‘Joi Bangla’

For most of us, it is a sad and grim December. Forty-one years ago, the Dhaka Racecourse resonated with thunderous chants of  “Joi Bangla”. People were in ecstasy. The instrument of surrender was sealed and the green flag was formally lowered from the soil of the erstwhile East Pakistan. History had come full circle. A nation was reborn.

While Bengalis in the erstwhile eastern wing of Pakistan were rejoicing their hard-earned liberation, people in the western wing were in a state of stunned shock and utter disbelief. What had gone wrong? There was, however, the inevitable conclusion that there could be no military solution to a political problem.

December 16, 1971 takes me back to my impressionable years at Dhaka University. Everything around was enchanting. A morning drive from the hostel to the campus on a rickety cycle rickshaw was a fascinating experience while coming across sari-clad girls with beaming smiles on their faces.

Ayub Khan’s long era was drawing to a close. The sense of alienation in the eastern part of the country had reached its heights. Despite all this, I had never come across the word ‘secession’. Hardcore Bengali nationalists would only talk about regional autonomy. Imperatives of nation-building had made it evident that we were essentially a polity. This required varying dispensations to move the country forward but the leadership refused to believe this and we clung to centrist policies in the name of ideology, denying the fact that an ideology is like a steady tide with ebbs and flows and not a concrete mass. It is an ever-evolving paradigm.

The Dhaka Racecourse, which proved to be our Granada in 1971, was the same place where I got the chance to have a close view of Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman. It was March 1969. The Racecourse ground, popularly known as the Ramna Green, was milling with a jostling crowd. I was struggling to find a vantage point that could enable me to glimpse Sheikh Mujeeb. By now, he was the sole voice of the Bengalis and symbolised the aspirations of the people. He had been released from jail after a long incarceration, having been witch-hunted for propounding his famous six points and subsequently, tried in the Agartala Conspiracy case. That evening, Sheikh Mujeeb was in an upbeat mood, captivating the charged crowd with his histrionics. He talked about the rights of his people and vowed to shed his blood for ‘Sonar Bangla’. On that very day, a student leader of Dhaka University, Tofail Ahmed, named Sheikh Mujeeb ‘Bangla Bundhu’ — friend of Bengal. Even today, the nation remembers him with this appellation.

I had many friends in that rally. They had been close friends for many years. We laughed and shared our concerns together. We dined and moved together, engaged in long discourses, at times agreed, but more often than not, were quite different from each other. In March 1971, after the Pakistan Army’s crackdown, some of my Bengali friends took up arms and joined the liberation force. One-time friends were now estranged fellows.

Lately, I have been able to pick up the thread and revive old contacts. We have all mellowed down. In my reckoning, our erstwhile compatriots may well forgive us but can never forget what was done to them. While Bangladesh is on the move, bonding together as a nation-state, we still appear to be in a state of smugness, refusing to learn from our painful history.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2012.