Bangabandhu gave us a fighting spirit which is still alive

Bangabandhu turned out to be an exceptional leader mainly as his intuitions about people’s needs and rights were correct throughout his deeply engaged political career. And that was the reason for which he “stood out among many other leaders who were also fathers of their nations,” said Professor James Manor in a speech given on Bangabandhu at SOAS, the University of London on April 10, 2018.

He was closer to the ground even during his school days. He was a compassionate leader from his early days and organized ‘Muslim Welfare Association’ to collect alms to support the educational expenses of poor students, ran ‘Gruel Kitchens’ during the 1943 Bengal Famine to save lives of the hungry people and ‘Relief Camps’ during riots preceding the partition of India. This deeper engagement with the people never waned until his last breath.

If one reads his ‘The Unfinished Memoirs’ he/she can easily find out how disturbed he was seeing the hapless condition of the ordinary people by the war-mongering colonial ruler of Bengal leading to the mass starvation in 1943. Despite his mentor Suhrawardy overseeing the food and other daily necessities as the Minister of Civil Supplies in Bengal, the catastrophe could not be avoided due to the war policy of the British which restrained the transportation of food from one place to another. According to Sheikh Mujib, the British rulers gave priority to the war effort over the people of Bengal. They gave precedence to the movement of arms rather than food by the trains. “The English were locked in battle and Bengalis would have to die from hunger as a consequence. And that too in a land that, was once fabled for its resources! When the English (East India Company) annexed Bengal following Mir Zafar’s betrayal in the eighteenth century, Bengal was so rich that a wealthy businessman of Murshidabad had enough money to buy the city of London.” (‘The Unfinished Memoirs’, UPL, 2019, fourth impression, age.17-18).

He chose politics as an instrument to stand by the have-nots. He worked for achieving Pakistan with a belief that this new state will abolish the exploitative Zamindari system without compensation for providing land to the tenants. However, he could easily see that the creation of Pakistan was a ‘false dawn’ as the new state was captured by the elites with their ulterior motives. So, he started organizing the youths to protest the one-eyed Pakistani state. He started organizing the language movement with other co-organizers for which he had to embrace the first-ever political jail. Though apparently, the language movement looked like a cultural movement, it had deeper socio-economic roots. He was very quick in capturing the economic perspective of this movement which sow the seeds of Bengali nationalism. And he remained focused on nurturing this political vision to flourish consistently.

In the fifties, Bangabandhu’s economic thoughts were deeply colored by his ‘Two Economies Thesis’ which was further bolstered by his epoch-making campaign for ‘Six Points’ to address burgeoning disparities throttling all the potentials of the Bengalis. In the 1950s the depth of the disparity was so deep in Pakistan that the economists estimated that 60% of the total revenue generated in Pakistan during that decade used to be contributed by the people of East Pakistan. Of that only 25% used to be spent in the eastern province of Pakistan. Similarly, East Pakistan earned 59% of export earnings but only accounted for 30% of the total import expenditures. Only 4% of the total foreign aid of Pakistan was spent in its eastern wing. Around 1959-60, the per capita development expenditures were about five times higher in the western wing compared to that in the eastern wing.

It was in this context of disparities Sheikh Mujib declared his famous political campaign ‘Six Points” which had a deeper reflection of his economic thinking as well. In addition to the demands for a parliamentary form of government, provincial autonomy of governance, and militia or paramilitary forces for the provinces, the economic demands reflected financial autonomy including tax collection authority and separate foreign exchange earnings authority by the federating units. Obviously, these demands were not acceptable to the Pakistani ruling elites and Sheikh Mujib had to be put in jail to stop his tirade against them. While in jail a false sedition case was floated against him to finish him off by hanging at some point in time. But the ideas of ‘Six Points’ caught the imagination of the students, peasants, workers, and all segments of the Bengalis like a wildfire. A people’s uprising took place in the early months of 1969 which forced the authoritarian government of Ayub to release him unconditionally. People then adored him with their chosen title of Bangabandhu which soon became his namesake. The Ayub government collapsed under his pressure and General Yahiya took the helms of the government under a softer military rule with a promise to hold a free and fair national election. Bangabandhu took the challenge and started his election campaign anchoring the basic tenets of the ‘Six Points’. The people of East Pakistan simply grabbed this opportunity and voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Awami League to form the government. But the Pakistani clique was not ready to give back the legitimate power to the elected leader of the majority and Bangabandhu had to call for the war of independence after arousing the consciousness of his people through the non-cooperation movement. The Pakistani elites unleashed a cruel genocide and forced the Bengalis to take arms to fight a just war which they decisively won. And thus, an independent Bangladesh was born which was subsequently joined by Bangabandhu a few weeks later after his release from a Pakistani jail.

After returning to independent Bangladesh Bangabandhu began the amazing journey of rebuilding the war-torn economy and society. His unique pro-people development philosophy originated from his life-long struggle for socio-economic emancipation of the ordinary people which was clearly reflected in the fundamental state principles of equality and justice in all spheres of life and livelihoods as enshrined in the constitution of the Republic. With a meager resource base, he had to reconstruct the war-ravaged physical and social infrastructures, rehabilitate more than ten million war refugees, and restart most of the regulatory and other institutions amidst hostile natural and diplomatic environments. Yet, he relied heavily on agriculture which continues to give us sustenance and extra strength. Simultaneously, he decided to nationalize almost all the industrial units as these were left unattended by the Pakistani entrepreneurs who rushed to Pakistan during the last days of the war. Despite serious challenges arising out of adverse natural calamities and subsequent food insecurity, he kept on raising the bar of expectation of achieving a prosperous country with the mobilization of domestic resources including human resources. His emphasis on education and human resource development was certainly very strategic.

Defying the domestic and international political and diplomatic challenges, he was able to improve the per capita income of the country three times higher in just about four years. While it was 93 USD in 1972, the same went up to 272.75 USD in 1975. In his later years, he gradually liberalized the economy and raised the ceiling for private investment from 2.5 million Taka to 30 million Taka in the 1975-76 budget. His First Five Year Plan aspired to achieve economic growth of 5.5% which in fact went up substantially more than that by 1975. However, this fantastic journey of inclusive development was cut short by heinous intervention by the betrayers who killed Bangladesh on August 15, 1975.

Bangabandhu was driving the country to self-reliance on food which the country has now become under the prudent leadership of his daughter. She too walks on both legs encouraging both agriculture and industry to grow in tandem. Like her father, she is equally committed to the well-being of the disadvantaged and the extremely poor. As a result, today’s Bangladesh has turned out to be one of the best performers in most development indices in Asia including per capita income defying all the odds of the ongoing pandemic, as indicated by global institutions like IMF and ADB. However, because of the global economic slowdown precipitated by first the pandemic and then the ongoing Ukrain-Russia war, Bangladesh today faces numerous challenges including a high rate of inflation and significant foreign exchange instability. Yet we remain optimistic and vigilant drawing inspiration from Bangabandhu who engraved a fighting spirit among the people of Bangladesh to turn challenges into opportunities. Fortunately, his daughter has further consolidated that inner strength. Surely, like the rest of the world, Bangladesh is also braving the odds imposed on her by the global economic crisis. The people of Bangladesh are confident that they will be able to overcome these challenges and continue their journey towards Bangabandhu’s aspired ‘Sonar Bangla’ (Golden Bengal).

The author, former Governor of Bangladesh Bank, can be reached at [email protected]