We, in Bangladesh, need to deepen our understanding of the present situation in the country. We must understand the origins, history and tasks of the struggle of the Bengali people, and the organisations leading this struggle.
by Anwar A. Khan
It has been said of the world's history hitherto that might make right. But it was for us and for our time to reverse the maxim, and to say that right makes might and our right had truly made might in 1971. Our nation took a vow to achieve victory at all costs, victory in spite of all hardships, victory, however, long and hard the road may be; for without victory there was no survival.
Philosopher Voltaire said,”Injustice in the end produces independence.” We suffered injustice in every sphere of our life from the Pakistani regime for more than 23 years. And in order for us to be able to terminate this long standing injustice, we fought a bloody war against the brutal Pakistani regime for long nine months in 1971.
Our glorious Liberation War in 1971 to achieve Bangladesh was the people’s war. Because peoples’ from all classes: peasants to wood-carpenters to potters to labourers to students to teachers to doctors to engineers and other professionals and peoples’ from all castes, creeds and religions whole-heartedly partook in this great war for attainment of Bangladesh. But some bloody and cruel buggers and their mango-twigs call it a civil war to cover up their grave misdeeds. So, we must blunt them, once and for all.
December is the month for our victory. Three millions of our people were perished in the nine months of involvement by the Pakistani aggressive and violent criminals. After all, the blood and sacrifice, the boastful but worst criminal forces were defeated and the Bangladesh side emerged victorious. We became an independent and sovereign state on December 16, 1971. So, we celebrate December 16 as our Victory Day every year with pomp and grandeur. We find our supreme joy on this great day. This year we have celebrated 48th years of our victory.
But Bangladesh was not born overnight. We achieved our independence after a great sacrifice and through a hard struggle for more than two decades. If we look back, we discovered our identity through the Language Movement in 1952. Our struggle to establish our identity and national spirit started soon after 1947, when Pakistan came into being into two parts: East Pakistan and West Pakistan by combining two geographically, culturally, and linguistically separate groups of people. The people of this part consisting of 56% of total population of the whole of Pakistan soon realised that being a part of Pakistan, which was created on the two nation theory, there was little scope for the Bengalis to live and flourish.
The Bangla language was the most important vehicle of the cultural expression for our people. The central government in West Pakistan used to treat us as second class citizens and they refused to grant official status to the Bangla language which became the focal point of our struggle against the Pakistani domination since then.
We were told by our leaders that all who would live desiring Bangladesh would suffer ill and brutal treatments, and this was certainly true. The path of liberating Bangladesh from the cruel clutches of the Pakistani Army and their equally brutal local cohorts, the liberators took was a wide one, and strewn with thorns, though they followed the clarion call of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman< “OUR STRUGGLE THIS TIME IS A STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM, OUR STRUGGLE THIS TIME IS A STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE”. This epoch-making speech is considered the main event that inspired the Bengali nation to fight for its independence which preceded us and made of it a royal road towards achieving the country-Bangladesh.
The great freedom fighters of our nation, our liberators, and the martyrs paid a very heavy price for Bangladesh. Men and women, they willingly suffered in all manners of torture and even death to prove their love for Bangladesh during our glorious Liberation War in 1971. The consideration of what Bangabandhu and his party stalwarts willingly suffered for us impels us toward them with gratitude, and these great people, the martyrs, found no greater happiness than to be able to suffer and die for their loving country. They did so by the abundant graces they received through their long struggles, and they had proved their extraordinary fortitude through intense sufferings. The martyrs have left us the stories of their lives to inspire us also to at least confess the name of great fallen heroes in our daily lives, and to prove our belief in our actions.
With the advent of the full scale war towards early December, 1971, the freedom loving people became convinced that the Pakistani Junta intended a destruction of our way of life and belief. War is always a cruel, wasteful, and terrifying engagement between opposing forces. Our glorious Liberation War was the single most destructive war in the history of this nation. In fact, it equals all other wars combined.
It is our founding Father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his political party- Awami League garnered the support of the vast majority of our population for them and won a landslide victory based on their 6 points charter in an all Pakistan based National Parliamentary Elections in 1970. Bangabandhu emerged as an undisputed leader of the Bengali Nationalism and the principal leader of the people of this land.
But the Military coterie headed by President Gen Yahya Khan finally refused to transfer power to Bangabandhu. Its fall-out was gigantic in nature. The enemy was then clear to us. At the clarion call of our great leader Bangabandhu immediately before his arrest by the Pakistani Army to free the country from their cruel clutches, we all started the Independence War towards the end of March, 1971. A 9-month long horrendous onslaught was continued on us by the cruel griffins belonged to the Pakistani Military.
The Yahya Khan junta and their fearsome local accomplices carried out genocide, mass exterminations, rapes, blazing of hundreds of thousands of houses of our innocent people. It is clear that President Yahya Khan and his henchmen proved to be treacherous tyrants whose wars endangered us in every possible way.
Let there be no doubt: There will be "Pakistanis" in Bangladesh's future, defined either as wars in which the goal of the Pakistani Army was to prove its military credibility to our freedom fighters and freedom loving people. Hitler and his henchmen victimised an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called "Master Race." And brutal Yahya khan and his cruel his allies did the same misdeeds to annihilate the people who belong to this worthy of respected or dedicated land.
Their heinous policy was pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," in this country preserving only those who conformed to a Pakistani loyalist. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by their doctrine of possessing the land of Bangladesh only, not its people as is if they made a mad crusade for extermination of genuine and bonafide people of its land.
We had witnessed mass demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, etc. just before the time of “Operations Searchlight” carried out by heinous Yahya and his Military personnel. The heroic armed upsurge of the Bengali people against the Pakistani Military regime had been going on for well leading to our war of independence. Our glorious Liberation War shows the determination of the Bengali people to be masters in their own land, an independent and sovereign secular republic.
We, in Bangladesh, need to deepen our understanding of the present situation in the country. We must understand the origins, history and tasks of the struggle of the Bengali people, and the organisations leading this struggle. This is necessary to be able to give genuine political and material support to the trial initiators for the war criminals. We must also encourage working class participation and leadership of the support movement here, as well as rallying other forces. We should learn from the past experience, both positive and negative, of the work of our forefathers who took the lead, mobilised the mass people for creation of Bangladesh.
We, the people of Bangladesh, declare for all our country and the world to know: that our country belongs to all who live in it, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and other religions, and that no one can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.
And therefore, we the people of Bangladesh, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and other religions together -- equals, countrymen, brothers -- adopt this Freedom Charter. And finally: All peoples shall have equal rights! There shall be equal status in the bodies of the state, in the courts and in the schools, colleges, universities and everywhere for all people of all religions.
Over and over again, people of this country have demonstrated their willingness to make innumerable sacrifices, including death, to bring to a halt the unbearable machinery of oppression.
The later year of 1971 had been very "heady" for the masses, the revolutionary forces and their supporters around every nook and corner of the country. For many, the end already seemed to be in sight. The historical conditions, the balance of forces and the subjective factor may, in fact, be more favourable than they were after November, 1971.
However, a longer view is necessary. It is becoming clear to all that mass protests alone, no matter how prolonged and militant, are not by themselves enough to overthrow the regime. The regime must be defeated militarily. A prolonged period of guerrilla warfare combined with armed uprisings throughout the country was necessary. The fighting of the freedom fighters side by side the allied forces of India in early December, 1971 paved the way for this and objectively put the Bengali masses much closer to victory than they had ever been before.
After being freed from the Pakistani jail, Bangabandhu returned to his proud motherland, Bangladesh on January 10, 1972 and it seemed as if he then declared :
Bangladesh had finally been established; today it was a fresh and golden opportunity and so a most solemn command to realise that form of government in which the just, constitutional rights of each and all are guaranteed to each and all. … He had placed us in the front rank of the most marked epochs of the world’s history. He had placed in our hands a country which we can faithfully execute only by holy, individual self-consecration to all of plans of its betterment.
Bangabandhu had not deserted Bangladesh though he is no more with us, he declared, but had rather disciplined us in a refining fire that would hone us for a higher calling, yet to be revealed.
When we started our Liberation Struggle against the brutal Pakistani forces, we thought could win and we could. Faith is necessary to victory. We had that much of faith. We saw that the Bengali people had suffered for more than two decades from the brutal exploitation and oppression of the Pakistani regime. We earnestly expected victory against them and we made victory.
There is a wise saying that a man's true character is revealed in defeat. We can say it was also revealed in our victory against those hyenas. Horace Mann said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” And we won victory for humanity in 1971. Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting. And we did never stop fighting. We accepted the challenges so that we could feel the exhilaration of victory. And on the 48th anniversary of our Victory Day on December 16, 2019, we truly felt the exhilaration of our victory.
We repeat that the freedom fighters along with allied forces of Bangladesh and India had led to the decisive defeat of the Pakistani Army and their ugly local cohorts and have opened the way for Secularism. National liberation wars that had been led by the pro-liberation forces had made heroic advances in all sectors of the country in 1971 and led to significant victories and the Yahya regime collapsed and surrendered to the allied forces (Bangladesh and India) under the open sky on December 16, 1971 at our Suhrawardy Uddan, near Dhaka University.
To win the war against the Pakistani Military Junta, the Bengalis have not only to survive and win but also to protect the country from the anti-liberation forces which still exist in the country. Hence, the struggle will necessarily continue on to a higher stage till the anti-liberation forces and their neo-allies can finally be defeated.
Noted Historian Prof. Dr. Muntasir Mamun has said, “The Liberation War of Bangladesh is still the main spirit of our nation’s existence and only that spirit will protect the country and lead to its desired development.” Bangladesh shall be and continue to live on a secular state for “-Chotoder-boroder, sokoler, goriber-nissher sokoler. Aamar desh, shob manusher; shob manusher……(Bangladesh belongs to people of all classes irrespective of religions)” We should hold a big commemoration on our Victory Day every year. This effort on our part will be paying our rich tributes to all our fallen heroes and the living freedom fighters.
-The End-
The writer is a political observer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.
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