Bengali Nation : Bangabandhu
Professor
Abdur Razzaq
The nation in
Bangladesh is a nation because it intends to be a nation and nothing
else. Enumeration of all that is peculiar to itself or all that it shares with a lot of
other people, dead cargo or live heritage,
would not explain or explain away the nation. The unbending pride, the
shared identity with 80 million people in weal and in woe, the insistence on being a Bengali and nothing else, this is
what makes the nation. Patriotism, a wise Greek had observed, is the act of
falling in love with one's own country, its mountains and rivers, with whatever else God or nature has
endowed it, including, of course, its people. A man falls in love with a
woman or a woman does fall in love with a man
not because she or he is the most perfect
specimen of her or his kind and he or she does fall in love and thereby begins the greatest adventure of life.
It does not take a great deal of learning to know the greatness of heritage
coming from Assyria, Chaldea, Egypt or Greece or Rome or Arabia or Iran or the more recent contributions of the Red Russia, the
nature and significance of which is
being so hotly debated in Moscow and Peking, echoed all over the world,
at Dacca too. This nation of ours has nothing to offer comparable to all this
or any of these. Yet, what holds us together, makes of us a nation, is the
exclusive passion of each to identify himself with this nation and nothing
else. This, I believe, is what makes
Bangabandhu the central figure of our time. In assessing the state of nation, the prospect the nation has before it,
it is relevant to go a little into what may be called the phenomenon that is Bangabandhu. What made him tick? What are
his claims to be the central figure in
Bangladesh? Why did Bangabandhu do whatever
he did? Why was the man so careless of his own safety? The least care could easily provide against this
slapstick comedy drama which ended so tragically. But has it ended? That
is the point one has to explore in any exploration of the state of the nation.
Of course no one is, of however heroic a proportion, a hero all the 24 hours a day. With this reservation, there is no
doubt that Bangabandhu was a man by love possessed, love of his own
country in the widest sense of the term. This love that possessed the man, I am
afraid, is considerably different from the rather tepid sentiment we all of us
entertain for our country and try to pass off for the love of our country.
Bangabandhu was a good enough Muslim, in certain respects almost puritanic. Earlier in life he was a loyal member of the
muslim League and an ardent supporter of the idea of Pakistan doing his bit to actualize the idea. Long before
the end he had absolutely surrendered
himself to his last and lasting passion. He was by love possessed for that bit of the world that we call Bangladesh.
Such love can be dangerous as it proved to be for Bangabandhu. This obsessive possessive passion tends to render one blind to everything else, particularly when the
love is requitted. From 25th march 1971 to 101h January
1972 Bangabandhu is totally absent from the scene where unequal forces are
locked in a deadly struggle. Bangabandhu
and Bangabandhu alone is the symbol round which the adherents of the forlorn
cause group themselves. And that is no accident. In those dark days, in
that testing time, among the millions who
would constitute the nation, there was no misunderstanding and there was
no ambiguity. Bangabandhu alone was the
symbol. But there have been other symbols in the long freedom struggle
in the subcontinent. Between this one, the symbol in 1971, and others before
him, there is a qualitative difference. To take only two examples: Gandhi and
Jinnah. Either of them could sway millions, make them do their biddings.
Jinnah, a man of the highest integrity, of
very great forensic skill, a dedicated public man, had after, due deliberation, espoused a cause which he believed
to be righteous and brought it to a more or less successful conclusion. It is
rather difficult to associate Jinnah with that rather untidy passion, love, to
motivate him.
Gandhi was different. He did preach and
practise love. But that was because love was Dharma-Dharma for all men. He
belonged to the world. It was accidental that
he was an Indian. We denude it of all meaning when we try to assess his
politics without taking note of the deep religious nature of the
man. He did many things which pertained to
this world. He was never out of politics. But whatever he did, he did it
because it was religious duty to do it. He was a medieval man in the best sense of the term. Important as this life was,
it was with him but a mere appendix to the far more important life to come the everlasting life in God. Both of
them counted adherents by the millions. It would not have entered the
head of any of these millions to regard Jinnah or Gandhi as one of themselves. This is the difference, large as life, between
Bangabandhu on the one hand and Jinnah and Gandhi on the other.
Bangabandhu had forged an indivisible fusion between himself and the nation.
The millions who had identified themselves
with Bangabandhu in 1971 what did they have in common with this man and were
not absent from the scene of action? There is
no doubt that in 1947 these same
millions had been swept by the idea of a Pakistani nation, who had not
agreed to lose themselves in the identity of an Indian nation. That is the
meaning of the Movement for Pakistan. It so
happened that those who did not choose to lose themselves in the identity
of a single Indian nation were Muslims, a fact, which is not central to the
idea of Pakistan. We can see that in Jinnah's First Constituent Assembly
address, his insistence that with the birth of Pakistan we are all citizens of Pakistan, neither Hindus, nor Muslims,
nor Christians. By 1971 a section of these millions were equally determined not to lose themselves in the
identity of a Pakistani nation.
This is I believe, what is common
between Bangabandhu and the struggling
millions of 1971, the desire to stay distinct from the identity of a
Pakistani nation or Indian. The English, the French and the rest of the Europeans fought so hard against a single Europe that Hitler had designed may one day constitute a
single European nation, but as of now, it will not take us far if we try
to understand the realities of the European scene in terms of a European
nation. The problems are still the problems
predominantly of Englishmen and French and Italians and so on. And that
inspire of the common class character of these distinct identities. That
appears to be the situation in the subcontinent
as a whole and in Bangladesh in particular
too. There is a great deal we have in common of religion or of the class
character of the society with the subcontinent as a whole or part of it, but
cutting right across them all there is the unmistakable will to retain the
distinct identity. This is what Bangabandhu
is a symbol of; this is what made the fusion of the man the millions
possible. In assessing the place of Bangabandhu it is irrelevant to make a
catalogue of his virtues or gloat over his shortcomings: the millions took him
to their hearts, word and all. because they found in him the expression of
their innermost desire, the desire to retain their distinct identity of its own
distinct nation. The epoch is still the
epoch of the nation state, the problem is still the problem of the
nation.
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