November resonates with us, for it has become part of our history in its cheering as also heartbreaking moments. It speaks to us, every year, of what we have achieved and of the glory we have lost as a sovereign people.
In November 1972, on its fourth day to be exact, wondrous it was to see the country come by a constitution, drafted by a committee set up in April of the year and ratified by the Constituent Assembly, an achievement we as a nation were justifiably proud of.
Our sense of pride was a reflection of our belief that just as we had gone to war to liberate Bangladesh and ended up coming home with victory, on 4 November we convinced ourselves that our nationhood was henceforth to be based, constitutionally and politically and socially, on the rule of law.
On Constitution Day, 4 November, it is that old feeling of collective national achievement, based on the cardinal principles of democracy, secularism, socialism and nationalism, we revive in the soul.
Much has happened --- and not happened --- since that day when Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led the members of the Constituent Assembly into affixing their signatures to the constitution. Our happiness came in the belief that on 16 December of that year, within a year of our ascent to the heights of freedom, we were privy to a constitution taking effect in Bangladesh.
On 4 November this year, it remains our hope that the noble principles enshrined in the constitution in 1972 will re-emerge to remind us of the strenuous struggle we put up for regional autonomy and then national sovereignty through the 1960s and early 1970s.
And then there are the tragic tales which we have not forgotten to remind ourselves of around November. The catastrophic cyclone which battered the coastal areas of Bangladesh on 12 November 1970, at a time when it was yet the eastern province of the state of Pakistan, has remained seared in our collective memory as a people.
As many as a million of our fellow Bengalis perished in that tidal surge, a tragedy which left us all bruised and battered even as we looked forward to exercising our right of franchise at the general election called for the following month.
We have not forgotten that in the aftermath of the tragedy, Bangabandhu suspended his election campaign and went forth to offer succour to those who had survived the fury of nature.
We remember the swift infusion of aid from foreign governments and organisations freeing, somewhat, the survivors of their distressed conditions.
And, of course, we have not forgotten the callousness with which the military junta then lording it over the country chose to ignore the trauma befalling our people in coastal Bangladesh.
A cavalier attitude to the disaster characterized the regime of President Yahya Khan. On a visit to China at the time, it did not occur to the general that national duty required a cutting short of his trip and making a dash for the cyclone-battered region. He did visit the region but not before he had completed his tour of China.
November is thus part of life for us, a weight that has not lifted from our souls since that night of terror when a band of rogue soldiers stormed the central jail in the nation's capital and gunned down four of the noblest of men in our history.
The assassinations of Tajuddin Ahmad, Syed Nazrul Islam, M. Mansoor Ali and A.H.M. Quamruzzaman on 3 November 1975 in the putative security of prison remains, and will forever be, a blemish on our history as a people.
These four men, the moving spirits behind the Mujibnagar government in 1971, the very first instance of a sovereign national government in modern Bengali history, saw their lives bludgeoned to an end through cruel irony.
The irony is all: these four men dedicated to Bengali nationalist politics, to the urgency of providing leadership to the nation at a time when the Father of the Nation remained incarcerated in solitary confinement in distant Pakistan on charges of waging war against Pakistan, died in the very land they freed from alien occupation.
Today, forty seven years after that sinister dawn of 3 November 1975, we pay homage to these illustrious leaders. And as we do so, let us sound a collective resolve, so that the future does not repeat the bad past, so that our children and grandchildren inhabit the beautiful country our four national leaders dedicated themselves to freeing from marauders come from distant lands: Never again!
But the tragedy of 3 November was not yet the moment for us to inform ourselves that our sorrows were at an end. Indeed, more of our tears would flow only days later, when on 7 November three of our illustrious patriots, brave freedom fighters were murdered in cold blood. It was that period in our collective life when intrigue began to fell our heroes. It was the beginning of a long season of madness.
The killing of Khaled Musharraf, KhondokarNajmul Huda and A.T.M. Haider was but a precursor to an expansion and deepening of national tragedy. Scores of our brothers and sons, all dedicated to the defence of the land, lost their futures with the loss of their lives.
It is all these memories which assail us in November. As the seasons turn, as intimations of a Bangladesh winter begin to pervade the country, we remember too the long series of heartbreak we have waded through.
This morning, it is Ishmael, he of Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick', whose voice we hear. Every damp, drizzly November, made conscious of the calling of his soul, he would take to the sea.
We do not take to the sea, but we do not forget how despite being a nation proud of our achievements we were all at sea all those gloomy Novembers ago.
Today we hold aloft the banner, despite all such vicissitudes, of national dignity we raised in a November when our leaders gave us our constitution, the sacred document that was to be a testament to our dreams and aspirations as a nation.
Our dreams endure as we put our nightmares behind us.
In November this season, we build with our dreams those bridges to the future, in profound remembrance of the heroic men on whose sacrifices we promise to shape a new dawn for ourselves, for our children, for the children of our children.
ahsan.syedbadrul@gmail.com