Untold Facts

Awami League Frame: Democratic Joy is Misfit

There are some honest suggestions for Hasina for grooming her son Joy for the succession to her throne. The main point of suggestion is to get him cleaned transparently, not through rhetoric alone much less more importantly in the degenerated Awami League Framework.
Apart from the positive side of Joy’s education in open society in the USA and also negatively of dynastic ambition’s likely hazards among the politically volatile people of Bangladesh, the main stumbling block could be elsewhere.

People of Bangladesh have been hoodwinked and befooled time and again by the recent past political leaders with rare exception of one hue or the other. In general they had given everything but honesty and integrity in democratic norms.

Possibly, the reasons were obvious. One, common poor people are rather simpleton, looks for anything to catch hold of like drowning man to catch at a straw that appears hopeful for bare survival. In addition, image building of certain persons by vested interests had not been that difficult here whoever had managed huge funding for propaganda inside and from outside. What could be bigger propaganda tool here for nearly half the population or about 75 millions of people sustaining lives at grinding poverty level earning less than one dollar a day when politicians promised time and again for cheaper rice, the main staple food starch in Bangladesh. Mujib promised to supply rice in open market at Taka 0.50 per Kg in 1970 and Hasina in 2008 at Taka 10 per Kg, and so won the elections in their own time with ‘absolute majority’, but unfortunately none kept the promises amazingly with any accountability afterwards whatsoever!

That sort of promises made and broken reminds me of T B Macaulay, the British bureaucrat and historian, who nearly two centuries ago pointed out that the Bengalis would make ready made promises that they would soon break without any slightest remorse!

We limit this essay on Awami League alone. There had been some transformations from the noble inception in 1949. The beginning was quite lofty having leaders like Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani as the President, Shamsul Haq as the General Secretary, etc. But the degeneration started in mid 1950s. After the ouster of Bhashani by hoodlums like Mujib etc and death of Suhrawardy in 1963, the degeneration took the final shape. Muijb topped the leadership and purged out still then there the honest persons like Abdus Salam Khan, Amena Begum, Ataur Rahman Khan, etc. absolutely for his power craziness.

In mid 1960s after his launching of the apparently innocent looking Six Point program for ‘autonomy’ that the CIA and the R&AW had the sole blessings that landed him in prison, it was only Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury who kept the Awami League afloat. His imprisonment, however, raised his popularity in negative sense. At this stage Bhashani of the NAP from out side through his Jalao Porao raised Mujib to the high position. The victory of the party in the 1970 election in East Pakistan and the stalemate of power sharing led to the civil war and India’s intervention in the December 1971 war. These crucial matters took place out of his knowledge and beyond physical presence that made him obviously through massive propaganda still bigger hero and so he turned as the absolute leader of independent Bangladesh. Naturally his luck favored him to become absolutely power hungry in midst of surrounding sycophants that Malek Ukil labeled in post August 1975 discourse as the FARAOH’s fall.

Oli Ahad, Mujib’s contemporary in politics and close to one another vouchsafed with full authority that Mujib was all along power hungry. He further noted with all knowledge that Mujib had no patriotism whatsoever but love for absolute power alone (See, Oli Ahad’s Jatiya Rajniti 1945 Theke 1975).

Here one may note carefully his upbringing in childhood and early youth. He was a juvenile delinquent so much so that affected his early schooling and passing Matriculation Examination with poor result at the age of about 22 years. The inside fact that made him delinquent and his foster father lamented his manners as a GOONDA or hoodlum was perhaps due to his birth of a Hindu unwed girl mother in Calcutta; the biological father having had refused to marry his mother, the girl’s father gave him in adoption to Sheikh Lutfur Rahman of Tungipara, Gopalganj, who would work as a Mohrar with the lawyer Chandi Das, the girl’s father. He married the girl and adopted Mujib as foster son in 1923 at his age about 3 years. Even as the foster father in his poor pecuniary condition as a low paid worker, later on after Pakistan established he got a promotion to become Peshkar from the position of Record Supplier in the Faridpur Dustrict Judge Court, he did almost everything possible to rare him and also give him education. But his disturbed birth and childhood obviously played some part in his delinquency. Even so, the Pakistan movement in Bengal based in Calcutta and Suhrawardy’s favor for rather a hoodlum youth opened his luck to get admission in the Islamia College, Calcutta, and then a bastion for Pakistan movement. It is well known that he had his BA Degree through fraudulence and impersonation for being a serious Muslim League worker. To be brief, the Bengal Muslim League, the Pakistan movement, Suhrawardy and his dole money made the beginning of his fortune there in 1940s. In 1949 June when the Awami Muslim League was formed in Dacca he happened to be the joint secretary two, first was Moustaque. One can imagine thus his rise, luck and becoming power crazy from early delinquency.

His rule in Bangladesh for little over three years and a half had been dotted with his power craziness. He ruined all modes and institutions of democracy for the same craze. He raised killer Rakhsmi Bahini just only to misuse and abuse all state powers at whims for his perpetuation in power. He closed down all newspapers except four under his direct control and throttled freedom of expression just only absolutely to perpetuate his power and authority. One might recall Stalin’s low birth that many think made him ruthless to kill as many as, in one count, 30 million people in satisfying his beastly ego in about two decades rule in former USSR. Mujib’s Rakhsmis killed nearly 40,000 plus in three and half years. Had he stayed in power any longer, one might guess how many more his Rakhsmis would have extra-judicially killed with impunity.

Some say that he did not do any financial corruption. Who gave the money for building his 32 Dhanmondi home? Under his nose his own people made Bangladesh a hell of ‘CORRUPTION BONANZA’ just as a London paper had the term used in early 1975. He himself had been the bonanza or the unending fountain of corruption. In fact, promotion and fostering of corruption bonanza by Mujib himself brought the national army men in conflict with him, in addition to his creation and better nursed the Para military force, introduction of lone party absolute dictatorial BKSAL, throttling of newspapers, endless extra judicial killings, etc. etc. that ultimately led to his fall in the army coup on the glorious 15th August 1975 for freedom, democracy, disbanding the killer Rakhsmi Bahini, freeing media and newspapers and multi-party Parliament. Mujib’s egocentricity and power craziness made the exit in disgraceful way obvious so much so that none was known to have lamented his fall but had been jubilant.
Even on the early morning of his fall, he got killed in encounter that was not to be, had he not shown his ego not abdicating but by ordering his eldest son Sheikh Kamal from inside the residence at Dhanmondi to fire on the mutineers, as is recently known from a statement of the coup leader Col Farook’s eldest son Tarek made from abroad.

Hasina as is seen from her all attitudes in most shameless way proudly inherits Mujib’s all those egos and anti democratic modes and methods as were clear in her first term and in the second term now with more aggressive viciousness. It is thus useless to suggest and expect that she would prepare Joy differently from the previous Awami League’s anti-democratic, pro corruption, actively fascistic and repressive framework against all genuinely lawful oppositions and legitimate dissents. But if Joy, as he was educated and groomed in the democratic climate of the USA, might have some point for optimism. The optimism would be that he must not fit in the old Awami League framework but must be in different mode that must be fully tolerant, gentle, patient and clearly democratic one. To all sensible people the Awamis are the most rotten fascist of the 21st century in Bangladesh that inherited Mujib’s disturbed childhood and his Calcutta dole days of meanness and mental craziness.

Joy’s father Dr Wazed was a gentle man, a typical simple Rangpuri, as I knew him from a distance, almost free from unusual rotten egoist attitude that both Mujib and Hasina were made of. Whether Joy could assiduously come out of the genetic disabilities and insufficiency of his maternal side or not that might be determinant one way or the other of a worthy beginning in gentle, tolerant and democratic political career for him in Bangladesh provided further that he could keep him outside the external domains of the Indian Intelligence, the R&AW and of the Israeli Intelligence, the MOSSAD, in particular.

Author: HB Khair