'Ami Sirajul Alam Khan: Ekti Rajnoitik Jeebonnalekho' (A political memoir of a giant political philosopher of Bangladesh): Amanuensis of the book by : Shamsuddin Peara, Publisher: Mawla Brothers, Banglabazar, Dhaka, First publication: February 2019
Sirajul Alam Khan (SAK) is an intellectual and personal lodestar, an inspirational model of truly humane scholarship, an unmatched exemplar of one peculiarly attractive life-affirming form of human excellence and fullness of being in Bangladesh.
When in 1960s under the inspiring leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Bengali people were trying to break shackles of the Pakistani rulers and establish a separate independent and sovereign state, Sirajul Alam Khan along with a young group of people began to work to liberate Bangladesh from Pakistan. They got Abdur Razzaque, Kazi Aref Ahmed… like astounding doers and dedicated younkers towards the cause of their own homeland. They set up a secret hole-and-corner 'Nucleus' and Bangladesh Liberation Force (BLF).
The BLF, during our glorious Liberation War in 1971, became known as 'Mujib Bahini and it was driven under the leadership of Sheikh Fazlul Hoque Moni, Sirajul Alam Khan, Abdur Razzaque, Tofail Ahmed…
In Bangladesh's politics, Sirajul Alam Khan is a living legendary figure and a mystifying character who loved to work very hard behind the screen. He has told the narratives of political movements of his own style and that has been captured in this book by Shamsuddin Peara, his longtime confidante, but now free from delusion. Many stunning events or upshots of Bangladesh's history which were unsung up until now are uncovered in this book.
It is a book which has depicted the narratives of verity of struggles of Bangladesh movements during the period of 1962-1971 in a pictorial lifelike manner. It has contained a full-strength of struggles spanning 9 years of organizing, ideological and armed planning to liberate Bangladesh from the clutches of savage Pakistani rulers. It has also unveiled a terra incognita chapter of Bangabandhu Mujib's struggles taking leading alight role and the undisclosed action mechanisms of Swadhin Bangla Nucleus (Independent Bengal Nucleus).
Those who are interested to know the real birth stories of Bangladesh will have glimpses or coups d'oeil about the preparation part of establishing Bangladesh and a real picture of Bangladesh's affairs of immediately after Bangladesh was attained in this invaluable book. ShamsuddinPeara has written this book based on the interviews of SAK and it can be considered as a verysignificant document for all people including politicians and researchers to better understand how Bangladesh came into being.
In the Preface part of the book, the writer has said through publication of it, his long cherished dream has converged. Sirajul Alam Khan (SAK) was the co-traveller or charioteer of a dream of a few hundred thousand younkers of freedom fighting generation during 1960 -1970s to liberate the-then East Pakistan from Pakistan and establish Bangladesh as a sovereign and independent state.
The writer was an integral part of this coeval for which he feels proud. They could clearly construe to live together with Pakistan was absolutely impossible. The-then most popular Bengali Leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman could fathom this bare fact long back and SAK like a student leader was on the forefront or avant-garde to fulfill the dream of establishing Bangladesh. SAK has that much of prowess that he was able to dictate or prescribe all speeches, declarations, decisions of Chhatra League (Students League) to put them into actions to establish Bangladesh.
The long road to freedom of Bangladesh was a journey full of rashness and hard knocks. SAK's primal intend was to unloose East Pakistan from Pakistan. He believes in socialism… His image, as depicted, on the cover page of the book, in appearance shows that he is a saint or a religious cleric or something like that because of his long ripe hair and beard, but in fact, he is a prodigy, an unusually gifted or intelligent persona; someone whose talents excite wonder and admiration in political philosophy, his depth of cognition in politics, political movements, his profundity in reading wide variety of books on many subject-matters of political movements, people's struggles for emancipation in countries after countries.
He is widely known as 'Mao Tse Tsung of Students League' to its hard-core members. That was the decennium of Mao Tse Tsung. He is also highly revered and widely addressed to him as 'Dada' (elder brother) by his political votaries. Revolutionaries from every nook and corner during that time used to pronounce the slogan 'freedom comes from the bullets.'
During those turbulent times of the 1970 general election, Yahya-Bhutto conspiracy not to hand-over power to the majority party leader Bangabandhu Mujib, our preparation for the armed struggle, the black brutal night of 25 March 1971, our liberation war…he labored boundlessly, inspired the party workers and invigorated them to fight befittingly with the brutish Pakistani army to establish Bangladesh.
In his deliberations to the author of this book, nobody has come under his assault though he had intimacy with so many preeminent student leaders and political leaders of distinction. He gave his fullest efforts to establish socialistic society in Bangladesh and to place Bangladesh on a solid footing of democracy, ethical values and rule of law. But all those could not be succeeded in the end. This 78 years old political giant is now on self-exile in the USA.
SAK leads a very simple and honest life and his long standing struggles throughout his life were aimed at changing the lot of people in general. This book is not his biography. It is a book of account of how SAK has controlled the political events of Bangladesh during a particular important time of 1962 -1975 in Bangladesh's history.
He emerged as a political activist in 1965 relinquishing his position from the Students League's conference declaring that this might be his last speech in public appearance for the forthcoming 8 -10 years except for a short while in a public meeting of Awami League at Paltan, Dhaka on 18 January 1970 where the immortal slogan was sounded out aloud and obstreperously first by SAK. And before Bangladesh came into being, he did never make any public appearance in any meeting.
During his internment in the years of 1963-65 by the Pakistani government, he found a new panorama in life. The jailhouse library was rich with books of eminence. During that time, he read books of Greek philosophers - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, European scholars and philosophers - Carlyle, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Lock, the emergence of European nation states like the history Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 after the World War-1, Marx, Angles, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Plekhanov, Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, Hegel's German philosophy, Homer's Iliad and Odessey, Ebn Khaldun's Al-Mukaddima, Al-Beruni's books, Churchill's History of The English Speaking People, books of socio-economic class struggles of the ideologues like M.N. Ray, Mao Tse Tsung, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh…to enrich his knowledge to better carry forward the Bangladesh movement.
Those who want to know of politics of pre-independence times of Bangladesh's liberation struggles, this book being hisself-willed acts, will uncover the history's closed doors and that will usher in a bright chapter of our history. The book can be weighed and enumerated based on Bangladesh's one of the best, truth-based, intrinsic-valued and informative political history which has not bechanced before.
It will act as a binocular for investigating or the work of inquiring into something thoroughly and systematically of our past history. Dear readers, you will find every page of the book speak ups the sequential outgrowth or seeds of Bangladesh's independence.
The Appendix Part of this book has carried interviews of ASM Abdur Rob, a veteran freedom fighter and a very close confidante of SAK, interviews with Shamlipi Shema in America and ShamsuddinPeara which have added more sappiness to SAK. Many unknown stories have thus been unfolded through these interviews. All these speak of the richness of the book in divulging many truthful events which were laid buried for a long time.
The last part of the book has carried images of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani and the-then famed student and youth leaders.
SAK is now on the twilight zone of his life. Let the state bestow ascribable honour to this undocumented burnished son of the land. Thank you very much, SAK, for your indescribable contributions in creating Bangladesh standing beside Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Thank you so much, Shamsuddin Peara for your worthful and highly commendable work and Mowla Brothers for bringing about this praiseworthy book for us all. I believe the book is a milestone work in the annuals of Bangladesh's history.
Still then, I must say SAK was not on the right path after Bangladesh was achieved. His split up with the country's Founding Father and the formation of a separate political party - JSD could be precluded by both Bangabandhu Mujib and SAK himself. Because of JSD, the newly born country encountered and suffered Brobdingnagian troubles which swayed throughout the country.
Anti-liberation force and their confederates both at home and abroad got enormous opportunities to further ravage the whole country and Bangabandhu's government which finally resulted in brutal murdering of Bangabandhu and his family members in 1975.
The glorious achievements that we attained through our Liberation War and established Bangladesh in 1971 were stricken with the feet by the new self-declared shenanigan military rulers and their ugly mang-twigs. The country has then been running back-geared blanking out the supreme sacrifices of three of our people and the losing of chastity of our three hundred thousand mothers and sisters.
From 1966 till the time of today, the generation of people like us has witnessed events that rocked the country. The country has further been bleeding since 15 August 1975 unabatedly. SAK, JSD and its leaders cannot circumvent all these liabilities.
Had SAK and his true-blue lieutenants supported Bangabandhu's government whole-heartedly to build up the war battered country, the history of Bangladesh would definitely then have been positively different today.
The book is a comprehensive, accessible survey of the personal and political life and philosophy of SAK. Masterfully lucid and compelling; sure to be required reading in the SAK canon. Not another political memoir, I can hear Shamsuddin Peara's moan.
But yes, this one is really worth it… What makes this memoir unique is that it oozes no balm to quell the raw pains that experience metes out to us all. He is a novel politician, original and of a kind not seen before. Victor Hugo aptly wrote, "To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark." I give it five out of five stars to this book.
The writer is a senior citizen, book reviewer, writes on politics, political and human-centered figures, current and international affairs
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