Editor’s note
The most important political event in the history of the people of Bangladesh remains the country’s successful war of liberation against the occupation forces of Pakistan in 1971…
VICTORY DAY SPECIAL 2014
Freedom of expression: subverted
At the beginning of the month of anniversary of its freedom, the nation was quietly reminded of the tenuous foundation over which one of the most cherished freedoms currently rests. International Crimes Tribunal 2 convicted and sentenced a journalist on charges of ‘contempt of court’ for citing figures from published research on casualties during the war of liberation of 1971…
Dwindling fight for secularism
The constitution adopted in the parliament in 1972 incorporated secularism as one of its four basic principles avowedly to respect the spirit of the independence war in 1971…
The general law of rebellion in Bangladesh
Only with lies and conspiracy, an integral part of bourgeois politics, instead of bravery and courage, it was possible for Clive, the conspirator from Great Britain, to overwhelm the Battle of Plassey, actually, ‘a brief artillery duel’ as Boris Kagarlitsky writes in From Empires to Imperialism, the state and the rise of bourgeois civilisation (tr Renfrey Clarke, Routledge, 2014) on June 23, 1957…
‘India didn’t want to put all eggs in one basket’
India was instrumental in creating the Mujib Bahini partly because it did not want to put all its eggs in one basket and partly because it wanted a force directly obligated to it. Also the issue of the fighting the pro-Peking left/Naxals influenced its creation, Afsan Chowdhury — a journalist and researcher who was part of the Muktijuddher Dalilpatra Project […]
‘No single organisation can claim war credit’
The Awami League does not need to distort the history of independence. If the Awami league did anything to the history of independence, it did that for the need of the history and its continuity. It is the BNP and the Jamaat party that are responsible for all kinds of distortion of the history of independence, Rashed Khan Menon…
‘It was never a war of a single party, person’
Mushtaque Ahmed’s plot was to form a confederation with Pakistan and stop fighting the liberation war. To realise his plan, he contacted Pakistan and the United States. Some Awami League leaders, cabinet members and bureaucrats were part of Mushtaque Ahmed’s plot, Manzurul Ahsan Khan — now an adviser to the Communist Party of Bangladesh who, along with the police, took […]
‘War glory belittled if AL claims all credits’
The erstwhile East Pakistan was not undivided either. It was divided into different classes with 95 per cent of working class proletariats and people from the middle- and lower middle-class and less than 5 per cent of the rising business class and the rich Bengalis, Khalequzzaman — general secretary of the Socialist Party of Bangladesh — tells Taib Ahmed in […]
‘Mujib Bahini didn’t fight liberation war’
On December 16, 1971, MAG Osmani was eagerly waiting in Comilla to join the surrender ceremony at the Ramna Race Course and was communicating with the Bangladesh government-in-exile in Kolkata to get the clearance…
‘AL, BNP turn liberation war history into family history’
The Awami League is the party that led the political front in the liberation war and it was, fundamentally, a bourgeois political party, representing the new capitalists among the Bengalis and it was impossible for the Awami League to lead the liberation war…
‘Let us give our history a total shape’
Most of the leftists, say around 98 per cent, were for the liberation struggle but there was a very small portion that did not support the war, Ayesha Khanam — president of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad — tells Abdullah Juberee and Shahin Akhter…
‘War didn’t happen overnight out of the blue’
Long before the crackdown on March 25, 1971, preparations were made for an armed struggle as it would not be possible to liberate the country without an armed struggle, Haider Anwar Khan Juno — now a left politician…
The bell-bottomed guerrillas of ’71
During the liberation war of 1971, thousands of young men were recruited at the Sector Two headquarters at Melaghar, near Agartala, India. Under the guidance of their sector commander, Major Khaled Musharraf, these young men were trained…
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