Reverberating The Mass Upsurge Day Of 1969 In Bangladesh

The winning of the objectives of this national democratic revolution will, in turn, lay the basis for a steady advance in the direction of deepening our national unity on all fronts — economic, political and cultural and towards a formation of a new country- Bangladesh. 

by Anwar A. Khan-2020-01-24

 

The Mass Upsurge Day falls on 24th January. It came more than 5 decades ago in Bangladesh on 24th January 1969. It was a sustained, truly mass struggle, confronting ferocious backlash by our people perpetrated on us by the savage Pakistani rulers and we overcame multiple challenges while developing our considerable strengths to fight those beastly animals back and defeat them. This glorious movement witnessed an explosion of popular-democratic struggles championed by people of all walks of life in our country whose activities became central in the campaign against all oppressions and the quest for the creation of a democratic state.

 

 

 

It was a democratic political movement. The uprising consisted of a series of mass demonstrations and sporadic conflicts between government armed forces and the demonstrators. Although the unrest began in 1966 with the Six-point movement of Awami League, it got momentum at the beginning of 1969 and culminated in the resignation of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the first military ruler of Pakistan. The uprising also led to the withdrawal of Agartala Conspiracy Case and acquittal of Bangabandu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his co-accused from the case.

 

The movement soon engulfed the whole of the-then East Pakistan’s politicians, students, peasants, artisans, workers- all joined the movement almost en-bloc. Due to continuous exaction of demands marked by sound judgment of the labouring class of the industrial belts and low- and medium-income groups soon turned the movement into a struggle for economic emancipation. The racial repression and the deprivation of the Bengalis within the frame-work of Pakistan and to the contrary, starting from the language movement the feeling of separate identity together with struggle for autonomy had direct influence on the mass upsurge of 1969.

 

Indeed, this mass upsurge was the greatest mass awakening ever since the creation of Pakistan. The student agitation of 1968 turned into a mass upsurge when Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani, Chief of the National Awami Party (NAP) asked his followers to besiege Governors House, formulated and declared his other programmes.

 

As a part of joint programmes, the NAP of Maulana Bhasani and other political parties arranged a public meeting at Paltan Maidan to observe the Repression Resistance Day on 6 December 1968. After the meeting was over, a huge procession besieged the Governor's House. The Maulana declared a total shut-down of work the next day following the clash between the people and the police. On the call of the main opposition parties namely two factions of NAP (Bhasani and Muzaffar), Awami League and other political parties, a Hartal (Shut-down of work) was observed throughout the-then East Pakistan on 8 December 1968. Repression Resistance Day was very successfully observed throughout the former Province on 10th December 1968 at the call of Awami League’s pro-six-point demand. On the 14th December 1968, the gherao programme (a protest in which a building or person is surrounded by people until demands were met) was declared by the NAP (Bhasani).

 

Accordingly, the programme was launched with the gherao of the bungalow of the DC of Pabna on the 29th December 1968. Mass Uprising Day is observed in Bangladesh every year on 24 January to mark the climax of the movement of the people of the-then East Pakistan for autonomy in 1969 that eventually led to the Independence War and emergence of Bangladesh in 1971.

 

On this day in 1969 Matiur Rahman Mallik, a standard IX student of the Nabakumar Institution, Dhaka and Rustam Ali, a rickshaw-puller were killed in police fire on demonstrators in Dhaka as the Pakistani rulers desperately tried to suppress the popular uprising. The killings sparked off intense protests across the country that eventually saw the fall of the dictator Gen Ayub regime. It is competently said that the day teaches Bengalis about the values of democracy and to protest against oppression.

 

A wind was blowing. It was heading end-to-end the country, and could not be suppressed forever. This proves that the mobilisation of the people is a formidable source of democracy. Events in were indeed an urgent reminder of the challenges of inclusive growth, of job creation, of opportunities for the young, of leaving no one behind.

 

This Revolution of 51 years ago provides important lessons for peoples across the world in their quest to dismantle oppression and build just societies today, tomorrow and the days ahead. It can be termed as pleading for a moral excellence of cause or propounding an idea of determination of one's own fate or course of action without compulsion. It taught us that the political separation of our nation from an alien national body; and the formation of independent nation state - Bangladesh.

 

In this reflection on the 51st anniversary of the Mass Upsurge Day, we will seek to grasp the responses to the revolution, the surge of anti-Pakistani which led the defeat of their fascism. This is an episodic event in human history. It was a period of tremendous outpouring of revolutionary energies in music, art, theater, journalism, poetry and political organising. The uprisings in 1962, 1966, 1968 and 1969 marked a new stage in human history with the independence of Bangladesh in 1971.

 

The tremendous achievements of those insurrections beckon us to understand what was possible and what is possible to create today. We should create records, equally relevant today in wiping out poverty, backwardness, and illiteracy, in establishing equality among peoples of all religions and between men and women. It is an inspiration of what was and what can be, and that is why, we say that the era it established of the transition from alien rule to the establishment of a sovereign and independent state which is as relevant today.

 

Tension had since continued rising and the vast majority of giant Bengali political and student leaders were put behind the bars by the ignominious Pakistani regime to put down the legitimate demands of Bangladesh’s people by force or authority. The movement persisted in to release them immediately and unconditionally. The 1969 Mass Upsurge Day may have more to teach us. The increased tempo of struggle then in our country was a commitment to end all forms of exploitation of human by sub-humans in our part of land. It clearly shows that a new nation was in the making.

 

The winning of the objectives of this national democratic revolution will, in turn, lay the basis for a steady advance in the direction of deepening our national unity on all fronts — economic, political and cultural and towards a formation of a new country- Bangladesh. For our nation building means among other things unifying ourselves nationally as the leading class whose developing culture, aspirations and economic interests become increasingly those of the overwhelming majority of our people.

 

The heroic upsurge of the 24th January 1969 of our people against the tyrannous Pakistani regime continued for almost 3 years. We witnessed mass demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, etc. and the whole Pakistan based National Election where Awami League led by its charismatic leader Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman emerged out as the majority party leader of Pakistan, but the ruffian Pakistani military rulers betrayed with us and refused to hand-over power to Bangabandhu and then waged a full-scale war with us.

 

Their nefarious actions were directed to violent repression which led to the brutal murder of our 3 million people. The 1971 war shows the determination of Bangladesh’s people to be masters in their own land, an independent People’s Republic. The struggle necessarily continued 9 months on to a higher stage, a revolutionary people's war. For it is clear that the only way the settler regime can be defeated was militarily. And that was done bravely by our people inspired by deep love for our country.

 

The history of any society is based on how its people fashion a living for them, how they contend with the forces of nature and consequently how the relations between people develop. In our 1971 war with the Pakistani military rulers, we had emerged out as a fairly powerful mass organisation. The war reached a new height, but we won the war defeating the inglorious war-mongers of the Pakistani regime disgracefully. Bangladesh came into being on 16th December 1971.

 

We have won our own destiny, but without the fullest organisational democracy, we will never be able to achieve conscious, active and unified participation of the majority of the people, and in particular the working class, in our struggle for betterment of our country. It clearly sums up the systematisation of popular experiences and demands which some leaders were able to eloquently make during those stringy days in Pakistan.

 

Clearly, this Mass Ups-well had more the character of an ideal to be struggled for rather than a simple description of reality; nevertheless, it indicates the centrality of popular democracy within the ideology and practice of the movement. The basic role of the civics is not changed. This role is building people's power and it is something that must play itself out in our society.

 

The present process of democratisation in Bangladesh has been overwhelmingly state directed, not only because political parties and state agencies have taken the initiative and provide the fora in which decisions on such democratisation processes are made, but also largely because of the weakness of a culture of popular democracy and the absence of popular institutions through which that culture could be expressed. The key to a democratic system lies in being able to say that the people in our country can not only vote for a representative of their choice, but also feel that they have some direct control over where and how they live, eat, sleep and work, how they get to work, how they and their children are educated, what the content of that education is; and that these things are not done for them by the government of the day, but by the people themselves.

 

In other words, we are talking about ... mass participation rather than passive docility and ignorance, a momentum where ordinary people feel that they can do the job themselves, rather than waiting for their local Member of Parliament to intercede on their behalf.

 

Long live the Mass Upsurge Day and its message - that is intended, expressed or signified.

 

-The End –

 

The writer is an independent political observer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centered figures, current and international affairs