Priyo Blog

15th August 1975: A Call for Collective Obligation (Farje-Kefaya)

Action on 15th August was the most appropriate and timely decision and a Forje-Kefaya. A leader who talked 23 years of his political career about democracy spoiled all his achievements of the past through BAKSAL rule as if putting one ounce of urine in one gallon of milk. All the struggles and movements by the-then East-Pakistanis since birth to burial of Pakistan was solely for democracy and economic justice. By regressing from democracy to ONE PARTY BAKSAL RULE Sheik Mujib guillotined democracy and turned himself an autocrat and fascist leader. It was even worse than simple one party rule as we did see under communist regimes in different countries, because Bangladesh under BAKSAL was heading towards a country under the notorious fascist family rule or chosen kingship. Yet, many BAKSAL beneficiaries try to sell it by saying it was a temporary step to ‘Salvage The Nation’. This kind of assertion was nothing but a total lie because the changed 4th amendment of constitution did not have any term-limit or any temporary arrangement. People didn’t foresee any plausible peaceful means of returning to democracy for which lakhs of lives have been sacrificed.

The beneficiaries or some level-headed people argue that 15th August occurrence was illegal and unconstitutional as it ousted and killed the elected government. This is again an untrue assertion because by changing constitution through 4th amendment Mujib had molested or raped the constitution. Even the members of the-then parliament had no right to change fundamental frame of constitution; and if  that change at any situation had been  warranted, it should have been validated by referendum. Mujib’s popularity was at nadir when he formed BAKSAL. He lost the popular mandate. He was conscious about his grounded popularity and so feared rationally to test his new BAKSAL through referendum. He had lost all legal rights to claim as the legal executive chief of the country. His unconstitutional fascist rule legalized or validated any means or steps  popular upsurge or other options to strip him off the power. But under his autocratic tyrant rule popular upsurge was not feasible option. Only option was arm-intervention from military or outlawed under-ground arm cadres.

Popular upsurge or any action, legal or apparently illegal, violent and non-violent against such government is permissible by all ethics, logics, rational and moral standard. The historic and famous Declaration of Independence of America by its Fore-Fathers condones such action and fight against such colonial/autocratic/tyrant/fascist rulers who deny or deprive people’s basic rights of self-determination. We also fought against Pakistanis and sacrificed a sea of blood with a similar spirit.

Here I quote from The Famous Declaration “……..We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world….”

Apart from the afore-mentioned spirit of declartion of independence, lets us look at what the father-figure president of Abraham Lincoln commented on
when he was once asked by reporters that what measured can be appropriate
when a country's elected or non-elected head of the state become autocrat, tyrant and despotic. He said in the same vein of the spirit of declaration of independence, every step like, mass movement, arm struggle etc whatever possible is legal and legititmate.

 So ousting such an autocratic BAKSAL ruler, in fact, became the collective responsibility of every citizen of Bangladesh then. BAKSAL government was a dead decaying foul-smelling corpse and to dispose it was the collective obligation of the nation. It can be said as Farje-Kefaya like burial of dead body in the society by some responsible people, it is a collective call of duty for everybody, though. By dethroning Sheik Mujib BAKSAL government the Savior Sunny Sons of the Soil (SSSS) saved the nation and salvaged democracy. They showed the highest valor and the best example of sacrifice for the people and nation. The whole nation including Sheik Hasina and her MPs who are elected in democratic process and the judges who are enjoying to be judge by their own merit and free to adjudicate, are the beneficiaries of the boldest and riskiest step they took for the nation. 

People are forgetful of the past and abjectly in ingratitude. But the Greatest Overseer sees everything. May Almighty Allah give them the best rewards of Shahada or Gazees to them whatever is the outcome of the  sham trial.

Ameen

Summa Ameen

Summa Ameen.