I had the good fortune to meet the Shahid President Ziaur Rahman on December 6, 1979. On this date, the Central Bangladesh Nationalist Party organised a partisan meeting at the capital’s Ganabhaban with thana level leaders of Jatiotabadi Jubo Dal and Chhatra Dal from all over the country. In 1979, I was the senior vice president of the Jatiotabadi Jubo Dal Hijla thana (now upazilla) committee. The Hijla thana Jatiotabadi Jubo Dal committee was formed without any political chaos among the thanas of Barisal district in October 1978. For this decent activity, the Hijla thana Jatiotabadi Jubo Dal had earned highest praises from the Central Committee.
To be honest, I attended the meeting at the request of the Jatiotabadi Jubo Dal Hijla thana committee President where Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman would have delivered a speech. All the secretaries and presidents of Jatiotabadi Jubo Dal and Chhatra Dal upazilla units from across the country took part in the meeting. We, the die-hard followers of Shaheed Zia, have been waiting for hours to see him and hear his instructive speeches. It was a surprising thing that the president came in time and delivered an inspiring, encouraging and enthusiastic speech.
Throughout his speech, there was talk of honesty, fairness, efficiency and the curse of corruption. What a wonderful speech that I still can’t forget. At the end of the speech, as he was leaving, he came down from the podium and shook my hands. He held my hand and gave me a memorable piece of advice, saying that one should never indulge in corruption by forgetting honesty and ideals. In a patriotic voice, he said, “ I will see to everything you need. You should keep it in mind”. That advice in his loving voice will never be forgotten from my memory. The feeling of that day still haunts me today. The memory still makes me cry. I will never ever forget him, my admiring President. He would smile and inspire us to become a true lover of our country with delight. He took such joy in us, his followers. He was a wonderful statesman whom we all adored and we still do. Each one of us would have done anything he asked of us, such was the loyalty he inspired. Other would do even more. They would sacrifice their happiness & pleasure, accept the hardship in life and even be prepared to die. The freedom fighting can be a shining example of this. Such was his call & his cause that ordinary mortals became extraordinary when they followed him. His personality and cause inspired poets & writers to new heights of literature enriching our culture & our heritage. So what was this giant of a president like whose shadow had followed the destiny of Bangladesh for six years or more since the 10th November in 1975.
He was rather shy and had a shy & endearing smile. In Britain, a minister from Somalia told me how Ziaur Rahman inspired a whole generation of diplomats with his stirring speeches in the International forums. He said that they watched the videos of his speech to learn from him. Such was his power of speech that he never needed notes. He was a man of privilege and he spoke from the heart. He made his audiences joyous, he made them cry, he could whip them into frenzy & he could motivate them to shed aside despair to rise & build a great nation. He had told me how his extrajudicial murder had changed their lives & the nature of their nations.
The first demonstration, which snowballed into movements for freedom & democracy for your country, began protesting of his unjust killing. His fellow politician had told me, “He had a grand passion for pan-Islamism”. Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman was passionately committed as a Muslim to the concept of Muslim unity. He spoke of the soldiers of Islam and of an Islamic power to bring Islam at par with other civilisations. He also spoke of an Islamic common market. He became the vice chairman of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). He spoke of the right cause of Palestinian people and attached a declaration in the passport for Bangladeshi citizens of going to any country of the world other than Israel. He spoke of the Al Aqsa Mosque and became a member of the Al Quds Committee.
All over the world, he inspired a generation with his stand against colonialism, imperialism and unjust war in Iran-Iraq where Asian blood was being shed. He took pride being an Asian and had good terms with Third World leaders. President Suharto of Indonesia treated him as a friend while President Anwar Sadat of Egypt gave him affection. King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Arabia, Amir Sheikh Jabir Al-Ahmad Al-Jabir Al-Sabah of Kuwait and President Saddam Hossain of Iraq held him in esteem for his intellect had a power that inspired awe. Powerful statesmen, the American President Jimmy Carter, President Karl Carstens of Germany and President Marshall Josip Broz Titu of Yugoslavia, the Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping praised him for his brilliance & his statesmanship.
At heart Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman was a democrat cum socialist. He was determined to defy India & save the people from the clutches of feudalism, imperialism and neo-colonialism. And so he formed Bangladesh Nationalist Party in 1978. He travelled far and wide preaching its message. He went to dusty villages at a time when roads had yet to be built. He travelled in the Sun and in storms with his message that the poor people of Bangladesh could change their destiny. His tours electrified the messages and shook the nation. During his time women and minorities got their full rights in parliament. The neglected tribals in hilly areas got their rights & freedom and prospered. Land was distributed, labour given bonuses, job security, health facilities and a safety net. The women were appointed to the subordinate judiciary, the foreign office, the Police and bureaucracy.
He knew, ‘power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely’. That was the process engined and engineered by the Awami League leaders and their cronies to derail Bangladesh’s democracy & civil society since the inception of independence. The roots of national malaise including all permeating corruption, doesn’t lie with individuals but in the system itself. Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which had recognised all that the masses needed in its commitment to “food, clothes, residence, treatment(health care) and education”-these five fundamental rights would do well to set experts to the task of evolving a strategy for handling the situation flowing from an oppressive free market in Bangladesh presently without a provision for bringing about an economically judicious relationship between wages and prices.
The growing economic imbalances- the gap between the rich and the poor-was decreasing and was drawing the country nearer to a sustainable growth.
In him, the people of Bangladesh, nay of the Muslim world, saw their hopes, their dreams & their aspirations. He gave his life for the downtrodden, the discriminated & the disadvantaged. He said he would show the usurpers how a leader of the people lives & dies. And he did.
Secretly he was murdered in the darkness of the night & his body taken to the hilly area in Rangunia and buried there while the nation slept. A terrible monsoon rain and storm shook the saints land Chattragram with huge pieces of ice falling abnormally as nature wept for a great man whose greatness was acknowledged the world over.
Finally his body was taken to Dhaka and he was buried at Zia udyan, Sher-e-Banglanagar, in the capital city of Dhaka.
Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman had said to his young bride Khaleda, when he married her, “I shall be a shooting star brightening up the Sky for one brief moment before disappearing forever”.
