Bangladesh is a proud nation as it emerged through a glorious freedom fight. Though we have got the freedom the spirit of the freedom fight is yet to be established. OVER the last year we have been commemorating the 42th year of Bangladesh's independence. In these 40 years Bangladesh has registered many gains for which we should feel proud. We have established a globally competitive garment industry moved ahead of India in particular areas of human development and gender parity, extended micro-credit to 25 million women and drastically reduced aid dependence through an explosive growth in remittances by our hard working migrants. We have furthermore held four reasonably free and fair elections where incumbent regimes have been replaced by opposition parties through the ballot box.
Previous history of freedom fight: Bangladesh lost her independence to the British when Nawab Serajuddola was defeated in the battle of Palassey in 1757. In 1947, the British divided India into two sovereign states, India and Pakistan. Pakistan was created but the people of Bangladesh were in majority in Pakistan, They were deprived of all the powers Bangladesh was made o colony of West Pakistan. As a result the people of Bangladesh could not tolerate this and started a strong movement for their release.
Background of the Liberation War: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and some patriot of Bangladesh raised their voice of protest. In 1968, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and some other Bengalese were charged with a false case known as Agartola Conspiracy Case, but the people of Bangladesh started a strong movement against this case. Ayub Khan was compelled to release them. Then came Yahia Khan and he declared general election in 1970. The party of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman got absolute majority in the National assembly. But Yahia did not hand over the power and he stopped National Assembly. As a result, Sheikh Mujib started non-violent, non-co-operation movement. Yahia started a false dialogue with Sheikh Mujib and he began to increase the strength of army.
Freedom struggle of 1971: March 25 is a black day in the history of Bangladesh. On that night the army began to attack in the unarmed people of Bangladesh. Sheik Mujib was arrested and taken to West Pakistan. The independence of Bangladesh was declared. As the liberation war started, freedom fighters took birth overnight and faced the well-trained occupying forces to Pakistan fearlessly. At Mujib Nagar the government of the people republic of Bangladesh was formed on 17th April, 1971. But the Pakistan went on committing genocide to horror of the world. Women were raped and killed. The world press believed the atrocity of the of the occupying forces exceeded all limits. Millions of innocent Bengalese fled across the border in fear of their loves. So when their crimes were full, the Pakistanis came under direct attack of the combined forces of India and Bangladesh. The 16th December: The final stage of the war took a couple of days only. On the glorious day of 16th December, the Pakistani army surrendered. Our victory day confirmed the birth of Bangladesh on the world map.
Spirit of liberation war and present situation: Bangladesh was not born because of an historical accident. Nor was it the gift of a departing colonial power grown weary of bearing its imperial burden. Our nationhood emerged out of a long process of struggle which culminated in a bloody war of liberation. To move large numbers of ordinary people to pledge their lives for a separate existence we needed to inspire them with a vision for a better world than the one they were repudiating. This inspiration was what came to be known as the spirit which inspired the liberation war, what we popularly term Muktijuddher-chetona. This is a phrase which is used so frequently and so casually as to be rendered almost devoid of meaning. We invoke this spirit as a ritual incantation and rarely bother to ask ourselves what this spirit embodies.
I would argue that the spirit of the liberation war is adequately captured in the four principles which have guided our constitution: Democracy, Nationalism, Secularism and Socialism (which has later been elaborated to mean social justice). In my presentation before you, I will discuss why these pillars of our constitution capture the spirit of the liberation struggle, how far we have departed from these guiding principles and where we need to travel in order to restore meaning to the spirit of the liberation war.
Our emergence as a separate nation-state was the direct outcome of the persistent denial of democratic rights to the people of Bangladesh by the Pakistani ruling class. In 24 years of shared nationhood never once was central power in Pakistan exercised through the outcome of a free and fair election. In 1990 when the Ershad autocracy was overthrown through a mass mobilization the nation experienced the excitement of a second rebirth of democracy. But who would have imagined that within 17 years of this renewal of democracy our confrontational style of politics would have reached a point where the military were once again provided with an opportunity to intervene in the political process through the process of Emergency Rule.
There is no evidence that we have learnt the right lessons from our most recent malfunction of the democratic process. The politics of confrontation and intolerance appears to be once again permeating our political culture. The political opposition, over successive regimes, has been marginalized, partly as a result of its own political immaturity in boycotting parliament thereby violating its democratic mandate. As a result of these endemic boycotts four successive parliaments have been rendered virtually dysfunctional in their incapacity to discharge their primary mandate of keeping the executive accountable to the will of the voters. The malfunctioning of our democratic institutions remains compounded by the continuing inability to strengthen democracy in our principal political parties. The principal political parties, in turn, reflect the gradual ascendance of money and muscle power as the driving force in democratic politics.
In such a distortion of the democratic process every institution of governance tends to be compromised. Our administration has become ineffective where both recruitment and advancement have been politicized and divorced from performance or norms. As a result virtually all public services as well as law enforcement have become partisanised and commoditized to a point where the machinery of government has lost virtually all capacity for functioning as an instrument of public service.
The last remaining bastion of the rule of law, the judiciary, is now under threat. Over the years, the lower judiciary has degenerated into a politicised instrument of the ruling party. The once independent upper judiciary, which served as a bastion of our democratic freedom, is being exposed to a process of creeping politicisation. The appointments to the Election Commission (EC) had been similarly politicised upto the tenure of the last elected government. It remains to be seen how far the new appointments to the EC, who are expected to preside over the next round of elections to parliament in 2014, will be selected on the basis of merit and consensus. The integrity of the very institutions to safeguard the democratic credentials of our electoral process needs to be protected.
The last recourse of democracy, the free media, is demonstrating considerable resilience. But the security of journalists has been periodically endangered and the independent press itself faces a constant struggle to secure itself from both state pressure and private terror. Here again, people with money and state patronage are making inroads into the media and are investing both in the print and electronic media with the expectation of "managing" the news in the service of partisan and private gain. That our institutions of democracy and governance should have degenerated to a level where the very sustainability of the democratic process is endangered is particularly distressing when we consider our long and painful struggle for democracy.
Though we achieved our independence through much bloodshed, we still are not emerging as a powerful nation. We seem to have forgotten the supreme sacrifice we made in 1971. So our main duty should be to build up the country.