Bangladesh suffered a bloody August and the unending screams

The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In every day early hours of August 2018, when the loss is fresh, there is comfort in knowing that his glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours.

by Anwar A Khan- Aug 4, 2018

( August 3, 2018, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) If we remember his death, we become indebted to his birth. We call it bloody August 15. It bechanced in 1975. He has not escaped the horrors of Bangladesh that we created at this grand man’s clarion call through and through the supreme sacrifices of millions of our people in 1971. He is no one else, but the Father of our Nation, Bangabandh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It retraces that the ghost of bloody August will haunt his legacy to persist in our souls till we live on.

Where in the starlit stillness we lay mute, hear the whispering showers all night long, and his bullet-ridden bruised body was a lute whereon our passion and warmth pay a deep-chested feeling of delighted approval and liking for his uncurled songs he sang for the welfare of his people for more than two decades. We cherish martyrs like Mujib not only because he died for truth, but also because he died for what he believed in and loved for the true cause of his people in his country, Bangladesh.

The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In every day early hours of August 2018, when the loss is fresh, there is comfort in knowing that his glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They have entered the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh was torn, they cried out. They suffered as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember, we shudder when recalling his or their pains.

The elegiac month of August has, once again, come to our life. We wish to dedicate this month to the immaculate heart of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Founding Father of Bangladesh. This immaculate heart may be venerated together with the sacred hearts of our great fallen heroes like Tajuddin Ahmad, Syed Nazrul Islam, Capt (Retd.) M Mansur Ali, AHM Kamaruzzaman and with good reason just as their sacred hearts represent their true love for mankind in Bangladesh. His blood has dried, but it has become rose petals. What we feel brushing our cheek is not only our tears but these are our love apple for him. He remains above us, beside us and within us; how he beams a human sunrise and we are so proud of him!

Let us go hence: the night is now at hand; the day is over-worn, the birds all is flown; we have reaped the crops the gods have sown; despair and death; deep darkness over the land broods like an owl; we cannot understand tears, for we have only known surpassing vanity: vain things alone have driven our perverse and aimless band. Let us go hence, some whither strange and cold to hollow lands where just men and unjust find end of labour, where is rest for the old, freedom to all from love and fear. Twine our torn hands! Oh pray the earth enfolds our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.

If in that Bangladesh’s garden, a great hero like Bangabandhu Mujib is slain, we sleep, and know that we are dead in vain, nor even in dreams behold how dark ascends in smoke and fire by day and night, the sleep well and see no morning, sons and daughters of Bangladesh. But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by, at the right hand of majesty on high you sit, and are sitting so remember yet your tears, your agony and bloody sweat, your cross and passion and the life you give, bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; and he might as well live in our memories till the last drop of our blood. We have wept with the spring storm; and burnt with the brutal summer. Now, hearing the wind and the twanging bow-strings, we know what winter brings. The hunt sweeps out upon the plain and the garden darkens. They will bring the trophies home to bleed and perish beside the trellis and the lattices, beside the fountain, still flinging diamond water, beside the pool which is eight-sided, like my heart.

To describe the tragedy of Bangabandhu’s passing, I quote a few lines of a famous poet:

“Ah! Me, what language can impart
The mournful feelings of a throbbing heart
No more the flag which royal Clarence gave
In ambient air its sportive colours wave
Cold is that hand which joyful won’t to raise
The splendid ensign upon gala days.”

Bangabandhu’s heart, full of goodness, ever compassionate toward our miseries; deign to melt our icy hearts and grant that they may be wholly changed into the likeness of the true heart. Pour into them the love of thy virtues; enkindle in them that loving fire with which thou thyself dost ever burn. In thee let Bangladesh find a safe shelter; protect her and be her dearest refuge, her tower of strength, impregnable against every assault of her enemies. Be thou the way which leads to Bangabandhu, and the channel, through which we receive all the graces needful for our salvation. Be our refuge in time of trouble, our solace in the midst of trial, our strength against temptation, his love in persecution, our present help in every danger and especially at the hour of troubles, when all hell shall let loose against us its legions to snatch away our souls, at that dread moment, that hour so full of fear, whereon our eternity depends. Ah, then most tender and pure, make us to feel the sweetness of thy fatherly heart, and the might of him was open to us a safe refuge in that very fountain of mercy, whence we may come to praise him in the world without end.

This fateful month of August 1975, especially in the wee hours of 15 August, a sky-touching statesman like Bangabandhu Mujib who was encircled by a gang of local cobras (anti-liberation and reactionary forces) in collusion with the most obnoxious nexus…. dreadful and disdainful killing outfits-CIA and ISI belonged to America and Pakistan. He was silenced to death by gun bullets by those hooligans. Maybe, the most shocking thing about this month is that no one seemed to know that those ruffians were headed over a cliff. Those rogue people seemed to be more obsessed with the prospect of brutal assassination in Bangladesh.

In his lifetime, “Bangabandhu” as he was fondly revered by his people, enjoyed an emblematic status in Bangladesh and was widely appreciated across the world for his idealism and statesmanship. A greater understanding of Sheikh Mujib’s ideas and activities can only benefit the present efforts to create a world that is genuinely independent and self-determined. Consequently, his legacy is still relevant to the present-day struggle of Bangladesh’s people and other oppressed peoples around the world. Noted journalist Søren Kierkegaard truly wrote, “The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”

We cherish martyrs not because they died for truth, but because they died for what they believed in and loved. Bangabandhu was like what Mahatma Gandhi once said, “They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.” He is like the martyrs who are exceptional people. The martyrs survive pain, they survive total deprivation. They bear all the pains of the earth. They give themselves up. They transcend themselves… they are transfigured. And Mujib has transmogrified and changed completely the nature or appearance of Bengalis’ landscape in the world map.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. And it is this type of dangerous, fearful tunnel-vision that may even be in full motion at the present moment. Would we recognise those attitudes, if we are caught in the middle of them? This is the kind of tragedy that reminds us why we should read history. We should bow our heads in shame even unto this day about the trail of tears and those who died along the way on that very early morning. But the blood of the martyrs’ waters is the tree of freedom. We expect to uncover more splendid treasures of this great fallen hero of our land in the days to come. The writer sincerely trusts that we shall keep our backs very stiff in this matter.

Those cruel butchers then enjoyed their vanity fair; they thought of themselves and not of others care-Fratricidal course that to hell doth lead – this was poison upon which the gentry fed. We should study physics, chemistry, more while they all such sinners adore; this is no idle prattle talk to you; it has made the banners red, white and blue. Out of the clear of the earth’s eternity has raised a kingdom of Bangladesh’s fraternity; there shall be conquests over militant forces; for, as man proposes, God disposes. Signs of retribution are on every hand: Be ready, the foreign paid men like Gideon’s band. They may scoff and mock at you today, but get you ready for the awful fray.

In the fair movement of our abounding grace, there is a promised hope for our race in the sublimes’ truth of prophecy. We are to raise us to earthly majesty. Princes shall come out of Egypt so grand, the noble Bengali men’s home and motherland, the Psalmist spoke in holy language clear as our triune will declare. In their conceit, they see are not their ruin. You soldiers of trust, be up and doing! Remember Belshazzar’s last joyous feast, and Daniel’s vision of the Great Beast! Weighed in the balances and found wanting is the tektite to which they are pointing. This interpretation, we, men shall never in our dreams forget. The resplendent rays of the morning sun shall kiss our life again to begin; the music of rhythmic natural law shall stir Bangladesh’s soul with excellent, beautiful or creative flow. The perfume from nature’s rosy hilltops shall fall on us spiritual dewdrops. Celestial beings shall know us well, for, by goodness, in death, with them we will dwell. And how sad a finish! With battleship, artillery and gun, our men put all evil creatures to run; and Heaven and Earth they have often defied taking no heed of the rebels that died.

The present August 15 marks the 43rd anniversary of Bangabandhu’s assassination. His death stunned the world and caused an outpouring of public grief unprecedented in today’s history of Bangladesh. His killing has altered the course of the country’s history. We will not forgive you, sun of emptiness, and sky of blank clouds. We will not forgive you indifferent anti-Bangladesh liberation and reactionary forces until you give us back our golden son.

This is the sad road to August. It is the most sorrowful month in Bangladesh. This is the murder that Bangladesh can never forget. August is the mournful month in our History – the bloody August of 1975; the trail of tears…and the never ending trail for our people, an elegiac month. Those hyenas’ acts have changed the face of our history. But God can’t be mocked in this daring way. So, the evil ones shall sure have their day.

The killing of Bangladesh’s Founding Father is barbarous, and the manner of the murder was too horrible for description. He dedicated his entire life to the just cause of Bengalis and establishing for an independent and sovereign homeland for them. He was the foundation and ultimate goal of Bangladesh’s politics. Let us build another exalted pantheon, a monument commemorating a nation’s dead heroes like Bangabandhu Mujib and his true-blue lieutenants. A walk to remember him or them is a full admiral, a full-of-the-moon elucidating, straightening out with irradiating rays of light upon us. It should not be the finale section of a musical composition and a basso continuo only, but it should be our living and braving out of withstanding with courage. When August comes with scarlet roses with no maculating stain on his bright face, our souls take leave of him to sing all day long for him, a love so fugitive and so complete.

-The End-