I am a proud Bengali, and hail from a family of freedom fighters, some of whom died fighting to liberate Bangladesh from the clutches of a most oppressive military junta. Religion for me is a matter of private faith, but my identity, like that of my country people, centres on our great Bengali language, and the syncretic culture that grew round it down the centuries.
Many hardline radical Muslims in West Asia and Pakistan ridicule us because our women, including me, wear bindis on our forehead, or because we have a turmeric ceremony (gaye holud) during weddings. I have heard from a jihadi, who fought in Afghanistan and belongs to my native Chittagong, that even Osama Bin Laden was upset to hear Bengali Muslims still adhere to what he felt were Hindu practices like kopale teep (bindi on forehead) and gaye holud.
I don’t expect Laden to appreciate our Bengali culture, but I will say that this is a great syncretic culture that has emerged due to religions co-existing side by side in a spirit of unusual mutual tolerance.
Pakistan’s Unacceptable Ideals
We became part of Pakistan politically through events known to all and which I need not recount. But we never accepted Pakistan’s ideals because it denied us the right to our language and culture –the essence of our identity. The idea of Pakistan could never become acceptable in its erstwhile more populous wing.
Bengali Muslims constituted the biggest population group in Pakistan but those in the west, especially the Punjabi bureaucratic-military elite, decided they will never allow us into any power sharing arrangement. So even after the Awami League won a clear majority in the 1970 elections, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman could not become the prime minister of the country.
Mujib had seen it coming and prepared his people for the inevitable. Bangladeshi writer Foyez Ahmed says Bangabandhu visited Agartala, Tripura’s capital, in the early 1960s to plead for Indian support in a message he conveyed to Jawaharlal Nehru through then Tripura Chief Minister Sachindra Lal Singha.
Without getting into the details, it could be surmised that Bangabandhu had no illusions about power sharing in Pakistan, but he fought the 1970 elections to force an ultimate showdown with the Yayha Khan-led military junta by calling its bluff.
Independence at a Great Cost
We would have never succeeded in winning our independence in such a short time without India’s support – sheltering millions of refugees, and ultimately intervening militarily. But we should also not forget the huge sacrifices we made – 2.5 million people dead, half-a-million women dishonoured, tens of thousands of houses razed, a country left in rubble.
If the Pakistanis believed this was their own land, could there army do this? We were always second class citizens in Pakistan and the absence of democracy made it worst. So when we finally won independence at the cost of a sea of blood, we decided to follow India as our role model in creating a secular republic, the antithesis of Pakistan’s Islamic republic.
The counter-revolution struck within four years. Bangabandhu was killed along with most of his family. Our secularism was overturned by those that PM Sheikh Hasina describes as the “defeated forces of 1971.” It has taken the country nearly 40 years to defeat those “forces”, or at least push them on the defensive.
Payback Time
The war crimes trials, which begun in 2009, resulted in the hanging of four of the worst mass murderers of 1971. I am from Chittagong and I know how my own family members, all muktijoddhas (freedom fighters), were tortured by Salauddin Quader Chaudhury at his Goods Hill residence. And when his trial was in its final stages, SAQA, as this infamous character is known, produced a certificate from Punjab University Lahore that he was in West Pakistan all through 1971. Thankfully, our Supreme Court did not buy that white lie and SAQA was hanged.
My father Saifuddin Khan, who was at the forefront of the language and the autonomy movement launched by Bangabandhu, suffered unspeakable torture at the hands of the notorious Al Badr militia which Jamaat leader Ali Ahsan Mujahid (who also went to the gallows) headed.
They not only killed freedom fighters and Hindus, but also massacred the cream of the immensely influential and secular Bengali intelligentsia. Many of them, our finest minds, were killed on December 14, two days before the final Pakistani surrender. So our Victory Day is preceded by the Intellectual Martyrs Day, which is a day of remembrance, steeped in deep sorrow.
Shadows of Evil, and a Pledge for a Better Tomorrow
The murder of our secular bloggers and publishers have plunged the country into shadows of evil. Pakistan was defeated and forced to leave our land, but its brand of politics is still alive and must be crushed. Therefore, those who expect political reconciliation between freedom-loving Bengalis and pro-Pakistani Islamists are living in a fool’s paradise. This will never happen. One must win. And win we will.
So this December 16, we will celebrate our Victory Day with huge enthusiasm, because the victory of 1971 has been reinforced by the victory of bringing to justice the mass murderers of 1971. Pakistan has never learnt from its mistakes, and it never will. So long as the army controls its politics, Pakistan will never be a tolerant country. Thankfully, we broke away from this failed state and look how our economy, our society and our human development indices have progressed, which Amartya Sen or Kaushik Basu never fail to appreciate.
Bangladesh was born out of hope, and it has grown out of despair – of natural calamities, military overlordship and resurgent religious fundamentalism. I will never say that the threat from those who seek to restore the Pakistani-style religious politics is finished. Lawrence Lifschultz called Bangladesh a classic case of “unfinished revolution”. There cannot be anything truer than that.
We still have miles to go to create a Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal) – a dream nurtured by the likes of Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul and Jibananda Das. Inshallah, we shall overcome.
(Sumi Khan is Editor, Surjobart24, a Bangladeshi digital news portal)
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