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‘FOR YOUR SAKE, O FREEDOM’

1971 and Bangladeshi poetry
ILLUSTRATION: BIPLOB CHAKROBORTY
Bangla was recognised as one of the national languages of Pakistan, but there were other sources of discontent. Democracy had been put on hold, and the economic exploitation of East Pakistan continued apace. A pro-democracy movement gathered momentum in the late 1960s, inspiring a spate of political poetry.
KAISER HAQ
Bangladeshi poetry has always been sensitive to socio-political issues and public themes. In discussing the poetic response to the Liberation War, therefore, it is useful to start with the broad historical background, move on to the literary tradition, and then consider the poetry itself.
The immediate historical background is the movement for provincial autonomy, out of which came the independence struggle. Further back is the Language Movement, which exposed a fissure in the national ethos of Pakistan. Ironically, Bangalee Muslims had been among the most ardent supporters of the Pakistan movement. Their disillusionment, when it came, was understandably all the more intense and bitter.
A deeper historical root of Bangladesh lies in the short-lived Bengal partition of 1905; for six years it put on the map the province of East Bengal and Assam, with Dhaka as its capital. Though opposed by the Hindus, the partition was welcomed by a majority of the region’s Muslims. One may also partially identify an antecedent of Bangladesh in the abortive move in 1947 by an alliance of Hindu and Muslim leaders—including Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Abul Hashem, Sarat Chandra Bose, and Kiran Shankar Roy—to have an independent “Free State of Bengal”.
There is another, much older, historical circumstance that has a bearing on the Bangladesh movement.
In the Sepoy Uprising of 1857, the rebels belonged to the Bengal Army, recruited mainly from the Gangetic plains, while the Gurkha, Sikh, Punjabi Muslim, Jat, Dogra, and Pathan soldiers remained loyal to the British. After the rebellion was quelled, the British propounded the theory of martial and non-martial races, placing under the former category all the ethnic groups that had been loyal to them. Henceforth their Indian soldiers were recruited from among them, while the old catchment area of the Gangetic plain was deemed to be peopled by non-martial types. The martial races were supposed to be good fighters, loyal and obedient, albeit a bit obtuse; and the non-martial ones clever but feckless and duplicitous.
Such racial stereotyping survived as an unfortunate legacy of the Raj, and poisoned relations between West Pakistanis and the Bangalees of East Bengal. The “martial” Punjabi took it as his right to dominate the “non-martial” Bangalee. When the Pakistan Army launched its genocidal onslaught, little did it expect an effective popular resistance. The Bangalee freedom fighters not only helped liberate their country but also removed the mind-forged manacles of racial stereotypes. Bangladeshis could henceforth project a self-image free of an inferiority complex.
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With the partition of 1947, Dhaka emerged as a significant literary-cultural hub. There were a few traditionalist poets imbued with the Islamic ideology of the Pakistan movement, but they were quickly put in the shade by a new generation of modernists whose distinctive characteristic was a capacity for aestheticist introspection that coexisted with a lively interest in public events. The killing of five Language Movement demonstrators on February 21, 1952 elicited an immediate response from them. The tragic event has ever since exercised the imagination of our poets, inspiring protest poetry as well as meditative verse.
Bangla was recognised as one of the national languages of Pakistan, but there were other sources of discontent. Democracy had been put on hold, and the economic exploitation of East Pakistan continued apace. A pro-democracy movement gathered momentum in the late 1960s, inspiring a spate of political poetry.
Shamsur Rahman, the country’s leading modern poet, climbed down from the ivory tower to write poems like “ Hartal ”, “ Asader Shirt ” (the eponymous Asad being a martyr of the pro-democracy agitation), “ Safed Panjabi ” (“White Kurta”, a lively portrait of Bhasani, whom Time magazine , if I remember rightly, had dubbed the “red maulana”). A younger poet, Nirmalendu Goon, wrote the highly popular “ Hulia ” (“Arrest Warrant”).
The struggle for democracy and, for some, for socialism, and the poetry that emerged from it, had international analogues: protests against the Vietnam War, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, student uprisings, notably in Paris in May 1968, all of which had literary repercussions. Protest poets like Adrian Mitchell and Christopher Logue and the Beats enjoyed worldwide readership; poets in Bangladesh could rightly feel they were part of a global trend.
Then came the crackdown of March 25, 1971, plunging 70 million people into a cauldron of terror, panic, anxiety, but also strengthening a collective resolve to resist and overcome. Such powerful emotions had to result in a large body of poetry.
But there was a catch. The ruthlessness of the military crackdown, and the spread throughout the land of armed conflict between freedom fighters and occupation forces, meant the suspension of many normal activities. The creative imagination was constricted by anxiety. And even if it found expression somehow, the process of cultural production was blocked. Liberation War poetry consequently saw the light of print after victory was achieved.
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The most magisterial poetic take on the independence war is undoubtedly Shamsur Rahman’s collection “ Bondi Shibir Theke ” (“From the Concentration Camp”). Rahman himself has given us the backstory in a moving preface to the definitive edition of the book (Dhaka, 1997). After the crackdown, he and his family moved out of Dhaka city and sought refuge in his ancestral village in Narsingdi for a month and a half. He wrote two of his best-known poems there: “ Tomake Pawar Jonyo, hey Swadhinata ” (“For Your Sake, O Freedom”) and “ Swadhinata Tumi ” (“Freedom, You Are”). He started writing poems in a diary, and secreted it in all sorts of odd places, just in case men in uniform came and conducted a search. Only his wife, a few close friends and a few freedom fighters knew of this. Returning to his house in Dhaka in mid-May, Rahman found the yard overgrown with grass and weeds, and an insouciant white cat that had made its home there; the animal’s composure gave much needed reassurance amidst the tension and terror, the daily arrests and murders, the ominous noises of military vehicles, and the sound of boots. Going to work, reading, writing, all seemed meaningless.
The most magisterial poetic take on the independence war is undoubtedly Shamsur Rahman’s collection Bondi Shibir Theke (“From the Concentration Camp”). Rahman himself has given us the backstory in a moving preface to the definitive edition of the book (Dhaka, 1997). After the crackdown, he and his family moved out of Dhaka city and sought refuge in his ancestral village in Narsingdi for a month and a half.