March 1971: Renewing The Old Pledge

It is March again.

- Syed Badrul Ahsan

And these are thoughts that well up from somewhere deep in my soul. They rise, they gather in the core of the heart in me, to remind me that there was once a time when pride and tradition came together to let me know that I was a Bengali. In July 1971, as my parents, my siblings and I prepared to leave what today remains of Pakistan and make our way to an occupied Bangladesh, my teachers and my friends told me in something of a polite whisper that they hoped conditions would return to normal in ‘East Pakistan’ and that we could remain brothers for all time. I was in my teens. I had heard of the atrocities Pakistan’s army was carrying out in Bangladesh. I had, with something of macabre happiness, watched army trucks transport, along the road before my school, coffins carrying the bodies of Pakistan’s soldiers killed by the Mukti Bahini in Bangladesh. My friends looked morose, naturally.

For me, those sombre vehicular movements by the army were intimations that Bangladesh would be a free nation someday.