The second edition had the detailed story.”
Bazlul Huda was the first to be taken to the gallows. He was handcuffed, and a black hood covered his face. Eyewitnesses have said Huda struggled to free himself and screamed loudly, as guards led him to the brightly lit room. An official waved and dropped a red handkerchief on the ground, the signal for the executioner to proceed. It was just after midnight when Huda died. Muhiuddin Ahmed was next, followed by Farooq, Shahriar, and AKM Muhiuddin. It was all over soon after 1:00 am.
Earlier that day, the Supreme Court had rejected the final appeal of four of the five convicts. Shahriar was the only one not to seek presidential pardon. His daughter Shehnaz, who spent two hours with her father that evening, later told bdnews24.com, “My father was a freedom fighter; and a man who fights for the independence of his country never begs for his life.”

Mujib’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, was at her prime ministerial home that night. She was informed when the executions began, and she reportedly asked to be left alone, and later offered namaz-e-shukran (a prayer of gratitude). Many people, most of them supporters of the Awami League, had gathered outside her house that night, but she did not come out to meet anybody. A few days later, she told a party convention that it was a moment of joy for all of them, because due process had been served.

The mood was sober and subdued. Dhaka residents I spoke to told me the celebrations were only in certain localities. Ahmad, who was at her news desk until late at bdnews24. com, wrote to me, saying the mood was sombre, and many looked at it as a time for reflection, although that night and the following day there was muted rejoicing in some areas. Many could understand Hasina thanking God, and other politicians welcoming the closing of a dark chapter, but some felt it a bit much that parliament itself thanked God and adjourned for the day, she said.
The chapter is not yet closed. In early February, Awami League activists ransacked and set afire the home of the brother of Aziz Pasha, one of the self-confessed conspirators who had died in exile in Zimbabwe a few years ago. Six other conspirators remain at large, and the Government says it is determined to bring them back.
CALL IT JUSTICE, REVENGE, or closure. It has taken 34 years for this particular saga to reach its end. Khondaker Mushtaq Ahmed, who took over as Bangladesh’s president after Mujib’s assassination, had granted the officers immunity and praised the assassins. General Ziaur Rehman, who later became president, con- firmed the immunity. A series of articles in August 2005 were published simultaneously in The Daily Star and Prothom Alo, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the coup d’état that killed Mujib and much of his family. Lawrence Lifschultz, an American journalist who had been South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review in the 1970s, revealed that one of his principal sources, alleging CIA links with the political leadership of the coup, was the US Ambassador to Bangladesh, Eugene Boster.
While Boster sought anonymity during his lifetime, Lifschultz disclosed after Boster’s death that the ambassador had in 1977 informed he and his colleague, the American writer, Kai Bird, that the US Embassy had contacts with the Khondaker group six months before the coup, and that the ambassador had himself ordered that all links with Khondaker and his entourage be severed. Boster claimed he learned later that behind his back the contacts continued with Khondaker’s associates until the actual day of the coup.
In their book, Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution (1979),Lifschultz and Bird document Khondaker’s prior links to a failed Kissinger initiative during the 1971 war. Khondaker’s colleagues in Bangladesh’s government-in-exile had discovered his covert contacts with Kissinger, and it ended with him being placed under house arrest in Calcutta. Four years later, Khondaker—who was in Mujib’s cabinet—became president after the military coup, and once in office, he granted immunity to the assassins.
Later governments gave some of the assassin’s high-ranking posts, even though these men had conspired to eliminate the country’s elected leader. Lt- Col Shariful Haq Dalim represented Bangladesh in Beijing, Hong Kong, Tripoli, and became high commissioner to Kenya, even though he had attempted another coup in 1980. Lt-Col Aziz Pasha served in Rome, Nairobi, and Harare, where he sought asylum when Hasina first came to power in 1996. She removed him; he stayed on in Harare, and died there. Maj Huda was briefly a member of parliament, and also served in Islamabad and Jeddah. Other conspirators served Bangladeshi missions in Bangkok, Lagos, Dakar, Ankara, Jakarta, Tokyo, Muscat, Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Ottawa, and Manila.

The Oxford-trained lawyer, Kamal Hossain, who was Mujib’s law minister, and later foreign minister, told me, “The impunity with which Farooq operated was extraordinary. When he returned to Bangladesh, the government facilitated him and President [Hussain Muhammad] Ershad, who wanted some candidate to stand against him in the rigged elections. [Ershad] let Farooq stand to give himself credibility.”

It was clear that a trial of the assassins would only be possible if Mujib’s party, the Awami League, came to power. That happened in 1996, and Mujib’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, became prime minister. The cases began and the court found all 12 defendants guilty. But Hasina lost the 2001 elections, and the process stopped, resuming only after her victory in the elections of December 2008. The government now wants to bring the surviving officers back to Bangladesh: Noor Chowdhury is reportedly in the United States; Dalim is in Canada; Khandaker Abdul Rashid, Farooq’s brother-in-law, is in Pakistan; MA Rashed Chowdhury is in South Africa; Mosleuddin is in Thailand; and Abdul Mazed is in Kenya. Bringing all of them back may not be easy, because they will face executions. Canada and South Africa have abolished the death penalty, and Kenya put a stop to it recently, making it harder for those governments to extradite them.

How does a nation, whose independence was soaked with blood, which lost a popular leader of its freedom struggle in a brutal massacre, reconcile with that crime? What form of justice is fair? Does the death penalty heal those wounds?
Bangladesh thinks so. It is among the 58 countries (including India) that retain the death penalty, but it applies it only in rare cases, like murder. In 2008, five people were executed in Bangladesh. Many governments oppose the death penalty on principle, and the European Union appealed to the Bangladeshi government to commute the sentence of Mujib’s assassins. The human rights group Amnesty International also sought clemency, while agreeing that the men should face justice.
Bangladeshi human rights lawyers have found it hard to challenge the death penalty because it is not controversial in Bangladesh. There are also political exigencies. One human rights activist told me, “We are against [the] death penalty but the dilemma is that we are in a country where life imprisonment really means imprisonment guaranteed until your party is in power. The death penalty is almost seen as the only way to guarantee justice for such a grisly crime.” Grisly, it certainly was. This is what happened.
I    N 1975, Dhanmondi hadn’t changed much from how it looked at Independence, with roads lined with twostorey houses dating back to the 1950s. Today, there are multi-storey buildings, English-medium schools, new universities, shopping malls and hookah bars
to lure younger crowds. Back in 1975, the area was quieter. In the evening, people strolled along the periphery of the large lake in the middle of the neighbourhood and at night you could hear the tinkle of the bells of the cycle rickshaws plying the roads.
On 15 August 1975, before dawn, 700 soldiers with 105 millimetre weapons left their barracks and headed for the three homes where Mujib and his family lived. Everyone was still asleep at Mujib’s home, number 677 on road 32 in Dhanomondi. Mujib’s personal assistant, Mohitul Islam, was at his desk when Mujib called him, asking him to call the police immediately. Mujib had heard his brother-in-law Abdur Rab Serniabat’s house at 27 Minto Road was being attacked. Serniabat was a minister in Mujib’s government.
Mohitul—who lived to tell the tale—tried calling the police, but the phones weren’t working. When he called the telephone exchange, the person at the other end said nothing. Mujib snatched the phone and shouted into the mouthpiece.
The guards outside were hoisting the national flag when the soldiers arrived. The guards were stunned to find army officers rushing in through the gate, ordering them to drop their weapons and surrender. There were a few shots.

A frightened servant woke up Mujib’s son Kamal, who got dressed and came down when Maj Bazlul Huda entered the house with several soldiers. Even as Mohitul tried telling Huda that it was Kamal, there was a burst of gunfire; Kamal lay dead. Huda quickly went to the landing of the staircase when he heard Mujib’s voice.
“What do you want?” Mujib asked Huda, whom he recognised.
The soldiers pulled their triggers, spraying Mujib with dozens of bullets. Before his burial the following day in his birthplace, Tungipara, the imam noticed at least ten bullets still lodged inside Mujib’s body. When I visited the house in 1986, I saw dozens of bullet marks on the wall and staircase where he was killed. Mujib had collapsed on the stairs; his trademark pipe in his hands. He was dead by the time his body stopped tumbling down the stairs.

The killers then went inside the house, and one by one, killed everyone they could find: Mujib’s wife Fajilutunessa, Kamal’s wife Sultana, Mujib’s other son Jamal and his wife Rosy, and Mujib’s brother Naser, who was heard pleading, “I am not in politics.”
Then they saw Russell, Mujib’s ten-year-old son, who was crying, asking for his mother. He, too, was killed.

Around the same time, another group of soldiers had killed Mujib’s brother-in-law, Serniabat at his home, and a third group had murdered the family of Fazlul Haque Moni, Mujib’s nephew, an influential Awami League politician who lived on road 13/1, about two kilometres away from Mujib’s home. At that time, Mahfuz Anam was a young reporter at the Bangladesh Times. He lived across the Dhanmandi Lake, and had a clear view of Sheikh Moni’s house. “I saw what happened,” he recalled. “Early that morning I was awakened by the sound of firing. I got up. My room was on the side of the lake. I ventured out to the boundary wall. I saw troops enter Sheikh Moni’s house. I heard plenty of firing, followed by screaming. I heard shots—some random, some from sub-machine guns. I saw the troops leave the house. It was all over in four to six minutes. I could hear the people inside groaning; it continued for some time.”
The junior officers’ coup had proceeded exactly as planned. There had been no resistance from the moment Huda and his team had reached Mujib’s home. After taming the Rokkhi Bahini, Farooq arrived at Mujib’s gate, eager to know what had happened at Mujib’s home. Huda told him calmly, “All are finished.”
When we met a decade after those killings, I asked Farooq, one of the leading conspirators, “And the ten-year-old boy: did he have to be killed?”
“It was an act of mercy killing. Mujib was building a dynasty; we had to finish off all of them,” he told me with a degree of finality, his arm slicing ruthlessly in the air, as if he was chopping off the head of someone kneeling in front of him. There was no mercy in his eyes, no remorse, only a hint of pride
They had tried killing the entire family, but they could not get Mujib’s two daughters, Hasina and Rehana, who were on a goodwill tour in Europe. Hasina was in Bonn, Germany, where her husband, MA Wazed Miah, a nuclear scientist, was a researcher at a laboratory (He died in May 2009). Kamal Hossain, Mujib’s cabinet minister, was on an official visit to Belgrade. Speaking a week after the executions of Mujib’s killers, he told me, “I first heard there had been a coup. Later, at the home of the Bangladesh Ambassador to Yugoslavia, we sat listening to French radio, and more information began coming out. We heard about Mujib’s death, then we heard about the other family members. My first thought was Hasina’s safety.” He met her in Bonn and decided to sever his relations with the new government. He handed in his official passport to the ambassador, and left for England, which had better links with Bangladesh, and where getting information would be easier. Hasina, too, decided there was no need for her to go back. She was granted asylum in India and lived in New Delhi with her husband until 1981. Hossain returned to Dhaka in 1980.
I    N OCTOBER 1986, I visited Mujib’s house, the mute witness to the ghastly events of that dawn. As if to ensure that no one will forget the tragedy, Hasina, who showed me around, had made only minimal changes to the house, preserving the crime scene. The bare walls bore bullet marks. Shattered glass lay on the ground of what was once Mujib’s library. On the
staircase on which Mujib was shot, and on the wall which he tried to grip for support as he fell, darkened blood stains were still visible.



Mujib was 55 when he was killed. He had been in and out of Pakistani jails, and was widely regarded—and initially revered— as Bangladesh’s founding father. At the time of Partition, what is now known as Bangladesh formed the eastern wing of Pakistan. The two parts of Pakistan were divided by thousands of kilometres of Indian territory. Islam united the two, but culture, language and the idea of nationhood divided them. The eastern half was more populous, and should legitimately have commanded greater resources, but the generals and politicians in power in the western half disregarded eastern demands, responding to eastern claims with contempt, if not repression. Punjabis dominated the Sindhis, Baluchis, and Pathans in the west, and they had even less regard for their Bengali compatriots.
Things came to a head in 1970, when in nationwide elections, Awami League secured a majority. Mujib should have been invited to become Pakistan’s prime minister, but the generals and politicians in the west thought differently. Mujib’s negotiations with Gen Yahya Khan, Pakistan’s ruler, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party which had won a large number of seats in the west, continued interminably. Meanwhile, Yahya Khan sent Gen Tikka Khan to Dhaka. Many Bangladeshis remember planeloads of young men arriving on flights from the west. They were military men but not in uniform, and they did not carry weapons. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s navy was shipping weapons through ports like Chittagong, keeping Bengali officers in the dark, and secretly arming the men who had landed in Dhaka.
The crackdown began on 25 March 1971, as the Pakistani army brutally attempted to crush Bengali aspirations. Mujib was jailed in West Pakistan. In the east, hundreds of thousands were killed, and millions of refugees made their way to India. A civil war followed, and India aided the Mukti Bahini, as Bangladeshi freedom fighters were called. In early December, Pakistan attacked India on its western front; India retaliated, and its troops defeated Pakistan on both fronts within a fortnight. Indian troops entered Dhaka, and thousands of Pakistani troops surrendered. A few weeks later Mujib returned to the Tejgaon airport. A sea of humanity greeted the leader of the new nation, Bangladesh.

Three and a half years later, Farooq and his men annihilated most of Mujib’s family. “Even dogs didn’t bark when we killed Mujib,” Farooq told me.
T    HE SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN of 1975 was not the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of 1971. He squandered his unprecedented goodwill for two reasons. First, he could not meet the phenomenal expectations Bangladeshis had in his leadership. Lifschultz, who
was based in Dhaka in 1974, remembers the day when Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, visited Bangladesh for the first time since its independence from Pakistan. As Bhutto’s motorcade moved from the airport into central Dhaka, a section of the crowd lining the street shouted, “Bhutto Zindabad (Long Live Bhutto).”
Lifschultz thought this was rather bizarre. He told me there were conflicted feelings among some Bangladeshis who in 1974 were living through the first stages of a severe famine. Clearly, some believed their hopes had been belied, but to him, the cheering of Bhutto seemed particularly perverse, given the circumstances of Bangladesh’s emergence.
B    ANGLADESHI FRUSTRATION with Mujib was understandable. By mid-1974, Bangladesh was reeling from a widespread famine that experts believe was at least partly due to political incompetence. Citizens were also stunned by the ostentatious weddings of Mujib’s sons at a time of economic crisis. Food distribution had failed, and people were forced
to sell their farm animals to buy rice. Thousands of poor people left their villages looking for work in the cities. Irene Khan, who was until recently the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, was a schoolgirl in the early 1970s. She recalls hungry voices clamouring for food outside the gates of her family home every day.
With public criticism over the mass starvation growing, Mujib clamped down on dissent. He abolished political parties and created one national party called Bangladesh Krishak Shramik Awami League (BAKSAL); removed freethinking experts who did not agree with his policies; nationalised newspapers (closing most), and allowed only two each—in Bangla and in English. He stifled dissent within the party, suspended the constitution, and declared himself president. Now editor of The Daily Star, Anam calls those measures the greatest blunder Mujib made. “It is still a mystery what led him to do that. He had it all. There was nothing, nobody in the parliament opposed to his policies, except for a few voices. He was the tallest man in the country. Why did he do it? It was in total contrast to his political heritage. It was a dramatic transformation from a multiparty system to a one party state.”



The only time I met Farooq, in 1986, he expressed outrage at those changes, “How do you pass an amendment in Parliament which abolishes party membership in just 11 minutes? No discussions, nothing!” Bangladesh, in his opinion, was becoming a colony of India, and as a freedom fighter, he thought he had to stop that. “I tried to save the country,” he told me, his tone rising, “Mujib had changed the constitution so that the court could not do a thing. All power was with the president.”
None of Farooq’s explanations justified the terrible manner in which he and his family were killed, but the famine and his increasingly authoritarian rule partly explains why there was little outward expression of grief after his assassination. At the same time, it was not just Mujib’s killing, but the brutality of it, that many Bangladeshis felt justified the death penalty for the assassins.

Justice moves slowly in Bangladesh. According to a recent study, Bangladesh’s jails can hold only 27,000 prisoners, but there are some 70,000 inmates in jail, and some 47,000 are still awaiting trial, according to the inspector-general of prisons. One reason for the backlog is the shortage of judges. The other is that some defendants are too poor to afford legal help.

The trial of Mujib’s assassins falls under a different category. There was little political will to try the assassins. That changed when Hasina came to power. The five of- ficers were sentenced to death as early as 1998. They appealed, but higher courts upheld the sentence in April 2001 and November 2009 respectively. They sought a Supreme Court review, and later, four of the five applied for presidential pardon. While the government meticulously followed the constitutional procedures, many have noted the speed with which the final appeals were dealt with.

A four-member special bench of the Supreme Court’s appellate division met at 9:25 am and issued a verdict at 9:27 am, on 26 January 2010, rejecting the review petition. Senior civil servants of the law and home ministry met at noon, and discussed the issue for three hours. Farooq, who had resisted writing his mercy petition, did so that afternoon. Officials received and dispatched his petition within minutes, as they were all in one room with colleagues whose approval was needed. A report on bdnews24.com said that President Zillur Rahman rejected the petition at 7:30 pm (the hangings occurred soon after midnight).

The quick turnaround of the documents was remarkable. One lawyer told me, “What you saw wasn’t due process; it was process with undue speed.”
T    HERE IS A SENSE IN DHAKA NOW, that the executions have brought the tragedy to a close. Perhaps; but many other wounds continue to fester. On the day of Mujib’s killing in 1975, the officers had also arrested Tajuddin Ahmed, Nazrul Islam, Kamaruzzaman, and Mansur Ali—four leading Awami League politicians suspected of being pro-Mujib. On the
night of 3 November 1975, soldiers came to the jail, and asked for the four to be brought to one cell. The jail authorities tried to find out what was going on, when a call from the president asked them to cooperate. The soldiers then took out their weapons, and, without reading out any charges, without any trial or any authority, sprayed bullets on them, killing them instantly. Mosleuddin, involved with the 15 August killings, proudly claimed to have played a role in the jail killings. Khondaker gave the killers immunity. Some pro-Mujib of- ficers overthrew Khondaker two days later. A counter-coup followed, and the situation was stabilised weeks later when Gen Ziaur Rahman took over, ending the pretence of civilian rule. Tajuddin’s daughter, Simeen Hossain Rimi, has compiled her father’s writings and sought justice. The government has said it will pursue that case, too. And then there are the war crimes.
When Hasina came to power in 2008, one of her electoral promises was to seek justice for the victims of the 1971 war. Without getting into the technical debate over whether what happened in Bangladesh in 1971 was a genocide— which is a legal term with a precise meaning in international law—there is enough evidence to prove that both war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in Bangladesh. Many of those who committed those acts are still free: some live abroad, some in Pakistan and some in Bangladesh, living with the same impunity as some of Mujib’s killers did until recently. These individuals resisted an independent Bangladesh, and successive governments in Bangladesh haven’t pursued the matter. Some governments lacked the political capital and will, some had little moral authority, and some have even been complicit with some of the crimes.
That context has changed with Hasina’s recent victory. Irene Khan, who worked for many years at the UN High Commission for Refugees before leading Amnesty International, told me:
You can have debates about whether particular acts constitute war crimes or genocide. You can debate whether what happened was a war or an internal con- flict. But they were crimes against humanity. There was obviously culpability and collusion of some locals with the Pakistani army. For instance, in December 1971, before the formal handover to the Indian army, there was a whole list of intellectuals who were picked up and killed. These were not political cases; these were civilians. Those crimes have remained uninvestigated; it is extremely important that there is a commission of inquiry, if Bangladesh is to put a closure to this chapter of its history. Even if you will have only a limited number of prosecutions, you need a full record of what happened.
Pakistan’s own war inquiry commission report of 1974 mentions that tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and many women were raped. Bangladeshis find that report incomplete because it barely scratches the surface of what happened.
Justice for those crimes against humanity won’t be easy. At the time of the final handover of Pakistani prisoners of war, India and Bangladesh signed a tripartite treaty with Pakistan, which effectively granted immunity to Pakistani soldiers. While Bangladesh passed a law subsequently to try war criminals, that law only focused on Bangladeshi collaborators, leaving out the Pakistani army. “That issue has always been brushed under the carpet,” Irene Khan told me. “The real question is: can an international treaty sign away the rights to justice of victims? The treaty absolves the Pakistani army and political leaders.”
Realpolitik may have prevented going after Pakistanis, and domestic politics made targeting local collaborators complicated. Hasina’s rival was Khaleda Zia, Ziaur Rahman’s widow. She led the Bangladesh National Party, which has had an electoral alliance with Jamaat-i-Islami, a fundamentalist party. Some of the Jamaat’s leaders and many followers are accused of being collaborationists.

The Bangladeshi government had said it would commence trials in March. A tribunal was expected to be set up in Dhaka by 26 March, Bangladesh’s Independence Day, but nobody has been indicted yet, no prosecutors or investigators have been appointed, and only Bangladeshi ‘collaborators’ will be tried. Some observers fear that the process will be seen as an attack on Jamaat-i-Islami. If the initial indictees are only from the Jamaat, they will claim they are being victimised, and the credibility of the process will suffer. A fair process would also investigate the conduct of the Mukti Bahini, the Bangladeshi freedom fighters who are alleged to have committed atrocities against Urdu-speaking Biharis, many of whom supported Pakistan.

And all this, to what end? It is a people’s quest for justice; a society’s desire to break the imposed silence. It is to reassert the norms that govern a nation, to re-establish the foundations on which civilisation can rest.
Irene Khan is not sure if the recent executions will help turn the tide against the culture of impunity. “This is a systemic problem in Bangladesh,” she says. “There is impunity from the local policeman who beats up a suspected thief, to the security forces who tortured and killed suspected mutineers in interrogation cells.” She refers to the failed Bangladesh Rifles mutiny last year. Guards of Bangladesh Rifles objected to army officers commanding them, so they held officers hostage, killing many of them and ransacking the barracks, before surrendering. Hundreds of mutineers were tortured later, and over 60 died.
T    HE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY runs deep. Hasina may think of reaching closure for her personal grief. For millions of Bangladeshis, that remains an elusive goal. Projonmo 71 is a social movement, bringing together the children of those who died during the independence war. Staunchly Bengali in their nationalism, many of its members are secular.
Meghna Guhathakurta, an academic who taught international relations at Dhaka University and is now the director of Research Initiatives, a development think tank, is one of them.

She vividly remembers the midnight of 25 March 1971. Her father, Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, who was a professor of English at Dhaka University, was correcting examination papers. Schools and colleges were closed, as Bangladeshis had embarked on a non-cooperation movement. She feared her father would get arrested, and they had been warned.
An army convoy came to the campus. There were six apartments in the building. The soldiers began banging on the doors. An officer and two soldiers entered their ground floor apartment through the back garden. The officer asked in Urdu, “Where is the professor?” Her mother asked why they wanted to meet her husband. The officer said they had come to take him away.

“Where?” she asked. The officer did not reply.
Guhathakurta told me what followed in a calm voice:
My mother called my father. The officer asked my father if he was the professor. My father said yes. ‘We have come to take you,’ he said. Meanwhile, several other professors were being brought down. Some families tried to hold them, but we told them—‘let them go, otherwise they will shoot you.’ We turned around, and we heard the firing of guns. And we saw all of them lying in a pool of blood. Some were shouting for water. We rushed out to the front part of our compound. I saw my father lying on the ground. He was fully conscious. He told me they had asked him his name and his religion. He said he was a Hindu, and they gave orders to shoot him. My father was hit by bullets in his neck, his waist, and it left him paralysed. The soldiers had run away. We took my father to the house. We could not take him to the hospital because there was a curfew.

He remained in pain, and they could only take him to the hospital on 27 March, when the curfew was lifted. He died three days later.
I asked her about the executions of Mujib’s assassins. “I am against impunity, and I am very much happy justice has been met,” she said. “But I am not happy that we have the death penalty. Not every crime has been tried yet.”
She is a peace activist and has thought of forgiveness, but there is a moral dilemma around that idea. British writer Gillian Slovo, who was born in South Africa, had faced such a moral quandary in the years after apartheid was lifted. During apartheid, Slovo’s father, Joe, led the South African Communist Party, and he and her mother, Ruth, first lived in exile in Mozambique, from where they carried on their anti-apartheid activism. They were among the few whites to take on the South African regime (her mother had been detained without trial in 1963, and the couple fled South Africa after the African National Congress leadership was rounded up). Tragedy struck in Mozambique, when agents of apartheid sent her a letter bomb, which exploded, killing her.
Slovo ended up confronting the man responsible for sending that lethal parcel to her mother. She discovered a copy of her book, which she had autographed, had ended up with that man. I met Slovo in late 2008, soon after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and I asked her if it was possible to forgive. After all, South Africa had astounded the world with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which offered a non-violent way in which the oppressor and victim could resolve differences face to face. Slovo told me, “Lots of countries like truth commissions because they look at South Africa and think of the miracle. But I am not sure if it was entirely miraculous; it had its flaws, too. The commission was a compromise to stop people from fighting. People need to see if the two sides want to stop fighting first. It is impossible to otherwise start a process that goes so deep. There is a difference between individual and collective responses. South Africa’s experience reflected the thinking of an archbishop [Desmond Tutu], whose church believed in forgiveness.”

Guhathakurta had studied at a convent, and the Christian ideas of mercy were ingrained in her as a child. She was 15 when her father was murdered, and the impression of those school lessons was strong. She told me, “I remember the first thing I did was to say: I forgive those who killed my father. But in a multicultural system it doesn’t always work. Not all religions are about forgiveness. Revenge is permitted in many religions. Human beings have a primordial urge to take revenge.”

Many years later, Guhathakurta was interviewing victims of 1971 for a film. She was talking to those who escaped from killing fields, and families of people who were victims. That’s when it occurred to her: trauma never really ends. Her nightmares will always stay. She acknowledged her anger. She did not want revenge; she wanted justice. She said:
For me, justice would be when the Pakistani government realises what it did. But they have not even recognised the genocide. For me, justice means something like Berlin’s Holocaust Museum is constructed in Islamabad. I want to see signs where they say that such an event took place, and it was our fault, because we did it, and we are sorry. You can’t ask the daughter to forgive the murderer of her father. Revenge doesn’t make sense, either. Just because my father died doesn’t mean yours has to die. But recognition, that something took place, and the fact that it should not take place again— that’s justice. The Holocaust museum says it happened, therefore it can happen again.

Slovo had put it slightly differently: Real reconciliation only happens when the terrible is acknowledged, so that you can’t say it did not happen.
TOWARDS THE END of the Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie’s novel,Kartography, Maheen tells her niece Raheen, “Bangladesh made us see what we were capable of. No one should ever know what they are capable of. But worse, even worse, is to see it and then pretend you didn’t. The truths we conceal don’t disappear, Raheen, they appear in different forms.
Bangladesh abounds with victims—each family has a horror story of its own, where a loved one has been hurt grievously, and the ones who have committed those atrocities have not faced justice, nor expressed remorse. It is impossible to heal everyone. But honest accounting of what happened would be a good start. Trying Mujib’s killers, seeking the extradition of those living abroad and solving the mystery of the jail killings are useful steps in making sense of their warped politics, where individuals bragging about killing defenceless people were being rewarded.

Removing the culture of impunity will be a small step towards justice—not necessarily through death penalties, but through remorse, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Until that happens, the question Projonmo 71 left inscribed on the plaque commemorating the martyred intellectuals at Rayer Bazaar in Dhaka will continue to resound across the wounded rivers and valleys, awaiting an answer: “Tomra ja bolechhiley, bolchhey ki ta Bangladesh?” (Is Bangladesh saying what you had wanted to say?

নিচের বোল্ড করা অংশটুকু তাহেরের শেষ চিঠি থেকে নেয়া:
রায় শুনে আমাদের আইনজীবীরা হতবাক হয়ে গেলেন। তারা এসে আমাকে জানালেন, যদিও এই ট্রাইব্যুনালের বিরুদ্ধে আপিল করা যাবে না তবুও তারা সুপ্রিম কোর্টে রিট করবেন। কারণ বেআইনিভাবে এই আদালত তার কাজ চালিয়েছে ও রায় দিয়েছে। সঙ্গে সঙ্গে প্রেসিডেন্টের কাছে আবেদন করবেন বলে বললেন। আমি তাদেরকে স্পষ্টভাবে জানিয়ে দিলাম, প্রেসিডেন্টের কাছে আবেদন করা চলবে না। এই প্রেসিডেন্টকে আমি প্রেসিডেন্টের আসনে বসিয়েছি, এই বিশ্বাসঘাতকদের কাছে আমি প্রাণভিক্ষা চাইতে পারি না
"এই প্রেসিডেন্টকে আমি প্রেসিডেন্টের আসনে বসিয়েছি। এই বিশ্বাসঘাতকদের কাছে আমি প্রাণভিক্ষা চাইতে পারি না।" তিনি যখন চিঠিটি লিখেন, তখন সরকারে কারা ছিল? যারা বঙ্গবন্ধুর হত্যাকারী, তারাই। কারণ তারই বঙ্গবন্ধুর হত্যাকারীদেরকে পুণর্বাসন করেছিল, হত্যাকারীদের বিচার না করে তাদেরকে পুরস্কৃত করেছিল ইত্যাদি,যা কারই অজানা নেই। এছাড়াও স্বাধীনতা বিরোধীদেরও তারা পুণর্বাসন করেছিল। কর্ণেল তাহের তার চিঠিতে নিজেই উপরোক্ত স্বীকার উক্তি দিয়ে প্রমান করেছিলেন যে,বঙ্গবন্ধু হত্যার সাথে তিনিও সম্পৃক্ত ছিলেন। কারণ তিনি তার চিঠিতে উল্লেখ করেছেন, 'এই প্রেসিডেন্টকে আমি প্রেসিডেন্টের আসনে বসিয়েছি।' এই বসানোর পিছনে তাহেরের বিরাট ভূমিকা রয়েছে। বঙ্গবন্ধু হত্যার পিছনে ছিল আন্তর্জাতিক চক্রান্তের বিশাল থাবা, আর এই হত্যাকারীরা ছিল তাদের ক্রীতদাস। মুক্তি যুদ্ধে পাকিস্তান হেরে যাওয়াতে, পাকিস্তানের সহায়তাদানকারী(মার্কিন যুক্তরাষ্ট্র,সৌদী্ আরব ও চীন) আহত হায়েনারা মরন থাবা দেয়ার জন্য সুযোগের সন্ধানে ছিল ওৎপেতে বসে। মার্কিন যুক্তরাষ্ট্র ষড়যন্ত্রের জাল বিছিয়েছিল বিপথগামী কিছু সেনাবাহিনী এবং বেইমান উচ্চাভিলাষী আওয়ামী লীগ নেতাদের মাঝে। আর চীন তার জাল বিছিয়েছিল বৈজ্ঞানিক সমাজতন্ত্রের মুলমন্ত্রদানকারী অতি বিপ্লবী সমাজতান্ত্রিক মোল্লাদেরকে দিয়ে। আর সৌদীর প্রচেষ্টা ছিল রাজাকারদেরকে আবার পুনর্বাসন করা নিয়ে। যা তৎকালীন সময়কার পেক্ষাপট বিশ্লেষন করলেই স্পষ্ট বুঝা যায়। নিচের উদ্ধৃতিগুলো বিশ্লেষন করলেই তা স্পষ্ট হয়ে যায়।
নিচের বোল্ড করা অংশটুকু তাহেরের শেষ চিঠি থেকে নেয়া:
জলিল, রব, জিয়া আমাকে দৃঢ় আলিঙ্গনে আবদ্ধ করলো। এই আলিঙ্গন অবিচ্ছেদ্য। এমনিভাবে দৃঢ় আলিঙ্গনে আমরা গোটা জাতির সঙ্গে আবদ্ধ। কেউ তা ভাঙতে পারবে না।
বিভিন্ন সেলে আবদ্ধ কয়েদি ও রাজবন্দীরা অধীর আগ্রহে তাকিয়ে আছে বন্ধ সেলের দরজা-জানালা দিয়ে। মতিন সাহেব, টিপু বিশ্বাস ও অন্যান্যরা দেখালো আমাকে বিজয় চিহ্ন। এই বিচার বিপ্লবীদেরকে তাদের অগোচরে ঐক্যবদ্ধ করলো।
সেনাবাহিনীতে কর্মরত অবস্থায় থেকে কোন সেনাকর্মকর্তার রাজনীতি করার কোন সুযোগ নেই, অথচ কর্ণেল তাহের তার বক্তব্যতে স্পষ্ট করেছিলন, তিনি সেনাবাহিনিতে থাকাকালীন অবস্থায় প্রত্যক্ষ রাজনীতির সাথে সম্পৃক্ত ছিলেন। সেই রাজনীতি ছিল কোনটি? রব, জলিল, ইনু এরা কোন রাজনীতি করতো? এরাই ছিল তখনকার অতি বিফ্লবী সমাতান্ত্রিক রাজনৈতিক দল জাসদের নেতৃত্বে এবং কর্ণেল তাহের ছিল এদের ইন্ধনদাতা। যিনি সব সময় কল্পনা করতো, চীনের আদলে সেনাবাহিনী তৈরী করে দেশ শাসন করবেন, যা মেজন ডালিমের স্বীকারোক্তিতে পাওয়া যায়।
স্বাধীনতার পর দেশে সরকার যেন স্থির অবস্থায় না থাকতে পারে এটাই ছিল ষড়যন্ত্রকারীদের প্রধান লক্ষ্য। তাই এই অতি বিপ্লবী রাকজনীতিকদেরকে তারা ক্রীতদাস বানিয়ে, তাদের দ্বারা দেশের মধ্যে অশান্তি সৃষ্টি কারই ছিল তাদের উদ্দেশ্য। এই সময় জাসদের রাজনৈতিক উদ্দেশ্যই তা প্রমান করে যে, তারা আমাদের স্বাধীনতা বিরোধী শত্রুদের সাথে সম্পৃক্ত হয়েই এখানে কার্যক্রম চলিয়েছিল। এরা তখন জঘন্যতম অপরাধের কিই না করেছিল। সমাজতন্ত্রের অপব্যাখ্যা প্রদান করে, এদেশের তরুণ সমাজকে তারা জঙ্গী বানাতে তারা এতটুকুও কুণ্ঠাবোধ করেনি। যা বর্তমানে ইসলামী জঙ্গীবাদীরা করছে। তাদের মুল উদ্দেশ্য ছিল বঙ্গবন্ধুকে হত্যা করে যেন তেন ভাবে সিংহাসন দখল করা। তাই তারা সশস্ত্র সংগ্রামের মাধ্যমে সমাজতন্ত্র কায়েমের কথা বলে, তরুণ সমাজকে লেলিয়ে দিয়েছিল। তাদের অসৎ উদ্দেশ্যের জন্য তারা যুদ্ধে ব্যবহারকৃত অস্ত্রগুলো জমা না দিয়ে, তারা তৎকালীন সময় সমাজের তরুণদের হাতে তুলে দিয়েছিল সেইসব অস্ত্র। রাজনৈতিক দলের উদ্দেশ্য কখনই ডাকাতি হতে পারে না। কিন্তু এরা তাই করতো। এর সগ্রামের ব্যয়ের নামে অর্থ মানুষের বুকে অস্ত্র ধরে এরা অর্থ সংগ্রহ করতো। এরা মানুষের কাছে চিঠি সাথে কাফনের কাপড় ও বুলেট পাঠিয়ে, ভয় দেখিয়ে অর্থ সংগ্রহ করতো। এরা বেছে বেছে বুদ্ধিজীবি, বিজ্ঞ রাজনীতিকদের হত্যা করতো। সমাজে যত প্রকারের বিশৃঙ্খলা করার, এরা তাই করতো। জলিল, রব, ইনু, জিকু, সিরাজ সিকদার, সিরাজুল ইসলাম সহ আরও অনেকই ছিল এদের হোতা এবং ব্যাকসাইট লিডার হিসাবে ছিল কর্ণেল তাহের। '৭৫-এর নভেম্বর যখন জিয়াকে বন্দি করেছিল, মোশারফ বাহিনীকে নির্মুল করা হলো এবং জিয়াকে মুক্তির নামে পরবর্তী সময়টাতে যা কিছু ঘটেছিল, তা ছিল কর্ণেল তাহেরের নির্দেশিত সাজানো নাটক।
শেখ মুজিবকে স্ব-পরিবারে হত্যা করা ছিল ষড়যন্ত্রকারীদের প্রথম ধাপ। দ্বিতীয় ধাপ ছিল, সেনাবাহীনির মধ্য থেকে স্বাধীনতার পক্ষে মুক্তিযোদ্ধাদেরকে হত্যাকরা। তা তারা ঘটিয়েছিল নভেম্বরে। এরপরেই ধাপ ছিল জিয়ার সাথে কর্ণেল তাহেরের সিংহাসন ভাগাভাগির সন্ধি। কারণ জিয়াকে উদ্ধারের সময় ইনু একজন রাজনীতিবিদ হয়ে ক্যান্টমেন্টে তখন অবস্থান করছিল। এই ইনু ছিল জাসদের সশস্ত্র সংগ্রামের প্রধান সেনাপতি। তার নেতৃত্বেই তরুণদেরকে সশস্ত্র সংগ্রামের উদ্বুদ্ধ করা হতো। কর্ণেল তাহের ভাল করেই জানতো যে, জিয়া ছিল অত্যন্ত ক্ষমতা লিপ্সু একজন সিনিয়র সেনা কর্মকর্তা। কারণ এই জিয়া স্বাধীনতা ঘোষনাপত্র রেডিওতে পাঠ করতে গিয়ে, নিজেকে প্রেসিডেন্ট বলে নিজেকে দাবী করেছিল। পরবর্তীতে চট্টগ্রামের আওয়ামী লীগ নেতাদের চাপের মুখে শেখ মুজিবের নাম উল্লেখ করেছিল। জিয়ার এই চরিত্রের কারণেই কর্ণেল তাহেরের খুব ভাল করেই জানা ছিল। তাই খন্দকার মুশারফ বাহিনীকে খতম করার পরেও কর্ণেল তাহের জিয়াকে বন্দি দশা থেকে মুক্ত না করে,জিয়ার সাথে ক্ষমতা ভাগাভগির সন্ধি জন্য অপেক্ষা করছিল। জিয়া ছিল বিশ্ব মতলববাজ লোক। সে ছিল সেরের উপর সোয়াসের। নিজেকে বন্দি অবস্থা থেকে মুক্ত পাওয়ার জন্য কর্ণেল তাহেরের সব প্রস্তাবে রাজি হয় এবং মনে মনে প্রতিজ্ঞা করে,ওস্তাদের মার শেষ রাতেই দেখাবো। এবং দেখিয়েই ছেড়েছে সে। জিয়া বন্দি অবস্থা থেকে বের হয়েই ভাবলেন ওস্তাদের মার শেষ রাতে কিভাবে দেয়া যেতে পারে। এরাতো মুক্তিযোদ্ধা, আবার সেনাবাহীনির সাথে এদের গভীর সম্পর্ক আছে, এরা যে কোন সময় যা খুশি তা করতে পারে, এমনও হতে পারে একচটকানীতে তারে উল্টায়ে দিতে পারে। তাই জিয়া স্বাধীনতার কে শত্রু আর কে যুদ্ধাপরাধী তা বিচার না করে,ক্ষমতার লোভে জামাত শিবিরকে সঙ্গে নেবার বাসনায় তাদেরকে পুণর্বাসন করা শুরু করলো এবং বৈজ্ঞানীক সমাজতন্ত্রের স্বপ্নধারী, অবৈজ্ঞানীক মোল্লা কমরেডদেরকে এক যোগে জেলের মধ্যে পুরলেন। এটাই ছিল জিয়ার ওস্তাদের মার শেষ রাতে।
কর্ণেল তাহেরের উপরোক্ত উক্তির এই অংশে তা স্পষ্ট ফুটে উঠে, 'জলিল, রব, জিয়া আমাকে দৃঢ় আলিঙ্গনে আবদ্ধ করলো। এই আলিঙ্গন অবিচ্ছেদ্য। এমনিভাবে দৃঢ় আলিঙ্গনে আমরা গোটা জাতির সঙ্গে আবদ্ধ। কেউ তা ভাঙতে পারবে না।' অর্থাৎ জিয়াকে বিশ্বাস করে এখন সে অনুতপ্ত, জিয়ার বিশ্বাসঘাতকতা তাদেরকে চরম শিক্ষা দিয়েছে। তাই এখন থেকে কোনই সন্ধি নয়, সশস্ত্র সংগ্রামই একমাত্র পথ। জলিল,রব,জিয়ার আলিঙ্গনে তাই অনুভুতি লাভ করেছে, তার অবর্তমানে এরাই এই পথকে এগিয়ে নিয়ে যাবে।তাহের শেখ মুজিব হত্যাকারীদের মধ্যর যে একহন ছিলেন এবং সেও জিয়ার মত একজন ক্ষমতা লিপ্সু ছিল তাতে কোনই সন্দেহ নেই।
নিচের বোল্ড করা অংশটুকু তাহেরের শেষ চিঠি থেকে নেয়া:
দেশ সৃষ্টির জন্য আমি রক্ত দিয়েছি। আর সেই সূর্যের জন্য আমি প্রাণ দেব, যা আমার জনগণকে আলোকিত করবে, উজ্জীবিত করবে_এর চাইতে বড় পুরস্কার আমার জন্য আর কী হতে পারে? আমাকে কেউ হত্যা করতে পারে না। আমি আমার সমগ্র জাতির মধ্যে প্রকাশিত। আমাকে হত্যা করতে হলে সমগ্র জাতিকে হত্যা করতে হবে। কোন শক্তি তা করতে পারে? কেউ পারবে না।
কিন্তু বিশ্বাসঘাতক ও চক্রান্তকারী জিয়া ও তার সাঙ্গপাঙ্গরা আমাকে জনগণের সামনে হেয় করার জন্য মিথ্যার আশ্রয় নিয়েছে।
বৈজ্ঞানিক সমাজতন্ত্রবাদীরা কতটা স্বপ্নবিলাসী ছিল তাহেরের এই উক্তিতেই বোঝা যায়, 'আমাকে হত্যা করতে হলে সমগ্র জাতিকে হত্যা করতে হবে। আমি আমার সমগ্র জাতির মধ্যে প্রকাশিত।' আহা! সে মনে করেছিল যে, যুদ্ধে তার এক পা খোড়া হওয়াতে, তার রক্তের বিনিময়ে এই স্বাধীনতা হয়েছে, তাই সব জনগণ তার। ত্রিশ লক্ষ্য শহীদ এবং দুই লক্ষ্য মা-বোনের ইজ্জত কিছুই ছিল না। কি দুঃসাহসিক কথাবর্তা। জেগে জেগে স্বপ্ন দেখেছিল সব জনগণ তার, দেশের জনগণ তাকে যেন স্মরণ করে বসে থাকবে পৃথিবী ধ্বংসের পূর্ব মুহুর্ত পর্যন্ত। জনগণ এতই মনে রেখেছে যে, তার মৃত্যুর স্মরণ সভায় একশত জন মানুষ খুঁজে পাওয়া যায় না। আসলে যারা পথভ্রষ্ট হয়ে যায়, তারা পথভ্রষ্টই। তাদেরকে মনে রাখার কোনই প্রশ্ন জাগে না। শুধু এটাই না, জনগণতো পরের কথা, তার সঙ্গে যারা ছিল তাদের অবস্থা পরবর্তীতে কি হয়েছিল? যে জলিলকে বুকে জড়িয়ে ধরে তাহের অবিচ্ছেদ্য আলিঙ্গনের উস্মা উপলব্ধি করেছিল, সেই জলিল তাহের মৃত্যুর দশ পনের বছর পরেই, পাকিস্তানে গিয়ে পাক্কা মুসলমান সেজে সেখানেই মরলো। ইনু, রব, জিকু, এদের বর্তমানে কি অবস্থা?একেকজন একেক দলের পা চাটার দালাল হয়ে পড়ে আছে। কি স্বপ্ন ছিল তাহেরের!'আর সেই সূর্যের জন্য আমি প্রাণ দেব, যা আমার জনগণকে আলোকিত করবে,উজ্জীবিত করবে_এর চাইতে বড় পুরস্কার আমার জন্য আর কী হতে পারে?'আহা! পথভ্রষ্টরা পথভ্রষ্টই। এরা মানুষকে শুধু স্বপ্নই দেখাতে পারে, কিন্তু এদের নিজেদেরই যখন কোন পথ জানা না থাকে, তারা আবার জাতিকে কি পথ দেখাতে পারে? যাদের আলিঙ্গন তাহেরের কাছে অবিচ্ছেদ্য বলে মনে হয়েছিল, তারা নিজেরাই এমন বিচ্ছেদের মধ্যে আছে যে, এখন গণনাই করা যায় না। এক ব্যক্তি, এক দলে পরিণত হয়েছে।
শেখ মুজিবকে হত্যার ষড়যন্ত্রের আগে যদি তাহের এই অনুতপ্তটা করতে পারতো,তাহলে আজ সে সত্যি বীর মুক্তিযোদ্ধা হয়েই থাকতেন এতে কোনই সন্দেহ নেই। কিন্তু নিউটনের তৃতীয় সূত্রের কাছ থেকে কেউ শিক্ষা নিতেই চায় না। বিশ্বাসঘাতকতা করলে বিশ্বাসঘাতকদের শিকার হতে পারে, এটা যেন ভুলেই যায়। তাহের তার চিঠির এই উক্তি দিয়ে আবারও প্রমান করেছিল, 'কিন্তু বিশ্বাসঘাতক ও চক্রান্তকারী জিয়া ও তার সাঙ্গপাঙ্গরা আমাকে জনগণের সামনে হেয় করার জন্য মিথ্যার আশ্রয় নিয়েছে।'সে নিজেও জানতো না যে তাকে একদিন বলির পাঁঠা রূপে তার পরিণতি ঘটতে পারে।
হৃৎকমল, আর কতদিন মানুষকে বুঝ দেবার কথা বলবেন বঙ্গবন্ধুকে হত্যা করেছিল,তার দলের লোকেরাই। তাহলে ইতিহাস বলবে সিরাজকে হত্যা করেছিল মীরজাফরই,ব্রিটিশ বেনিয়ারা না। হ্যাঁ, ব্রিটিশরা সিরাজকে ক্ষমতা থেকে সরানোর পরিকল্পনায় মীরজাফরকে ব্যবহার করেছিল, ঠিক তেমনিভাবে একই কায়দায় বাংলাদেশের মুক্তিযুদ্ধের পরাস্ত শক্তিরাও ব্যবহার করেছিল ঐ বেইমান কিছু নেতাদেরকে, পথভ্রষ্ট বৈজ্ঞানিক সমাজতন্ত্রের স্বপ্নবিলাসীদেরকে এবং এর রুপকে জন সম্মুখে বড় আকারে প্রচার করার জন্য বাকশালের অনেক নেতাকেই ঐ মসন্ত্রিসভার সদস্য করা হয়েছিল বন্ধুকের নল দেখিয়ে। এই সামান্য বিষয়টি যদি বুঝার ক্ষমতা না থাকে তাহলে রাজনৈতিক বিশ্লেষনমূলক বক্তব্য দেন কোন অধিকারে। তাই প্রথমেই বলেছিলাম,কালো চশমা পড়ে আলোতে কিছু দেখা গেলেও, অন্ধকারের কিছুই দেখা যায় না। যে অন্ধকারে এখনও আপনাদের মত অনেক লোকই পড়ে আছে। আপনিও তাদের বাহিরে নন।