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Bengal’s voice, in time and space
by Syed Badrul Ahsan
For a nation that owes its birth to the political struggle waged by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the paucity of truly scholarly works on Bangladesh’s founding father is certainly surprising, if not exactly shocking. While it is true that a whole genre of literature has developed around the personality of the man who symbolized --- and continues to epitomize – the Bengali ethos, the bigger truth is that not many of such works have been made available to readers outside the country. One of the problems here has been the reluctance of Bengali scholars to get down to the business of producing a full-length biography of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It is a job that has now been done by S.A. Karim, to his and the nation’s credit. Karim is certainly well-placed, in terms of time, to observe the career of a man whose government he served as Bangladesh’s first foreign secretary in the heady days after liberation. More than three decades after the killing of Bangabandhu and what was certainly a turning away from Bangladesh’s original principles of freedom, Karim brings into focus the long, bare knuckles struggle of a politician whose track record was consistently one of upholding and promoting the cause of Bengali emancipation.
The author’s admiration for his subject underlines the tenor in which he approaches his study of the life and career of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The complex man that Mujib was, in the sense of the varied roles he played in the course of a political career that took him along a difficult trajectory, comes into good focus in the work. But those varied roles ought not to be equated with the shifting politics that characterized other political leaders in this part of the world. While Suhrawardy, Bhashani and Fazlul Huq remained unable to resist the temptation of suiting their politics to the winds defining the particular political seasons around them, Mujib demonstrated a point of view that admitted of no compromise. And the varied roles? His career in politics took wing with the movement for Pakistan, predictably in an age of growing Muslim communalism exemplified by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League. But once Pakistan became a reality, it did not take the young Mujib long to know that a bad mistake had been made. That reasoning explains his rather swift transformation to a Bengali nationalist even as he looked upon Suhrawardy as his mentor. His natural guru should have been Bhashani, but Mujib knew, in those early days in the 1950s, that the Red Moulana was not to be a safe pair of hands for Bengalis. Mujib would be proved right in his assessment. Bhashani’s politics would keep veering from adventurism to melodrama and the other way round. Mujib needed a leader on whom he could depend for a career. Suhrawardy was that leader, though once the great man died in Beirut, Mujib quickly branched out on his own. After 1963, the year when Suhrawardy died, it took him only eight years to transport himself to heights not even Suhrawardy or for that matter any other politician in pre-1971 Pakistan could reach. His decision to revive the Awami League in 1964, followed by the Six Point movement in 1966, quickly assured him a place in the Bengali consciousness. The Agartala conspiracy case only cemented his position in politics. By the time the general elections took place in 1970, Mujib was ready to assume leadership of the state of Pakistan, though at his heart’s core it was Bengali nationalism he now clearly personified rather than getting drawn to thoughts of assuming office as Pakistan’s prime minister. The War of Liberation in 1971, waged in his name and shaped around his image, turned him into a household word across the world.
S.A Karim’s observations of Mujib’s years in power, a delicate and difficult time, are appreciably dispassionate. His admiration for Mujib does not detract from the mistakes he saw the Bengali leader making in the course of his administration of the country. The Mujib government, given the exigencies of the times as also the failures of the political leadership, was in many instances a wobbly affair. Tragic incidents such as the killing of Siraj Sikdar are, for Karim, instances that quite sapped the strength of Mujib’s government. The initiation of BAKSAL politics was a heart-breaking affair. But none of these observations keeps the author from making note of the tremendous degree of achievements Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his associates made in those three and a half years in office. Bangladesh’s foray into global diplomacy, its dealings with India and Pakistan over the issue of the 1971 prisoners of war, its entry into the United Nations, et al, remain episodes that have assured Sheikh Mujibur Rahman a place in history.
Students of Bangladesh’s history, at home or abroad, should feel pleased with S.A. Karim’s work. One reason is that it has made its appearance after long, thorough and painstaking research by the author and so is fundamentally a work of substance. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is a fascinating historical figure. This book takes us back to a new search for Bengal’s authentic voice in time and space.
Sheikh Mujib
Triumph And Tragedy
S.A. Karim
The University Press Limited
ISBN 984 05 1737 6
Tk. 500/-
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