Intellectual arguments in Bangabandhu’s 7 March oratory

We need to bring about a wholesale change in our approach to history, the many aspects of it, we observe on a regular basis in Bangladesh. It is not enough to inform the nation, especially the younger generation, year after year of the events and incidents and happenings that have shaped the destiny of this nation. More important is the need for historians, scholars, teachers and journalists to come forth with detailed analyses of such momentous happenings as the 7 March 1971 address by the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The 7 March address is a seminal part of the historical narrative in Bangladesh. In broad measure, it was effectively a mapping of the road by Bangabandhu to national freedom. Bangabandhu did not declare Bangladesh's independence on the day, but again, no call to freedom could be greater, could be more resonant than the concluding lines of his peroration: 'The struggle this time is the struggle for our emancipation. The struggle this time is for independence.'

Those final statements were decisive, for once they had been voiced by the undisputed, elected leader of the Bengali nation, the province of East Pakistan ceased to exist and the republic of Bangladesh took wings. The speech was a reflection of Bangabandhu's definitive shift away from the concept of Pakistan as it then existed. His was a constitutional approach to politics, one that he was willing to bring into the negotiations that would soon commence with the Yahya Khan junta and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. Did Sheikh Mujibur Rahman then, through those talks, aim at preserving Pakistan in Bangladesh?

The answer is a clear 'No'. Between 15 March, when Yahya Khan arrived in Dhaka, and 24 March, when the negotiations reached an impasse, Bangabandhu and the rest of the Awami League leadership were consciously driving the point that the state of Pakistan needed to be reconfigured in line with the circumstances that had resulted in the electoral victory of the Awami League. The circumstances were of course all related to the Six Points. The problem for the Awami League was that the junta and the PPP were adamant about not letting Bangabandhu take power in Islamabad. Had they readily accepted the results of the December 1970 election, matters would be different. But by 7 March, much water had flowed under the bridge, enough to convince the Bengali leadership that assuming power in Pakistan did not matter but holding out the promise of freedom for Bangladesh did.

That position was a follow-up to the speech of 7 March. The oratory was majestic, lyrical in style and Olympian in its grand sweep of history. In those eighteen minutes, Bangabandhu proved once more his mastery in fashioning political poetry and his ability to condense the history of Pakistan's twenty three years into eighteen substantive minutes. He did more, which was to come forth with a clear statement of intent where his dealings with the military regime were concerned. His was a path, at once bright and without encumbrances, through the woods into a valley of political expansiveness. Yahya Khan's fresh call for a session of the National Assembly on 25 March was dismissed by Bangabandhu, but on the basis of a logically thought out plan. He had four demands to make of the regime — lift martial law; initiate an inquiry into the shootings of citizens by the army; withdraw the soldiers back to the barracks; and, most significantly, transfer power to the elected representatives of the people. Only then would he consider whether or not — note the term 'consider' — to join the National Assembly session.

At that point, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was de facto leader of Bangladesh. Authority began and ended with him. That demand for a transfer of power was a mere formality, for he knew full well that Pakistan's writ no more ran in its restive runaway province. The call for a transfer of power encompassed a hand-over of political authority by the regime to elected politicians in all the regions of Pakistan and specifically in the east. It was a demand which put things in clearer perspective for Bengalis, for it pointed to Bangabandhu's preoccupation with a future Bangladesh. He had turned his back on Pakistan, on prospects of assuming power in Islamabad. The speech was Bengali-centric, but at the same time Bangabandhu let the political classes of West Pakistan know that the separation did not have to be bitter, that he did not relish seeing the day when Bengalis and West Pakistanis would turn their faces away from one another in mutual antagonism. The divorce need not be a noisy and chaotic affair.

The 7 March speech was, again, a call to secular politics, an ethical principle the Awami League had upheld since the mid-1950s. Bangabandhu made it clear that Muslims and Hindus and all other communities by extension together inherited the land and its history. Through stressing the need for Bengalis and non-Bengalis to maintain unity, he sent out the message that ethnic harmony would be a vital component in his concept of Bangladesh.
In the larger perspective of history, therefore, the speech of 7 March 1971 necessarily requires intellectual interpretations and scholarly analyses, the better to keep this nation focused on the moral compass that was set to work forty six years ago. History is much more than platitudinous observances of great moments in the life of a nation. It is, in essence, a thorough study of the times and the men and the politics that bring them together — to leave a whole world transformed.

The words spoken by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on 7 March 1971 were a leap out of the dark. They pointed to the dusty pastoral path to liberty, to the twilight struggle that would ensue in the coming war for freedom.