Home ›› 10 Jan 2022 ›› Editorial
It was an electrifying moment for us, here in Bangladesh, and for people around the world. And it happened fifty years ago today. As twilight fell over a newly liberated country of seventy-five million people on 8 January 1972, the news on the BBC World Service came loud and clear: “The East Bengali political leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, has arrived in London.’
A couple of days later, a Comet jetliner of Britain’s Royal Air Force, placed at the disposal of the Father of the Nation by the British government, landed at Tejgaon airport. Moments later, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman emerged from it. It was from the same airport ten months earlier that he had been whisked away as a prisoner to Pakistan. And here he was again, being welcomed home by a grateful nation as its founding father, its liberator.
As the truck carrying him and a whole phalanx of politicians and student leaders inched its way out of the old airport, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman seemed tired after all those months in solitary confinement in Pakistan. He looked thinner than he was in March. He ran his hand through his hair, despite that look of fatigue after all that long journey back home. Despite all of that, he was clearly overwhelmed by the ecstatic manner in which his people were welcoming him home.
It could have been a scene right out of an epic tale, of legend. It could have been an image shaped by the imagination. It was neither of those. It was truly happening before us. We had watched history being made in Bangladesh in the nine agonising months of Pakistani repression. And here, right before us, once more stood the man whose inspirational leadership had finally thrown open the doors of freedom for us. History was getting a new dimension. Bangabandhu was History Man.
I was among those welcoming, cheering multitudes on that day. I watched Bangabandhu on that truck. He was leaner than he was when the Pakistan army abducted him and took him to Pakistan in March 1971, yes. And yet there was the power in those eyes that held one in their confident brilliance. I tried to get on the truck. No luck there, for it was already loaded with people. As the vehicle slowly crawled past me, truly in the manner of a snail, I thought I would climb aboard at the rear.
With one foot on the truck, the other grazing the road and my hands holding on to a chain on the side, I made a huge effort to haul all of my sixteen-year-old strength on to it. It was Colonel Osmany who then told me (he was on the truck) softly but sternly, ‘Khoka, neme porho…byatha paabe’. I didn’t get down. With that one foot on the truck and the other dangling along the road, scraping it, I made it all the way with Bangabandhu to the Race Course.
A million Bengalis welcomed the Father of the Nation back home on that winter afternoon. He spoke of the millions who had been murdered by Pakistan, of the homes and villages and towns ravaged during the war. He bade farewell to Pakistan and wished Zulfikar Ali Bhutto well. He quoted Tagore. And he wept.
For the first time in his public career, before the world, Bangabandhu shed tears in remembrance of the terrible ravages Bangladesh had gone through in the preceding nine months. And we wept with him. We remembered, as the Leader spoke, how we had worried about his safety, how we had prayed for his life and for him to return home.
For the entirety of the war we had no way of knowing where he was or whether he was dead or alive. It was only Pakistan’s abject defeat in Bangladesh and the surrender of its 93,000 soldiers in December 1971 that perhaps saved him. He had, after all, already been sentenced to death by a military tribunal constituted by the Yahya Khan junta.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, having played a diabolical role throughout the war, nevertheless recognized the folly of keeping the leader of a now free nation imprisoned in alien land. The international community demanded that Bangabandhu be released. Bhutto had little choice.
In the early hours of 8 January 1972, Bhutto bade farewell to Bangabandhu at Rawalpindi’s Chaklala airport. Hours later, on a cold dawn in London, Bangladesh’s President, for that was what Bangabandhu had been since April 1971, descended at Heathrow. For the first time since the beginning of the war for Bangladesh’s liberation, on that freezing winter morning, the world knew that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was alive.
The Bengali leader cheerfully told a crowded news conference at Claridge’s later in the day, “As you can see, gentlemen, I am alive and well.” And then he went on to offer a near lyrical account of his sentiments on being a free soul once more:
“Gentlemen of the world press, I am happy to share the unbounded joy of freedom won by my people in an epic liberation struggle. . .”
Here at home, we laughed, we cheered and then we wept. Bangabandhu was coming back home. In the twilight glow of 10 January 1972, with the Leader back among his people, we knew we now inhabited a land ‘where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free . . . where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection . . .’
Our triumph was complete. Nothing could go wrong. It was our precious Joi Bangla moment.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is an independent journalist and author of ‘From Rebel to Founding Father: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’. He can be contacted at ahsan.syedbadrul@gmail.com
