Manash Ghosh, 82, the author of a new book that peels the power and the plot behind the assassination of the first President of Bangladesh, belongs to that generation of journalists who worked with their backs to the camera. His souvenirs from the Liberation War of Bangladesh (1971), extending up to the first three years of independent Bangladesh, as a 28-year-old journalist with The Statesman posted in Dhaka, are his memories. They are now part of his new book, Mujib’s Blunders (Niyogi Books).
One of its highlights is the way it has filled in the shadows that circled the new nation that eventually led to the assassination of its first president and the massacre of his family in 1975, and gives the conspirators, faces.
In realpolitik, it is accepted wisdom that friends are kept close and enemies, closer; the book shows Mujib taking it to ridiculous lengths—exaggerating the capacity for reform of former enemies while antagonising old comrades like Tajuddin Ahmed [the person who actually directed the Bangladesh Liberation War with Mujib then in Pakistan’s jail and who was also the prime minister of Bangladesh’s first provisional government in 1971], often at the behest of his ambitious nephew Sheikh Moni.
Mujib’s immediate predicament after freedom, unlike Jinnah’s and Nehru’s, hinged on identity—his nation’s liberation came with Indian help and he wanted to foreground Bangladesh’s identity as a secular Bengali nation. For many Bangladeshis, that was betraying the mandate—they had signed up for a Muslim-Bengali nation with a majority of the elite resentful of the separation from Pakistan. For the defence top and middle brass, for instance, that meant loss of privilege, and starting over in a new nation.
Mujib’s Blunders also has riveting accounts of the contributions of India’s defence forces towards the Mukti juddho (freedom fight). It was almost a suicide mission, but unknown except outside of military history. Under Squadron Leader Pushp Kumar Vaid of the Indian Air force, dangerous sorties on Soviet Mi-4 helicopters, were flown all over the Meghna to drop troops. “The mission was carried out in the dead of night, the helicopters were being shot at, and the pilots had no navigational aid other than the magnetic compass,” says the author.
The book holds important lessons for the neighbourhood and for nations that come out of national liberation movements worldwide with too heavy a reliance on personality cults and on the unresolved ‘Muslim question’, which marks all three nations that came out of British India.
Mujib’s legacy is now seen as problematic and is in danger of being erased in his nation. His daughter, Sheikh Hasina Wajid, who was the last prime minister of Bangladesh, had to flee the country last August after violent student protests, which resulted in a loss of 1,500 lives; a Bangladesh court has recently issued a warrant for her arrest. Excerpts from a conversation with Ghosh ahead of the 50th anniversary of Mujib’s assassination on August 15, 1975.
You first went to Bangladesh in 1971 after Sheikh Mujib's return from Pakistani jail. What were your first impressions?
Mujib went to address a massive public rally straight from the airport; there he openly declared that he knew a conspiracy was on to undo the Liberation War and that the conspirators were active. I mean within a few hours of his arrival in Dhaka, he could sense that things were not all right. He told the public that ‘this time I will lead the war, I shall lead you all to fight against the conspirators to keep Bangladesh liberated’.
How did you hear about the assassination?
After serving in Dhaka as bureau chief of The Statesman for three years, I was posted back to Calcutta just before Mujib's assassination. I heard about it on the radio. It was not much of a shock, because it was very much in the air that he would be (killed). His army officers pulled the trigger and killed him and 18 members of his family. Almost the entire family [except Sheikh Hasina and her sister Rehana] was wiped out.
It is 50 years since Sheikh Mujib's assassination, and 50 years later you have written this book. There can be no ambiguity with the title like Mujib's Blunders.
David Frost, the reputed English television host, once asked Mujib: ‘What is your greatest weakness?’ He said: ‘I love my people too much.’ He felt ‘all his people were Bengalis’ and no harm would come his way from those people. He knew who the conspirators were—right from Ziaur Rahman [spouse of Khaleda Zia, the leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the rival of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League] to Major Shariful Dalim. One reason for his overconfidence was that they used to bring even their marital problems to him for solution. They were frequent visitors to Mujib’s house. And they directed soldiers, who killed him absolutely from point-blank range.
From your book, there seems to be a Sheikh Mujib who went to jail, and another who came out of it. He didn't seem to know his friends from his enemies.
He had many character frailties. He used to be surrounded by sycophants. He allowed his ears to be poisoned with all kinds of things, especially about people like Tajuddin—the conspirators knew Tajuddin was onto their game, and so he had to be kept away from Mujib at all costs. Pakistani then premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who released him from jail, also played mind games with him, suggesting that while he still languished in jail, his trusted lieutenant had already made himself prime minister with Indira Gandhi’s help. The seeds of suspicion were thus sown in Mujib's mind about the people whom he should have trusted more. His nephew, Sheikh Moni, strengthened those suspicions as he had ambitions of being Mujib’s successor; he insinuated that Tajuddin was growing ‘too ambitions’. The truth is that Tajuddin came over to India on Mujib's instruction, and sought Mrs Gandhi’s help when Pakistan started the military crackdown in East Pakistan. Mujib had already made him the head of an interim government.
One of the readings of your book seems to be that Tajuddin would have been a better first prime minister of an independent Bangladesh.
He was, indeed, the first prime minister of independent Bangladesh, and it’s wrong to say that he was the prime minister of an interim government, as that interim government was, in fact, the de facto first government of independent Bangladesh, and he was its prime minister. He had great organisational ability – the ability to bring together people of all political hues and effect unity among all the pro-liberation forces. He said he was the Bharata of the Ramayana, carrying out the duties of Rama – i.e., he was filling in for Bongobondhu [as Sheikh Mujib was called] till his return.
Would you say that the repatriation issue and the clash of interests among former senior Pakistan government personnel and out-of-turn promotions of mukti jodhas [freedom fighters], many of them with no proven administrative skills, were among the key reasons why the Mujib government, which assumed power on a huge wave of goodwill, was eventually set on disaster mode? Would you say that was one of his key blunders?
Fidel Castro had warned Mujib: ‘I hear that you are you are putting the repatriates from Pakistan in key government positions. This is a dangerous precedent. You are setting the country up for counter-revolution. When I threw Batista out of power in Cuba, I weeded out all his trusted men and replaced them with my own men.’ Mujib felt there will be a change of heart if he gives them responsibilities and gives them space. He, in fact, made the intelligence chief of Pakistan, his vigilance commissioner—the net result was that he was able to spy on him better and pass on crucial information to his former Pakistani masters so that the conspiracy was able to fructify.
Sheikh Hasina has inherited Sheikh Mujib's legacy, good or bad. Are there some invisible actors in her story as well?
There are no invisible actors. They are very much visible actors, who played their hand openly to throw her out of power. Peter Haas, the American Ambassador in Dhaka, was directly involved…. He was hand-in-glove with the Jamatis and fomented trouble on multiple occasions. The so-called student revolution was no revolution. It was a plain takeover by Pakistani deep state with American help.
Do you think that things started to go wrong for Sheikh Mujib, and perhaps for Sheikh Hasina, when they tried to change the mandate for which Bangladeshis, or at least many Bangladeshis, wanted Bangladesh -- that it should be a nation for Bengali Muslims, and not just a Bengali nation?
Mujib always tried to play down the Muslim identity. He would always say my first identity is that I’m a human being, my second identity is that I'm a Bengali and my third identity is that I’m a Muslim.
But the day he arrived in Dhaka in 1972, in his speech he made a grievous blunder. He said that Bangladesh is the second-largest Muslim populated country in the world—there was no need for him to say all this, and this opened the floodgates for the idea of a Muslim Bangla…. Muslim Bangla, however, is still very much on the minds of a large section of Bangladeshis.
Why is wanting to be a Muslim Bengali nation a problem? Isn’t that why they separated from undivided India and then from Pakistan?
Those who think in terms of Muslim Bangla think the country belongs to them and no other religious community has the same rights as they have. In fact, one of the slogans raised by the Jamaat-e-Islami during the movement for Hasina’s ouster was Bharat Jader mamar bari Bangla Chharo Taratari (All those who have maternal uncles in India) meaning Hindus, should leave Bangladesh at once.
The Muslim identity began coming to the fore from Ziaur Rahman’s time. After Mujib’s assassination, secularism was removed from the fundamental principles of Bangladesh’s constitution in 1977 during Ziaur’s time. (H.M.) Ershad followed by making Islam the state religion of Bangladesh in 1988.
What do you think are Hasina’s chances of returning to power in Bangladesh?
Last August’s upheaval is not the last upheaval, there will be more. Hasina has staged a comeback from almost hopeless situations before as well. ‘Joy Bangla’ and ‘Joy Bongobandhu’ slogans were openly shouted by mukti joddhas (freedom fighters) in Dhaka this month.
What is your opinion of the recently proposed alternative to the SAARC?
Any alternative without India is a big zero. It will be a non-starter.