November 29, 2024

Bangladesh: Longings for Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” and Sheikh Mujib’s “Jieye (Long Live) Pakistan”

Dr Q M Jalal Khan

Those longings became more intense and acute than ever before during the fascist Hasina’s 16 years of gory and grievous misrule. They rang and resonated with more appeal and immediacy as the fetid and fascist Hasina became excessively addicted to using all kinds of tools—both state and private—to continuously punish and persecute and kill and kidnap the people of Bangladesh from the beginning of 2009 to 5 August 2024. She did so even from the time of her bloody logi-boitha shontrash (oars and sticks and poles terror of 2006) and her murderous arson attack of 2004. Those tools as they became reduced to their repugnant and repulsive state included Hasina’s extremely notorious police league (the state police and the ruling Awami League being synonymous with each other in their nonstop pursuit and prosecution of the innocent people for holding even the slightest opposition views), equally notorious RAB, despicable DB, devilishly dastardly DGFI, highly jaundiced judiciary, (kangaroo) courts of law, stuffing/packing the prisons with thousands of innocent inmates, stagnant and ignoble parliament, un/civil administration, brute BAL-impregnated bureaucracy, s/election commission, public dis/service commission, corruption-ridden financial sector, baneful banking sector, stolen share markets, menacing mass media, sinking education sector, corruption-ridden health and business sectors and what not. Through her lawless jungle- rule, Hasina exerted absolute control and coercion over the entire machinery to advance the cause of her fascist propaganda with endless dirty tricks and dangerous tactics. All the regime’s machinations were tailored with her shrill and shallow-voiced lies, falsehoods, myths and half-truths, all blatantly made up and manufactured to malign the entire range of the opposition. The entire command and communication system was methodically mechanized, manipulated and weaponized by the monstrous she-tyrant to not only trumpet her nasty and nefarious provocations but also oppress the people of Bangladesh in a most bloody and barbaric manner possible for the last 16 years. 

The horrible tyrant Hasina—a pure she-devil, she-monster, she-croc, and she-hyena, if people are allowed to express their loads of loath that way—and her crappy and clownish cronies and mafia syndicates were committing all sorts of brutal and beastly crimes—from a series of blatant election riggings to hundreds of enforced disappearances to a number of massacres to the killing of many innocent people by hanging or beating them to death in police custody to the most unjust and illegal confinement of thousands of opposition politicians and religious scholars. They were doing so with the open and active support of the horribly unneighborly anti-Muslim India as led by such extremist groups as BJP and RSS, under the leadership of their Muslim-killing Narendra Modi.

To repeat, it is by being in satanic collusion with the communal/ist, fanatical and fundamentalist Hindutva India, particularly under Modi that the utterly fascist Hasina regime and its filthy and stinky she-despot were perpetrating all kinds of horror and terror for the last 16 years. Completely Modi-fied, Hasina resorted to all kinds of criminal notoriety with slavish and servile loyalty to her ‘blood-relation’ and ‘husband’ India (to use those terms as advocated by her own inner mafia circle. As widely known, India has been exercising all kinds of subjection, subjugation, and subversion in the Muslim majority but much smaller neighbor Bangladesh for a long time. Such Indian hegemony has been made possible by both covert and overt, open and clandestine conspiracies with the hissing and heinous Hasina regime installed in Dhaka by Delhi in 2008. 

From early 2009 to 5 August 2024, Bangladesh was considerably and significantly Sikkim-ized, virtually losing its sovereignty and territorial integrity to India the way the tiny Sikkim (under Lhendup Dorji) and many other parts of today’s India were gobbled up by the hegemonist and Hindu supremacist India during the second part of the twentieth century. It was the same case with Bangladesh, though slightly indirectly, under the shamelessly slavish and servile Hasina — Bangladesh’s Lhendup Dorji of the first order. Indian-sponsored fascist Hasina and many of her Hinduized BAL-BAKSAL, from the very top, are/were of Hindu origin, Hindu descent, Hindu blood and Hindu sexual connection. They were unleashing terror and tyranny, nonstop, on the people of Bangladesh for at least the last 16 years. This is not to ignore or underestimate, by any means, their earlier almost 4 years of crime-and-corruption-ridden authoritarian one-party rule (1972-1975), which had turned Bangladesh into an utterly dreary dystopia degenerating into deadly consequences of famine, the plague that was their Rakkhi-and-Mujib Bahini terror and the dictatorial one-party rule. Those dark ‘Tofayel’-and-‘Masududdi’-led Rakkhi predators, always on the lookout for human preys, were as horrible and harmful as the dangerous and devouring rodents and locusts and blood sucking leeches. With a deceiving human exterior, they were as low-gazing as vultures looking for carcasses.

No doubt, the whole state apparatus, as led by Sheikh Mujib then, was a highly detestable and despicable one, weighed down by gaping moral depravities and widening economic disparities. The heavy chains imposed on the people by the intolerably oppressive Mujib and his severe maladministration inevitably led to the fateful and painful end that his dire dictatorship deserved—an end that was sorrowful for him and his clan but deeply joyful for the entire nation and its people of all walks of life, who either maintained a nodding quiet or publicly rejoiced by distributing sweets as they breathed a sigh of relief at the desired demise of Mujib and his brutal BAL-BAKSAL rule.

Now, Mujib’s daughter Hasina, her family and her BAL-BAKSAL gopal/gopali crooks and clowns and cronies, who, until recently, abounded in the RAB, police, parliament and civil administration, voraciously learnt from the playbook of their gopal ‘father’ Mujib and even how to be worse, far worse, thousand times more heinous and horrible. From 2009 to 5 August 2024, RAW-police-RAB-protected Hasina and her mafia gopal/gopali gangs and goons descended on the nation only to turn it into a police and prison state and divide and weaken it to both the vicarious and sadistic pleasure of India. They made the country a শূয়োরের খোঁয়াড় (pig-shed) and গরুর আথাল (cowshed) that created an intolerably choking and suffocating environment. They became an indescribably vicious, vengeful, vindictive, corrupt and cruel group of gangsters, culprits, looters, smugglers and vote riggers of vermin class, taking the country far behind and far backward, in cahoots and cohorts with the help of their ‘blood’ and ‘husband-wife’ relation India, their main backer and backbone, a communally-driven fanatical and fundamentalist Hindu country. The carnival of their bloody social and political ills and evils that took an unprecedented toll on the safety and security of civilian lives knew no limit.

The Hasina-led BAL-BAKSAL and their hoodlums and hooligans decomposed into an evil swarm of Indian RAW agents, millions of illegal Indian workers, local gangs and goons, lawless gopal/gopali police, rogue paramilitary RAB, and members of her unholy parliament, unjust judiciary, and uncivil civil administration. All of them were thriving on fetid force and fraud, widespread crimes and corruption, endless cruelties and atrocities, and overwhelming deception and debauchery lasting for at least 16 years, not to speak of their misdeeds predating. During those years, Bangladesh was tearing and teetering under the claws and clutches of state terrorism perpetrated and perpetuated by foul and fascist Hasina and her BAL-BAKSAL crooks and clowns

through all these years (as the country was under similar satanic elements during 1972=1975, not to speak of the later 1996-2000). No wonder, the people of the country as if they were ‘White Man's Burden’ (as Rudyard Kipling thought the colonized to be) were looking up to the West (America, in particular) to rescue them from those Hasina-led pack of howling wolves and hyenas, dangerous crocs and coyotes and canines, and poisonous snakes and smelly skunks in human form. Hasina’s men and women were only a small coterie of their own kind—a bunch of shameless sycophants, sickening flatterers, beastly scoundrels, horrendous hoodlums and horrific hooligans. Their brutal oppression (with the help of their partisan parasites in the corrupt and cliquey gopal/gopali police, bloodthirsty RAW and RAB and their rusty and raucous members in the civil administration) for a total of (16+4) 20 years knew no bounds. 

Bangladesh was born about the last moment of 1971 with a number of suicidal confusions and contradictions at the root of which lay the very figure of Mujib himself. Even after the fake rumors of his origin of birth are discounted (but only to be mocked by Donald Trump who loves to raise and stir the issue of birtherism as he did in the case of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris), Mujib was wrongly imposed, by the sheer tyranny of his fascist daughter Hasina and her fake BAL-BAKSAL majority, backed by the communalist and Muslim-hating India, upon the nation as its so-called ‘father’. A good deal of discourse and discussion has been done on this issue by (Ret) Col Rashed Chowdhury, Zoglul Husain, Dr Abid Bahar, Dr Saidul Islam, this author and many others. Unlike any such ‘father’ of any other nation throughout history, Mujib neither really wanted the independence of Bangladesh nor took part in its 9-month long war of independence. A great portion of Mujib’s words and actions were highly controversial and questionable as they really were from the beginning. He was a highly divisive figure who, through his demagoguery, loved to divert, deflect and deviate from the common good and common ground more than he created and contributed to a unifying theme or cause, especially in the post-independence Bangladesh. It was he who, with the exception of the failed Agartala conspiracy, wanted the both (East and West) wings of Pakistan to remain united as a single country, as they used to be from 1947 to 1971, but this time perhaps under a sort of confederation. Boston-based Bangladeshi-American Radiologist Dr Muazzam H Kazi gives a short analysis of Sheikh Mujibur’s intent in 1971 as follows:

• Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s historic March 7th, 1971 speech is often interpreted as a call for an independent Bangladesh. However, if we carefully examine the dialogues between Mujib and the Pakistani junta from March 15th to March 24th, 1971, it becomes clear that his speech was likely a political maneuver aimed at achieving either a democratic Pakistan or an autonomous Bangladesh within Pakistan. Many argue that the March 7th speech was a de facto proclamation of independence, but I believe otherwise based on the following sequence of events:
• March 15th, 1971: President Yahya Khan arrived in Dhaka to negotiate with Mujibur Rahman and the Awami League. Despite the massive crowds urging Mujib to declare independence, discussions continued, indicating that an independent Bangladesh was not Mujib’s declared goal at this stage.
• March 16th, 1971: Mujib and Yahya held a closed-door meeting. There was no discussion of independence. Instead, the talks focused on Pakistan’s future political structure.
• March 17th, 1971: Mujib repeated his demand for the immediate transfer of power to elected representatives but did not call for outright independence.
• March 18th, 1971: Behind the scenes, the Pakistani military was preparing Operation Searchlight, a planned crackdown that would lead to mass killings on March 25th.
• March 20th, 1971: Tensions rose as Yahya suggested bringing Bhutto into the talks, but Mujib made it clear he had no interest in negotiating with Bhutto. Yet, Mujib remained focused on a political resolution rather than independence.
• March 21st–22nd, 1971: Discussions between Mujib, Yahya, and Bhutto continued. Mujib, wary of the army, held private talks with Bhutto outside the official meeting spaces. Still, the focus was on achieving a political settlement within Pakistan.
• March 24th, 1971: The Awami League continued drafting proposals for a confederation within Pakistan. Despite rising tensions, no independence declaration was made, and constitutional talks remained the priority.
• March 25th, 1971: The talks failed to produce any resolution. That night, the Pakistani military launched Operation Searchlight, killing unarmed civilians. It was only then that the East Bengal Regiment began their revolt, and the path to independence became determined and inevitable.
• In Sharmin Ahmad’s book Neta O Pita: Tajuddin Ahmed, she recounts a critical moment on the night of March 25th, 1971. Her father, Tajuddin Ahmed, along with Barrister Amirul Islam, visited Mujib’s house at 10 PM. They urged him to escape and lead the nation, but Mujib declined. Tajuddin then requested that Mujib declare independence and tried to record the declaration, but Mujib declined again. Tajuddin left Mujib’s residence and went on to lead the nation during the Liberation War. This account remains uncontested by Barrister Amirul Islam, who is still alive. Based on these events, it’s evident that Mujibur Rahman’s initial goal was to secure autonomy within a united Pakistan. The full push for independence only crystallized after the atrocities of March 25^th with the bold and definitive and loud and clear declaration/proclamation of independence by then Maj Ziaur Rahman the following day. 

All his life he dreamt of becoming the prime minister of all (united) Pakistan, as suggested by the last and concluding words—‘Jieye (Long Live) Pakistan’--of his 7 March speech that was full of undecisive and procrastinating ifs and buts as far as the declaration of independence of Bangladesh was concerned. As such, he was not only hesitant but was in fact clear and categorical in refusing to declare and resisting the independence of Bangladesh. For the duration of his safe custody in Pakistan, he didn’t even know that Pakistan broke and Bangladesh became independent about which he wasn’t very happy as suggested by his disappointment/frustration expressed to A S M Abdur Rob and others upon his return in January 1971.

No wonder he found a backdoor mechanism to run away from the liberation war in order to stay in the safe custody of the (West) Pakistani authorities. Since then, until he was assassinated in August 1975 for the reason of his destructive misrule, he remained an unbearable liability rather than a desirable asset in the politics of Bangladesh. The first national traitor and the first collaborator with President General Yahya Khan on the night of 25 March 1971, he left Bangladesh with all the necessary security and financial details worked out for his family with Pakistani authorities. Having left the country helpless to the onslaughts of the enemies and later exposed to the menace that was the manipulative mercy of India (to use my own oxymoron), Mujib’s was the first Razakar family of Bangladesh. Even then, he was dictatorially imposed on the people of Bangladesh as ‘the father of the nation’!  What a mockery of what’s otherwise a noble title of the zenith status! Out of frustration and disappointment, one feels like asking, “Should Bangladesh ever have been born, only to be wished to be rescued indeed by America/the West as a ‘White Man’s Burden’?” 

Let me bring the veteran London-based online campaigner Zoglul Husain of vast knowledge (referenced above) whose view is very pertinent here. He has this to say,  

• This year, the fascist Hasina regime, together with the hegemonist India, co-produced a biographical film, Mujib: The Making of a Nation, with the malicious intent of falsely claiming Mujib to be the maker of the nation in Bangladesh. The truth is, Mujib never wanted the independence of Bangladesh. The fascist Mujib regime of national traitors, killed 30 thousand patriots, threw 62 thousand to prison, perpetrated indiscriminate killings, torture, tyranny, oppression, repression, and reckless plunder, it caused a man-made famine, in which 1.5 million people perished, and above all, it sold out national interest and surrendered sovereignty to India. It destroyed democracy, turned the country into a bottomless basket case, and the country was plunged into a deep abyss. The glorious army-people uprising of 15 August 1975 rescued and saved the country. Mujib was actually a national traitor. (Ret) Col Rashed Chowdhury, a decorated freedom fighter in 1971, and a renowned author of 6 books and co-author of another 7, with a new book in the pipeline, has explained in several articles how preposterous is the idea of making a biopic of Mujib and making him ‘father of the nation’ to falsely claim his leadership in making a nation.

According to Col Chowdhury and Zoglul Husain, Mujib does not qualify even to be bracketed among the founding fathers, as some pundits try to do these days. On March 25, 1971, he betrayed the people of Bangladesh and fled the field of independence in collaboration with killer Yahya. Late famous journalist Enayetullah Khan analyzed Mujib very correctly in his article (original in Bangla), “Rise and Fall of Mujib”. They wonder how such a person can share the honor of being grouped together with the founding fathers. Nonetheless, Chowdhury believes that “Mujib did have some contribution in awakening the Bengalis to fight the West Pakistani leaders for their rights. It was more of চুঙ্গাবাজি to augment his own interest and stature, posing as a self-styled king. Ayub Khan catapulted Mujib to prominence by implicating him in the Agartala Conspiracy Case (ACC), and Bhasani helped him by leading the 1969 Uprising that culminated in freeing Mujib from the ACC. Soon, after the failure of Ayub's Round Table Conference (RTC) in March 1969, Mujib became a fairytale hero to Bengalis. To me, Mujib came at the right time of history, but he bungled every opportunity he had, mainly because of his greed for greatness and stupidity.”  

Until 5 August 2024, Bangladesh was still burdened with the same BAL-BAKSAL forces of fraud and deception, unfortunately, in a more foul and fascist manner resorted to by Hasina and her gangs in her terrorist party, police, RAB, DGFI, judiciary, administration and state machinery. To reiterate, the country was not only fraught but also defrauded with irreconcilable conflicts and controversies from the beginning. Such a cursed nation torn with unbridgeable divides and differences has never been seen on earth. Look at the megalomaniac Sheikh Mujib and the origins of his obnoxious BAL-BAKSAL-RakkhiBahini and his authoritarian rule (1972-1975) marked with corruption, famine, and oppression as its hallmark. Look at his monomaniacal daughter Hasina and her fascist misrule of widespread loot and plunder and endless monstrosities in repression and persecution (1996-2000, particularly, 2009-2024). Until then, the country was suffering, immensely and indescribably, from her totalitarian state tyranny leaving it in irreparable tatters. Following the footsteps of her awful father (who had over thousands and thousands of people killed and behind bars, both combined, and let his cronies steal to the extent of reducing the country to a ‘bottomless basket’), his horrible hyena daughter Hasina far superseded her sire in completely criminalizing the entire range of state tools—police, parliament, judiciary, civil administration, banks and financial institutions and educational institutions! 

“The Awami League (AL) and the Mujib family,” comments Dr Muazzam Kazi, “have repeatedly oppressed the people of Bangladesh whenever they have come to power. In 1975, through BAKSAL, they stripped citizens of their basic rights, and from 2009 to 2024, Hasina has further eroded these rights—looting banks, manipulating the power sector, the stock market, and taking commissions from major projects. Each time they govern, they dismantle the fundamental principles of our liberation war, including democracy, voting rights, liberty, and justice. To safeguard our rights, banning the AL seems to be the only solution.”

Given the unspeakable Awami atrocities and steamroller oppression for more than two decades and the control and occupation of Bangladesh by the communalist, fanatical and fundamentalist India, with the help of the completely Modi-fied Awami Hasina BAL, one is prompted to ask this question: “Wasn’t it better for Bangladesh to have remained ‘White Man's Burden’ as it used to be until 1947 or remained united with Pakistan as a Muslim country until 1971, free of Indian Hindutva hegemony with a better atmosphere of the rule of law, peace, safety, security, less corruption, less anarchy and more stability prevailing then? Horrible Hasina, until she was kicked out on 5 August 2024, made the country full of totems named after Mujib and herself and other family members in a filthy and stinky manner. It reminds one of Saparmurat Niyazov, former President of Turkmenistan, who was pretty self-centered. So much so that he bombarded the country with his own image everywhere. Niyazov not only had his image on every possible product and location, but he also named lots of things after himself, including cities, the month of January, and even a meteorite! Mujib’s brutal end along with most of his family members has an unmistakable parallel with Nicolas II, the last Czar/Emperor of Russia: “The night of July 16, 1918, the Romanovs—ex-Tsar Nicolas II, his wife, and their five children—were woken by their Bolshevik captors in the house where they were being held in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The guards gathered the family in a room and opened fire, then attacked them with the butts of their guns and bayonets. With this bloody execution, the Bolsheviks hoped to stamp out all traces of the Romanovs in Russia, as well as the monarchy they stood for.” The stories of the brutal executions of the last French Emperor Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette; Italian fascist Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci; Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his spouse Elena; Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, all of whom left a grandiose but bloody legacy, including vast halls and statues and so on, are similar to the end Sheikh Mujib met.

Apart from the issue of the killer Mujib, who escaped and absconded from the liberation war, as the fake ‘father of the nation’, there are many other issues that are eating and tearing into the vitals of Bangladesh—national anthem issue, the number of the dead during the liberation war issue, constantly abused constitution issue, Mujib Bahini issue, Rakkhi Bahini issue, BAKSAL issue, Bashonti famine issue, 15 August as the day of deliberation issue, and the issue of bloody Hasina’s bloodier regime of massacres, mass murders, judicial murders, logi-boitha shontrash, enforced disappearances, unimaginably inhuman dungeon of AinaGhor, countless tortuous (mercilessly beaten, handcuffed and dundaberi) remands and imprisonments, India’s Felani border killings, spread of fundamentalist Hindu culture in a traditionally Muslim majority country, banning the BAL and ISKCON and over a hundred treasonous agreements with India, to name only a few, that left the country reeling and bleeding and teetering for about two decades. All these conflicting and controversial issues need to be resolved with urgency now that the country has found its second and true liberation, which is the result of the July-August revolution by the young Chatro Janata, not any political party whatsoever! Cowardly, compromising, hypocritical, pro-BAL and pro-India BNP is slavishly seditious, treacherously and treasonously adhering to India, drifting far away from the patriotic and nationalist values and ideals of legendary President Ziaur Rahman and Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia. Under the present incompetent leadership, the BNP has been a faulty, failing and flailing party for the last 16 years! 

Q.M. Jalal Khan, MA, PhD (USA), is an author, coauthor and lead editor of about 11 books on the Awami misrule and Indian hegemony in Bangladesh for the last 16 years (in addition to his works of literary criticism). Here is the list of those political books:

1. Bangladesh: The 5 August liberation, national anthem controversy and other essays (forthcoming).

2. Bangladesh: Social Media Outcries Against the Awami Fascism (Writer’s Republic, USA)

3. Bangladesh: Political and Literary Reflections on a Divided Country (Peter Lang, New York)

4. Bangladesh Divided: Reflections on a Corrupt Police and Prison State (Peter Lang, New York)

5. Bangladesh: A Suffering People Under State Terrorism (Peter Lang, New York)

6. Bangladesh in Bondage (Palgrave Macmillan)

7. Begum Khaleda Zia: People's Leader of Bangladesh (Academica Press, USA)

8. Bangladesh Under Awami Tyranny (Writer’s Republic, USA)

9. President Ziaur Rahman: Legendary Leader of Bangladesh (Writer’s Republic, USA) 10. India’s Hegemonic Design in Bangladesh (Writer’s Republic, USA)

11. আওয়ামী ফ্যাসিবাদ: দেশপ্রেমের বিদ্রোহী পংক্তিমালা (Awami Fascism in Bangladesh: Patriotic Verses of Rebellion) আওয়ামীফ্যাসিবাদদেশপ্রেমেরবিদ্রোহীপংক্তিমালাwww.amazon.co.uk/----/dp/1800682638 আওয়মফযসবদদশপরমরবদরহপকতমলwww.horoppabooks.com/product-page/-------------------- 

www.amazon.com/gp/product/1800682638/ref=cx_skuctr_share?smid=A3GP44ZNKGHSAQ%20 (for USA/Canada) 

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1800682638/ref=cm_sw_r_wa_apa_i_3CZSDNYATN21NVMGS0QR%20 (for UK and Europe).