If I look back more time before 7 November 1975, Col Taher was a true patriot, loved this country and wanted welfare of Bangladesh’s common people.
by Anwar A. Khan
7 November 1975. I was then a senior student of Dhaka University, Bangladesh and lived in Sergeant Zohurul Haque Hall (SZHH). On the evening of 6 November 1975, my friend and year-mate Jamal Fazle Rubby Badal, a high-profile member of Jatiya Samajtrantric Dal’s (JSD) ‘Gono Bahini’ who lived in a room just beside my own room, suddenly came to my room and said, “This midnight, something bigger will betide in Dhaka under the leadership of JSD.” I pressed him to let me know of it and promised him to keep it secret, but he didn’t disclose anything more.
About 11 pm on that night, I went to bed for sleeping. Unexpectedly to my utter dismay, just after 12.00 midnight, I started to hear a slogan in a very louder tone from the ground floor of SZHH that a revolution took place in Dhaka Cantonment and elsewhere in the country. I went to the ground floor and found that a quite large procession under the leadership of JSD’s Students Wing including its ‘Gono Bahini’ members chanting the skyline slogan that JSD captured power of Bangladesh with support of Bangladesh army.
The whole night, they marched through other DU Halls, around the Dhaka University campus and the whole Dhaka Metropolitan City. A large procession also headed towards the Dhaka Cantonment. I was witnessing everything. 7 November dawn emerged. Loud sounds of some microphones were heard and some speakers were announcing stating emphatically and authoritatively that Col Abu Taher (retd.) was their supremo and under his command, Gen Ziaur Rahman was made freed from house-internment.
JSD people declared that both Col Taher, Gen Zia and other senior most JSD leaders gave a clarion call to all students and other people to come to the Central Shahid Minar ground in the very early morning. They said their leaders would make some very important speeches there. I along with my friends of SZHH went there, but on the way before we reach there, we saw hundreds of military convoys and tanks carrying huge numbers of Bangladesh army soldiers who were moving towards the Central Shahid Minar ground cantillating the words of “Sepoy-Janata Zindabad,” “Gen Zia Zindabad,” “Col Taher Zindabad”, “JSD Zindabad”…In the meantime, the Central Shahid Minar ground was packed-up with countless of people.
Uncounted numbers of soldiers with army convoys and tanks were full of the Central Shahid Minar ground before 7.00 am.
Though I did never support JSD politics under any setting, but as an onlooker, I was waiting for seeing those JSD leaders, Col Taher, Gen Zia to hear their speeches. A make-shift podium was erected at the Central Shahid Minar ground by JSD people and they were announcing repeatedly that their revolutionary leaders would soon appear at the dais to deliver their important speeches.
But all of a sudden, a contingent of army soldiers with tanks and convoys from the Dhaka Cantonment came to that spot just after 11.00 am and started brush-firing pointing to the podium. I along with my friends was then running hastily towards SZHH to save ourselves. From the back of us, we were then listening moans of huge people who were dying at gun-bullets. We reached in front of SZHH safely and then breathed deeply and heavily. I don’t know how many people were then brutally killed by the supporter-soldiers of Gen Zia, because by that time, a strong and unassailable rift developed between Col Taher and Gen Zia.
Gen Zia refused to come to the Central Shahid Minar ground along with Col Taher to deliver any speech. But when Col Taher’s loyal soldiers freed Gen Zia from house-internment on his request, Zia embraced Col Taher and said, “Taher, you have saved my life. I am now at your disposal and shall follow your instruction.” Gen Zia, after freeing from house interment, agreed with Col Taher to go the Central Shahid Minar ground to make a speech from JSD dais. So, Urdu toned Bangla speaking Gen Zia was nothing, but a third-rater double-crosser.
If I look back more time before 7 November, 1975, Col Taher was a true patriot, loved this country and wanted welfare of Bangladesh’s common people. He fled from Pakistan’s army from Pakistan in 1971, joined our liberation war, fought on the front-line with the brutal Pakistan army and lost his one leg while fighting with Pakistan’s army to liberate Bangladesh from them. He was one of the Sector Commanders in our war with Pakistan in 1971 to establish Bangladesh.
He took self-retirement from Bangladesh army when he was the Commander of Cumilla Cantonment. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib then appointed him as Director of Narayangong Dredger Directorate. His deputy was Ziauddin Khan (I fondly called him Ziauddin bhai who died more than a decade ago)), a brilliant student of BUET, Dhaka and got first class in Mechanical Engineering in 1964. When Col Taher was Narayangong Dredger Directorate’s Director, Ziauddin bhai was its Deputy Director. He didn’t do politics, but he was a staunch supporter of Bangabandhu Mujib’s ideals and participated in our Liberation War in 1971. He was senior to me by 12 years. He resigned from Government service at his own volition and joined a large private business firm where I also worked in the years of 1981-84. We did our office in the same room. Because of our same idealistic principles, we were very close to each other. He loved me so much like his own younger brother and addressed me as “tumi.”
Ziauddin bhai always spoke very highly of Col Taher because of his patriotism, honesty, administrative power, love …for this country. But he didn’t know of Col Taher’s involvement in JSD politics. He was deeply saddened because of Col Taher’s hanging to death by ruthless Gen Zia, a traitor of Bangladesh’s history
I hail from Kishoreganj District Sadar. Col Taher was from Netrokona District and his village home is nearby Kishoreganj District Sadar. He used to come to Kishoreganj because his father-in-law’s house was only 10 minutes walking distance from our house. His father-in-law was Dr. Mohiuddin Ahmed (a reputed physician) and a close friend to my father. He used to come to our house. The same was the case with my father. If I was at Kishoreganj, I visited Mohiuddin kakku’s (uncle’s) house on a regular basis where I had the opportunity of meeting Col Taher, at least 4/5 times in the years of 1974-75. He loved to speak in English. Every time, he spoke to me and advised me to be a good citizen of the country, but he did never speak on politics. If I knew he was connected with JSD politics, I could have requested him to discard JSD politics because its politics was destructive to the newly born country – Bangladesh.
Because of his strong principles, high integrity and other human attributes, he fell prey to the dirty politics of JSD. JSD used him to capture power of Bangladesh’s throne which he couldn’t fathom. And so, he was the solitary guy who lost his precious life.
Col Taher was a true patriot and a person of high morality and principles. That’s why, he had to walk the gallows falsely framed out by pitiless and unlawful President Gen Zia of Bangladesh to exterminate a true hero of our nation.
It is also equally true when eminent journalist and celebrated columnist Syed Badrul Ahsan says, “On 7 November 1975, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh was commandeered by elements determined to undermine the fundamental guiding principles on which the War of Liberation had been waged four years earlier.”
Zia was purely responsible for dividing the nation which was once unified. Nobody did want those who collaborated with the Pakistani army and carried out genocide ….to be reinstalled politically in the country. Neither was there any demand or call by the people for them to be rehabilitated. But General Zia did show that much of audacity allowing these morally reprehensible people to do politics in the country for which we have still been paying a very heavy price for Bangladesh.
President Zia freed those abominable charactered people from jailhouse who were served various terms of imprisonment for their misdeeds in 1971 and those who were in jails waiting for punishments. Some bigwigs including that malevolent Golam Azam fled away the country whose citizenships were scrapped; some of them were hiding for their improper, wicked or immoral behaviour and to our utter shock, Zia took all initiatives to bring those back to the country and returned their citizenships except Golam Azam, the local mastermind of mass-murders, rapes, lootings… but he came back to the country with Zia’s support being a Pakistani citizen holding the Pakistani passport during his regime and Golam Azam got back his citizenship during Begum Zia’s first tenure of government.
Zia made Shah Aziz, a collaborator of Pakistan Army, as Prime Minister of the country. Similar way, he made Abdul Alim a cabinet minister, who committed genocide and other higher magnitude of criminal offences in 1971 for whom ICT-2 handed him down the life term imprisonment.
Begum Zia did the same disgraceful thing. She made another two ill-famed Al-Badr commanders and mass murderers of our independence war, Matiur Rahman Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mujaheed as her Cabinet Ministers.
The damages thus they both have caused to the country; its people and its polity is irreparable. One should call them sub-humans because of their cruel love for the country.
Bangladesh has been created to run its course strictly in line with the values and spirit of our liberation war and there should be no compromise in this regard. If any people are found not commensurate with these qualifications, but want to rule us, I must say they do not belong to Bangladesh; they do not own this country or the country does not own them.
Zia, Ershad and Khaleda are the pictures of depravities. During their rising to power and regimes, decadence reigned supreme in Bangladesh. These are the people of malevolent and intentional transmitter of the virus of philosophies of medieval darkness and the defeated forces of 1971 war stemming from evil characteristics or forces; wicked or dishonourable into a valiant nation.
They are the ghosts and goblins whose appetite for debauchery is insatiable. They are soiled with dirt or soot and harshly ironic or sinister deserving or bringing disgrace or shame. Sitting in a languid, dirty power parapet, these rat-bags carried out satanic activities to our glorious Bangladesh that we attained in 1971 at a very heavy price.
They created a world that is irredeemably sordid, where neither beauty nor charm nor intelligence nor our glorious liberation war spirit had any value. Dirt, debauchery and the most unbridled course of vice and cruelty reigned supreme.
Their mendacity is unpardonable.
-The End –
The writer is an independent political analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.
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