Let Joy Bangla ring across the land!

Fifty-one years ago, it was Joy Bangla which rang loud and clear all across this land. But, of course, Joy Bangla had been our militant call to self-assertion since the day Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, our Bangabandhu, emerged free of imprisonment in February 1969.

Today, with Joy Bangla becoming our national slogan, it is that heritage, that precious moment we recall when the Father of the Nation let us in on the thought that Joy Bangla was our definition as a nation.

When Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman rose to address the multitudes on 7 March, 1971, it was a sure sense of the future, indeed of destiny which worked in him. The nation was at a critical crossroads of history, waiting for its elected, undisputed leader to lead it out of the woods and on to the path to freedom. It was a heavy responsibility which devolved on the future Father of the Nation on the day, for intense were the challenges before him and hard the choices.

The challenges came in the shape of the chicanery of the Yahya Khan military junta and its conspiratorial collaborators. They came in the threat of democracy, so cheerfully sanctioned by the Bengali nation at the general election of December 1970, being about to be undermined by the civil-military bureaucratic complex in distant Rawalpindi.

And then there were the difficult choices. The radical students and at the same time large sections of the population expected Bangabandhu to go for a declaration of independence on 7 March. To all intents and purposes, it was Bangabandhu's writ which ran large in Bangladesh, with his non-violent non-cooperation movement defining the state of politics all over Pakistan. He had already rejected the call for a round table conference by the regime, which ignited the hope in an increasingly militant Bengali nation that freedom was at hand and Bangabandhu would be its harbinger.

And yet democratic politics, a constitutional means of observing the issues and expecting to solve them through pluralistic means, had always underpinned the Mujib character. While the idea of a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) may have enthused many, Bangabandhu knew better. He was the elected leader not only of East Bengal but of Pakistan as a whole. And his Bengalis constituted the majority of Pakistan's population. The implication was obvious: the army and its friends could not but pay heed to him.

As Bangabandhu ascended the dais at the Race Course in the afternoon on 7 March, he knew only too well that his pre-eminent position in national politics decreed that he meet the challenges and make his choices in judicious manner. The thoroughly astute politician that he was, he knew what road he would take on that day. He would not be a secessionist, for two reasons. Firstly, he was the leader of the majority party in Pakistan and the majority did not secede. Secondly, his historical understanding of precipitate action, of the UDI of Ian Smith in Rhodesia and Odumegwu Ojukwu in Biafra as also the secession of the American south in the early 1860s, convinced him that separatism was not the path he would follow.

On 7 March, therefore, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did not declare Bangladesh's independence. And yet his ringing words --- 'the struggle this time is the struggle for our emancipation, the struggle this time is the struggle for independence' --- were an authentic, purposeful, clearly articulated message of freedom. He offered the Pakistani establishment a face-saving way out of the situation: martial law would need to be withdrawn, an inquiry would have to be instituted into the killings by the soldiers, the army had to be withdrawn to its barracks and power would have to be transferred to the elected representatives of the people.

That was the masterstroke which came from a leader thoroughly experienced in his understanding and mastery of the issues. Of course, he knew that the regime, thick-skinned as it was, might not agree to his demands, which was reason enough for him to keep his independence options open. He succeeded brilliantly. On 7 March, it was oratory on Olympian heights. It was, at the same time, a careful mapping of the route of the coming struggle. His instructions were without ambiguity. And prescience was part of his message. Even if he were not around, he said, the nation must carry on the struggle.

As the sun dipped in the western sky, Bangabandhu's call to freedom promised the dawn to be once the evening had passed. Joy Bangla rent the air.

This morning, as we travel back to that moment of hope interspersed with a sense of collective glory, we sing Joy Bangla again. We give a full-throated expression to Joy Bangla. We let it ring from the rooftops, from the ramparts of freedom.

Joy Bangla --- to us, to the world beyond our frontiers! 

Syed Badrul Ahsan. Sketch: TBS