Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman played a ‘historic’ role by sending the allied forces back to India after the 1971 Liberation War, a senior BNP leader has said.
The party’s Standing Committee Member Hannan Shah was speaking in Dhaka on Sunday at a discussion organised by the Swadhinata Forum as part of the Victory Day celebrations.
“When Bangabandhu returned to Bangladesh after the Liberation War, he did the greatest favour to the nation…immediately after the War,” Shah said.
“He used his personal stature to make the Indian prime minister (Indira Gandhi) promise to take back the Indian forces soon,” he added.
A former army officer, Shah said, “You cannot imagine what would have happened had the Indian forces stayed on—Bangladesh would have become an Indian state like Kashmir.”
“The nation is grateful to Bangabandhu. I personally think it would have been a disaster if he hadn’t done that (send the Indian forces back). There is no knowing how long a struggle would have lasted and how many hundreds of thousands of people would have perished,” he said.
Shah, however, stood by the BNP’s claim that its founder Ziaur Rahman had proclaimed independence. “We all heard that proclamation. But Sheikh Hasina (the prime minister and Awami League president) said she didn’t hear it.”
Referring to Sheikh Mujib as Bangabandhu, Shah went on to say, “Bangabandhu, the brain-child of democracy, fought Ayub Khan, Monem Khan, Yahya, but not on the battlefield. He fought them with his political intelligence.”
“But later, hopelessly under the influence of some other people, he introduced BKSAL. There was not even the ‘D’ of democracy in it (BKSAL). We didn’t expect that from Bangabandhu.”
He said the BKSAL era had ‘dug the graves of other parties’.
The BNP leader expressed his frustration over the current political situation. “What is the situation today? The political and social situation has worsened. We have to go from door to door for justice.”
About the assistance of the Indian forces, Shah said, “We wanted to be free in the interest of a beautiful future. Those who study history know that we didn’t want independence. We wanted to establish our rights. We got help from our ally because it was Pakistan that used force against us. We snatched victory with our ally’s help.”
“As an army officer, I can say that it would have taken five to seven more years for the freedom fighters to liberate the country had the allied forces not come to our assistance. One can’t imagine what our future could have been in such a situation,” he said.
“India did not help us just like that. Its main aim was to break up Pakistan, defeat Pakistan so that Pakistan would be weakened. Pakistan was a threat to India … it would no longer be a threat,” Shah said.
He also alleged that the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JaSaD) had attacked the Indian high commission in Dhaka so that India could send its troops into Bangladesh in 1975.
Source: bdnews24