Independence Day Edition
Ending Discrimination Vital for Embracing Freedom's Ideals
What progress have we made towards the goals that Bangladesh aimed for in achieving independence, 53 years later? Have we moved further away from those goals? Is the development of our political culture heading in a positive direction? Where are the weaknesses, and what does the future hold?
Independence Day celebration now turns into a commodity
Mujahidul Islam Selim is a veteran leftist politician from Bangladesh. He was a former president of Bangladesh Communist Party and has been associated with left-leaning politics since his student days. He played a significant role in the Liberation War of 1971 and served as the president of a student union. In independent Bangladesh, he was elected as the vice president of the Dhaka University Central Students' Union (DUCSU) in its first election after liberation. He studied economics at Dhaka University. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993, he has held various leadership positions within the Bangladesh Communist Party, either as the general secretary or president. Currently, he serves as a member of the Central Committee of Bangladesh Communist Party. Recently, he discussed various trends and transformations regarding the celebration of Independence Day in an interview with Rahat Minhaz, Assistant Professor of the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at Jagannath University. On March 23 in 2024, the interview took place over Zoom.
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.
Artist's responsibility to protect freedom
Freedom is an inevitable companion for every individual. For that freedom, we have fought for thousands of years. The history of that struggle is not just known to us; the whole world knows it. We are fortunate; we have found someone whose birth was necessary for our freedom. We do not know how much longer we would have suffered under oppression! The great leader, the father of the nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, showed us the dream of that freedom and brought it to us.
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