The irony in Bangladesh today is not just the existence of an unconstitutional regime but the measures this regime has been taking, without any thought to accountability, to upend the nation’s history.
It was installed in office in a manner that was a clear violation of the constitution, seeing that the provision for a caretaker government had already been revoked by the Awami League government headed by Sheikh Hasina.
On the watch of this regime, it has been Bangladesh’s history that has been under relentless assault.
In the latest manifestation of its attitude to the nation’s political heritage, the regime has called forth the audacity to redefine a number of aspects of the War of Liberation waged by the Bengali nation under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1971.
The redefinition goes for broad changes in such areas as who is a freedom fighter and who is not.
The Yunus regime, yet once again overstepping its authority, has classified participants of the War of Liberation into two categories.
It has defined freedom fighters (muktijoddhas) as those who took part directly in armed battle against the Pakistan army and its local collaborators.
In the second category, it has placed all those individuals, as associates of the freedom struggle (muktijuddher shohojogi), who were part of the movement by working for the wartime government headed by Acting President Syed Nazrul Islam and Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad.
The surprise, or call it the irony again, is that the individuals the regime has sought to redefine as associates of the War of Liberation have since March 1971 been justifiably revered as freedom fighters.
Among them have been all the political figures who were elected to the Pakistan national assembly and East Pakistan provincial assembly at the general election of December 1970, but who after the declaration of Bangladesh’s independence, actively became involved in the guerrilla war against Pakistan.
Additionally, officials of the civil administration and the diplomatic structure who proclaimed their allegiance to the Mujibnagar government in 1971, along with the individuals who manned the wartime radio station, Shwadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, have been referred to as associates of the War of Liberation.
Such a move to reclassify those who directly took part in the war by affirming their loyalty to the Mujibnagar government has predictably aroused the ire of broad sections of the nation.
One reason for such anger is the fact that where the earlier reference to the war specifically mentioned Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the Father of the Nation under whose leadership and inspiration the war was waged to establish a Shonar Bangla (Golden Bengal), in the new formulation by the interim regime all mention of Bangabandhu has been erased.
In other words, it is a quixotic situation the current regime has given rise to, deliberately of course: a nation which was led by its undisputed political leader is now being told that the leader does not matter anymore.
The move by the interim government was concerning enough for newspapers in Bangladesh to display headlines noting that Bangabandhu, the leaders of the Mujibnagar government, indeed 400 others, have been reduced to the status of liberation war associates rather than being freedom fighters.
The media reports prompted a quick response from the advisor on Liberation War Affairs in the interim regime, himself a freedom fighter, to the effect that Bangabandhu and the four national leaders — Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmad, M. Mansoor Ali and AHM Quamruzzaman — have been acknowledged by the regime as freedom fighters.
He went on to explain that the role of all five leaders remained unchanged, evidenced of it being the historical place of the Mujibnagar government noted in the gazette notification.
However, he did not offer any comments on why Bangabandhu’s name, in the original document, was absent in the new formulation.
Besides, referring to Bangabandhu and the four Mujibnagar leaders as freedom fighters was a clever way of avoiding any mention of their seminal role in setting the foundational principles of the country.
The hard truth in Bangladesh today is that the interim regime has targeted the nation’s antecedents in a way that has been hollowing out the entire cultural and political history of the country.
In the ten months that have gone by, systematic attacks on everything and everyone linked to the Awami League have left the nation traumatised, a condition which shows little sign of being rolled back. Irony, again, has been at work.
The Awami League, the political party which spearheaded the nation’s emergence as a sovereign state, has been clamped with a ban while the Jamaat-e-Islami, which enthusiastically and unabashedly collaborated with the Pakistan military junta in 1971 and has never expressed any contrition over its dark role, has had its deregistration overturned and now expects to assume power at some point in Bangladesh.
The irony is again to be spotted in the filing of charges against former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and calling for her trial by the International Crimes Tribunal, currently manned by votaries of the Yunus regime.
The tribunal was reconstituted by Sheikh Hasina’s government to try the collaborators of the 1971 Yahya Khan regime on charges of committing crimes against humanity.
In these ten months, the historic home of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has been demolished by mobs supportive of the regime and neither Muhammad Yunus nor any of his advisors condemned the criminal act.
In similar instances of anarchy, symbols of the War of Liberation have been vandalised and destroyed across the country.
The homes of politicians and other individuals known for their adherence to the principles of the 1971 war have been demolished with bulldozers. Indeed, bulldozer politics has spared hardly anyone holding fealty to the foundational principles of the country.
Last week, when the home of the late President Hussein Muhammad Ershad came under attack in Rangpur, the army had to intervene and discipline the vandals by serving a warning on a youth leader loyal to Yunus.
The home of former President Abdul Hamid, who is now in Thailand for medical treatment, in his native Kishoreganj has come under assault as well.
A malevolent, organised campaign is underway to obliterate all signs of Bangladesh’s struggle for freedom in 1971.
Sheikh Hasina and members of her family have had their passports and national identity cards revoked. Bangabandhu’s image on currency notes is set to be replaced, a sign of the hate continually being spewed against the nation’s founder.
The nationalist slogan of Joi Bangla has come under a ban and individuals who have chanted it have swiftly been arrested and imprisoned.
Last week, the name of Bangladesh’s wartime Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad was removed from a college set up in his honour in his native Kapasia and replaced with a new appellation.
A Jamaat-e-Islami individual convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death in the period of the Awami League government was freed by the judiciary, an act which naturally has drawn renewed public attention to the absence of or flouting of the rule of law and indeed the role of the judiciary.
Talk shows on television avoid any discussion or criticism of the interim regime’s actions. Newspapers, afraid of mobs, stay clear of raising any protest at all this assault on national history.
Dates of historical significance in Bangladesh — 7 March, 17 March, 7 June, et cetera — have been papered over.
The President of the republic, Mohammed Shahabuddin, remains a virtual prisoner at Bangabhaban, the presidential home-cum-residence. Where it is the responsibility of the head of government to keep the President apprised of policy matters and brief him on his visits abroad, Yunus has failed to carry out this responsibility. Interestingly, though, every major announcement, including the one pertaining to the reclassification of freedom fighters, is issued in the name of the President!
The vitriol against the Awami League, Bangabandhu and indeed everyone linked to the War of Liberation or holding adherence to it is a pronounced affair in Bangladesh today.
Sinister moves are underway to have the constitution, adopted in 1972, replaced with one that will surely be at a vast remove from the nation’s history. And yet there are reasons for the interim regime to worry about.
Muhammad Yunus, despite the ban imposed on the Awami League, complained the other day that the Awami League was destabilising the country.
It was a comment which was a hint of the party holding in itself the ability to bounce back to centre stage, as it bounced back every time it came under state-organised assault — in both the pre-1971 and post-1975 periods in the country.
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The assault on history goes on. And yet there is hope — in the nation’s young, in its peasants and workers and professionals, in the ageing generation which went to war in 1971 or lent it active support — that the wheel will turn, that Bangladesh will rise once again from the pit into which it has been pushed. Resilience has consistently been the hallmark of this nation.
