Remembering Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
On August 15, 1975, a group of disgruntled army officers committed a gruesome killing in the house of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. There were no bounds on the manifestation of barbarity at that night. The killers did not spare even a pregnant woman, a newly-wed bride, and children. The killings of grisly nature revealed the utmost animalistic characteristics of the perpetrators. Immediately after the killings of Bangabandhu and all others, the assassins took steps to execute their heinous plan of re-defining the course of Bangladesh. At the onset, they declared Bangladesh as an "Islamic Republic" but retracted later just to wait and do it gradually in the course of time after consolidating their power.
To make Bangladesh a secular country, the government under the leadership of Bangabandhu took a couple of steps. Secularism was made one of the preambles in the constitution. The political parties formed on the theocratic beliefs were banned. These two deeds were the baseline work for defining the course of Bangladesh along a non-communal path. Unfortunately, the reversal of the course continued and within a short span of time the theocratic parties emerged with the support of the political Islamists and patronization of the successive military governments. Bangladesh has gradually reached a point of intolerance where even inquisitiveness and discussion on unfounded beliefs are dealt with machetes. The intolerance grew in Bangladesh in a directly proportional form with the rise of the fundamentalist Islamic parties. These forces could have been kept at bay if the course defined by Bangabandhu were followed. He went after and proscribed these forces based on his political experience during the days of Pakistan.
It is claimed now that secularism has been re-established in Bangladesh. Has the government banned the political Islamic parties? It takes guts to be Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman only to ban Islamic political parties in a Muslim-majority country like Bangladesh. I remember him and his contribution to define a secular path for Bangladesh and get us out of Pakistan, a country bundled with quagmire then and even now.
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