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Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in jail: Mar 71-Jan 72

A grave for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Dec 21, 2021: The Times of India

Mohanlal Bhaskar was being held in Mianwali jail in Pakistan when Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was brought there in a chopper. A few days later, a jail official picked Bhaskar and seven other Indian inmates to dig a ditch in the block where Sheikh Mujib had a cell. The instructions were specific – the ditch should be eight feet in length and four feet in width and depth. An excerpt from Mohanlal Bhaskar’s book ‘I was India’s spy in Pakistan’

Winter was still tiptoeing in when a chopper alighted inside the prison’s compound. The next morning, we learnt that Sheikh Mujibur Rehman had been brought in from the Lyallpur prison. We also learnt that at the Lyallpur jail, some soldiers belonging to the East Bengal Regiment had attempted to smuggle him out through a secretly-dug tunnel. He was lodged in Mianwali prison’s women inmates’ block. The women inmates were shifted to another barrack. The women inmates’ block lay at the back of barrack number 10.

We, the Indian inmates of the jail, had been shifted to barrack number 10 just days ago. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was kept amid strict, round-the-clock surveillance by guards from a Pakistani army contingent. His cook prepared his meals, comprising mostly rice and fish.

The next day, when it was confirmed that Sheikh Mujib was in the jail, the Pathans among the prisoners scaled the barracks’ roofs and let out a torrent of filthy abuses aimed at his mother and sisters and threw torn shoes and stones at the women inmates’ block. A few guards got hit with the torn shoes and rocks. The guards subsequently scaled the barracks’ roofs and fired bullets in the air, six shots, to scare the troublemakers who thereafter climbed down. The Pathans, however, continued abusing Sheikh Mujib from their barracks.

Later, the jail’s chief, Chaudhary Naseer, undertook a round of the prison and passed on a message to the inmates – ‘You all must chill. Sheikh Mujib has been brought here to be hanged.’ The clarification sent a wave of jubilation through the jail with the Pakistani inmates breaking into chants of ‘Ya Ali’, ‘Ya Ali’.

We, the Indian inmates, craved a glimpse of Sheikh Mujib. But that was impossible. Yet, the heart yearned to see the ‘Bengal Lion’, who had managed to awaken his people against tyranny and exploitation. He had sacrificed his own family in doing so. As per reports, Sheikh Mujib’s son was shot dead when the latter was being taken into custody. Only his daughter, Sheikh Hasina [Bangladesh’s current prime minister], survived.

We once met his cook in the jail’s storeroom, where one went to collect the ration. The cook was there to pick up the ration meant for Sheikh Mujib. We could not speak to him in the presence of guards. The store’s clerk, however, could not resist a dig: “So, how is the traitor Mujib doing?’ The cook was a tough nut. He responded: “Sheikh Saheb is perfectly fine and healthy and in a good mental space. He keeps saying that he will continue to fight for the rights of the Bengalis till his last breath.”

One day, one of the prison’s senior officials, Fazaldad, arrived at our barrack with a warden in tow and ordered his junior to pick eight Indian prisoners. There was no word about what task we were being assigned. When we were led to the women’s block, where Sheikh Mujib had been lodged, we thought finally we would get a glimpse of the great man. But we found all the windows in the block had been shuttered with wooden screens.

Fazaldad ordered us to dig a ditch – eight feet in length and four feet in width and depth. We deduced instantly that Sheikh Mujib would be hanged and that we were digging his grave. We got on with the job. None of us had the guts to ask Fazaldad what the ditch was for.

No Pakistani inmate was involved in the digging. The jail officials probably thought that the news would be leaked if Pakistanis in the jail got a whiff. By late evening, we had finished the task. Then the wait began, our ears straining for any sound from the gallows.

But nothing happened that night. It seemed the hanging had been postponed. The next morning, when the wards were thrown open, some were saying that the Sheikh was still alive while others claimed he was killed with a poison injection then buried in the grave we had dug last night. But these were all speculations.

Later in the day, when we reached the storeroom to collect our share of jaggery and chana, Sheikh Mujib’s cook was there to collect for him tea leaves, milk and sugar. That was a clear indication that Sheikh Mujib was alive. We later learnt that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had met Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan to ask him to stop the execution. The logic he [Bhutto] had given was that if Sheikh Mujib was hanged, the Bengalis’ anger would burn and destroy the entire rank and file of the Pakistani armed forces stationed in East Pakistan.

The next evening, we were again brought out of our wards and asked to fill up the ditch. We were happy that we had been spared of becoming a part of such a dubious event. But a fortnight later, we were again taken out of our cells and asked to dig a new grave. On this occasion too, Sheikh Mujib was not hanged. And this routine was repeated twice again and each time we were asked the next morning to fill the ditch up.

This is how Sheikh Mujib spent his four months of incarceration at Mianwali prison’s women’s inmates’ block – awaiting to be executed any day, any hour.

When Bangladesh came into being eventually, Sheikh Mujib became its first President. But none would have imagined that the people for whom he had sacrificed everything, including his family, would assassinate him.

A few months before President Mujib was killed, R&AW had got intel of the plot. When the plan for the assassination was being prepared at a secret meeting attended by Bangladeshi army officers, one of the participants there was our mole. He subsequently scribbled a note on the deliberations on a slip of paper and dumped it in a waste bin. An agent of ours later picked up the note.

R&AW’s chief R N Kao posed as a betel-leaf seller to slip into Bangladesh. He met Sheikh Mujib and alerted him about the plot. Sheikh Mujib laughed saying: “How is that possible? They are my sons, they cannot murder me.”

Mujibur Rehman was assassinated at the behest of Bangladesh army’s chief Ziaur Rahman. I go down the memory lane even today, reminiscing about those days when Sheikh Mujib had been imprisoned at the Mianwali prison. Ropes for hanging him had been prepared, graves were dug up. His enemies could not kill him. However, it was his own who assassinated him.

Translated by Abhishek Saran. This memoir, published by Rajkamal Prakashan, won the prestigious Shrikant Verma Award in 1989

Note: Mohanlal Bhaskar was repatriated to India in 1974. He passed away in 2004 [Mohanlal Bhaskar’s account of the events inside Mianwali jail was confirmed by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman himself weeks after he returned to East Pakistan and was elected prime minister of Bangladesh. This is what he told a group of journalists from the US, this NYT story reports:

At 4am, two hours before the killing was to take place, Sheik Mujib related, the prison superintendent, who was friendly to him, opened his cell. “Are you taking me to hang me?” asked Sheik Mujib, who had watched prison employees dig a grave in the compound outside his cell (they said it was a trench for his protection in the event of Indian air raids.) The superintendent, who was greatly excited, assured the prisoner that he was not taking him for hanging.

Sheik Mujib was still dubious. “I told him, ‘If you're going to execute me, then please give me a few minutes to say my last prayers.’”

“No, no, there's no time!” said the superintendent, pulling at Sheik Mujib. “You must come with me quickly!”]

Rape

Leesa Gazi’s film

Avijit Ghosh, Dec 16, 2021: The Times of India

Leesa Gazi, a writer and filmmaker, grew up in Bangladesh and migrated to England in 1998. Her documentary feature, Rising Silence, sheds light on the lives of rape survivors in the aftermath of the 1971 liberation war of Bangladesh. She speaks to TOI about it

Q: Your documentary, Rising Silence, seems to be a personal as well as emotional journey for you too. What made you pick up the subject?

A: All my childhood I grew up hearing stories of our Liberation War from my father, who was a freedom fighter. A few profoundly haunting images never left me; like that nameless boy who died on the eve of Bangladesh's Independence Day, December 16, 1971. When he was told the news, a peaceful smile emerged at the corner of his lips and then he died. Another image my father told me of was when he witnessed hundreds of mute, faceless women standing back-to-back on a convoy of trucks. They were Birangona women. I remember trying my best to picture their faces, but I couldn't. Because their stories were not only forbidden and overshadowed by various regimes after the assassination of the founding leader in 1975, but they were also hidden, shunned, ostracised from their homes and from society.

I wanted to know these women on their own terms, beyond labels and statistics. When I was going to meet them for the first time in 2010, I still could not imagine their faces. It was an unbearable idea. However, once I met them, they were real, they could have been anyone; it could have been me. I felt there must be many like me who wanted to know about them. As I look back now, I think the journey of Rising Silence began on that very day. In the midst of the faceless numbers, I wanted to show that one person who could be someone's daughter or sister, or mother, or friend or lover or indeed any woman; who had a childhood, has a name and a story to tell. I wanted the audience to know them as they are and beyond the term ‘Birangona'.

Q: Birangona literally means brave woman. As your documentary says, in the context of the 1971 war, it means the women who faced sexual violence from the Pakistan army and their local collaborators. How many such survivors existed in 1971. How difficult was it getting the women to speak on the subject?

A: It is difficult to say how many such survivors lived through the campaign of mass rape. After 1975 people were ridiculed, harassed and even killed for being freedom fighters. They were representative of an ideal which had a vast popular resonance but which the authorities wanted to wipe out. So we could only imagine what Birangona women had to endure. Since August 15, 1975, the day Bangabandhu was killed along with most of his family, they were thrown out of women's rehabilitation centres overnight across Bangladesh. The centres were then locked up, documents were burned down to erase their existence.

Dr Geoffrey Davis, a physician who participated in the victim relief programme to perform late-term abortions on the survivors of rape, estimated in an interview with Dr Bina D'Costa that the commonly stated number of 200,000 was probably "very conservative" compared with the real numbers.

Amidst the military coups and the dictatorship of independent Bangladesh, the stigma of rape and the collective shame attached to it was so appalling that it was never spoken of in public. So the plight of those women was largely ignored, and then almost forgotten. Birangona women wanted to tell their stories, but there was no safe space then; to do so was often life-threatening. When they started to feel safe to talk, many of them had already perished, and many stories had gone untold. They have plenty to say. All of them, in fact, own a towering voice and burning stories. We have never cared to listen to them. We have been busy stigmatising them for generations.

Q: The documentary shows many Birongonas continue to be shunned by both their families and taunted by society. Comment

A: In more or less every part of the world, male on female rape has been seen as a source of shame for the victims. Patriarchal society has burdened women with the loss of dignity caused by rape while the action of the perpetrator is often overlooked and not factored into the discussion. The stigma around sexual violence is monstrous. When you live in a world where women are not regarded as people and rather subjects of male possession, female victimhood can be widely disregarded. Where women are seen as male property and custodians of male pride, defiling them is a painless method of defaming their fathers or husbands - and in turn, their families, their communities and even their countries. When women are incumbents of the pride of others, they are also then held responsible for the loss of said pride, whether it was their fault or not. Targeting women and girls using rape and sexual violence as a tactic of war comes from the same mindset. If we want to bring change, we need to eradicate this attitude which has been engraved in our cultures, our DNA since the dawn of time.

Q: Yet some of these stories are also of hope. What were the inspiring take-aways from the documentary?

A: There were many times when I was in complete awe of their courage and compassion. Their stories have given me a sense of humanity, strength, faith, a sense of pride which I have never experienced before. They took me into their homes and villages, beyond history and politics, to share their lives and experiences as women. They inspired me and helped me a great deal to understand who I am, what I am capable of as a woman. They accepted us without judgment and with an unconditional love that came so naturally to them. These incredible women remain defiant, and the dignity they have shown is honourable. By living, they overcome and grow beyond the monsters of war and daily prejudice with extraordinary strength and the most profound expression of love.

I don't know how it is even possible to think of saving people while living through extreme violence. They saved lives living in such horror. I saw them disowning their children to protect them; building a future even while living with the ghost of the past; not fearing to speak their minds; rising from the ashes to stand tall. What spirit they uphold! A birangona recites, "The one who loves another, their heart will weep forever. That's why my tears never end" — Then she'd break into dance and song. It has been the most inspiring thing to experience that after all this, they still have the heart to celebrate life - "Being human is the best form of existence.”

Q: Did the Bangladesh government ever help them out financially, or in terms of counselling?

A: In Bengali, Birangona means ‘Brave Woman’, and this was the honourific granted by the interim government of Bangladesh, only six days after the war ended to the survivors of the campaign of mass rape carried out by the Pakistani Army in the Liberation War of Bangladesh in1971. This is very significant because in spite of the stigma of rape, their plight was recognised by the government of Bangladesh, a majority Muslim country. This recognition by a state of its victims of sexual violence remains globally unprecedented. In 2015 the Government of Bangladesh officially recognised the Birangona women as Freedom Fighters and began the process to identify them to provide them with a stipend.

Q: Did the Bironganas say anything about the role played by the Indian army in 1971?

A: Yes, some of the women recalled that the Indian Army entered their villages around 13th of December 1971 along with the Muktis (freedom fighters) to fight the Pak Army.

Q: How long did it take to make your documentary? Who financed it and how much did it cost?

A: From the research stage to the completion of the film, it took us three years. The Executive Producer Abbas Nokhasteh at Openvizor financed the lion's share of the production budget. Manusher Jonno Foundation and the Osiris Group made a healthy contribution towards it. We also raised funds where artists and rights activists from the Bengali community in London donated money personally or through organisations. It cost approx £60k.

Q: Can you please tell me a little more about yourself. And how did you take to filming?

A: I grew up in Bangladesh and was a member of a leading theatre company Nagorik Natya Sampradaya for more than a decade. I migrated to the UK in 1998 and immediately started working as a TV producer on a community TV channel in London. From 2008 I started working as a professional actor and writer for the stage. Then in 2012 we, the four founding members of Komola Collective, formed our art company that tells stories from women’s perspectives. The four of us are Filiz Ozcan, Sohini Alam, Caitlin Abbott and I. I see myself as an incidental filmmaker. I did not study film or theatre.

Edited excerpts of this interview was first published in The Times of India in 2019