The ideals that Bangabandhu lived and died for
There was something ominous about the day in which Bangabandhu was laid to rest in his native village of Tungipara when, according to the village elders, the "skies were knowingly weeping tears" (Syed Badrul Ahsan, From Rebel to Founding Father, p. xv). Fourteen soldiers were in charge of what their commanding officer Major Haider Ali called "the bloody burial business" (SA Karim, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 379). The mission of Ali and his men was to separate the body of Bangabandhu from the other victims of the carnage and return to Dhaka before nightfall. The assassins feared that had Mujib been laid to rest with the other members of his family in the unmarked graves in Banani, the site might one day turn into a pilgrimage. The body was therefore flown to Tungipara. The army helicopter sent a wave of panic among the villagers whose memory was still rife with the way the Pakistan army charred down the ancestral home of the Sheikh family in 1971. The villagers feared a similar backlash and the place wore a deserted look.
The soldiers found a distant relative who identified the body riveted with 29 bullets as that of Bangabandhu's. A local imam was asked to bury the corpse in "five minutes" without any rituals. "Is he a shahid?", asked the imam. Only martyrs could be buried unwashed as the stains are believed to testify to one's sacrifice on the Day of Judgement. The Major decided to spare some extra time to dodge the ideological quandary. A bar of laundry soap was arranged for the last rites and four saris were collected from a nearby hospital as there was not enough time to get a proper shroud. When asked for joining the janajas, the officers declined, mentioning that they had not performed their ablutions (AL Khatib, Who Killed Mujib?, p.38). The body was then lowered to a dug-up grave next to his father, where Bangabandhu still lies today.
The day before, on August 15, 1975, Bangabandhu was standing at the top of the stairs of the two-storied house on Road 32, Dhanmondi. The assailants had already killed his son Sheikh Kamal and an attendant as they stormed into the house around 4 in the morning. Bangabandhu's call for help was either a little too late or of no use. The silence speaks volumes of the treacherous plot. As he stood there in his white kurta and lungi, roaring his last words, "Where is Kamal? What do you want?" (Ahsan, p. 264), an officer was puzzled while another shot him in the chest and stomach. The body rolled down the stairs and dropped at the landing of the house from where he was once arrested by the Pakistan army on March 25, 1971.
For nine months, he was kept in a condemned cell in West Pakistan. He was sentenced to be hanged, and a grave was dug nearby. He told his captors that he was not afraid of death; after all, as a man, a Bengali, and a Muslim, he can die only once. He had the opportunity to leave before being arrested, but he did not want to flee like a coward. He told his comrades Tajuddin Ahmad and Syed Nazrul Islam to keep on the struggle, and that he would rather die in that very house. "This will be the place of Bangladesh. I want to breathe my last in this house" (Speeches, January 10, 1972). His words proved prophetic. The only difference is the men who actually killed him were wearing the badge of an institution born out of the Liberation War. These "renegade" soldiers later killed four associates of Bangabandhu—Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmad, M Mansur Ali and AHM Qamaruzzaman—who headed the war-time government that defeated Pakistan in the name of Mujib. The flaw in this textbook tragedy lies in the generosity of Bangabandhu. He trusted his men to a fault.
The betrayal, the burial, the tragic flaw: all are well-known. Air is thick with many conspiracy theories. Was it the spectre of the Cold War? Did the losing party have a hand in it? Did he offend any powerful neighbour? Did a bullet really start following him after his stance for non-alignment? Was it the dissatisfaction over the misrule in a war-ravaged country? The disgruntled officers had plenty of time to spew venom to claim that the tragic end of Bangabandhu was justified.
Born in a rural village, Bangabandhu came to the centre-stage of politics when the subcontinent was suffering from its birth pangs. Bangabandhu's love for his people was conditioned by his desire for a country without any oppression; a country that will protect its language and culture; a nation-state. But at the same time, he was alive to the changing world order.
On the independence day speech given on March 26, 1972, he said the following: "Our dream is to create a new world. We are working towards attaining a successful social reform." He went on to add later, "Awami League is a multi-class party. I have added peasants, workers, before it, but the characteristic of the party has remained unchanged. It cannot be done overnight. There are the nouveau rich in the party. The opportunity to loot for these people has increased manifold. I want to keep them in check in a socialist frame through the creation of BKSL. If this fails and if I die in the process, these people will engulf the party and indulge in further looting. They might even model themselves after the enemies and try to change the basic principles and characters of the Awami League. If that happens, I will die a second death. Let me warn you: if this second death happens in the hands of my party and its followers, then I shall have to be thrown into the abyss of forgetfulness for a long time. I don't know when I shall be able to return," (quoted in Bangabandhu's Political Life, Kali o Kolom, [my translation])
This speech once again proves to be prophetic. The resurgence of Bangabandhu and the celebration of his life and deeds in his centenary serve us an occasion to reflect on the analysis of the man and on what he wanted from life. He was never afraid of death. Death was his daily companion. He used to often recite the famous poems of Tagore, "Don't guard me from danger/This isn't what I pray for… Just don't let me be frightened by danger…" (Prison Diaries, p. 243).
When the assailants posed the ultimate danger at the time of his death, he cried out, one last time, "What do you want?"
Today on his death anniversary, if we are to return the love that Bangabandhu invested in us, we need to ask ourselves, "What do we want?"
To answer that we need to return to the details of how Bangabandhu lived and how he died. And the ideals that he lived and died for.
Shamsad Mortuza is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), and a professor of English at Dhaka University (on leave).
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