Papa Bachchan to play Sheikh Mujib, Bangladesh's Founding Father

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.

Sheikh Mujib wanted a confederation: US papers

Sheikh Mujib wanted a confederation: US papers

By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, July 6: The US State Department’s newly declassified documents about the 1971 debacle show that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman wanted to have a “form of confederation” with Pakistan rather than a separate country. The documents include two telegrams dating Feb 28, 1971 and Dec 23, 1971 “based on the sentiments of Sheikh Mujib and the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,” showing that Sheikh Mujib was not secessionist, as many in the then West Pakistan believed.

The telegrams, sent to the State Department by the US embassies in Pakistan and India, document key foreign policy decisions and actions of the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

The telegram, entitled “Conversation with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,” shows the path followed by the Awami League leader as he “talks of excesses by West Pakistan, states he (Mujib) is not willing to share power and does not want separation but rather a form of confederation.”

In November 1969, a year before the war began, a US diplomat sent this report to Washington: “… East Pakistan, one also senses a growing undercurrent that beyond some intangible point the West Pakistan landlord-civil service-military elite might prefer to see the country split rather than submit to Bengali ascendancy.”

One telegram quotes Indira Gandhi as saying that President Nixon has “misunderstanding about India’s case” and that “there is fantastic nonsense being talked about in the US about our having received promises from the Soviet Union about the Soviet intervention against the seventh fleet and against China.”

The documents released on June 28 provide full coverage of the US policy towards India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the newly created state of Bangladesh from January 1969 to December 1972.

Documents from March to December 1971 include intelligence assessments, key messages from the US embassies in Islamabad and New Delhi and the Consulate General in Dhaka, responses to National Security Study memoranda and full transcripts of the presidential tape recordings that are summarized and excerpted in editorial notes in volume XI.

The historian branch of the State Department held a two-day conference on June 28 and 29 on US policy in South Asia between 1961 and 1972, inviting scholars from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to express their views on the declassified documents.

During the seminar, Bangladeshi scholars acknowledged that their official figure of more than 3 million killed during and after the military action was not authentic.

They said that the original figure was close to 300,000, which was wrongly translated from Bengali into English as three million.

Shamsher M. Chowdhury, the Bangladesh ambassador in Washington who was commissioned in the Pakistan Army in 1969 but had joined his country’s war of liberation in 1971, acknowledged that Bangladesh alone cannot correct this mistake. Instead, he suggested that Pakistan and Bangladesh form a joint commission to investigate the 1971 disaster and prepare a report.

Almost all scholars agreed that the real figure was somewhere between 26,000, as reported by the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, and not three million, the official figure put forward by Bangladesh and India.

Prof Sarmila Bose, an Indian academic, told the seminar that allegations of Pakistani army personnel raping Bengali women were grossly exaggerated.

Based on her extensive interviews with eyewitnesses, the study also determines the pattern of conflict as three-layered: West Pakistan versus East Pakistan, East Pakistanis (pro-Independence) versus East Pakistanis (pro-Union) and the fateful war between India and Pakistan.

Prof Bose noted that no neutral study of the conflict has been done and reports that are passed on as part of history are narratives that strengthen one point of view by rubbishing the other. The Bangladeshi narratives, for instance, focus on the rape issue and use that not only to demonize the Pakistan army but also exploit it as a symbol of why it was important to break away from (West) Pakistan.

Prof Bose, a Bengali herself and belonging to the family of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, emphasized the need for conducting independent studies of the 1971 conflict to bring out the facts.

She also spoke about the violence generated by all sides. “The civil war of 1971 was fought between those who believed they were fighting for a united Pakistan and those who believed their chance for justice and progress lay in an independent Bangladesh. Both were legitimate political positions. All parties in this conflict embraced violence as a means to the end, all committed acts of brutality outside accepted norms of warfare, and all had their share of humanity. These attributes make the 1971 conflict particularly suitable for efforts towards reconciliation, rather than recrimination,” says Prof Bose.
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Kirtimaan Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920-1975) Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was born on 17 March 1920 in the village Tungipara under the Gopalganj Sub-divi

	Sheikh Mujibur Rahman			Kirtimaan Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920-1975) Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was born on 17 March 1920 in the village Tungipara under the Gopalganj Sub-division (currently district) in the district of Faridpur Bangabandhu, the architect of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman(1920-1975) is a charismatic leader, President and Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's father, Sheikh Lutfar Rahman, was a serestadar in the civil court of Gopalganj. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman passed his matriculation from Gopalganj Missionary School in 1942, IA (Twelfth Grade) from Islamia College, Calcutta in 1944 and BA from the same College in 1947. After partition (1947), he got himself admitted into the university of dhaka to study law but was unable to complete it, because, he was expelled from the University in early 1949 on charge of "inciting the fourth-class employees" in their agitation against the University's indifference towards their legitimate demands. Sheikh Mujib's active political career began with his election to one of the posts of joint secretaries of the East Pakistan Awami Muslim League (1949). As a political prisoner, he was then interned in Faridpur jail. In 1953, Sheikh Mujib was elected general secretary of the East Pakistan Awami Muslim League, a post that he held until 1966 when he became president of the party. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman entered parliamentary politics first in 1954 through his election as a member of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly on the united front ticket. He was also a member of the Pakistan Second Constituent Assembly-cum-Legislature (1955-1958). Disturbed by the radical political views of Sheikh Mujib, the Ayub regime put him behind bars. A sedition case, known as agartala conspiracy case, was brought against him. It may be noted that during most of the period of the Ayub regime Mujib was in jail, first from 1958 to 1961 and then from 1966 to early 1969. During the second term in jail, Mujib's charisma grew so much that a mass uprising took place in his favour in early 1969 and Ayub administration was compelled to release him on 22 February 1969 unconditionally. On the following day of his release, the Sarbadaliya Chhatra Sangram Parishad (All Parties Students Action Committee) organised a mass reception to him at Ramna racecourse (now, Suhrawardy Uddyan) and accorded him the title 'Bangabandhu' (Friend of the Bengalis). In him they saw a true leader who suffered jail terms for about twelve years during the 23 years of Pakistani rule. Twelve years in jail and ten years under close surveillance, Pakistan, to Sheikh Mujib, indeed proved to be more a prison than a free homeland. The general elections of December 1970 made Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman the sole spokesman of East Pakistan. Mujib was so serious about the six-point that on 3 January 1971, he held a solemn ceremony at Ramna Race Course with all the East Pakistan representatives and took an oath never to deviate from the six-point idea when framing the constitution for Pakistan. During the course of non-cooperation (2-25 March 1971) the entire civil authorities in East Pakistan came under the control and directives of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, himself becoming the de facto head of government of the province. During this time, on 7 March Mujib made a historic address at a mammoth gathering at the Race Course which marked a turning point in the history of the Bengali nation. At the end of his speech, he made a clarion call, saying: "Build forts in each homestead. You must resist the Pakistani enemy with whatever you have in hand…Remember, we have given a lot of blood, a lot more blood we shall give if need be, but we shall liberate the people of this country, Insha Allah [ie, if God blessed]…The struggle this time is the struggle for our emancipation; the struggle this time is the struggle for independence”. At mid-night of 25 March 1971, the Pakistan army launched its brutal crackdown in Dhaka. Sheikh Mujib was arrested and kept confined at Dhaka Cantonment until he was lifted to West Pakistan for facing trial for sedition and inciting insurrection. Although during the war of liberation was begun in the wake of the 25 March army crackdown Bangabandhu had been a prisoner in the hands of Pakistan, he was made, in absentia, the President of the provisional government, called the mujibnagar government, formed on 10 April 1971 by the people's representatives to head the Liberation War. He was also made the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Throughout the period of the War of Liberation, Sheikh Mujib's charisma worked as the source of national unity and strength. After the liberation of Bangladesh on 16 December 1971 from Pakistani occupation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was released from Pakistan jail and via London he arrived in Dhaka on 10 January 1972. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman headed the first government of the post-liberation Bangladesh for a period of three years and a half. By that time, the country was in a shambles, the result of a nine-month war for independence. Sheikh Mujib attempted to remedy the situation by ruling through executive decree, Sheikh Mujib declared a state of emergency, declaring himself president and disbanding all political parties except for the newly formed Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BAKSAL) which raised a paramilitary force to annihilate anyone opposing his decisions and ideals and to keep his family in power for eternity. His popularity reached the lowest of the low. A group of army adventurers assassinated him along with most of his other family members on 15 August 1975. Update: July-2006 **Reference: Wikipedia Banglapedia

CIA Involvement in Sheikh Mujib Killing

CIA Involvement in Sheikh Mujib Killing

The past is never dead
The long shadow of the August 1975 coup

Lawrence Lifschultz

Published on February 13, 2007

What USA started during the Liberation War in 1971 with attempt to split the Awami League using Khandaker Moshtaque and his accomplices continued after the independence following a direct US instigation, resulting in the carnage on August 15, 1975. On basis of his 30 years' investigation that included interviews with the US sources, Moshtaque and others concerned, Lifschultz has written a series of that tale. . ...

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Was the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members on August 15, 1975 merely the result of personal malice and an act out of sudden fury of some army officers?

Long investigation by veteran US journalist Lawrence Lifschultz has made it clear that there was a deep-rooted conspiracy behind the dark episode of August 15.

Lifschultz in a number of investigative reports published in newspapers made it clear that Khandaker Moshtaque and a quarter of US embassy officials in Dhaka were closely involved with the small section of army officers in the August 15 coup.

At long last, Lifschultz disclosed the name of his "very reliable source", the then US ambassador in Dhaka Eugene Booster with whom he has maintained close communication for the 30 years.

Booster repeatedly objected to the conspiracy leading to the August 15 assassination, even issued written instruction in this regard, but failed to prevent the then station chief Philip Cherry of US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Dhaka office from doing the conspiracy.

Lifschultz's plan to publish an interview of Eugene Booster in this regard remained unfulfilled as Booster passed away on July 7 last.

The new-born Bangladesh could not save herself from the wrath of then foreign secretary Henry Kissinger who could never forget that Bangladesh was born in opposition to his suggestion.

Along with Salvador Allende of Chile and Taiyoo of Vietnam, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was in Kissinger's political vendetta.

What USA started during the Liberation War in 1971 with attempt to split the Awami League using Khandaker Moshtaque and his accomplices continued after the independence following a direct US instigation, resulting in the carnage on August 15, 1975.

On basis of his 30 years' investigation that included interviews with the US sources, Moshtaque and others concerned, Lifschultz has written a series of that tale.

The first part of his four reports is published today.

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The 30th anniversary of the August 15th military coup in Bangladesh powerfully illustrates the dictum of William Faulkner that the past is never dead, it is not even past. For those of us who lived through the years of Bangladesh's 'War of Independence' and the decade of the 1970s, we remember these dates as milestones of an era. They are markers on a road we traveled to a destination many did not reach.

After thirty years Bangladesh still lives with the legacy of the violent night of August 15th. Just over four years from that dark March night in 1971 when Pakistani Army troops rolled their tanks and armoured vehicles through the streets of Dhaka slaughtering their fellow countrymen instead of accepting the outcome of national elections they had agreed to accept, a small unit of the new Bangladesh Army invoking the sordid tradition of Pakistan Army staged a traditional military putsch.

Within hours, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, symbol for many of an ideal of liberation, was dead in a military coup d'etat that had run amok in a frenzy of killing. Mujib and almost his entire family were slaughtered including his wife and sons, the youngest only twelve. On that deadly night groups of soldiers broke into squads and traveled around the city killing relatives of Mujib's family.

The pregnant wife of one relation who attempted to intercede to save her husband's life was herself killed for her efforts. Mujib's two daughters were abroad and they survived with Sheikh Hasina years later becoming Prime Minister. Yet, only a year ago, she too was nearly assassinated in broad daylight by a hit squad that still "eludes" capture, demonstrating yet again Faulkner's insightthe past is not even past. It is very much present.

The political configuration that exists today is a direct descendant of August 15, 1975. The current Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, was the wife of the late General Ziaur Rahman, the Deputy Chief of Army Staff in 1975, who played a crucial behind scenes role in the plotting that preceded the coup and in the events which followed.

At the American Embassy that night political and intelligence officers tried to monitor the unfolding events. But, there was one figure at the Embassy in the days that followed the coup who was particularly unsettled. A small knot had settled in his stomach. The events were an echo of what he had feared might happen months earlier and which he had made strenuous efforts to prevent.

I would meet this man in Washington three years later. He became a critical source for me and clearly hoped the information that he provided would one day lead to uncomfortable truths being revealed and those responsible being held accountable. For the first time in nearly thirty years I can identify this individual. I have been freed from a restraint of confidentiality that I have adhered to for almost three decades. But, be patient, with me a bit longer while I explain how and why I came to meet this individual.

I was one among many foreign correspondents covering the coup. Yet, I was the only journalist reporting these events for a major publication who had actually lived in Bangladesh as a journalist. I was the Dhaka correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) in 1974. The following year I moved to New Delhi and took up a new position as South Asia Correspondent for the Review. The violent death of Mujib would draw me into an inquiry that I could never have anticipated would, again and again, hold me in its sway at different stages of my life.

My unusual source who worked at the American Embassy that night would encourage me forward by his own honesty and quality of integrity. He was one of those unusual individuals one occasionally finds inhabiting an official bureaucracy. He was deeply distressed about the coup and the subsequent killings. He was a man with a conscience. Unlike the rest of us he knew something others did not and that knowledge tore at his conscience. It was this sense of ethical responsibility that brought us face-to-face in one of the more memorable encounters I had as young reporter.

After the coup against Mujib the official story put about by the successor regime and its minions in the Bangladesh press disturbed me. It didn't hold together. Moreover, the cracks began to reveal rather curious links and antecedents.

The version of events which emerged at the time was that six junior officers, with three hundred men under their command, had acted exclusively on their own in overthrowing Mujib. The motives for the coup were attributed to a combination of personal grudges held by certain of the officers against Mujib and his associates, together with a general mood of frustration at the widespread corruption that had come to characterize certain elements of Mujib's regime. In short, according to this view of events the coup was an ad hoc affair not a thought out plan a year or more in the making.

The morning Mujib and his family were killed, the figure installed by the young majors as President was Khandakar Mustaque Ahmed, generally considered to be the representative of a rightist faction within Mujib's own party, the Awami League. After the putsch, Mustaque remained impeccably reticent about any part he personally might have played in Mujib's downfall. He neither confirmed nor denied his prior involvement. He simply avoided any public discussion of the question and desperately attempted to stabilize his regime.

A year following the coup, after he had himself been toppled from power and before his own arrest on corruption charges, Mustaque denied to me in an interview at his home in the "Old City" of Dhaka that he had any prior knowledge of the coup plan or piror meetings with the army majors, who carried out the action. However, the majors who staged the military part of the coup and were forced into exile within four months by upheavals within the Bangladesh Army began to tell a different tale.

In interviews with journalists in Bangkok and elsewhere, bitter at their abandonment by their erstwhile sponsors and allies, the majors began to talk out of school. They confirmed prior meetings with Mustaque and his associates. A story began to emerge that Mustaque and his political friends had been involved for more than a year in a web of secret planning that would lead to the overthrow and death of Mujib.

A few months after the coup, a mid-level official at the U.S. Embassy told me that he was aware of serious tensions within the U.S. Embassy over what had happened in August. He said that there were stories circulating inside the Embassy that the CIA's Station Chief, Philip Cherry, had somehow been involved in the coup and that there was specific tension between Cherry and Eugene Boster, the American Ambassador. He had no specific details about the nature of this "tension" only that there were problems. "I understand," he said, "something happened that should not have happened." He urged me to dig further.

American involvement in the coup didn't make sense to me. In the United States, two Congressional Committees were gearing up to investigate illegal covert actions of the Central Intelligence Agency. The so-called Church and Pike Committee hearings in Washington on CIA assassinations of foreign leaders had begun. The committee hearings were having their own impact within the American diplomatic and intelligence bureaucracies creating great nervousness and anxiety. The American press was openly speculating that senior American intelligence officials might face imprisonment for illegal clandestine action in Chile and elsewhere.

It was the summer when citizens of the United States first heard acronyms like MONGOOSE, COINTELPRO, AM/LASH and elaborate details of assassination plots against Lumumba in the Congo, Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile. The covert hand of American power had touched far and wide. Now the tip of the iceberg was publicly emerging so that for the first time Americans could take a clear look. Yet, all that was happening far away in Washington, in a muggy heat as sultry as any South Asian monsoon.

In India, Indira Gandhi, speaking of the tragedy of Mujib's death, spoke of the sure hand of foreign involvement. As usual, Mrs. Gandhi was graphically lacking in details or specifics. However, her avid supporters during those first nuptial days of India's Emergency, the pro-Moscow Communist Party of India (C.P.I.) were more explicit: the CIA said the CPI was behind the coup. I dismissed this as propaganda based on no specific evidence.

Yet, how had the coup happened? There were still huge gaps in my knowledge of how specific actors had traveled through the various mazes they had constructed to disguise their movements yet which ultimately led to August 15th. I was living in England nearly three years after the coup when I decided to make a trip to Washington to visit a colleague of mine, Kai Bird, who was then an editor with The Nation magazine, published from New York. Today he is a prominent American author.

Lawrence Lifschultz was South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong). He has written extensively on European and Asian affairs for The Guardian (London), Le Monde Diplomatique, The Nation (New York), and the BBC among numerous other journals and publications. Lifschultz is editor and author of several books including Why Bosnia? (with Rabia Ali) and Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History & The Smithsonian Controversy (with Kai Bird). He is currently at work on a book concerning Kashmir.

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The article is Originally published at Daily Star

Over 3,700 troops killed in Bangladesh's liberation war

Over 3,700 troops killed in Bangladesh's liberation war
Monday, 23 February 2009 | http://www.nerve.in/news:253500207496 | channel: Bangladesh


" Many officers and men of the Pakistan Army's East Bengal Regiment and para-military East Bengal Rifles joined the resistance and fought as Mukti Bahini, trained by Indian armed forces. "


Dhaka, Feb 23 - Bangladesh has said 3,713 of its soldiers died during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

They were among the 25,505 officers and men of the Pakistan Army who joined the freedom war, a minister told parliament quoting official defence ministry statistics.

Minister of State for Liberation War Affairs Captain - A.B. Tajul Islam told the house Sunday that in all 210,581 freedom fighters joined the liberation war.

Bangladesh's freedom movement began in March 1971 after the army in the then East Pakistan cracked down on the civilian populace that had overwhelmingly elected the Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in an election in 1970.

Many officers and men of the Pakistan Army's East Bengal Regiment and para-military East Bengal Rifles joined the resistance and fought as Mukti Bahini, trained by Indian armed forces.

When the war broke out in December 1971, a joint India-Bangladesh command fought in the eastern theatre and secured the surrender of 93,000 Pakistan Army personnel.

Angry Bangladeshi army officers blame Sheikh Hasina for BDR mutiny

Angry Bangladeshi army officers blame Sheikh Hasina for BDR mutiny

Dhaka, Mar.13 : Angry Bangladeshi army officers have shouted down Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at a private meeting, blaming her for the murder of over 70 officers by mutineering border security guards.

The ferocity of the army's anger was revealed yesterday when ministers lifted a ban on secret recordings of the clash on YouTube.

Ministers had initially banned the recordings amid fears they might further destabilize the country following the February 25th mutiny.

Sheikh Hasina was praised when she persuaded the leaders of a revolt by security guards of the Bangladesh Rifles to lay down their arms. But she was later fiercely criticized when the scale of the massacre emerged.

The revolt began when security guards forced their way into a meeting of all the regiment's senior officers at their headquarters in Dhaka and opened fire with automatic rifles. The bodies of more than 70 officers were later discovered in a number of mass graves and sewage tanks.

Sheikh Hasina had refused to send in the army to put down the revolt in its early stages and instead invited the leaders to present their demands. At the meeting, she offered the mutineers a general amnesty and an inquiry into their grievances.

Senior officers, who lost friends and family members in the massacre, said they believed the delay costs dozens of lives.

"You are responsible for all the deaths because you did not allow the army to intervene and we want explanation from you," demanded one officer.

"Had we been allowed to intervene, there would not have been so many bloody baths. We could have rescued a lot of officers from the camp."

Another said: "You didn't call the army and that's why so many officers were killed."

Several officers repeatedly demanded to know why she had not visited the scene of the carnage.

"Why didn't you go and see? Why did you send the interior minister?" they asked.

Charges have been filed against more than 1000 BDR guards and 36 have been arrested on suspicion of leading the mutiny.

--- ANI