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The Wire
a day ago
- Politics
- The Wire
How Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Ignored Fidel Castro's Friendly Advice and Paid the Price
The following is an excerpt from the book Mujib's Blunders: The Power and the Plot Behind His Killing. Fidel Castro was right in giving a prescient and timely warning to Bangabandhu that showing magnanimity to his political enemies, who had dourly opposed the Liberation War, would be considered as a sign of inherent weakness in his character and not as a moral virtue. His benevolence would only spur them on to conspire and act with greater gusto and vengeance against him and his government and, in the process, frustrate his dream of building a s onar (golden) Bangladesh. Castro was among the few world leaders who had paid the most glowing tribute to Bangabandhu saying he had not seen the mighty Himalayas but had seen Mujib. And yet Bangabandhu paid no heed to Castro's advice as he thought that by accommodating the committed pro-Pak minded officers in the top echelons of his administration and uniformed services, he had been able to win their trust and confidence. 'Mujib's Blunders', Manash Ghosh, Niyogi Books, 2025. However, when he started getting hard evidence of how some of his ambitious plans and projects were being sabotaged by an influential section of the bureaucracy, he confided in his party colleagues that he had committed a big blunder by placing repatriates in key bureaucratic posts. He had confessed saying he had tried to build a Bangladesh of his dreams with untrustworthy Pakistani materials and admitted that this was the 'worst mistake' of his life. Castro, being a seasoned revolutionary, who had spent years in the jungle fighting the forces of the ruthless Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, was a better judge of his political enemies than Bangabandhu. After overthrowing the Batista regime, Castro weeded out from his revolutionary government all those who directly or indirectly were loyal to or supporters of the dictator Batista because he knew very well that by retaining the remnants of the previous regime meant germinating the idea of a counter-revolution. Castro had drawn lessons from revolutionary history which was replete with instances of revolutionary governments, when ascending power, getting rid, lock, stock and barrel, of defeated forces from their government apparatus as both the victorious and defeated forces could not co-exist and work in the same system under the same umbrella as they were mutually incompatible. Castro had also warned Bangabandhu that he should watch out for CIA machinations as 'it was out to get him.' Already, it was doing everything possible to overthrow a popularly elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. But an overconfident Bangabandhu took no notice of such warnings as he felt his generous gestures to win over pro-Pak repatriates would help him earn their respect, confidence and loyalty. Bangabandhu made a series of serious blunders as the repatriates started arriving in Dacca by special flights. He had no fixed policy on repatriates. In fact, his policy differed from person to person. Public attention was focussed specially on three repatriates, the first of whom was Lt General Khwaja Wasiuddin, the only highest ranking serving Bengali officer in the top echelon of the Pakistan Army. In 1971, Lt General Khwaja Wasiuddin was the commander of Pakistan's biggest infantry corps and had fought against India on the western front but was interned along with his family after 16 December. But people in Bangladesh were especially keen to know what Bangabandhu would do to A.B.S. Safdar, deputy director general of Intelligence Bureau, Pakistan, who in 1970-71 while based in Dacca was specifically tasked to collect intensive intelligence on Mujib and his associates within and outside the Awami League and submit them to the martial law regime for follow up action. The third repat, Abdur Rahim, a very senior officer of the Pakistan Police Service, was also the focus of public and bureaucratic attention. Public interest was aroused because Lt General Wasiuddin belonged to the Dacca Nawab family and was a much-decorated officer for having served creditably on the Burma front during World War II in the Royal British Indian Army. He was respected by Bengalis for being proud of his Bengali identity even though he and his family could not speak a word of Bangla. This is because it was a tradition in the Nawab family that its members conversed, read and wrote only in Urdu as it was considered the language of refined and elite Muslim Bengalis. Bangla, on the other hand, was considered the language of unrefined and boorish Bengalis. I can distinctly recall when I met him for the very first time after his repatriation at his temporary residence in Dacca's Dhanmondi residential area, the first thing he had said quite apologetically was that he could understand but not converse in Bangla. 'Much as I would like to talk to you in Bangla, I won't be able to continue for long because my Bangla is not good at all. I am sorry and embarrassed for that. I am comfortable in English and Hindi.' A story I heard from Colonel Abu Osman Chowdhury about General 'Wasi' made my interest grow in knowing him. He was the only Bengali officer in the Pakistan Army who had his nameplate and designation written in Bengali outside his Rawalpindi cantonment office chamber. For this he fought a protracted battle with the GHQ which was not willing to give in to his demand as it would set a 'bad precedent.' But Wasiuddin was unrelenting. He was venerated as a father figure by all Bengali officers and men posted in West Pakistan because of which he was looked upon by all of them as their friend, philosopher and guide. Considering his seniority and professional standing in the Pakistan Army, finding a suitable posting for him in the Bangladesh Army had become a difficult proposition for Mujib though General M.A.G. Osmani, who led the Mukti Bahini and informally was also the Defence minister of the provisional Mujibnagar government, wanted to make him Chief of Army Staff (COAS). Mujib's job of finding a suitable placement for General Wasi had become more difficult as the large bevy of repatriated officers had raised this demand, though muted, that he was the most capable and suitable candidate to be the Army Chief to build Bangladesh's nascent army on the 'right lines.' This was not only because of his vast wealth of experience and long years of service, but also because he could not be expected to serve under a junior officer who was already the COAS. A key muktijoddha officer of the Niyomito Bahini, Major K.M. Shafiullah, who in three years after liberation (because of his stellar role during the Liberation War), got four out of turn promotions to become a major general, was already the COAS. Moreover, making a defeated commander, irrespective of battle honours and laurels won by him, the chief of a victorious army (read Mukti Bahini) in the 1971 war would have been unacceptable to freedom fighters and would have given rise to serious disciplinary and chain of command problems. Already considerable bad blood had been created as the repatriates and officers of the Niyomito Bahini were vying with each other to fill other top jobs in the military hierarchy. There was apprehension that with discipline being already low in the Niyomito Bahini, there was a possibility that it could get worse if the sources of friction between the two were not eliminated. So Wasi's absorption in the Bangladesh Army had placed Mujib in a Catch-22 situation. Mujib chose the easy way out. He decided to retire him from the army and placed his services at the disposal of the foreign ministry which made him the country's envoy to Kuwait. The presence of two different entities with identical competing goals to go up in the military hierarchy in the formative years of Bangladesh's defence services gave rise to fault lines which became visible in all the three services in uniform. Both the groups dissed one another with below the belt sarcastic gibes, one questioning the loyalty of repatriates to Bangladesh and the other doubting the professionalism of muktijoddha officers of the Niyomito Bahini to deserve out of turn promotions and enjoying prized postings. After the repatriated officers had been absorbed in all the three services, whenever promotions in the top echelons of the military were announced the first question asked even by civilians was 'whether the promotees were repatriates or muktijoddha s?' This perception of divisiveness was confined not only to the men in uniforms but it had also spread among civilians and all sections of society which with time got worse. In a year's time the fault lines became wider and longer and starkly visible. Nay, I would say they even became palpable, because a year later it manifested itself through the killing of the 'Father of the Nation' along with almost his entire family and four senior leaders of the Awami League—Tajuddin Ahmed, Syed Nazrul Islam, Captain Mansur Ali and A.H.M. Qamaruzzaman—who had led the Liberation War during its most critical phase. About three months later three very senior and daring Niyomito Bahini muktijoddha s—Major General Khaled Mosharraf, Brigadier K.N. Huda and Brigadier A.T.M. Haider, each one highly respected for being a soldier of soldiers and known for exceptional acts of heroism and bravery during the Liberation War, (both Mosharraf and Haider were sector and sub-sector commanders of Comilla and Sylhet and Noakhali sectors) were similarly gunned down by soldiers said to be owing allegiance to those led by Colonel Abu Taher who were trying to usher in 'Sipahi-Janata revolution' in Bangladesh. They had also killed over 15 other officers on similar grounds. Taher had trekked from Quetta across West Pakistan to enter India to join the Niyomito Bahini in mid-August when the preparation for the final phase of the Liberation War had just begun. Those rebellious soldiers were told that Khaled, Huda and Haider had ousted Khondokar Mushtaq from power and were endangering national security by installing a 'stooge government that would be friendly to India.' By killing Mosharraf, Haider and Huda and leaving Khondokar Mushtaq untouched, whose game Taher was playing has still remained an unsolved mystery. But there is no doubt that he and his soldiers had targeted all those officers and men who were in the forefront of the Liberation War, including Major Abu Osman Chowdhury, whose office and house were raided in Dacca's Kurmitola cantonment. They first headed to his office, and upon not finding him there they then proceeded straight to his home. Not finding him at home either enraged them so much that they first got hold of his wife Nazia, and after physically assaulting and violently abusing her in the foulest possible language possible, they then proceeded to pump ten bullets into her. Before they left Osman's house they kicked her blood-soaked body around the floor. The mystery surrounding this gruesome killing of an officer's wife by ordinary foot soldiers has remained an unsolved mystery till this day. Manash Ghosh is a veteran journalist.
The Hindu
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
Death of R&AW officer in Dhaka in 1974 linked to Mujib assassination plot, claims book
The mysterious death in 1974 in Dhaka of a senior officer of India's external intelligence agency, who had been serving as a secret emissary of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was a precursor to the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in August 1975, a new book has revealed. Veteran journalist Manash Ghosh, in his recently published book Mujib's Blunders: The Power and the Plot Behind His Killing, has written that Phanindra Nath Banerjee, Joint Director of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), was found dead in his room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dhaka in July 1974. The incident, he noted, was never thoroughly investigated by either India or Bangladesh. 'It was the mysterious death of Phanindra Nath Banerjee [popularly known as Nath Babu or PNB], Calcutta-based Joint Director of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), that disturbed us, the Dhaka-based Indian correspondents, immensely,' Mr. Ghosh writes. Mr. Banerjee was the direct liaison between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh. 'For Nath Babu, nurturing his relationship with a leader like Mujib was vital for his professional success. But then Ms. Gandhi had wanted his relationship with Mujib to assume both professional and personal dimensions as he was Bangladesh's man of destiny. He directly reported to Ms. Gandhi and got his instructions straight from her without any intermediary,' the author writes, explaining the R&AW officer's access to the top echelons of power in Dhaka. Mr. Banerjee had reportedly earned the trust of Sheikh Mujib's family, including Begum Mujib, and maintained a low profile in Dhaka's diplomatic circles while having frequent meetings with senior Bangladeshi leaders such as Tajuddin Ahmed and members of the Mujib household. His closeness to power in Bangladesh and his influential position attracted curiosity and speculation. Mr. Ghosh claims that serving officers - colonels, majors, and captains - allegedly involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were in contact with certain Western embassies in Dhaka and were lobbying for 'regime change.' These conspirators, he suggests, may have viewed Mr. Banerjee as an obstacle. 'They probably suspected that Nath Babu had got wind of the conspiracy that was being hatched against the entire Mujib family and had been officially assigned by his government to protect Mujib's life and also that of his family members. They could have thought that with Nath Babu around in Dacca, it would be difficult to execute their conspiracy to eliminate Mujib,' Mr. Ghosh writes. Though Mr. Banerjee's death was officially attributed to a heart attack, the post-mortem report was never released. 'The officer in charge of the Ramna thana, who was the first among Bangladeshi officials to reach his hotel room, told reporters that he had been instructed by his higher ups that the cause of Nath Babu's death should not be discussed with any media representatives,' Mr. Ghosh writes. He adds that the National Security Intelligence (NSI) officials in Bangladesh 'remained tight-lipped and refused to entertain our phone calls.' The author also hints at the possibility that the R&AW official may have died due to poisoning after consuming a meal during a meeting with a prominent leader from a minority community in Dhaka.
