Founding figures are as important as holy cows in South Asia – profoundly venerated. You build monuments, write hagiographies, institute peace awards and sometimes make very bad movies in their memory. But what chance do you have of making a critical film on one such personality and not losing your citizenship? It is indeed an uphill task to attempt movies on MK Gandhi in India, Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Pakistan or Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Bangladesh and call them art. Even foreigners have to tread with caution.
Take Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982). While some would argue that Gandhi was a film well-written and well-produced, it hardly examined some of the major failings of the man they call Mahatma. His experiments with celibacy, where by his own confession he often faltered, or the rather critical views that Bhimrao Ambedkar and even Subhas Chandra Bose held about him, were not shown; Gandhi was deified.
The same has happened to Mujib.
Another foreigner, Indian filmmaker Shyam Benegal, is set to release Mujib: The Making of a Nation, a movie about Bangabandhu. India and Bangladesh are co-producing the film just before Bangladesh’s current prime minister and Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina fights her next election in 2024. Benegal has been tasked with shooting an ‘election film’, even if he won’t admit it.
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The man, the legend
Mujib, the film, is not the only attempt the Hasina government has made recently to rekindle the memory of Bangladesh’s illustrious son. Many biographies of Mujib have come out over the years, including a 10-part graphic novel targeting the country’s youth.
The series (also called Mujib) has been published by the Centre for Research and Information, a not-for-profit policy research organisation that works closely with the Bangladesh government.
Launched in 2015 and edited by Bangladeshi Hindu Shibu Kumar Shil, the graphic novel holds great significance for the country’s estimated 13.1 million Hindus – a small chunk of its 165.16 million inhabitants. For them, Mujib’s dream of a secular nation is still one worth fighting for. The final parts of the novel hit the shelves just last year. It is, however, interesting to note that the PM’s 15 uninterrupted years in power have seen quite a few attacks on Bangladesh’s Hindu population.
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Who was Bangabandhu?
“This country does not belong to Hindus. This country does not belong to Muslims. Whoever thinks this country is theirs, this country will be theirs. Whoever will feel happiness seeing this country prosper, this country will be theirs. Whoever will cry seeing this country sad, this country will be theirs. This country will also belong to those who have given away everything for this country’s freedom and would do so in the future,” Mujib had famously said. These words are splashed on the inner walls of the Bangladesh Visa Office in Salt Lake, Kolkata, perhaps to tell Indians planning to visit Bangladesh about what the country stands for.
It all started inside a jail cell, making Mujib’s life celluloid worthy.
“I was arrested soon after Pakistan was born. The year was 1948, and I was involved in the language movement. A year later, in 1949, I was arrested again, only to be let out in 1952. Hassled, my mother asked me: “Babu, you have always spoken out in favour of this new country called Pakistan. You have spent all your money on the political movement that led to the birth of this country. Ordinary people of this country got to know why ‘Pakistan’ is important to you. Then why did the Pakistani government arrest you?” wrote Mujib in 1966 to record his time in jail.
On 10 June 1966, he was arrested again from a political gathering of jute industry labourers at Narayanganj in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). This was his third arrest that year.
Mujib spent most of his time in the 1960s in prison, often in solitary cells where he had no one to talk to. A decade had passed since his old mother asked why the Pakistani government had arrested him. And Mujib did not know how to answer her.
He wrote: “I didn’t know what to say to my simpleton mother who stays in a village. I said, ‘One day, I will tell you everything.’ That one day came, and I told my mother everything about what we were doing. She could hardly understand. All she said was: ‘One day, you take me to the people who arrest you. I would shout at them.’ My siblings laughed at her.”
Mujib’s mother should have known that these arrests were inevitable, given that her son was changing the very course of history. Mujib’s political journey had begun decades ago, during the 1930s.
As the head of a students’ delegation, he had met Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq, popularly known as Sher-e-Bangla or Lion of Bengal, a Pakistani-Bengali lawyer and writer who presented the Lahore Resolution, which intended to create a separate homeland for British Indian Muslims, aka an independent Pakistan.
He also served as Bengal’s first and longest prime minister during the British Raj. Mujib also met Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, a Bengali barrister and politician who served as the prime minister of Pakistan from 1956 to 1957 and, before that, as the prime minister of Bengal from 1946 to 1947 in British India. In Bangladesh, Suhrawardy is remembered as Mujib’s mentor. In India, he is seen as a controversial figure; some even hold him responsible for the 1946 Calcutta Killings.
Mujib would not turn his back on politics after this meeting. Suhrawardy would become his mentor and the Muslim League his chosen path. Like millions of others, Mujib dreamt of seeing the sunrise in a new country—a country called Pakistan.
Those days, Mujib would hold Jinnah in thrall and apparently cycle to Delhi to meet him. The veracity of this story cannot be confirmed today, but it is certain that Mujib ardently admired Jinnah—at least till Pakistan was born.
But Pakistan brought new battles in its wake. Battles where this young Bengali Muslim League politician would painstakingly pave paths for his people – both Hindu and Muslim –to speak their own tongue and value their cultural identity over their religious one.
Fate would make Mujib, who once stood with Jinnah and Suhrawardy, go beyond the idea of Pakistan and Islam to carve a nation that prioritised Bengali identity and secularism, a nation that would be called Bangladesh.
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A daughter’s challenge
Today, decades after Mujib’s rise, Bangladesh’s creation and much of her family’s tragic assassination Hasina must answer a difficult question – whether the country she rules over is the one her father had dreamt of. Fifteen years of anti-incumbency, widespread corruption, the concentration of power and privilege in the hands of the ruling elite and sectarian violence have cast a shadow over Hasina’s legacy. By all counts, Bangladesh has also seen unprecedented growth during her time in office; GDP figures are impressive, while roads, highways, and state-of-the-art bridges have transformed the country in many ways.
It is for Hasina to convince her fellow citizens that her time in office has been more good than bad. And that if she gets one more term, she will correct the missteps of the past. That and that alone will help her win the next election. A hastily-made film on an illustrious father and reminiscing over what was may not aid her at this juncture.
Deep Halder is a writer and journalist. He was an executive editor with the India Today Group and is the author of ‘Blood Island: An Oral History of the Marichjhapi Massacre’ (2019), and ‘Bengal 2021: An Election Diary’ (2021). He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)