The Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) and the Office of the President, Board of Trustees are pleased to host the webinar to celebrate the 'National Day of Mourning 2021' and launch the official brochure reflecting on various aspects of our life and work. 'Father of the Nation' - Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. As the country's premier tertiary educational institution, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) has made a conscious effort to promote the spirit and philosophy of our War of Independence as led by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It can be noted that a large part of the founding members of the board of the IUB were involved in the War of Independence in various capacities, including frontline fighters (5 on the battle front, others elsewhere, including the country's first health secretary).
There were two sentries guarding us, and they stood on either side of the porch where we were. Time stood still, but I remember that the sky cleared and the day brightened when a hot-tempered army officer entered Bangabandhu's house.
Ambassador (Rtd.) Muhammad Zamir
But Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders have forgotten that what goes around comes around. This measure commendably confirmed the belief of injured victims in the justice of our judiciary. I believe that the observance of this day as a day of national mourning reaffirmed the establishment of the rule of law.
Fifteenth August
Bangabandhu also believed strongly in Bangladesh's rich cultural and literary heritage and for him it was the springboard of the Bangalee ethos, its tradition and its nationalism.
Seeking the easy companionship of hypocrisy and hate, in one hour, that night,
They swept aside innocence,
Their assault was brief,
They faced no obstacle in their mind to the fact that they killed their own kind
The voice of liberty was snuffed out
It is unfortunate that his efforts were extinguished at such a young age. His thoughts will guide our new generation in the future journey of our national development. Given his major presence in our past, present and future, I think our younger generation should know more about him and his contribution to the making of a nation.
Incidentally, we, the researchers and the academic world, have a greater role to play in presenting it to the youth in the right perspective. And then the traitors involved in this heinous crime against humanity started telling the people that Bangabandhu was nobody. They say you are nobody, but the two hundred and fifty rivers of Bangladesh say, You are the rivers of Bengal, the green fields of Bengal.
His name can never be erased when he is the all-round namesake of Bangladesh. It is encouraging to note that we have been able to transform our grief into challenge.
Professor Atiur Rahman
In 1948, Sheikh Mujib joined the law department of the University of Dhaka as a graduate student. During this time he was a major contributor to the initiation of the language movement, the Dawwal movement (the movement against the government's cordon policy of restricting the movement of food, with huge implications for the seasonal workers) and the movement of class 4- employees of University of Dhaka. The old lady did not take the money and told him that "the prayers of the poor will be with him".
Sheikh Mujib became the Minister of Cooperatives and Agriculture and was sworn in on 15 May. He contributed a lot from the position of Minister and Chairman of the Tea Board. On February 5, 1966, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proposed six points for the liberation of the deprived people of East Pakistan.
Thanks to the support of global leaders and dedicated diplomacy of the then Indian Prime Minister Mrs. He took control of the war-torn country and immediately began to rebuild it. The four principles of the constitution reflected what Bangabandhu and the Bangalees had been fighting for for years: Nationalism, Socialism, Democracy and Secularism.
In response, he launched a second revolution to bring about systemic change and decentralization of administration.
Professor Dr. Fakrul Alam
In other words, initially Bangabandhu worked for “two Pakistanis as provided for in the Lahore resolution. Again, Bangabandhu's political guru played a key role in the evolution of his political consciousness through his speeches and lectures in Faridpur and Khulna. By then, Bangabandhu is clearly swinging towards a nationalism that had Bengali at its core and is imbued with its pride in the achievements of its people.
And it is no wonder then that at the 1952 Peace Conference in Beijing he spoke in Bangla. And in the last of the diaries collected in the volume, when he is being taken to the cantonment by the intelligence people of the Pakistani army, and the possibility that he will be killed. He would begin a broad campaign in the general elections that Yahya Khan and his men were forced to hold in 1970.
Rehman Sobhan, one of his close advisors of that period, wrote about how Bangabandhu had by then become the embodiment of Bangladeshi nationalism for his people, writing in Forum magazine on November 7, 1970. I would say that through his own emotionally nuanced articulation of his ideas about nationalism, which he recorded in his prison notebooks and articulated in his campaign speeches, Bangabandhu managed to convey the ideas and values that stemmed from his love for the country, its people, landscape and culture, which would eventually find expression in the Bangladeshi constitution . Let us remember how he embodied his dream of a nation with the help of his advisers and other like-minded patriotic people of the land, first in the 6 points and then in the Constitution of Bangladesh.
Despite almost impossible odds, he defied imprisonment year after year and freed Bangladesh from its oppressors.
Professor Zakir Hossain Raju
So it was not just a coincidence that I was entrusted to create a repository of books on the Bangladesh Liberation War for the creation of a special Liberation War and Bangbandhu Corner at the IUB Library in 2011. I looked around and found no such course taught in any of the universities in Bangladesh. So I started from my book Liberation War in Mass Media, and developed a course focusing on how 1971 has been represented in and through many different forms of art, media and culture.
This approach allowed the students in the course to catch multiple glimpses of our war of liberation from different perspectives (“lenses”) of our literary authors, artistic minds and media producers of all kinds. During 2019-2021, we will be offering seven or more sections of this course - taught by six of my able colleagues from the Media and Communications Department - reaching 350 or more students each trimester. We aim to equip students with factual knowledge and analytical skills to enable them to critically appreciate the rise of the nation from a variety of perspectives.
Through these two, we not only construct a representative discourse of the 1971 Liberation War, but also dig into the history of Bangladeshi nationhood as a team with our students. BDS109 faculty and students also work as a team to critically study some of the media, artistic and literary texts influential in our Liberation War. For example, the novels of Syed Shamsul Huq, Mahmudul Huq and Shaheen Akhter, or the memoirs of Sufia Kamal, Jahanara Imam and Hasan Azizul Huq, or the paintings of Shahabuddin, the films of Tareque Masud and Morshedul Islam - not only narrate and re-enact constantly. narrate the Liberation War and its various aspects and consequences but always bring the spirit of Bangabandhu and the independence of Bangladesh to all our classrooms.
I feel fortunate then that I developed this course seven years ago and we are now able to engage so many young minds here to think and learn about Bangabandhu and 1971 as a group within such a discursive way in this course .
Professor Imtiaz A. Hussain
Coming from all social stripes, his supporters, led by Tofael Ahmed of Kendria Chhatriya Sangram Parishad, pinned him the title "Bangabandhu" in Race Course on February 23, 1969. This title "Friend of Bangalese" was coined when an independent "Bangladesh" was not even in anyone's language, dictionary, mentality or ivory tower pipeline: Democracy, nationalism, secularity and socialism were much more important, largely because of the tough challenges they faced. His most famous words were spoken in the shadow of Bangabandhu: "We are all Bangladeshi, we are all Americans." Its audience, composed mainly of students of that venerable institution, was led by the Chhatra League, whose seed was sown and nurtured by none other than Mujib on January 4, 1948 (creating the East Pakistan Muslim Chhatra League, the first student opposition group of Pakistan).
Bot-tala became a student Rubicon: crossing it was a matter of pre-1971 politics due to multifaceted inequalities (meaning protests were numerous, with speeches to ever-growing audiences, converging, as they did , in Bot-tala, Paltan Maidan , or Race Course). They were first greeted, not by the veteran of that group, Sheikh Mujib, the host, but by the younger, Sheikh Russell, reiterating a defining theme in Bangabandhu's life story of the importance placed on youth. More vivid portrayals of Bangabandhu's international importance were his warm reception by non-aligned leaders at the 1973 conference in Algiers; and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit in Lahore in February 1974.
It helped soften Bangabandhu's sine qua non Pakistan position of "no visit to a country until recognition". Lahore was the very city where Mujib's Six Points were first announced, another February in 1966. The first was how Bhutto, one of the co-conspirators of Operation Searchlight, could not do anything to his rival in 1970 -71, Mujibit. Like a Pied Piper, Mujib played his native tunes all the way to his Hamel, that is, the land of Bangalees, Bangladesh.
Bangabandhu's democracy laid the platform to fully emancipate our women, not only in the polling booths but also from patriarchal or parochial constraints, something that the RMG sector is quietly promoting.
Professor Taiabur Rahman
