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The slain thought-soldiers of 1971

AFSAN CHOWDHURY
The intellectual occupies a major space in the narrative pantheon of the 1971 war. He is present in history not only as a person who imagined and articulated the contours of a new alternative but also the symbol of dissent and defiance in the face of state duress. Unlike the intellectuals of today he was a 'hero', a person who had taken on the state of Pakistan. He may not have had a clear idea of what constituted an alternative imagination but the pre-1971 intellectual was not a compromised soul. It's possible this happened because of the distance between the intellectual and the State declined in the post-war regimes.
When the Pakistan army cracked down in Dhaka on March 25 night, the targets show they thought lay the sources of imagination an emerging state. I remember Benazir Bhutto telling us --Mohiddin Ahmed, Muntasir Mamoon and myself -- in her sumptuous Karachi residence while playing a perfect, if a trifle ostentatious, host that her father was surrounded by the Mukti Bahini in his Dhaka hotel. When we surprised three said, "What Mukti Bahini? There was no Mukti Bahini then", she was a bit taken aback and then said, "I mean the AL radicals. I mean they all became Muktis, didn't they?"
It was obvious that long before the crackdown, East Pakistan was thought to have been taken over by the streets of Dhaka in the Pakistani eyes and so the attack was a defensive attack or an attack on regaining lost territory, not a pre-emptive one. It helps to understand why they could be so ruthless. The crude wooden rifles and pipe guns were enough to convince Pakistan that a part had been lost to "Indian agents" which is a bit ironic considering that evidence indicates that many in Islamabad were not too keen to keep East
Pakistan within its folds.
But looking at the attack positions, one notices the Dhaka University as a symbol of the insurrection - which by the way was thought to be heavily influenced by India -- read Hindus into this too. Thus Jagannath Hall became the ultimate source of all that had gone bad, the wrong thinking Hindu academics. This Hindu--Bengali--intelligentsia collectivity as a prime mover of then contemporary nationalism was simply beyond the capacity of the Pakistani rulers to deconstruct.
The image of murdered universities was a powerful tool in the
1971 war especially at the international level and even in India much care was taken of them. If there was one elite amongst the refugees -- all those who crossed over -- it was the intellectual. They were respected, had the degrees that were universal and satisfactorily convinced the Indian elite to act. In the war, they became the thought-soldiers.
Intellectuals are defined by the defiance, dissent and disagreement; what made them the most potent unarmed enemies of Pakistan. Which is why in mid December so many professionals and academics were picked up and killed. It didn't kill Bangladesh.
If one peruses the Bangla Academy lists and documents relating to intellectuals in 1971 one notices people from different levels of life. Those identified in the list as intellectuals were generally educated social leaders, especially from outside Dhaka but not necessarily academics. Some were activists and a few warriors in secret. They were not killed as some argue to deplete the intellectual larder but more it seems to get even with the 'partisans' in society.
But most intellectuals luckily escaped death and while these murders were certainly planned, the priority in December for the Pakistan army was to escape
unhurt and manage the ignominy of their surrender to India. The enthusiasm was more with the Bengali Pakistanis, Al-Badr or Al-Shams who had a major axe to grind and did extract satisfaction of sorts by killing whomever they thought could be. Most were not killed though if they had a chance they would have.
Prof. Rashid Haider of Bangla Academy, who has worked on the issue, remarked that many of these 'intellectuals' had become social leaders during 1971. People flocked to them to seek support in times of war and perhaps they were identified as much as leaders as they were as thinkers. All had
banded together to construct a new State in quest of a new identity.
It seems that the entire imagination of Intellectuals as we often understand was limited to the urban, degree holding, well-connected national profiled types. It negates the idea of the intellectual-partisan-leader at subnational levels and certainly at levels below that. This is largely because of the ideology of history that has been practiced in Bangladesh which was again under their control. Having created the State, they naturally became a part of that and the identity was of a craftsman of state making rather than the intellectual who is "condemned to be free". While in the earlier phase, protest gave them social strength, its absence after 1971 marginalised them. It was the very absence of dissent that turned the intellectual into an 'antel', a word of derision.
Peasant societies also had their thinkers and their experience as survivors or martyrs provide evidence of complex activities, far more complex than the one which the urban intellectuals at bay had to go through. However, they are not recognized as intellectuals or otherwise and their deaths and sufferings are ignored too.
Without intending any insensitivity whatsoever, one should ask as to why we have not established a single day to remember the Shaheed Peasant whether as an intellectual or as a social leader when it's they who died, suffered and fought the most.
Observing the death anniversary of intellectuals has significance beyond their brutal and tragic deaths.
The killers of December 14 achieved tragedy rather than purpose. Because in post-1971 Bangladesh, the role the intellectuals took upon themselves neither resulted in a successful state nor resistance to a successful rot of the same. The writer, an eminent columnist has done extensive research on 1971.