Kamal Hossain is part of our history

Syed Badrul AhsanSyed Badrul Ahsan
Published : 3 March 2015, 08:32 AM
Updated : 3 March 2015, 08:32 AM

The son of Bangladesh's prime minister has demanded, in a Facebook status, the arrest of, among others, former foreign minister Kamal Hossain. Why Kamal Hossain should be taken into custody, in the opinion of Sajeeb Wazed Joy, is not quite clear. Why should the young man be making a statement that is best left to politicians, that can only place the government under embarrassing circumstances?

Let the record on Dr. Kamal Hossain be set straight. It has always been a matter of pride for the people of this country that Kamal Hossain is a man inextricably linked to some of the most defining phases of Bangladesh's history. A proponent of secular democratic politics since his young days, he was on Bangabandhu's legal defence team during the Agartala case trial. He was part of the Round Table Conference called by a tottering Ayub regime in February-March 1969. At the crucial negotiations between the Awami League, the Pakistan People's Party and the Yahya Khan junta in March 1971, he was the AL constitutional expert responsible for the preparation of a draft agreement on the future of federalism in Pakistan, one that might have led to a peaceful resolution of the crisis had the Pakistan army not launched its genocide on 25 March 1971. He, like Bangabandhu, was in solitary confinement in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province during the entirety of the War of Liberation. The junta did all it could to induce him into repudiating the politics of Bangabandhu, to the extent of promising him freedom if he did so. Kamal Hossain remained unmoved.

Not many of us knew that, indeed had no way of doing so. But on Shwadhin Bangla Betar he was an almost regular target of commentators who thought he had compromised with the Pakistani junta after he was taken into custody in early April 1971. Not until Bangabandhu arrived in London after his release by the Bhutto government in Pakistan in January 1972, did we realise Kamal Hossain had also been freed with him. Subsequently, Bangabandhu informed us that the Pakistanis had put relentless pressure on Kamal Hossain to denounce his leader at the former's secret trial by a military court, but Hossain stayed loyal to the Father of the Nation. Those who remember how some political figures in the Awami League were to turn against Bangabandhu while he was in prison in Pakistan and when he was assassinated in 1975, will also have cause to recall that Kamal Hossain was one man who never flinched in his loyalty to the Father of the Nation.

Kamal Hossain's was the pre-eminent voice in demanding that Sheikh Hasina be brought back home from New Delhi in 1981 and anointed as leader of the Awami League. How many of us remember that story? It is our collective sadness that Sheikh Hasina and Kamal Hossain were compelled by circumstances to part ways when they did. Together they could have made a great team in a grand resurgence of democracy in Bangladesh, but that was not to be. But let it be remembered that in independent Bangladesh, Kamal Hossain served with distinction as law minister, a position in which he played perhaps the most instrumental role in framing the Constitution of 1972. As foreign minister, he steered Bangladesh to increasingly wider areas of international relations, among which are the tripartite agreement between Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan in 1974, and Bangladesh's entry into the United Nations that same year. Kamal Hossain refused to be part of the cabinet under the usurper Khondokar Moshtaque. Unlike that of so many others in the Awami League, Kamal Hossain's record has remained unblemished where collaboration, willing or forced, with Moshtaque is concerned. In the past two decades or more, he has graduated to being an elder statesman for us. No, we do not agree with him all the time. Yes, he has his drawbacks too, like everyone else. But he is one individual who has our abiding respect. Trying to pull him down is tantamount to launching an assault on our national self-esteem.

To suggest, therefore, that Kamal Hossain should be arrested, ostensibly on charges of treason, arouses our very deep concern. Dissent is part of democracy. Alternative views of how a state ought to be administered are certainly not treason. And patriotism must not be the monopoly of an individual or a group or a party. Every Bengali who remembers the war of 1971, who has read about it, who identifies with the values ingrained in that twilight struggle for freedom, who believes in a full, unfettered functioning of democracy, is a patriot. By that standard, Kamal Hossain is a patriot, like every citizen of this country. His is one of the few voices of reason for us in these parlous times.

Let that truth prevail, now and always.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist, current affairs commentator, and columnist.