Ekti Mujiburer Thekey....

I don't like simple stories, but I'll make an exception for the one that follows because even this is an improvement from the over-simplified bullshit we are asked to believe by political parties and their embedded intellectuals. If you disagree on the details, remember these are simplified stories.

August 15th marks the end of two over-arching symbols and the birth of two legacies. It marks the end of British rule in the subcontinent. Some scholars talk about the two divergent, almost contradictory, strands of the British Imperial legacy: the monarchic viceroyalty and parliamentary democracy. Like everything else, those North-Indians divided - excuse me, Partitioned (note the capital) - the legacy between them, with the authoritarianism going to the Land of All-Muslims-except-those-not-from-Punjab and the parliamentary democracy going to "Oh-My-Don't-We-Look-Secular-As-Our-Army-Takes-Over-Goa-Hyderabad-Kashmir-and-Manipur"-istan. Thus, their divergent political fates. That is how one story goes.

Equally, if not more, importantly, August 15th marks the barbaric death of one man and his family.

I say "more" deliberately.

I say "more" because this man was the leader in creating the closest approximation to a nation-state in the subcontinent, no mean feat.

I say "more" because he was not a "derivative" of any Imperialism, brown or white: not for him foreign languages and degrees, affairs with foreign women and the adulation of foreign culture and choice phrases, or speeches in English and only English, that most Islamic of languages.

I say "more" out of protest that intellectual elites of every hue in South Asia are so overcome by the narrative of power and guilt emanating from Delhi, Islamabad and their own consciences that they do not look at this man, his words and his actions as supreme instances of anti-Imperialism or Islamic humanism - but are ready to wax lyrical about their Netaji, their Punditji, their Allama or their Quaid for pages on end.

I say "more" out of sheer desperation that even the very people he freed are ready to talk about either Jinnah or Nehru in glowing terms, but remain sure that he was somehow lesser. I hope the "more" makes them think.

Yet his legacy might have proved in the end to be more potent than anyone else's, for it had the potential for creating the most inclusive, egalitarian, and single-mindedly nationalistic polity in South Asia. It was after all his dream, and he had two words for it that you could understand from Teknaf to Tetulia: Shonar Bangla. These last 36 years have been largely lost, and that perhaps is the magic of the story and the bitterness I taste in my mouth.

For within that legacy there were two strands, pre-'71 and post-'72. Pre-'71 is the lost legacy: the uncompromising championing of the most marginalised people on Earth, his own. Do I exaggerate both our marginality and his role? Ask yourself in what cosmopolitan, pan-national scheme do Bangalis from the East come up - except at the margins. Not Western pan-humanism, nor Islamic Ummahtocism, nor South Asian Desi-ism (but never "Deshi-ism"! Tsk tsk, these Bungaaalis with their barbaric pronunciations, yaarrr!) and lastly, certainly not Kolkata-centric pan-Bengalism. Of course, intellectuals from both sides mix up that last statement with communal sentiments. This is not to say that Hindus and Muslims are two nations. That "theory" was as fake as Jinnah himself. This is to say that Hindus and Muslims of Purbo Bangla got a raw deal from "West Bengal" at most times.

Forever at the margins, one man took us by the scruff of the neck and shoved us into the centre of it, battling off all hegemonies. This was a man proud to be Bangali, proud to use our language unapologetically in the forum of the world, proud of his roots and convinced that his people deserved better.

So what happened?

The reality of a war-ravaged country hit, with a heavy dose of power to match. He became dictatorial, suspicious, overwhelmed, not really quite sure of what he had unleashed: the power of millions. He said things that went against the very grain of his inclusion, of his feelings for the marginalised. He did things that went against the very pluralism he had once worn as a proud embelm. And the people that we are - accustomed to the margins, losing out forever, suspicious of each other, and unaccustoned to being masters of our own destiny amidst the tides of empires and rivers - we took all these little lessons to heart and forgot the rest. We even tried to erase him, because no matter what he did in those three short years, he could not dull the gloss of what he had once been.

So he was killed along with his family and we went our merry way, forgetting. We shut down newspapers, beat up reporters, killed people in crossfires and forgot about the marginalised, of whom the dead were the first. We helped people only when our leaders told us to, gave flood relief only when photographers were present, talked about "national security" while selling, starving and exiling our people. And we constantly - constantly! - denigrated and killed our fellow Bangladeshis - ironically at times in the name of their Father. His shining legacy lived on - in name, stashed away behind glass cases, to be admired but not practised. Too impractical you see. These hujugey Bangalis, there's no pleasing them...

In the meantime, 36 years went on by and maybe another 36 will go before people wake up and realise that the other half of his legacy, the pre-'71 one, has either been denigrated or never been tried, even by his own admirers.

Welcome to the country of sell-outs. They only fight over whom to sell-out to. And that is the sad story. Simple, not pretty, but a thousand times more honest than what Awami intellectuals or BNP apologists or Jamaati pan-"Islam"ists or CTG bhodrolokes will tell you.

August 15th marks the day that we lost the one person who refused to sell us out in word or deed. May we remember him like that.