August 1975 and thereafter
Serajul
Islam Choudhury
WHAT happened in
August 1975 was a great tragedy perpetrated by an anti-people clique who did
not want Bangladesh to move in the direction its people had desired it to take.
The desire embodied a dream and an ideology; and for its fulfillment the people
had struggled not only in 1971 but even before. The long struggle did not begin
all of a sudden. It had a glorious history of its own. In December 1971 it
reached a point where it was impossible for the old state not to yield to the
emergence of an independent Bangladesh. What the assassins were bent upon doing
was the bringing down not only of a great man but also, and not less
importantly, of the ideology of secular Bengali nationalism together with the
dream of a long-awaited and urgently needed social revolution. Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman had promoted that collective desire among, and with, the people. In
mourning his death we bemoan the loss of a leader as well as of an opportunity.
Sheikh Mujib died a martyr, heading the long list of those who laid down their
lives to liberate the people of Bangladesh.
The assassins
were a motley group comprising disgruntled army men and a section of the
reactionary elements within the ruling party itself. And they acted with the
silent support of the capitalist world, of which the USA was the leader. The
capitalist countries had, we recall, opposed -- both morally and materially --
the formation of Bangladesh, being apprehensive of its turning to the left. Not
that the leftists at home were satisfied. Some of them were disheartened to see
the new state not taking the line of non-capitalist development; others had
gone underground fearing repression on account of their failure to join the war
of liberation due to their inability to see that a resolution of the class
question demanded a settlement of the national question and that the principal
contradiction at that moment of history was between the people of East Bengal
and the Punjabi military-bureaucratic combine that ruled Pakistan. None of the
leftist groups was against a social revolution; indeed, they were fighting for
it. But they did not know how to achieve that objective, which is the primary
reason why they were divided among themselves, and, despite their sacrifices,
were unable to take on the leadership of the liberation war. The leftists had
nothing to do with the tragedy of 1975, although the Awami League leadership
thought them, quite mistakenly, to be their real enemy, ignoring the
reactionaries within their own camp.
The August
mayhem was a rightist affair. The whole business of conspiracy, consolidation
and execution was done by the ultra rightists. The more easily identifiable
anti-liberation elements, including the Al-badrs and the Razakars, were not
directly involved in the operation, but their ideological kinsmen had taken
upon themselves a task which those known and condemned for their activities
were incapable of performing.
The liberation
war, let us remind ourselves, was not fought for the limited political aim of
independence. We have had the experience of independence in 1947 enormously
paid for in terms of miseries and tears, and found it to be no more than a
transfer of power to the Punjabis to rule over the Bengalis. That is why, since
1952, we had been struggling for liberation, which, we had realized, must be
based on the twin recognition that the Bengalis were a nation and that national
independence would never be meaningful without an accompanying social
revolution. Revolutions have come and gone, but society, which is where people
live and expect to thrive, has not changed; it has remained as class-ridden and
exploitative as it has since the 1793 Permanent Settlement enforced by the
British. We needed and wanted a real revolution, ensuring a democratic
transformation of the state and society, guaranteeing equality of rights and
opportunities to every citizen. The four state principles adumbrated in the
original constitution of Bangladesh indicated the goal of a social revolution,
for which the first step to be taken was secularism and socialism had to be the
ultimate goal.
And it is this
possibility of a liberating revolution which the assassins of August wanted to
destroy. Those who succeeded them in the running of the state did not find it
necessary to make apologies. Briskly they want about achieving their
self-appointed task of altering the whole character of the constitution,
eliminating the principles of secularism and socialism. Promulgating a martial
law order, General Ziaur Rahman removed secularism and put above the preamble words
which read, "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful", and
inserted within it a pledge "in the name of almighty Allah."
Socialism was replaced by the innocuous idea of 'economic and social justice.'
The amended constitution negated Bengali nationalism by introducing Bangladeshi
nationalism in its place. Clearly, the purpose was not to widen the definition
of nationalism to include the small nationalities to which recognition has been
denied in the constitution, but to do away with the idea that the Bengalis are
a nation. Not satisfied even with that, General Ershad went to the extent of
introducing Islam as the state religion.
It is not
without significance that what was called 'a historical struggle for national
liberation in the original document has been changed by Ziaur Rahman's decree
into 'historical war for national independence,' suggesting that we fought for
political independence and not for social liberation. There is absolutely no
reason to doubt that those who made the alteration were unaware of the
difference between independence and liberation. They wanted to make us forget
that we had fought not for another independence of the 1947 type, but for
emancipation of the people through a total transformation of society. What
these anti-people elements wanted was not a secular state and a democratic
society but a smaller edition of what was once known as Pakistan.
Even bourgeois
democracy, not to speak of the one of socialist dispensation, demands as its
first requisite secularism, meaning, as it does, complete separation between
state and religion; and that exactly is what has been denied to us by the
rulers who commandeered the state after August 1975. What surprises us is that
the Awami League, which had provided leadership in the war of liberation, has
found it convenient to remain silent on the question, giving us the impression
that it does not consider the restoration of secularism to be an important
issue. Even in a land where corruption and crime are being committed everywhere
and every day, a more grievous crime than the removal of secularism from the
constitution would be difficult to find. The action has not harmed any
particular person, group or institution but has struck at the very foundations
of the state which had been founded on the rejection of the non-secular
two-nation theory on which Pakistan had based itself. That Pakistan was a curse
and a nightmare has been made obvious to those who are now living in that
broken political state. We have all sympathy for them in their suffering. We
ourselves came to the knowledge about the monstrous character of that state as
early as 1952, having paid much too much in terms of blood and tears for
allowing ourselves to be led into voting for it in 1946 by our leaders. M. A.
Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, had himself realized the mistake he had made
even before the state was set up and had discarded the two-nation theory at the
first opportunity that came to him, namely, the occasion to speak before the
constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947.
Looking at the
happenings in Bangladesh since August 1975 from a slightly different
perspective, one could say that the progress we are supposed to have made
amounted really to a widening of the road for capitalism to flourish. The
collective dream of liberation was for the establishment of democracy in the
country, and it has to be admitted that there is not much of a difference
between proper democracy and socialism. That collective dream has been
shattered, to be replaced by one of personal aggrandizement. This change has
been hastened by the despicably heinous act of the assassins of August 15.
Today the people at large are paying for the prosperity of a few. And, very
naturally, mainstream politics has become a shameless game of plunder in which
the ruling class, the members of which are related to one another by social and
even family ties, has engaged in cut-throat competition for the acquisition of
money and power.
But mere
mourning would not do. It may prove to be counterproductive, creating despair.
What we have to undertake is the continuation of the struggle to achieve the
realization of the collective dream of a social revolution. To give up the
struggle would be to degrade ourselves further than we have already done.
Writer
Professor Serajul Islam Choudhury,
is a reputed academic, writer and commentator on social and political issues.
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