Resilience, saying no and enterprise
Serajul
Islam Chowdhury
There
is no denying that things in Bangladesh
today are not as they ought to be, let alone
what they promised to be. What is particularly
frightening is the prevailing sense of insecurity
of life and livelihood. The two, of course,
go together. Factors responsible for this
sad state of things are many; but two failures
stand out, one of leadership, and the other
in respect of achieving unity. The nationalist
leadership which was in command during the
war of liberation had vague dreams but no
vision of what the state and society would
be like after independence. The leadership
was belonged to the upper echelons of society
both in statues and outlook. It neither
wanted, nor had the capacity, to promote
the interests of the less privileged sections
if the community, which constituted the
vast majority of the people.
Nationalists
speak of the nation, ignoring the fact that
the nation is divided by class interests
and that without social transformation --
revolution, if you like -- national unity
remains nothing but a rhetorical sound.
What had happened in other countries, happened
in ours as well. That those who have been
running the state, politically, are committed
only to self-aggrandisement is borne out
among other things, by the ease with which
they change their party affiliations. They
are not liberated, and are very much prisoners
of their own greed. And it is their competition
to grab public wealth and opportunities
that has, more than anything else, divided
the people who were united in 1971 against
a common enemy. The selfish and irresponsible
leadership has been duly, busily and faithfully
replicated in all walks of life, and what
we are faced with at the moment is stark
absence of role models. It will not be illogical
to be pessimistic.
But
surely there are positive qualities in us
to rely upon, if not to be proud of. At
least there are three resilience, resistance
and enterprise. And indeed these are no
mean virtues.
People
in Bangladesh have known disasters, one
after another, sometimes in quick succession.
Some of these have come from hostility of
nature, and some are man-made. Cyclones,
tidal bares, floods, droughts and pestilences
have tried to beat us down, causing misery,
death and devastation. Man-made disasters
like famine, violence, riot and war have
not been less frequent. After they have
been more harmful than the natural ones.
But people have not surrendered. Every disaster
was a new test of endurance, but even the
worst sufferers have not given in. Quietly
but resiliently they have tried to stand
up, building their nests, burying the dead,
adjusting themselves to new circumstances.
For
long we have been a marginalised people.
Foreigners have invaded the country and
set up their kingdom. Local rulers -- chieftains,
landlords, moneylenders -- have not been
any the less exploitative. But people have
said no to them, even if silently. The rulers
have ruled through coercion, but have seldom,
if at all, won the heart of the people.
People have defended the independence and
integrity of their culture, which explains
why Bengali language and literature have
flourished, despite invasions and encroachments.
People in this land of ours are religious,
but in a rather secular sense. Politics,
they have always felt, should be kept apart
from religion; and to religion itself they
have turned for shelter and justice, which
they have found difficult to be assured
of in the material would they live in. But
there is in us as a people a deep distrust
in society and even fate itself fatalism
in this country is not at all based on faith
in fate; in the contrary, it signifies disbelief
in fate itself. We are, indeed, a faithless
folk, the rulers have ruled not through
leave, which is capable of producing hatred
also, but through sheer difference of the
public. This indifference is very near cynicism,
if not apathy. Rulers have come and gone
but society has gone on as before. Men and
women have feet lonely. They have spoken
in the first person singular number, without,
of course, being predatory.
The
rejection of the rulers has therefore been
natural. In 1946 the people voted for Pakistan,
which was, in fact, saying no to British
rule as also to those connected with it
-- the landlords, bureaucrats and the moneylenders.
And only a year after Pakistan was established
East Bengal stood up against Pakistani on
the language question. In the 1954 election
people rejected the Muslim League under
whose leadership the state of Pakistan was
brought into being. Then there was movement
against military rule in 1962, mass uprising
in 1969, and finally the war of liberation
in 1971. The autocratic regime of Hussain
Mohammad Ershad was overthrown by a mass
movement. People have said no to the proposal
of exporting the very scarce and necessary
resource of gas to India. A citizens' movement
had forced the government design of destroying
the open space called Osmany Uddyan, situated
at the very heart of the overcrowded city
of Dhaka. Girl students of Jahangirnagar
University have driven out a group of rapists
from the university residential halls --
when police went on rampage at midnight
in a girls' residential hall at Dhaka University,
the students came out forcing the government
eventually, to bring about a change in the
university administration and sent up a
judicial enquiry commission to investigate
into the matter. When heinous assailants
made a murderous attempt on the life of
the writer Humayun Azad the protest was
as spontaneous as it was widespread. The
way garment workers in Narayanganj came
out in the streets demanding punishment
of those accused of killing some of their
fellow workers was, in a sense, reminiscent
of the workers' mobilisation in New York
on May 1 more than a hundred years ago.
Bangladeshi
folks are supposed to be lazy. That this
is a lie is proved everyday by the way people
work for themselves, often on their own,
here at home and also abroad. Opportunities
are limited, the fields are narrow; but
men and women in the country have never
been shirkers, they have to work, and are
disappointed to find themselves unemployed
or rendered jobless. Jute cultivation in
Bengal owes not so much to favourable land
and climate as to the sheer labour of the
producers.
Thrown
out of employment, the industrial worker
weeps, not only because he is being driven
into a life of uncertainty but also because
he had developed a fondness for his work
and his fellow workers. Bangladeshi workers
have earned reputation abroad for their
dutifulness and diligence. Women are working
today in garments factories and building
sets; this work is noticeable, but they
never been reluctant to work at home.
The
middle class is doing very well abroad in
both professional and academic fields. People
have the enterprise, what they lack is capital
and atmosphere. Craftsmen and technicians
are doing excellent work not only in keeping
production going, but also in inventing
new techniques.
These
are indeed positive qualities in us. They
are there -- often actively, sometimes potentially.
Qualities like these are even more valuable
than our natural and mineral resources.
What is sad, and certainly disappointing,
is that these we have not been able to develop
fully and bring about a radical change in
our life.
For
achieving that objective. What is needed
is leadership, at all levels, but particularly,
and most importantly, at the political level.
The goal has to be something greater than
more good governance, it has to be transformation
in society and in the character of the state
itself, so that all our creative energies
can be released, and our sense of belonging,
which is another name for patriotism, gains
in both depth and intensity, that transformation
is, after all, what we have been struggling
for decades. Pakistan has failed us, but
we cannot allow Bangladesh to fail, simply
because this is where we all belong. The
struggle to build up a democratic society
and state must continue.
.........................................................................................
The author is former head, English
Dept., Columnist and social thinker.
Of
bell bottoms and lungis
Peasant participation in
the war
Afsan Chowdhury
What were peasants doing
in a war that built an urban priorities
dominated state? It's even more puzzling
because by all accounts the majority of
the irregulars Mukti Bahini in popular imagination
were peasants, the villagers armed with
rage and decrepit rifles, bearded and barely
literate and essentially unused to urban
language, clothes and culture. Neither official
history nor academic work has dealt with
this strange journey from the plough fields
to the battlefield.
I
have used the term bell-bottoms -- trousers
flared at the bottom of the wearing leg-
not in any pejorative sense but as a term
which encapsulates a dominant cultural construction.
Because it does portray a particular class
of warriors who after the war benefited
and took control of the main city and by
extension the State. The sartorial is also
a description of social inclusiveness and
exclusion. This also doesn't apply to the
90 percent of the freedom fighters who seem
to be literally left without narratives
of their history. Significantly, our intellectuals
have not looked into the issue that deals
with peasant involvement in the war. There
is no ambiguity about it during the war.
The construction of the leadership during
the war was largely of the same nature that
exists in any post-colonial situations where
one group of political elites fill the space
vacated by another. There were of course
some progress especially in the alliance
of the formal state representations -- executive
and military -- under political leadership,
but peasant representation was largely absent.
In this case structural
representation could have become a major
issue in the discourse but its absence has
not been a matter of intellectual concern.
The use of the term 'jonojuddha"
-- people's war -- rather frequently nowadays
is even more puzzling unless one can say
that this is again an appropriation process,
an attempt of representation in history
that has become necessary by using such
terms. Have they not bothered to explain
because they can't explain why lungi clad
peasants participated in a war which was
led by bell-bottom wearing urban freedom
fighters? Metaphorically speaking of course.
Participation,
choice and social coercion
There were two major sources of social participation
in Bangladesh during this phase. One, during
the elections of 1970 where majority of
the people voted Awami League (AL) to the
status of the majority party. Later, AL's
victory threatened the state power sharing
mechanism, as a result the Pakistani- Islamabad
elite decided to go for military action
in Dhaka to prevent transfer of this shift
to a new elite. The urban mass upsurge was
also trickling into the rural areas. This
was the first contact between the two.
The
March connection: From the city to villages
This process of connectivity between the
urban and the rural intensified after March
25/26 when terrified Dhaka citizens sought
refuge in the rural areas and later people
began to organize resistance to the Pakistan
army based on non-Dhaka resources to Pakistan
who found that the mopping up operations
had to be taken all over including rural
Bangladesh.
"We knew that at a
point there would be some violence against
the people but we definitely didn't expect
what we saw on and after March 26."
Zillur Rahman (AL Leader to the BBC radio
series titled "Bangladesh 1971".
2002-2003.)
In a way the Pakistan army
achieved its goal because the sheer terror
that was generated on that night convinced
the bloodthirstiness of the intent of the
Pakistan army. Even till today, March 25
is the worst night of all though in terms
of scale and suffering a single morning
in many places shed more blood. It was meant
to cow down the misunderstood intent of
the Bengali people. The nervous Pakistan
army thought Dhaka was what mattered and
the people could be shocked into surrender.
Instead, it triggered resistance. And unleashed
a host of forces which ultimately overwhelmed
Pakistan and its army.
Peasant response to the
crisis by providing to political and military
leadership who had gone to the villages,
was crucial in setting up the platform of
resistance. This ultimately defined the
nature of subsequent war and commitment
of India's support which made the critical
difference. Historians seem to have largely
ignored the significance of this interaction
that the sanctuary-seeking people had with
the villagers that led to the construction
of convergences and created the nationalist
defense.
The hospitality and open
house policy of the peasants and the entry
of large populations into the rural areas
were not without expenses and other social
costs to the peasantry. This is an ignored
part of the war-contribution. While dominant
narratives either fail to recognise this
in war value terms, the historians perceive
this as expected behaviour reducing it to
rural hospitality terms. They are unable
to link it to the huge logistical support
provided by the rural people to the military
representatives of the nationalist movement.
The rural population acted as the funding
source and supplier of the first phase which
made the later phases possible. This is
all the more significant in the context
of India's refusal to support the war in
the late March to early April.
In the later stages, as
the war became more organised, the price
for participation became very high and a
part of the peasantry also joined the war
and after the war was over returned to the
villages from where they came. They came
from famished lands and returned to scorched
fields. Today, they can't explain why they
participated and the sense of regret is
high. "We gave our sons but other than
independence, what did we get?" asks
Dariya Begum from Kushtia ("Tahader
Juddho", a video on women and war 2001).
Although the state could
not have been born without them, it did
not share the spoils of victory with them,
not even gallantry awards.
Dhaka,
the peasant and the student
To link Dhaka with the construction of popular
imaginations, nature of the state and role
of locations in determining that link is
important. East Pakistan was a primate city
province that became a primate city-state.
Dhaka was the center and symbol of victory
and defeat during and after 71.
Dhaka was in the domain
of Sector 2 under Maj. Khaled Musharraf
and Maj.Haider and naturally drew the largest
number of young recruits from Dhaka into
its HQ at Agartala. Since Dhaka was the
center of attention in international attention,
guerilla activities in Dhaka was obviously
carried out by boys belonging to the city
itself. A significant event in Chilmari
could hardly compete with a bomb blast in
Dhaka in impact, so media attention and
military concern was highest here. Just
as the Pak army attacked Dhaka, the Mukti
Bahini also did their best to show to the
world that it was not in the Pak army's
total control. The battle for Dhaka thus
constructed its symbolic value, the conquest
of Dhaka became synonymous with Bangladesh.
And the construction of Bangladesh became
inextricably linked to Dhaka. It's not a
coincidence that most of the powerful elite
that ultimately has ruled Bangladesh/Dhaka,
also came from the sector that was responsible
for guerilla activities in Dhaka wars and
largely run by Dhaka boys. The Dhaka of
1970 determined the Dhaka of 1971 and the
Dhaka of today.
It was not intended to be
so but eventually reflected the various
state construction processes. The peasants
first sustained the population movement
to rural areas. Next it made possible the
most significant initial resistance that
displayed to the world in general and India
in particular, that this was a popular uprising
able to support a guerilla war leading to
a December intervention.
Peasants as outsider after the war
Subsequently, when the guerilla war began
the peasantry played several roles including
that of major suppliers of shelter, resources,
information and porters. Of course they
played the role of soldiers too. "The
enemy was in a school building top floor.
A group of policemen supported by over a
hundred razakars were there. The thana chief
from Tangail had declared never to give
up alive. We had taken casualties but they
were protected by sandbags. A young boy
who had been trained in India was hit and
killed. As we hadn't eaten the entire day,
we asked the local boys to get some food.
They ran desperately to get bread, eggs
etc. As this young boy- around 12 years
old- was running in the open field, his
arms full of food, he was shot dead. He
died with all the food strewn around him.
I started to fire at the protecting bags
and slowly they gave away. Then we picked
them off one by one. When they saw their
leaders gone, they started to flee. By then
the villagers had gathered. The razakars
and others jumped into the river but the
villagers caught them and killed about 200
of them" describes Md. Sultan, Air
Force NCO who escaped from Pak jail to return
home and fight in Barisal. (Bangladesh 1971,
BBC series 2002-3)
Maj.
Quamrul (retd) has written a book on the
warriors of 1971 --'Jonjuddher Gonojoddha'
-- which is a limited but a laudable effort.
It may be in fact a good description of
how the peasantry got involved in a war
that wasn't essentially theirs. Not that
anybody lacked patriotism or enthusiasm
but the post 1971 situation should not be
seen as an accident. All kinds of laments
and explanations notwithstanding, it was
a war led by bell bottom wearers. Peasants
in lungi who got involved were inevitably
going to be denied their right given the
nature of the state. Bangladesh had to reward
the urban elites who had taken its charge
and there was no representation of the rural
poor in the history writing or making history.
...................................................................................................
The author, an eminent columnist has done
extensive research on 1971.
