In the early hours of August 15, 1975, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, gun-wielding middle-level army officers arrived at the house of their President to murder him and massacre his family. The coup, led by a disgruntled section of the Bangladesh army with a role perhaps played by ‘foreign hands’ with various linkages to the Cold War and Bangladesh’s positioning since Sheikh Mujibur Rahman became President, snapped the democratic processes set up just three years ago when what was East Pakistan declared its independence as Bangladesh.
Three telefilms, Ami Mayer Kachey Jabo (I Want to Go to My Mother) directed by Hasan Rezaul, Bindu Thekey Brittey (From the Point to the Circle) by Shahnawaz Ripon and Captain Kamal by Mehdi Haque Rony, all based on books by Bangladeshi screenplay writer Shahid Rahaman, have just been screened at the Press Club of India, Delhi. They are attempts to look back, from the vantage point of 2024, at what happened in 1975. Just that for Bangladesh, it is perhaps not the best of times to be fixated on the past.
Sheikh Hasina Wajed, one of Sheikh Mujib’s daughters who survived the bloodbath, and the current Prime Minister of Bangladesh, who has consistently built on the ‘Mukti Juddho (liberation war)’ legacy, is beleaguered by student protests—ever since she, was enabled by a court ruling, brought back quotas in government jobs for the descendants of mukti joddhas (freedom fighters); something that had been abolished in 2018.
Since the opposition boycott of the 2024 elections, Hasina is technically the leader of a one-party state; her detractors point to her government’s record of keeping her opposition under house arrest, her supporters call the Opposition fundamentalists and against Bangladesh’s foundational principles of secularism and socialism enshrined in its Constitution by Sheikh Mujib.
The new films that bring up Hasina’s tragic family history are yet to be premiered in Bangladesh; the August 15 incident hardly needs a reminder, institutionalised as it is in the country as ‘The National Day of Mourning’ since 1996 when Hasina first came to power. How effective will these films on Sheikh Mujib’s murder be in, at least, managing public opinion in India, a neighbour that has been a strategic and economic partner of Bangladesh and has had a crucial role in Bangladesh’s liberation through its support for the Mukti Bahini (liberation army)? Or, will these films be read as a diversion to shore up the Hasina government’s profile with sentimental biographies of blood and betrayal, so as to help it tide over the current crisis that, thanks to a police crackdown, has claimed more than 150 lives so far? The answer is perhaps both a Yes and a No.
‘New generation must know’
Bangladeshi director Mehdi Haque Rony, who has helmed the film on Kamal, Sheikh Mujib’s elder son who was assassinated along with his wife on August 15, says there is “no connection between the student movement and our films”, but adds that it is “important for the new generation” in both Bangladesh and elsewhere to know this history. The attempt to update is apparent in his film’s tagline: ‘Captain Kamal, Jubo Somajer Protik (Youth icon Captain Kamal). “Few know of his arduous journey when he escaped house arrest and fled Dhaka to train for Mukti Juddho at the border. Here was a man who was the son of a President, but he behaved as if he was one of the people. He was a man of many parts, a theatre artiste and a sitar player, too. This is the first fiction film on Kamal,” says Rony.
Shahnwaz Ripon’s chilling film on Sheikh Moni, Mujib’s nephew, who was the leader of the youth wing of the Awami League, and the publisher of two newspapers, piles up the events of the day leading up to how Moni and his young family “were the first targets. After they were killed, they came for Sheikh Mujib. Moni had a hold on the youth”.
The telefilm on eight-year-old Russell, Mujib’s youngest son who was also not spared on August 15—there are touching episodes of how Mujib’s wife came to name him after his favourite philosopher Bertrand Russell and their family life—is based on Rahaman’s book Mohamanober Deshe (In a Great Man’s Land). The telefilm’s tagline, ‘Murdering a child in a mother’s lap, can this be any kind of politics?’ is another prompt that underlines how this one family’s tragedy cannot but be seen as a universal tragedy or any way to conduct politics, and was and is a matter of national shame for Bangladesh.
Us and them
To forget the lessons of one’s past is a dangerous but not a new turn in South Asian politics. This is, indeed, true for the opposition politics of Bangladesh, says Rahaman. He also adds what, in his opinion, a Bangladesh without an Awami League government amounts to: “I have seen religiosity on the rise, in messages behind buses, people are asked to send their children to maulvis instead of schools for education…. Whenever the Awami League has been (electorally) defeated, you’ll notice attacks on Hindus, Kali temples being looted….
Most Bangladeshis accept India as a friend but there are those who don’t want Tagore published in Bangladesh, they give a call for a ban on Indian goods – to them I say see if you can walk without India, do it and show me. On the 50th anniversary of Mukti Juddho, India’s Prime Minister Modi wanted to participate, and they said, ‘Don’t come to Bangladesh’. For us, whether it is the Congress, the BJP, the CPI(M), the TMC…, whoever comes to power…for us, India is our friend.”
Rahaman says that he is counting on India’s media to report on the quota crisis fairly and help prevent misinformation, “just like they did in 1971”.
“As a nation, we became free through Mukti Juddho, they are our freedom fighters, they sacrificed everything – should their kids and grandchildren not get help? In the name of quota andolan, they are asking for a restructuring of the government, that Sheikh Hasina should resign – is that the right way?” asks Rahaman. “She had said, ‘If we’ll not provide reservation to mukti joddhas, should I help the razakars [a term of abuse in Bangladesh; razakars are those who collaborated with the Pakistani army during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence].’ That statement of hers has been misrepresented by vested interests. She did not call the protesting students razakars.”
The films on the Mujib family seem like a biopic sliced into three separate films. Fifteen-minute clips of each were shown in Delhi. From them a glowing picture of Mujib emerges; in them, he has no warts, and his politics has no rough edges. There have been better examples of films as propaganda. Sergei Eisenstein to Ken Loach—they have known how to make them well.