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Martyr Asad: our timeless hero

Syed Badrul Ahsan
Asaduz zaman, a student of the depart ment
of history of Dhaka University, president of the DU unit and general secretary of the Dhaka city unit of East Pakistan Chhatra' Union (Menon group), died on this day in January 1969 while leading a protest march on the streets of Dhaka. His death occurred when Pakistan's security forces, on instructions from the government, fired into the crowd. It was a crowd of Bengalis raising the very legitimate
demand for a restoration of political liberties in a country long dominated by the military under dictator Mohammad Ayub Khan. And the march of which Asad was a part was one of the earliest signs of what was about to come to pass in East Pakistan, then a province of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, today the People's Republic of Bangladesh.
The year 1969 would turn out to be one of intense drama and unimaginable change. And it would be because of what the Ayub regime would or would not do in terms of a need for Pakistan to return to democratic governance. The regime had just celebrated what it called a so-called decade of development, which basically was a euphemism for an observance of the tenth anniversary of the Ayub dictatorship. But the celebrations were getting marred by the
growing chaos around the trial of thirty five Bengalis in what had notoriously been given out as the Agartala conspiracy case. Of the thirty five, thirty four were in the Pakistan armed forces. The thirty-fifth, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was accused number one. The charge against them was simple: they had, with foreign assistance, conspired to mount an armed revolt in East Pakistan with the intention of having it break away from the rest of Pakistan and becoming an independent state. The trial of all the accused began in June 1968, but as the weeks and months wore on, it became obvious that the special tribunal set up by the regime to try the accused was but a blatant attempt to suppress all moves at a Bengali reassertion of democratic freedom. By late 1968, demands were beginning to be made for the case to be withdrawn
and for all the accused to be freed.
In West Pakistan, former foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, once an Ayub protege, was placed under arrest along with Khan Abdul Wali Khan in November 1968, only days after a young man took potshots at President Ayub Khan at a public rally in Peshawar. The first stirrings of more trouble were noticed in the western part of Pakistan when retired Air Marshal Asghar Khan, a former chief of the Pakistan air force, entered politics and made it known that he had thrown in his lot with those calling for democracy in the country. In East Pakistan, Justice S.M. Murshed, former chief justice of the East Pakistan High Court, followed suit and joined the ranks of the opposition. It was a combination of these factors that was causing a rumbling all over Pakistan.
In early 1969, all the portents of doom were there for Field Marshal Ayub Khan. The murder of Asad would open the floodgates to disaster for the regime. The gathering revolt of the populace would take increasingly darker shades for the regime. Asad's death would be a sign of the desperation with which it responded to popular fury.
Asaduzzaman remains a martyr for his compatriots in Bangladesh. He has become the stuff of legend. His ultimate honour? Shamsur Rahman's timeless tribute to him in the poem Asad-er Shirt.
Shortly after Asad fell, indignant Bengalis renamed Ayub Gate in Dhaka's Mohammadpur as Asad Gate. It remains Asad Gate, testimony to the long struggle of Bengalis for democracy and freedom. And Asad will forever be our lost voice of resistance to illegitimate, undemocratic rule.