History is history, you cannot rewrite it.
Famous last words or an incredibly naïve choice of them? When he said the line on the lawns of Kolkata’s Fort Williamon Monday morning, retired Brigadier General Jahangir Kabir of the Bangladesh Army did so with all the conviction at his command.
The brigadier general was one of nine Bangladeshi officers, retired or serving, who Dhaka sent to the Indian Army's Eastern Command headquarters to join a tradition now 54 years old: the December Vijay Diwas (Victory Day) celebration to mark the Pakistan Army's surrender to the Indian Army in Dhaka in 1971 and the birth of a new nation, Bangladesh.
But the irony of Brigadier General Jahangir's words is hard to miss. For they come at a time when his own country is trying to write a fresh history for itself and India is witnessing numerous attempts to tweak its past.
In Dhaka, during its own celebrations of Bijoy Dibosh, as it is spelt there, Mohammed Yunus, chief adviser of the interim government, addressed the nation over television but did not utter even once in his speech the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, the country's founding father and the father of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina. The omission of Sheikh Mujibur's name seems yet another attempt in Bangladesh to erase a part ofits history. Back in August, after Sheikh Hasina fled Dhaka, frenzied mobs pulled down Sheikh Mujib's statues and many others commemorating muktijoddhas – Bangladesh's name for its freedom fighters – and vandalised the founding father's home in Dhaka where he was assassinated with almost his entire family on 15 August 1975.
On the same day in Delhi, a painting of the iconic photo of Pakistan Army’s Lieutenant General AAK Niazi surrendering to India's Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora was unveiled by the chief of army staff (COAS) at the Maneckshaw Centre, named so after the hero of the 1971 victory, Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw.
This same painting of India's biggest military victory, used to hang in the COAS office as backdrop for photo-ops with visiting dignitaries.
On December 11, in a photo of the COAS with his Nepal counterpart posted on social media by the Army, the painting was gone, replaced by one of what looked like the Pangong Tso lake up in Ladakh with some new-age weaponry and mythical creatures thrown in.
Its disappearance led to outrage on social media, led by retired Army officers, who said the BJP-led government was trying to erase a part of India's military history just because its architect was Congress prime minister Indira Gandhi.
History, they say, is written by the victor and never was and is still not manipulation-proof.
Political doldrums
The political equation between Dhaka and Delhi is in the doldrums since August 5. Foreign secretary Vikram Misri's Dhaka visit on December 9 and interactions with his counterpart and Mohammad Yunus did seem to have acted as balm. But Vijay Diwas optics have caused fresh friction.
As per tradition India had sent a small delegation of Army officers to Dhaka to participate in their observance of 16 December. And as usual, on Monday morning, PM Narendra Modi tweeted a Vijay Diwas message thanking the Indian Army and its soldiers who served the nation in 1971. There was no mention of Bangladesh in the tweet. In Dhaka the tweet did not go down well.
Bangladesh Law Adviser Asif Nazrul wrote on social media that he strongly protested the Indian Prime Minister's remarks on Victory Day.“December 16, 1971, was Bangladesh's Victory Day. India was only an ally in this victory, nothing more that.” The post went viral.
According to reports in the Bangladesh newspaper, The Daily Star, another post reacting to the Modi’s tweet by a senior student leader Hasnat Abdullah got over 7000 comments and over 8000 shares within four hours.
He wrote, "This was Bangladesh's Liberation War. It was for Bangladesh's independence against Pakistan. But Modi has claimed it was solely India's war and their achievement, disregarding Bangladesh's existence in their narrative.
"When India claims this independence as their achievement, I see it as a direct threat to Bangladesh's independence, sovereignty, and integrity.
"Our struggle against this threat from India is inevitable. We must continue this struggle," he wrote.
Curiously, Modi’s tweet on Monday is almost a copy of the one he posted on Vijay Diwas in December last year.
No mention of Bangladesh and the focus on Indian soldiers only. Dhaka is not known to have complained of India's cold shoulder in the past. This year, the sensitivities are clearly different.
Several other countries greeted Bangladesh on its Bijoy Dibosh on social media. So did India’s external affairs minister.
Priyanka Gandhi, meanwhile, added a new dimension to India’s stand on Bangladesh by bringing up in Parliament the plight of Bangladeshi Hindus at the receiving end of violence across the border. On Tuesday, it was a sartorial protest. She carried a bag to Parliament that had painted on its side this legend: stand with the Hindus and Christians of Bangladesh. (Not sure why Buddhists were left out; there is a relatively large population of Buddhists in Bangladesh).
Also adding turbulence is Sheikh Hasina’s comments on Vijay Diwas as posted on Awami League's X handle. In it, she calls Yunus a "fascist" more than once. Hasina has made equally unflattering remarks earlier in a couple of video addresses to Awami League supporters in the US. Dhaka raised the issue with Misri last Monday. He is believed to have told them Delhi may not approve of what she says but can't stop Hasina from talking to anyone.
Some light at the end of the tunnel
Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Brigadier General Jahangir Kabir says yes.
Back in 1971,he was a major in the Pakistan Army and posted in Karachi. When the battle for East Pakistan’s liberation gathered steam, he deserted and tried to sneak home to the east via the Rajasthan border, he said. But he was caught, jailed, tortured, court martialled and destined for the gallows and would have been dead if the muktijoddhas and the Indian Army had not intervened when they did.
"If they hadn't forced the Pakistan forces to surrender, I wouldn't have been here. I would have been in the gallows and my dead body would not have reached Bangladesh," he said. "What legacy are we talking about? The legacy of the muktijoddhas and the Indian Army is in our hearts. No one can erase it."
A shared history could be the key to restoring the friendship of the past. But it promises to be an uphill task and Vijay Diwas 2025 may be too a premature deadline.
