Syed Ashraf falls, as Tajuddin Ahmad fell

One more child of Liberation has fallen.

Syed Ashraful Islam's fall from grace is not something to be happy about. One of the few decent men in Bangladesh's politics today and certainly incorruptible, he leaves government under a cloud that ought not to have been there. His detractors have over the years spread canard about him. That he was inaccessible, that he often spent good time abroad, that he was absent at meetings are some of the stories that have been making the rounds over the years. To what extent these allegations are true is a matter for political analysts to reflect on. And while we wait for those analyses to come in, if they come in at all, note that not a single charge of incompetence or corruption has been laid at Syed Ashraful Islam's door. That the Awami League has always been close to his heart, that loyalty to his leader was all that mattered, that a secular and liberal Bangladesh he has consistently believed in, are principles that have never been in doubt.

It may be that Syed Ashraf will return to the centre of politics someday. Or, on a sadder and more somber note, it could well be that he will simply fade away. The latter course would, in the light of Bangladesh's tortured history, be yet one more instance of decency and innate goodness and political dedication being given short shrift in our putative democracy. You are reminded here of the gathering clouds of tragedy which increasingly came over Bangladesh's political skies when Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Tajuddin Ahmad began to drift apart. Having waged a long, intense battle for autonomy and then freedom together, these two history makers of Bangladesh then took paths that diverged from the old comradeship. It was Tajuddin's agony that he was unable, despite trying a number of times, to acquaint Bangabandhu with the circumstances which led to the formation of the Mujibnagar government in April 1971. On the day after the Father of the Nation returned home in January 1972, his trusted lieutenant observed in him a coldness that had not been there before. Obviously, the Young Turks who had so assiduously attempted to undermine Tajuddin Ahmad during the war, had indeed sought to vote him out of office as prime minister of the provisional government, had done their work.

The rest is history. You tend to wonder, though, how things might have been had Tajuddin Ahmad not left Bangabandhu's government. Without complaint, he stepped aside on 12 January 1972 for Bangabandhu to take over as prime minister. Without complaint, despite his reservations about Bangladesh's probable relations with the World Bank, he met Robert McNamara in Washington in 1974. Tajuddin was an unhappy finance minister, for his dreams of a socialistic Bangladesh post-1971 were soon to be abandoned in the interest of a foreign policy which Bangabandhu felt was a necessity of the times. For Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, diplomacy was a matter of gaining new friends even if those friends had not been of much help when their support had been necessary. Tajuddin would have nothing to do with the Americans, for he remembered the viciousness with which Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had stabbed Bengalis in the back all through the War of Liberation. For Bangabandhu, it was a matter of enemies not necessarily remaining a permanent fixture of foreign policy. He went out of his way, like Tajuddin, to express his gratitude to the American people for their support in 1971. Unlike Tajuddin, however, he set aside his bitterness toward the Nixon-Kissinger team, stayed carefully away from berating them in public — because he knew he would need Washington's support if he were to reach out to the wider world. It was in that mood that the Father of the Nation met President Gerald Ford in the White House in 1974.

Ironically, in 1974, Tajuddin Ahmad's view that it was yet too early to trust Washington saw vindication when the United States authorities took the insensitive step of compelling a shipload of food destined for a famine-stricken Bangladesh to turn back. In American eyes, Dhaka had committed the ultimate sin. It had tried doing trade with Fidel Castro's Cuba. That ship went back. And thousands more Bengalis perished for lack of food. Tajuddin must then have remembered the stealth with which Washington had planned, through the treacherous Khondokar Moshtaque, to have the War of Liberation undermined in favour of Bangladesh's continued association, albeit on a confederal basis, with Pakistan.

And Bangabandhu? The turning back of the ship certainly disappointed him. It must have rekindled in him the old fear, one he voiced on hearing of the assassination of Salvador Allende in September 1973, that they — and he meant the CIA — would now come after him. He went home early on that day, depressed with thoughts of the coup in Chile. And yet by autumn 1974, Bangabandhu felt he could strike a new balance with Washington. He met Ford. He had Kissinger come to Dhaka. Between these two happenings, he sent a note — impersonal, with none of the old warmth, rather cold — to his finance minister, asking him to resign in the national interest. Tajuddin Ahmad obliged him. Then he went home to Zohra Tajuddin, to their children.

Tajuddin's miseries lengthened. Bangabandhu's Second Revolution, in the form of Baksal, was a move he declined to be in step with. The break with his leader was complete. The horrible spectre of tragedy drew closer.

Bangladesh lost its way in August 1975. It plunged into deeper darkness three months later, in November 1975. Twenty one years would go by before the darkness would lift.

Syed Ashraful Islam has been an integral element in the return of light to the country in June 1996. He is part of the generation — of the children of the nation's founding fathers — with Sheikh Hasina, Sheikh Rehana, Mohammad Nasim, Mohammad Selim, Khairuzzaman Liton, Simeen Hossain Rimi, Sohel Taj — which has struggled mightily to restore the old pride to the country the fathers built, brick by brick, through the tumult and tragedy of the 1960s and early 1970s.

It will be sad to have new cracks undermining the dreams of this generation, as it was sad witnessing a growing chasm in policy destroy the idealism of the one which preceded it.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is a bdnews24.com columnist.