Bangabandhu and our four Founding Principles

In this mournful month of August, we remember Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman— the sobriquet we fondly call the Father of the Nation— and whose name, ideals, political philosophy are interwoven with the history of Bangladesh.

One of the most significant achievements of Bangabandhu and the Constituent Assembly was to endow the country with a Constitution within one year of a bloody war and the biblical massacre. The Constitution adopted four foundational principles: democracy, nationalism, secularism, and socialism, which had served as the guiding principles of Bangabandhu's political odyssey. Ever since he started his incredible political journey to confront the divisive communal, feudal, and discriminatory philosophy of the primordial state of Pakistan, his vision and mission was to establish the right of the Bangalee people to reclaim their land and their legitimate right to rule themselves and to create an exploitation-free society based on equality.

To contextualise and understand our founding principles that shaped our nation's identity, we need to understand the role and contribution of Bangabandhu and his struggles throughout his political journey, from his volunteering to aid the victims of the communal riot of Calcutta in 1946, his engagement in Dhaka University politics and causes of expulsion from the University for raising his voice in favour of the fourth class employees,  his role as a young leader in the language movement and the subsequent political movements, the 6 points demand, non-cooperation movement, his historical speech on 7 March in his iconic thunderbolt voice which inspired the nation to unite and eventually, to the declaration of independence. No one in our history could have understood the nation's pulses better than he did. He was unparallel, visionary, ecumenical, and a politician above all politics.

His political ideals and goals become explicit through his writings as well (The Unfinished Memoirs, Prison Diaries, and New China—as I saw it). His essays and speeches serve as invaluable reservoirs of his thoughts, beliefs and ideals on politics, state, law, and society. They illuminate our understanding of the core principles of his life, which were enshrined as the four founding principles in our 1972 Constitution, which could have been termed radical in the context of the then realities. These principles contained those very ideals for which the liberation war was fought. In other words, it indicated that the people of Bangladesh waged the liberation war to establish a civil society instead of a military-dictated one that the nation had experienced throughout its life as East Pakistan.

Bangabandhu's idealism was more than merely theoretical. He was a man of action whose ideals were inspired by the real-life experiences of the ordinary people. His entire life's politics was at its core, about the mass people's politics. Although he was aware of identarian schisms based on language, ethnicity, and religion, he did not attempt to sow seeds of discord and hostility based on the same. He saw the nationalist movement as a fight for more than freedom from the external colonial authority— it was also a fight to form a democratic state and a fair and just socioeconomic system.

Bangabandhu's vision for the country's economy manifests through his commitment in building a more egalitarian, self-reliant economic order along socialistic lines to eradicate poverty. He frequently emphasised in his writings the two ideas that propelled him into politics: rescuing the workers and peasants from exploitation and ending inequity between the affluent and the poor. He firmly believed that these objectives could be best realised through socialism. His idea of socialism was that of an 'exploitation-free society'. Socialism, to him, was not an end in itself, rather an instrument to realise a goal, which is also reflected in our preamble of the Constitution:

"It shall be a fundamental aim of the state to realise through the democratic process a socialist society, free from exploitation—a society in which the rule of law, fundamental human rights and freedom, equality and justice, political, economic and social, will be secured for all citizens."

The political and economic emancipation of the Banglee people was indeed at the core of his struggle, which is the crux of our constitutional ethos as well. In addition, Bangabandhu emphasised the need for social justice. Indeed, securing political, economic, and social justice for everyone was of immense significance to him.

Although Bangabandhu's interpretation of Bangalee nationalism is at times characterised as an ethnolinguistic nationalism for political correctness, the development of events in his political career points towards a more territorial turned civic nature of his nationalist politics. Therefore, his idea of nationalism includes the culture, values, and spirits for which he had fought his entire life: cultural harmony, diversity, plurality, and secularism in the country.

Bangabandhu was one of the clearest exponents of secularism. He did not see any merit in the Western or Communist idea of the anti-religious way of comprehending secularism. He also didn't see sense in shunning religious activities in a bid to 'appear secular'. As a profoundly religious man himself, he perceptively viewed the use of religion in political life as a manifestation of sheer manipulative opportunism and as detrimental to the growth of any democratic polity. He never shied away from proclaiming himself unapologetically, as a Muslim and unapologetically, as secular— the two identities, that many of our fellow countrymen find difficult to strike a balance between, in today's Bangladesh.

Bangabandhu's speech on 4 November 1972, the day the Constitution was adopted, provided a farsighted clarion call, a futuristic appeal to the nation. He placed the burden of ensuring that the Constitution is implemented on the future generations. His firm conviction was that the struggle throughout his life would only be meaningful, and the sacrifice of martyrs would be fruitful if future generations could build a society free from exploitation. He urged that his lifelong struggles would find meaning when future generations cherish the values of nationalism, democracy, socialism, and secularism, as enshrined in the Constitution. However, military dictators desecrated these ideals, as the country's constitutional discourse testifies, and eventually the nation went on a downward spiral.

Bangabandhu's lifelong ideals found their place as the founding principles in the 1972 Constitution. He is the man whom his comrade at arms and allies honor for fighting for the 'have-nots' and the oppressed— Fidel Castro once described, "I have not seen the Himalayas. But I have seen Sheikh Mujib. In personality and courage, this man is the Himalayas." Indeed, he was a man of mountainous height— with endless empathy for the toiling masses, passionate convictions for social justice in the country, lifelong struggles for democracy, and vision for creating an exploitation-free Sonar Bangla. His untimely, tragic, and brutal death might have killed him physically, but he is present in the spirit of the nation's very existence for which he sacrificed his entire life. It is for whom we can proudly carry a passport of an independent country and utter 'Joy Bangla'! The poet of politics was once asked what his strength and weakness were; he replied, "My greatest strength is the love for my people. My greatest weakness is that I love them too much." Indeed, he loved us (i.e., his countrymen) way too much! 

The writer is Professor of Law (on deputation), University of Dhaka and Commissioner, Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC).