Yes he had many agenda in his bag. He was undoubtedly a nationalist and a leftist as well. There were times when he kept our struggles alive. I remember one newspaper head line: Maulana saying: shoot if you want to, I will have to say the Janaza prayers. Thus He defied curfew. He once called Mujib a golden boy. He ridicule Jadu Mia by saying that prices of essential items were going beyond the reach of common people. This was Pakistan time. He pointed to Jadu Mia who was sitting on the same dias and said, "I don't know what has happened to liquor price though, Jadu knows that. " Is he not the first mass leader who said good bye to Pakistan? 68-71 was a turbulent period for East Pakistan with infinite possibilities for the people in the tegion I was an insignificant part of that and used to attend all major meetings and processions. Maulana came back after touring the tidal bore devastated areas and had a meeting in Paltan. He was so upset that only one leader from W. Pakistan Wali Khan came to E. Pakistan. Bhasani said, "No more with you. " He led Farakka Procession.
He clearly took some wrong steps. I remember he called for peace procession in protest against ongoing Hindu-Muslim riots in India. Many were afraid that this procession might ignite communal riot in E. Pakistan and divert the mass movement in a wrong direction. He realized it and withdrew the program. He was great.
I think he is one of a few leaders whom we should keep out of politics. Under him took shelter leaders ranging from extreme rightists to extreme rightists. That was a great help and boost for the leftist leaders. All of them tried to manipulate him and that could be seen in his inconsistencies. I do not think he was a preacher of Islam. He was a practicing Muslim and he had disciples---- that's it. He was secular in head and heart.
Last time I saw him was when he was in PG Hospital. No I never belonged to his party. I went with one of my friends who subsequently became minister. He asked, "How are you feeling now , hujur?" " Boro dubbol" (very week)--he gave a short reply. I respect that man.
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Maulana never been consistent in his thinking. There were times when he sounded like a die-hard proletariat and then, very next day, he was a different man with a different agenda. There was no way to put this Maulana in any political box and declare him as a radical man or damn religious reactionary. I found Mr. Bhasani as an enigmatic politician with no fixed political position. He was with the flow and he was there with every movement. When he spoke his mind, we could not make head tail of his words. Overall, he was a good force but not enough to be a consistent and charismatic leader.
Did he steal an ox to revolt against his father? I do not know. If he did, the sin is pretty minor in comparison to many of our other 'Gunodhar" leaders. We got plenty of leaders but their quality are pretty rotten and dismal, the least I can say.
-SD"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: SyedAslam <Syed.Aslam3@gmail.com>
To: Khobor <khabor@yahoogroups.com>; notun Bangladesh <notun_bangladesh@yahoogroups.com>; chottala@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 5:34 PM
Subject: [mukto-mona] Maulana Bhashani: The Majloom Jononeta
Maulana Bhashani: The Majloom JononetaM. WAHEEDUZZAMAN MANIK provides glimpses of the formative phase of the life and struggle of Maulana Bhashani.Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani was aptly called "Majloom Jononeta" (leader of the oppressed) because of his uncompromising commitment to the needs of the poor, landless, peasants, workers, sharecroppers, abandoned, exploited and repressed people of the society. By any measure, his long political struggle was characterised by his selfless dedication for championing the causes of the most underprivileged segments of our society. Throughout almost six decades of a struggling political life, Maulana Bhashani was both a demanding spirit and a fearless voice for emancipation of the humblest, exploited, terrorised, and oppressed citizens against the overwhelming powers of the governmental machinery and the overweening grip of the ruling elite of the society. Indeed, he had to his credit an unblemished and impeccable record of life-long relentless struggle for the downtrodden, the poor, the vulnerable, the neglected, the deserted and the disinherited. Yet his dignified comportment throughout his eventful political struggle had displayed a quintessential bravery, relentlessness and dauntlessnessHowever, Maulana Bhashani was more than a defender of the peasantry and working class. He was responsible for building up an epoch-making resistance movement against the infamous Line system and the brutish Bangal Kheda movement in colonial Assam. He was both the maker and shaker of political events during the most turbulent years of the then East Pakistan. The seed of politics of opposition and agitation was carefully planted by Maulana Bhashani in the formative years of Pakistan in an era when the overwhelming majority of Muslim population of the then East Bengal was not yet ready to be disillusioned with the euphoria of Pakistan movement. He had played a defining role in the difficult task of building up East Pakistan Awami Muslim League, a viable opposition party in the then Pakistan. Doubtless, his was the fearless dissenting voice in the formative years of Pakistan. He was an active leader of the Bengali language movement. He was one of the chief organisers of the United Front, an electoral alliance that routed the ruling Muslim League party in the 1954 elections. He was not only the authentic founder of the East Pakistan Awami Muslim League (EPAML) but he was also the founder of the National Awami Party (NAP). Therefore, the appearance of Maulana Bhashani in the regressive political scenario of the then East Bengal as the most dauntless dissenting voice and an effective organiser of a sustainable opposition party that was capable of building-up a viable resistance movement against the Punjabi-Mohajir dominated Karachi-anchored Pakistani ruling elite was nothing short of a miracle.It is part of Bangladesh's robust political history that it was Maulana Bhashani who had organised the historic anti-Ayub movement which took place in late 1968 and early 1969 that prompted and hastened the withdrawal of the infamous Agartala Conspiracy case and the unconditional release of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from captivity. It is widely acknowledged that he had orchestrated a series of 'gherao' (a form of non-violent sit-in strikes designed to 'encircle' the governmental official against whom a protest was directed) immediately before and during the 1969 student-mass movement eventually led to the shameful downfall of the dictatorial regime of Ayub Khan. Maulana Bhashani's legendary name is also integral part and parcel of Bangladesh's struggle for freedom and independence.Although Maulana Bhashani was intimately associated with all of the progressive movements during the Pakistan era from 1947 to 1971, no attempt has been made to provide any analysis or chronological details of any of those movements within the limited scope of this article. No effort has been made to discuss his fearless role in building-up the EPAML as a viable opposition political party in the then East Pakistan. Rather, the main purpose of this piece is to reflect on the formative phase of Maulana Bhashani's life and political struggle with specific reference to his struggling life up to late 1920s and early 1930s when he made Assam's Brahmaputra valley his place of residence and political struggle. However, a detailed discussion of strategies and tactics of his anti-Line system and anti-Bangal Kheda movement is not possible within the size of this paper.
Gleanings from his early life
Maulana Bhashani was born in 1885 (circa 1884) at a village named Dhangora within the jurisdiction of Sirajganj subdivision (at present Sirajganj is a district) of the then Pabna district. He was the second son of Alhaj Mohammad Sharafat Ali Khan and Mosammat Majiran Bibi. His father was neither a Zamindar nor a Talukder. Nor was he a Jotedar (intermediary between landlord and peasant) of any kind. Mohammad Sharafat Ali Khan owned a small grocery shop. He also owned a couple of acres of cultivable land. Although he was at best a middle-range farmer when Maulana Bhashani was born, his family status was quite respectable in his village by economic standards of that time. It is believed that he was a religious man who had performed Haj at an early age. According to some accounts, he performed Haj at the age of 35, and it is believed that he had walked from Mecca to Medina barefoot through the desert. The Haji title in those days added prestige not only to the performer of Haj but also added a new status to the family of a Haji.Alhaj Mohammad Sharafat Ali Khan had named his second son Abdul Hamid Khan. However, Maulana Bhashani was known as Chega Mia during the early phase of his life. From whatever is known about his father and mother, it is plausible to suggest that his father and mother were caring parents. Unfortunately, Chega Mia lost both of his parents when he needed them most. He was hardly five or six years old when his father died at an early age in 1889 leaving behind his wife and young children (three sons and a daughter). Chega Mia (Maulana Bhashani) also lost his grandparents, mother, two brothers, and a sister in an epidemic (cholera) in mid-1890s (most probably in 1894 or in 1895) when he was barely 10 years old. Since he lost both of his parents and his grandfather at a very early phase of his life, he had to journey through a chequered boyhood. Given the fact that his father's untimely demise preceded his grandfather's death, Maulana Bhashani was clearly deprived of his inheritance right to his father's property. He was a student at a junior madrasa for several years but he could not continue his studies due to abject poverty and changed pecuniary circumstance. As a madrasa drop-out, he had no shelter even at his paternal house due to the betrayal of his close relatives. He came to know what hunger and starvation meant as a young boy because he had neither food nor lodge even though his father left behind homestead and cultivable land. So he had started wandering around for several years, and there was no profession left in which he did not try his luck in those trying days.The orphan son of a mid-range Muslim farmer cum petty grocer and a grandson of a humble peasant, Maulana Bhashani had little reason to anticipate, in those trying times, a dedicated and selfless life of an ardent defender of the oppressed and downtrodden people. As a young disciple of Pir Syed Nasiruddin Shah Baghdadi, he had visited and stayed in Assam in the early years of 1900s (his first visit to Assam is believed to be in 1904). Although his main task in those days was to take care of various household chores of Pir Nasiruddin Baghdadi, Maulana Bhashani had received his basic Islamic education including his skills in the rudiments of Arabic from his association with Pir Syed Nasiruddin Shah Baghdadi. At the behest of this Pir, he had also the rare opportunity to pursue more formal religious education at Deobond Madrasa for almost two years. During his stay at Deobond in 1907-09, he was deeply influenced by Maulana Mahmudul Hasan who was popularly known as 'Shaikhul Hind'. It is being conjectured by most of the biographers of Maulana Bhashani that the progressive Islamic thinkers at Deobond and the liberal traditions of Sufi Islamic preachers might have immensely inspired him to become a fearless fighter against all types of oppression and exploitation including his steep opposition to the perpetuation of British imperialism.After his return from Deobond, most probably at the end of 1909, Maulana Bhashani started teaching in a primary school which was located at village Kagmari near Tangail town at a monthly remuneration of no more than three rupees. He also taught in a madrasa at village Kala near Haluaghat in Mymensingh district after he had quit his primary school job. Since he used to earn a monthly pittance in both of these places, his pecuniary circumstance had remained sluggish in those days. However, it is fair to suggest that wherever he went to work or live in those almost forgotten years he had demonstrated a knack for getting himself involved with the problems of the common people of that area. For instance, he used to deal with the problems of the poor, the poorest of the poor, the neglected, the hungry, the malnourished and the downtrodden. Maulana Bhashani had a strong desire for motivating and organising the marginal peasants and vulnerable villagers to resist all forms of injustices.There is little wonder why the targets of his grass root level resistance and protest movements in those days were the Zamindars, Talukders, Jotedars, and Mahajans (money lenders). In fact, the juxtaposition of precarious conditions of the vulnerable tenants vis-à-vis the powerful landed class piqued his interest in the difficult task of defending the peasants, sharecroppers and landless agricultural laborers. If there was a conflict between a tenant (a 'Proja') and a feudal landlord, Maulana Bhashani was always on the side of the tenant. He was not only an ardent defender of the tenants' rights but he was one of the most dedicated and effective organisers of the 'Proja' movement in early 1920s. (Details on the early phase of Maulana Bhashani's life can be gleaned from Chapter I of Syed Abul Maqsud's seminal work titled Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, Bangla Academy, 1994, and Peter Custers' "Maulana Bhashani and the Transition to Secular Politics in East Bengal," The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. XLVII (47), No. 2, April-June, 2010).Glimpses of the formative phase of his political struggle
Given the fact that the formative phase of Maulana Bhashani's political struggle is a matter of distant past, it is difficult to ascertain the exact day or month or even the year when he got formally inducted into national or regional politics. He had developed both the compassion and organisational experience before he made his debut in national politics after joining the Indian National Congress in 1917. Although there is a paucity of authoritative details of the nature of his involvement in national politics of that time, there is no doubt that Maulana Bhashani actively participated in the Non-Cooperation and the Khilafat movement, and he was imprisoned for a brief period during that time. He was a great admirer of Ali Brothers (Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Shawkat Ali) and Deshbandhu Chitta Ranjan Das. Maulana Bhashani had joined the Swarajya party with great a deal of enthusiasm being immensely impressed by Deshbandhu's charismatic and compassionate leadership style. He worked hard as a grass-root level foot soldier of the short-lived Swarajya party being essentially moved by the magnitude
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