Rise up and salute the sun
by Anwar A. Khan
Tajuddin Ahmad’s 94th birthday falls on 23rd July 2019. He is one the most far-famed politicians to delimitate Bangladesh’s glorious past history. In fact, he was an uppercase statesman of international stature. During our glorious Liberation War with the barbarous Pakistani military establishment in 1971 to set up Bangladesh, he was our Premier. He was born on 23rd July 1925 in a remote hamlet of Bangladesh’s soil. Despite his extraordinary human attributes, he always kept a very low profile in his politics and in life time. He still remains an unsung hero in our history which is very sad for a nation like us.
We have forgotten to remember this noble soul with due honour. Noted educationist and diplomat Prof Dr. Khan Sarwar Murshid once said, “Disremembering is equivalent to perfidy.” I was then a college student, but when I still close my eyes, I can clearly remember his handsome and bright face when I took lunch with him sometime towards the end of 1970 just before the national elections of the-then Pakistan at my maternal grandfather’s house at Maison Mia Bari, Kapasia under the Gazipur District, Bangladesh. When I talked to him, I found Tajuddin Ahmad was a man pure in heart and that he owned till his brutal murder in 1975.
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| The children of Tajuddin Ahmad |
Every aspect of his life is a jewel of intellectual prowess, silver-tongued, decent and a politician of perfect refinement with deep patriotism. It is an essential reading on Tajuddin for anyone interested in the struggle for establishing an independent and sovereign state in Bangladesh when Bangabandhu was languishing in Pakistan’s jail. No one will ever know what went through Tajuddind’s mind unless you are familiar with his magnificent character and the very difficult jobs that he did throughout his life, especially during our glorious Liberation War of 1971 to establish Bangladesh, and all the superlatives in the world will never be compensation for his loss in the wee hours of 3rd November 1975.
Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by any symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. Such is the moment I am presently experiencing because of absence of Tajuddin Ahmad in the realm of Bangladesh’s politics. I experience this high and saddest moment not for myself alone but for those people who have moved so courageously against the ramparts of injustice and who in the process have acquired a new estimate of their own human worth. It is because of leadership like Tajuddin, people were all united, in absence of Bangabandhu in the country during our glorious Liberation War in 1971, in the quiet conviction that it was better to suffer in dignity than to accept lives in humiliation. He is the real hero of our freedom struggle; and a noble-spirited politician for whom we can boast of.
We may recall the sorrow that Tajuddin Ahmad and his colleagues endured watching them only died on the gun bullets and bayonet charges in the Dhaka Central Jail by some hooligan junior army officers of Bangladesh Army. We unite all of our sufferings every day to him and his three other brilliant compatriots, asking for the grace and strength to endure them for the sake of Bangladesh. We ask to pray so that we may look forward to the joy that comes from remaining faithful witnesses to Tajuddin like honest and patriotic politicians.
We present our own sorrows and ask the Almighty to intercede for us with His benedictions for these great fallen sons of this sacred soil. Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarised in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau, "Improved means to an unimproved end.” This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man.
If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual lag must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world. So, we strongly feel the absence of Tajuddin Ahmad in Bangladesh.
Any student of history should not be surprised. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh's court centuries ago and cried, "Let my people go." This is a kind of opening chapter in a continuing story. The present struggle in Bangladesh is a later chapter in the same unfolding story. Something within has reminded the Bengalis of their birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded them that it can be gained. We had been caught up by the Bengali Nationalist Movement, and with our people we were moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of justice i.e. Bangladesh in 1971. Fortunately, some significant strides have been made in the struggle to end the long night of injustice by the Pakistani rulers’ domination on us.
We have seen the magnificent drama of independence unfolded in Bangladesh in 1971 under the able and dynamic leadership of Tajuddin and his paisanos. It came as a bright interlude in the long and sometimes turbulent struggle for our due rights: and the beginning of an emancipation of proclamation is providing a comprehensive legal basis for equality of opportunity in establishing Bangladesh.
What the main spirits of Bangladesh’s Liberation of 1971 are saying is that the demand for dignity, equality, jobs, and citizenship will not be abandoned or diluted or postponed. If that means resistance and conflict, we shall not flinch. We shall not be cowed. We are no longer afraid. The word that symbolises the spirit and the outward form of our encounter is politics, and it is doubtless that factor which made it seem appropriate to award a peace prize to one identified with struggle.
Broadly speaking, our struggle has meant not only relying on arms and weapons of struggle. It has meant noncooperation with customs and laws which are institutional aspects of a regime of discrimination and enslavement. It has meant direct participation of masses in protest, rather than reliance on indirect methods which frequently do not involve masses in action at all. Tajuddin Ahmad has stood like a solid rock to uphold these principles.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. As Arnold Toynbee says, "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore, the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word." The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of evils perpetrated by the Pakistani hellish swayers for more than two decades.
History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating detested path. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world. All our lives, we are engaged in preserving our experiences and keeping them fresh by artificially sprinkling the water of memory over them. They have ceased to retain their original smell and fragrance. Do you call it life— this effort at the preservation of a phantom freshness in something that is withered and gone? The answer is categorically “No!”
Let me say that I have the personal faith that mankind will somehow rise up to the occasion and give new directions to an age drifting rapidly to its doom. In spite of the tensions and uncertainties of this period, something profoundly meaningful is taking place. Old systems of exploitation and oppression are passing away, and out of the womb of a frail world’s new systems of justice and equality are being born. Doors of opportunity are gradually being opened to those at the bottom of society.
The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are developing a new sense of "some-bodiness" and carving a tunnel of hope through the dark hill of despair. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." Here and there an individual or group dares to love, and rises to the majestic heights of moral maturity. So, in a real sense, this is a great time to be alive. Therefore, I am not yet discouraged about the future. Granted, that the easygoing optimism of yesterday is impossible. Granted that those who pioneer in the struggle for peace and freedom will still face uncomfortable jail terms, painful threats of death; they will still be battered by the storms of persecution, leading them to the nagging feeling that they can no longer bear such a heavy burden, and the temptation of wanting to retreat to a more quiet and serene life. Granted, that we face a world crisis which leaves us standing so often amid the surging murmur of life's restless sea. But every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. It can spell either salvation or doom. In a dark confused world, the kingdom of God may yet reign in the hearts of men.
When we lose someone we love, it seems that time stands stiff. Those we love and lose are together with us in our heart forever in memory. What we shared will never die. It lives in our hearts, bringing strength and comfort while we are apart. With profound grief and sorrow, we regret the sad and brutal murder of our beloved leader, Tajuddin Ahmad. His departure has left a void that can never be filled. It has been forty forty years, but our tears are seldom gone. Till we meet again….It is now more than four decades but his memories of strong leadership and hard work will continue to guide us. “Memory is the scribe of the soul” which was aptly said by Aristotle. His life was a blessing; his memory was a treasure, and he is loved beyond words. A strong soldier and an exceptionally exemplary human being, adoring politician, devoted leader, our dearest man of history, he lived a glorious life always putting others before himself. Today we miss his grand presence deeply and sorrowfully. No one can replace his presence and we will live by the memories and the values that he gave us in his life time. Our hearts still ache with sadness and many tears still flow what it meant to lose him, no one will ever know. We miss him immensely.
Let me not leave you with a false impression. The problem is far from solved. We still have a long, long way to go before the dream of freedom is a reality for the people of Bangladesh. To put it figuratively in our language, we have left the dusty soils and crossed a bright sea whose waters had for years been hardened by a long and piercing winter of massive resistance. But before we reach the majestic shores of the promised-land and, there is a frustrating and bewildering wilderness ahead. We must still face prodigious hilltops of opposition and gigantic mountains of resistance. But with patient and firm determination, we will press on until every place of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope, until every place of pride and irrationality is made low by the leveling process of humility and compassion; until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a smooth plane of equality of opportunity; and until the crooked places of prejudice are transformed by the straightening process of bright-eyed wisdom like Tajuddin Ahmad. The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good. Because “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things” reminds us by Cicero.
Eternal in our hearts Tajuddin will always remain. E.M. Forster has correctly pointed out, “Unless we remember we cannot understand” because memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but it is theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. And we do not want to be so. Because William Faulkner prompts us to believe by right, “The past is never dead, it is not even past.” I believe every man's memory is his private literature. Because “Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us” as said aright by Oscar Wilde. Tajuddin Ahmad was not a man only, but a world for Bangladesh. The words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reverberate, “The leaves of memory seemed to make a mournful rustling in the dark.” He was the leader of will and force during a very defining moment of our history. On 23rd July 1925, a great statesman like Tajuddin Ahmad was born in a remote hamlet in Bangladesh to successfully lead his nation to its correct destiny in 1971. The state and its government should have a responsibility to officially remember this majuscule politician-statesman. We should rise up and salute this bright sun on his 94th Birth Day.
-The End –
The writer is a senior citizen of Bangladesh, writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs
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