It was a collision of the most brutal kind. President General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan's "Operation Searchlight" clashing against Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's "search for light" after Pakistan's historically most fairly contested election. The former's tally: hundreds of thousands killed, hundreds of thousands women raped, ten millions evicted as refugees, entry into the genocide hall-of-shame list, and a country severed after only 23 years of a bloody birth. The latter's legacy: founding a brand new country from battlefield victory, then climbing many global ranks faster than the leftover Pakistan, closing the gender gap (Bangladesh as 47th in the 2017 Global Gender Gap Report against 143rd for Pakistan), pushing democracy (Bangladesh's 41st score on a 2018 Freedom in the World, out of 100, as opposed to Pakistan's 39), or opening productivity arteries like economic growth-rates (in the IMF's World Economic Outlook Database for 2017, 7.3 per cent for Bangladesh versus 5.3 per cent, for Pakistan).
Much can be said 48 years down the road to portray Bangladeshi resilience and ascendance whether in political terms (the relative civilian-military share in governance), or economic. Though much has been said, and will continue to be said, social or cultural ties get underplayed, especially memories transcending events, landscapes triumphing monuments. Many bonds cultivated between Bangalee and non-Bangalee residents/citizens were family-based (of clan members opting to go in different directions without disrupting, at least not for long, family relations because of 1971), from business transactions, or (mostly) accidental links that refused to melt away, as between classmates or next-door neighbours, and so forth.
Highlighting this last component, Dhaka Stadium's abandoned cricket test match helps expose how other curtains were drawn down. By March 07, Bangalee sentiments were all encapsulated in Bangabandhu's speech, as if a point-of-no-return was imminent. Yahya Khan postponing the National Assembly on March 01 not only prevented the newly elected parliamentarians from congregating, but also caused the cricket pitch to be invaded by a rightfully agitated public, as the latest news rolled out of adjacent Hotel Purbani (where one Awami League committee, perhaps on parliamentary affairs, convened).
Cricket was an elite game then, when football was far more popular on the streets. We did not have any sustainable supply of cricketers, and frankly, not of the pedigree from West Pakistan. Inclusions from East Pakistan were mostly West Pakistanis working here, such as test player Nasim-ul-Ghani, Mahmudul Hasan, and Niaz Ahmed, who joined the Pakistan team to visit England in 1967. The only Bangalee to make the team was Rakibul Hasan. He proudly remembered how his test cap, as 12th man, was donned by the legendary Hanif Muhammad against New Zealand in 1969. In February-March 1971, he joined the team in that fatal game against the visiting MCC team.
The witty Rakibul with pretty strokes might be seen as one of the founding fathers of the game in the country: Tamim, Shakib, and Mahmudullah might be automatically associated with the game's popularity and accomplishments today, but watching Rakibul enter the field with a Pakistan cap was the first emotional high in the country's cricket annals.
Trekking to Dhaka Stadium today, from anywhere in Dhaka, might also be an emotional high for at least one wrong reason: traffic. Making it then from Dhanmondi was either environmentally uplifting or physically congenial: the city's air was so clean, we did not think twice about it, meaning, any rickshaw-ride with an open hood when it was not raining, was quite a laughter-filled conversational joy; while crossing Hatirpool (or New Elephant Road), then either Segun Bagicha (which really lived up to its name then: a garden with pools across the city's imposing building, the Secretariat), or the High Court's south side (across the even more green Race Course, where horses still raced, across the city's most magnificent building, Curzon Hall), one would hardly count the steps taken. Stopping for chatpotti or fuchka at Ramna Park entryway delighted Daccaites since they were reputedly the best in town. Very few people ever explain why the far slimmer Bangalee in those days, compared to now, was not just a function of the income-food equation: food was more natural and of better quality, with far less display of extravagance as a calling-card, in the consumption process.
Walking down Topkhana one could not avoid the small town's only jukebox, right inside the Igloo parlor. Baby Ice Cream's Gulistan parlour was also attractive and popular, but saving coins for that juke-box (even skipping a rickshaw-ride for it) added a thrill. Not to diminish Dhaka's Carnaby corner: Gulistan had a select sumptuous Chu Chin Chow bite. A follow-up Baby Ice Cream lick was so delicious that two-wheel ice-cream stalls had to ply the city's streets to satiate citizen taste.
Though jukebox culture never returned, music did. One futile attempt to revive pop music in 1972 was in, yes, the same Hotel Purbani: a fire-cracker burst (not, thank heavens, a bomb), blew up on the amplifier of the Times Ago Motion band, a leftover of the halcyon 1960s. Yet, popular music is having its renaissance. With a larger fan-base, more musicians, and even greater Bangla-English crossovers that is likely to blossom with more bountiful flowers now than ever before.
So too is the paucity of players and poverty of the cricket game. As if to compensate the loss of jukebox culture, cricket has not only returned, but also built a culture by now, becoming, in fact, the country's top-contending game. With "test" recognition in all the various dimensions of the game, Bangladesh's successful scorecards at the lower-end of the global rankings have been attracting fans. Though more needs to be done to climb upwards, who would have believed we even had a chance in March 1971 to do so?
Even behind an 'inevitability' air during March 1971, the Bangladesh mindset was anything but militant. Surviving Dhanmondi residents, whether living in Bangladesh or Pakistan today, will recall how throughout most of the month, we, still virgin teenagers that we were, formed and deployed peace-troopers (shanti bahinis) to protect the lives and property of non-Bangalees. Supported by many well-to-do Dhanmondi non-Bangalees, these boys secured the neighborhood from opportunists and anarchists, working out of living-rooms, often invited by fleeing non-Bangalees. They lived literally 24-hour days: keeping tab on political negotiations or news out of Bangabandhu's Road 32 Dhanmondi home by day, while patrolling by night. Some suffered on the 25th night on duty, others felt betrayed, but that harmony did not vanish.
The politics of the day just could not permeate, let alone poison, personal friendships or new-found bonds between Bangalees and non-Bangalees. Pakistan's Hamoodur Rahman report on the 1971 disasters exposed the gap between popular sentiment and the death-driven army dictators. Communications can be re-established, reminisces nourished, and the bitterness softened, yet recreating what was, and the opportunities that could have been, may be a bridge left too far behind to return to if crossing is the goal.
Time heals as it spins it wheels, but tides always come with new deals.
Dr. Imtiaz A. Hussain is Professor & Head of the Department of Global Studies & Governance at Independent University, Bangladesh.
