H.E’s REMARKS: Tale of personal sacrifices: Epitomizing the human tragedies of 1971 war
Distinguished panelists
Organizers from the Bangladesh Liberation Archives Team in Washington DC
Ladies and gentleman
Good afternoon and shuva oporanno
I feel honoured to be able to speak alongside three distinguished intellectuals who have very closely associated their names with Bangladesh’s history and have earned our deep tribute for their priceless contributions. As Bangladesh’s foreign friends, Professor Greenough and Mr. Thomas Dine are also among the recipients of our liberation war award. We are happy that, though belated, we could honour them at State level events in Dhaka.
In “War and Peace” Tolstoy notes, “Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.”
Tolstoy’s submission predates Bangladesh’s war of liberation by over a century. Personal sufferings are often essential to discover “self”; however, what extent of sufferings would suffice to satisfactorily know oneself could be a very demanding academic undertaking in itself. I better refrain from stepping into that discussion.
Dear Friends,
If you believe that my personal account surrounding the 1971 war would be of any interest for today’s audience and worth telling then I would like to be a bit candid and undiplomatic. In that case the person speaking in front of you would not be one of Bangladesh’s ambassadors rather he is a very ordinary person who tragically failed to reconcile with an uninvited dictate of fate.
Oftentimes I go on to curse myself that I was actually robbed of what could have been the most glorious phase of my life when my nation was at war!
Looking back, I still feel as if I was kept in a vast prison named West Pakistan when none of my tricks worked my way to free myself from a captivity and take me under the same sky that my countrymen were fighting to keep free of vultures. A boy of mid twenties now an old man of nearly seventy I still redo the plans that would absolve me of a guilt relentlessly haunting me since the war’s onset. A sense of relief never ceases to elope me.
Now, instead of me, put my late mother on the panel today. She is one of those whose two freedom fighter sons never returned from the battlefield. Her three other sons also fought the war. (They were somehow lucky not to add to the list of casualties albeit one narrowly escaped death). I had the misfortune of noticing my late mother’s every single moment’s agony till she breathed her last. Now you have got to epitomize the sacrifices of three groups of sufferers belonging to the same family: two freedom fighter siblings whose lives were cut short by the war, one mother who lost two sons; and one family member whose nine moth’s physical captivity has put him into a mental trauma difficult to bear rest of the life!
The 1971 war was not a war fought between two even sides. It was a war between one of the world’s most formidable militaries and millions of unarmed civilians. Three million people lost lives within a land boundary of just 56 thousand square miles and a time span of nine months. Almost every single village of Bangladesh has a mass grave carrying unidentified dead bodies for ages. The fallen include people from all walks of life-from simple villagers to the most celebrated public intellectuals . Countless literary plots could be designed, countless anecdotes could be compiled centering on the countless instances of tragedies. What is most striking is the degree of their uniqueness. Every single tragic tale is so different from the rest!
I read an interview of Sector Commander Khaled Musharraf, one of our legendary war heroes. At the training camps what he would regularly remind his trainee guerillas was that liberation does not come on the safe return of the freedom fighters rather it is built with their dead bodies! This Sector Commander did not live that long in his liberated country. I think, had he been around today, he would have realized that the liberated land also claims the fighters’ stable minds! You can only leave it to your imagination what would have been their fate had they been on the defeated side in the Race Course Maidan on 16 December 1971. But are they not very much the tragic heroes in their liberated homeland?
I don’t want to use today’s forum to make any complaint against anybody. I feel to share what I knew from an article appearing in the independence day supplement of a Bangla newspaper. A report reveals that a vast majority of school, college and university goers who took part in the combat battles could never return to their student days. Studies have shown that the rate of school and college drop-outs among freedom fighters is distinctively higher than their non –freedom fighter peers. Several issues explain this statistic. As a liberation war movie “ Abar Tora Manush Ha” [You be a good guy again] portrays , for many it was never possible to recover from the mental trauma they underwent those nine months. Secondly, their homes and relatives were the common targets of the Pakistani military and their collaborators for torture, murder, destruction and what not. In the battle grounds the freedom fighters would receive news of father’s disappearance, sister’s rape or homes gutted. After independence we also could not be any less harsh to them. The multiple phases of anti-liberation regimes subjected the unlucky liberators to ever new forms of humiliation. They were cursed to another phase of readjustment in a Bangladesh which was certainly not the one they took up arms for.
My late brother defected from Pak Army on the same day the war broke out. As a consequence our entire home was put under 24 hours of military surveillance. None except my mother could live there. Within the distance of two lanes was the home of a municipal council member who was also a Razakar Bahini organizer. From our close knit locality he helped the arrest of 26 young people who never came back. Reportedly, on the eve of Bangladesh’s victory, he crossed the Bangladesh-Burma border and could not re-enter Bangladesh until 1976. Do you know, after return from exile he again contested the municipal election and got elected. Must be a shame for me as a resident from that part of Dhaka.
I thank Mr. Ziauddin Chowdhury for his fascinating deliberation on some “unsung heroes” of the war. I want to only compliment him by bringing in the tale of a relatively junior warrior who greeted the Mitra Bahini head General Jagjit Singh Aurora in his battlefield alongside his commander. How many of you have heard of Shahidul Islam Lalu? If you kindly raise your hands, may I know, how many? He was the son of a very poor farmer from a village in Tangail who never had the opportunity go to school. He has another identity. He joined the war at the age of ten years and happened to be the youngest Bir Pratik. Around the time of his surrender of arms to Bangabahdu he was famously taken into the President’s lap. Can you imagine how famous he would have been if he hailed from anywhere other than in our country? He could not die any less sung or less known a shop keeper toiling on the streets of Dhaka nearly thirty years after the country’s independence.
The Bangladesh that found its name printed on the world atlas in 1971 is made up of sacrifices by millions of individuals -known or unknown. In a forum such as today’s, only the a few key types of those could be touched, leave alone the details. The discussion could not be even close to being representative of the entire case log. We must not forget that shortcoming. Nevertheless I sincerely appreciate the Bangladesh Liberation Archives Team for involving us in their noble initiative.
If you have any questions for me I would be happy to answer.
Thank you.