Friday, June 06, 2008
Papa Bachchan to play Sheikh Mujib, Bangladesh's Founding Father
See The Funky Ghetto Hijabi's Comments Below:Amitabh Bachchan to play Bangladesh founder
Thu May 1, 2008 12:54pm IST
DHAKA (Reuters) - Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan and his celebrity family members have all tentatively agreed to take part in a film based on the life of Bangladesh's founding leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, local media said on Thursday.
Amitabh will take the role of Mujib in the film, named "The Poet of Politics," while his son Abhishek Bachchan will act in the role of a young Mujib, Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury, the producer of the film, told ANA, a U.S.-based Bangladeshi news agency.
The ANA report, published in several Dhaka dailies on Thursday, said Chowdhury, an expatriate Bangladeshi journalist and newspaper columnist, also told the news agency that Amitabh's daughter-in-law and former Miss Universe, Aishwarya Rai, and renowned actress Shabana Azmi will also act in two key roles.
Shyam Benegal, the only director to won India's National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi five times, will direct the movie.
"After getting the consent of Amitabh, I am now a relieved man. To project a person of the magnitude of Bangabandhu (Sheikh Mujib), I could not imagine no one other than him," Chowdhury was quoted as saying in New York.
"Now not only Amitabh, his other family members have also agreed to take up the challenge," added Chowdhury.
It was not clear when Chowdhury will start shooting the film, which will be made in English and dubbed into Bengali, Hindi and other languages.
Mujib led Bengalis to an independence struggle in 1971, which resulted in the independence of former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.
Mujib was killed, along with most of his family, in a 1975 coup.
The Funky Ghetto Hijabi's Comments:
If you know me well you know I am a big Bollywood fan.
However, I don't think this film is really a Bollywood movie.
For one thing it's in English.
It is also going to be a very political film.
The producer, Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury, is a Bangladeshi journalist based out of London (He left Bangladesh in 1974) who is a diehard supporter of the Bangladesh Awami League, the party founded by Mujib and now headed by Mujib's daughter Hasina (For those of you not familiar with Bangladesh politics Mujib is like Bangladesh's Jinnah/Zulfikar Bhutto...except in real life the dudes were archenemies, and Hasina is Bangladesh's Benazir Bhutto).
The film will probably highlight Sheikh Mujib's secularism and his Bengali Nationalism. It probably won't contain criticism of his subsequent dictatorship in Bangladesh and the violent suppression of political oppostion...or of the imposition of a Bengali nationalism on non-Bengali peoples such as the Biharis and the Adivasis.
This will not be an objective film.
Here is what Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury once wrote about Sheikh Mujib:
BANGABANDHU SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN
Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury
London, 20 December, 1994
He is not a mere individual. He in an institution. A movement. A revolution. An upsurge. He is the architect of the nation. He is the essence of epic poetry and he is history.
This history goes back a thousand years. Which is why contemporary history has recognized him as the greatest Bengali of the past thousand years. The future will call him the superman of eternal time.
And he will live, in luminosity reminiscent of a bright star, in historical legends. He will show the path to the Bengali nation his dreams are the basis of the existence of the nation. A remembrance of him is the culture and society that Bengalis have sketched for themselves. His possibilities, the promises thrown forth by him, are the fountain-spring of the civilized existence of the Bengalis.
He is a friend to the masses. To the nation he is the Father. In the view of men and women in other places and other climes, he is the founder of sovereign Bangladesh. Journalist Cyril Dunn once said of him, "In the thousand - year history of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujib is the only leader who has, in terms of blood, race, language, culture and birth, been a full - blooded Bengali. His physical stature was immense. His voice was redolent of thunder. His charisma worked magic on people. The courage and charm that flowed from him made him a unique superman in these times."Newsweek magazine has called him the poet of politics.
The leader of the British humanist movement, the late Lord Fenner Brockway once remarked, "In a sense, Sheikh Mujib is a great leader than George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi and De Valera." The greatest journalist of the new Egypt, Hasnein Heikal (former editor of Al Ahram and close associate of the late President Nasser) has said, "Nasser is not simply of Egypt. Arab world. His Arab nationalism is the message of freedom for the Arab people. In similar fashion, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman does not belong to Bangladesh alone. He is the harbinger of freedom for all Bangalis. His Bengali nationalism is the new emergence of Bengali civilization and culture. Mujib is the hero of the Bengalis, inn the past and in the times that are.
Embracing Bangabandhu at the Algiers Non - Aligned Summit in 1973, Cuba’s Fidel Castro noted, "I have not seen the Himalayas. But I have seen Sheikh Mujib. In personality and in courage, this man is the Himalayas. I have thus had the experience of witnessing the Himalayas.
Upon hearing the news of Bangabandhu's assassination, former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson wrote to a Bengali Journalist, "This is surely a supreme national tragedy for you. For me it is a personal tragedy of immense dimensions." Refers to the founder of a nation - state. In Europe, the outcome of democratic national aspirations has been the rise of modern nationalism and the national state. Those who have provided leadership in the task of the creation of nations or nation-states have fondly been called by their peoples as founding fathers and have been placed on the high perches of history. Such is the reason why Kamal Ataturk is the creator of modern Turkey. And thus it is that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the founder of the Bengali nation - state and father of the nation of his fellow Bengalis. But in more ways than one, Sheikh Mujib has been a more successful founding father than either Ataturk or Gandhi. Turkey existed even during the period of the Ottoman empire. Once the empire fell, Ataturk took control of Turkey and had it veer away from western exploitation through giving shape to a democratic nation - state. In Gandhi's case, India and Indians did not lose their national status either before or after him. But once the British left the subcontinent, the existence of the Bengali nation appeared to have been blotted out.
The new rulers of the new state of Pakistan called Bangladesh by the term "East Pakistan" in their constitution. By pushing a thousand - year history into the shadows, the Pakistani rulers imposed the nomenclature of "Pakistanis" on the Bengalis, so much so that using the term "Bengali" or "Bangladesh" amounted to sedition in the eyes of the Pakistani state. The first man to rise in defense of the Bengali, his history and his heritage, was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. On 25 August 1955, he said in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, "Mr. Speaker, they ( government) want to change the name of East Bengal into East Pakistan. We have always demanded that the name 'Bangla' be used. There is a history behind the term Bangla. There is a tradition, a heritage, If this name is at all to be changed, the question should be placed before the people of Bengal: are they ready to have their identity changed?"
Sheikh Mujib's demand was ignored. Bangladesh began to be called East Pakistan by the rulers. Years later, after his release from the so - called Agartalas case, Sheikh Mujib took the first step toward doing away with the misdeed imposed on his people. On 5 December 1969, he said, "At one time, attempts were made to wipe out all traces of Bengali history and aspirations. Except for the Bay of Bengal, the term Bengal is not seen anywhere. On behalf of the people of Bengal, I am announcing today that henceforth the eastern province of Pakistan will, instead of being called East Pakistan, be known as Bangladesh."
Sheikh Mujib's revolution was not merely directed at the achievement of political freedom. Once the Bengali nation - state was established, it become his goal to carry through programmes geared to the achievement of national economic welfare. The end of exploitation was one underlying principle of his programme, which he called the Second Revolution. While there are many who admit today that Gandhi was the founder of the non - violent non - cooperation movement, they believe it was an effective use of that principle which enabled Sheikh Sheikh Mujib to create history. Mujib's politics was a natural follow - up to the struggle and movements of Bengal's mystics, its religious preachers, Titumir's crusade, the Indigo Revolt, Gandhiji's non - cooperation, and Subhash Chandra Bose's armed attempt for freedom. The secularism of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, the liberal democratic politics of Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Haque and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy Contributed to the molding of the Mujib character. He was committed to public welfare. Emerging free of the limitations of western democracy, he wished to see democracy sustain Bengali nationalism. It was this dream that led to the rise of his ideology. At the United Nations, he was the first man to speak of his dreams, his people's aspiration, in Bangla. The language was, in that swift stroke of politics, recognized by the global community. For the first time after Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel achievement in 1913, Bangla was put on a position of dignity.
The multifaceted life to the great man cannot be put together in language or colour. The reason is put on, Mujib is greater than his creation. It is not possible to hold within the confines of the frame the picture of such greatness. He is our emancipation - today and tomorrow. The greatest treasure of the Bengali nation is preservation of his heritage, a defense of his legacy. He has conquered death. His memory is our passage to the days that are to be.
The Funky Ghetto Hijabi's Comments:
Interestingly, In a 2004 poll conducted on the worldwide listeners of BBC's Bengali radio service, Mujib was voted the "Greatest Bengali of All Time" beating out Rabindranath Tagore.
This film is going to be as much about the early history of Pakistan as it will be about Bangladesh because there is no way they will be able to tell Sheikh Mujib's story without having his arch rival, Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, in it.
I wonder who will play Zulifikar Ali Bhutto?
Who's going to play Jinnah, Fatima Jinnah, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan?
Who will play Indira Gandhi?
Ash will probably be cast as a young Sheikh Hasina.
I wonder who will play Nixon?
You see at the time Mujib came to power Bangladesh was exporting Jute to Egypt. But the US had economic sanctions against Egypt. So, Bangladesh was punished for trading with Egypt and its food-grain imports were barred leading to a massive famine in 1974. This led to a lot of political instability and Mujib became something of a dictator, banning all other political parties. Political discontent within the army eventually led to not only Mujib's assassination but the massacre of his entire family. Sheikh Hasina survived along with another sister because they were on a cultural exchange in West Germany at the time. Some have speculated that the coup was a C.I.A plot.
The Pakistani Army is definitely going to be vilified in this film as Sheikh Mujib believed the Army was responsible for the murder of over 3 million people and the rape of over 200,000. Many say this is an exaggeration...but either way you put it something awful went down.
Sadly, this also meant that revenge for these atrocities was taken out on the local Urdu-speaking population, many of them refugees from Bihar...the numbers of Biharis murdered during the War of Liberation is also disputed.
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