Untold Facts

Identification of Historic Sites and Memorial Building in Bangladesh

An appreciable directive from the honorable High Court was delivered on the 8th July (09). The directive made to the Government of Bangladesh to identify places of historic sites and erect suitable memorial structures in those places.

To me the directive seemed to be insufficient for though it wished to generalize the sites, yet it narrowed it specification to a few relevant to 1971 alone. Thus it turned ridiculous so far as the past important historical sites and big events had been concerned. That was certainly though their wisdom but unfortunately and clearly implied that Bangladesh has no past history beyond 1971; no honest and wise historian would agree with the thesis of tunnel vision.

Bangladesh is not any of new land of new immigrants from elsewhere. Despite immigrants settled in the region from time to time in the past, there had been local natives as well. Such population mass, however, did not make any composite nation state in the long past as is understood in the modern sense.

Although there are inconclusive debates about independent entity of the nation state of the region, most of the erudite historians identified the Muslim Sultanat of Shamsuddin Ilias Shah of the early 15th century as the first sovereign of independent country in this region; Bangladesh of our time forms only a part of that independent Sultanat.

On further historical development during the Mughals, the people here lost some independence, regained much again in early eighteenth but fell down tragically to the Englishmen in mid 18th century.

To regain the independence and sovereignty, our forefathers struggled for 190 years until 1947 and then decisively succeeded in driving out the foreign rulers when fortunately the exact geographical area of Bangladesh (East Bengal and Sylhet) was secured. Thus we had the entity separated from the rest of British Indian subcontinent. In 1971 Bangladesh got the entity as independent country not in any imagined geographical area but in the exact of the area our forefathers secured in 1947. Had they not had the area in 1947, the question of independent Bangladesh would remain an illusion, never to be realized, as long, much less in 1971, as the Indian Union that the British had left here in 1947 would remain intact, secured, integrated and undivided, as that has been for the last six decades.

Now when the Government is rightly directed for exact location of identity of the historic sites of Bangladesh, one must not miss the facts and sites that specifically got marked the geographical entity in 1947. It was neither the gift of the colonial British nor of the Indian Congress Party but the fighting spirit and huge sacrifice of our forefathers under the All India Muslim League, Bengal Muslim League, in particular that for sure secured this geographical entity in August 1947. The historical fact that the Muslim League established in Dhaka in 1906 got the chunk of geographical area is almost forgotten. Do our present progeny know the exact site of the founding of the Muslim League in the present Dhaka city was at the Shahbag area? One researcher in history told me the other day that what was the old one story dilapidated building known as Madhur Canteen, in fact, in the Dhaka University main campus was the rostrum of the historic Muslim League Convention in 1906. If there would be any dispute about the exact site, one cannot escape the fact that the Muslim League Convention of 30th December 1906 was located somewhere there. I hope that the Government would work to fix up the site, as well, along with other sites.

Author: Dr. M.T. Hussain