Bangladesh's independence in the eyes of the youth

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Independence of Bangladesh through the eyes of the youth

Bangladesh is one of the few countries which earned its independence through the short but intense armed struggle following the breakdown of all peaceful means of negotiation of transfer of power to its legitimate elected leadership by the ruling elites of Pakistan in 1971. It was then a province of the artificial state called Pakistan created in 1947 through manipulation of religiously pampered ‘nationalistic’ identity which crumbled into pieces under the pressure of all kinds of inequalities and injustices. The Bengalis constituting most of the population could sense the ‘false dawn’ of a loosely federated country called Pakistan which failed to integrate their deeper liberal, democratic and secular socio-economic and political aspirations right from its initial days of fractured so-called ‘Muslim nationhood.’ The frontal attack on the sanctity of their mother tongue Bangla by the Pakistani ruling elites made it crystal clear to the Bengalis that their aspirations for independence were not at par with those of Pakistanis. Soon the Bengali youth led by the then most promising student leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his co-leaders embarked on the first phase of the Language Movement asking for providing the status of state language to Bangla for which they were arrested on 11 March 1948 and jailed for a few days.