"Mas-ca-ren-has?" queried a curious Chat Ramilo, obviously struggling
with the many syllabyles of the name, as I showed her the book cover.
Given the Philippines' Spanish colonial heritage, she might have found
the name faintly familiar. But, seeing it at Dhaka, Bangladesh obviously
caused the astonishment.
Actually, one wasn't personally surprised. Like Radharao Gracias, the
maverick legislator from South Goa, my hobby too has been (or should I
say had been?) to keep track of POGs (people of Goan descent) across the
globe, doing all kinds of odd and unusual things.
When I saw Anthony Mascarenhas' book "Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood" at
the Dhaka airport, I didn't think twice before picking it up. That I
wanted to get done with the few Taka left in my pocket, before leaving
back for home, further convinced me to take along a copy of the book. It
was priced at Taka 490, and the Taka-Rupee exchange rate is roughly
ten-to-seven favouring the rupee.
Quite unexpectedly, it didn't end up in my collection of unread books.
Maybe one has long underestimated how fascinating contemporary history
(particularly that pertaining to living memory) can be to me myself.
Maybe one was just bored and had a lot of time to catch in between
journeys (thanks to the navy control of Dabolim and the few slots they
allow for incoming flights, in reality). Maybe it was just that Anthony
Mascarenhas writes so well, in a gripping almost-cinematographic format.
As I waited through a four-hour delay for the Bangladesh Biman
to Kolkata, while rushing to catch the last evening flight to
Mumbai, and also while killing time till the 4:30 am check-in
procedures start at the unearthly hour for the flight to Dabolim,
one kept reading. This exciting story was another excuse to take
a slow bus home, and avoid adding to the (already heavy) load of
fossil fuel emissions. On reaching home, one was within 20 pages
of finish!
Mascarenhas is a journalist of Goan origin, who was based in Pakistan,
went on a tour with the military, and was shocked by what was going on
in Bangladesh. He subsequently shifted to the UK, wrote for some major
papers there, and told the story of what was going on in then East
Pakistan. By some accounts (using this term because I'm not sure), he
was *the* journalist who broke the story about the genocide in East
Pakistan.
There are differing perspectives of how many people were killed in the
civil war that led (with some nudging by India, for its own
geo-political interests) to the break up of Pakistan and the formation
of Bangladesh.
My colleague Partha Sarkar, who co-founded the crazy experiment called
BytesForAll almost seven years ago with me, drew attention to the
slaughter of Bangladeshi intellectuals just before the Pakistani army
moved out of that country. But whether it was three million killed in
East Pakistan/Bangladesh (seen by some as an exaggerated figure) or one
million, the figure is huge enough to warrant serious concern. If you
keep in mind the "five million Jews" figure of World War II, things fall
into context.
This book is about how, after the break-up from Pakistan, the
Bangladeshis themselves ruined things for themselves. It promises to
reveal issues like who killed Mujib (many who grew up in India in the
'seventies would find this a familiar name), who was responsible for the
jail killings, and how General Zia was assassinated.
It is a shocking story of how Bangladesh went in for so many coups in
such a short period, the elected rulers ruined things and betrayed
aspirations, and how military men went in for coup after coup.
Mascarenhas writes in a fascinating style. This book (Hodder and
Stoughton, UKP 4.95 net in the UK, ISBN 0-340-39420-X, pp 186, first
published in 1986) is a follow-up to his 'The Rape of Bangladesh', which
I'm still waiting to read.
Says the cover: "Anthony Mascarenhas, a veteran journalist, has been
closely associated with Bangladesh from the start of its freedom
struggle. In 1971, he left Pakistan to expose in The Sunday Times the
atrocities committed by the Pakistani army in the province which is now
Bangladesh. That article, and his subsequent book, The Rape of
Bangladesh, created a world-wide sensation. In 1972 he won Granada's
Geraldl Barry Award ('What the Papers Say'), and the International
Publishing company's Special Award for reporting the genocide in
Bangladesh. After serving 14 years on The Sunday Times, he is now a
freelance writer."
Anthony Mascarenhas' work about Bangladesh is linked to quite a few
pages in cyberspace. In my favourite collaboratively-crafted Wikipedia
itself, there are links to:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh:_A_Legacy_of_Blood
and other pages also offer references to his work, such as
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_coups_in_Bangladesh
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Mujibur_Rahman
Mascarenhas writes in his preface to his book: "This is a true story; in
many ways a text book of Third World disenchantment. On the 16th of
December, 1971, the state of Bangladesh (population 70,000,000) was born
at the end of a nine-month liberation struggle in which more than a
million Bengalis of the erstwhile East Pakistan died at the hands of the
Pakistan army. But one of the 20th century's great man-made disasters is
also among the greatest of its human triumphs in terms of a people's
will for self-determination."
This is how the book starts, in the first chapter titled
'Mujib and the Majors': "Not one of the hundred or so guests at the
Dhaka Golf Club on the evening of 12 August, 1975, is ever likely
to forget the third wedding anniversary party given by the
Acting Commandant of the Bengal Lancers, Major Farook Rahman,
and his lovely young wife Farida."
Mascarenhas goes to tell the story with amazing detail, and an almost
I-was-there tone. Everyone who lived through those times (even if only
as a schoolkid) would know of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the founding
father of Bangladesh. Or so, the media told us. To understand the
intrigue and plotting or the hurt egos and the hidden story that saw him
in that role, one needs to take a closer look at Mascarenhas' work.
And Mascarenhas knew him personally:
"We first met in 1956 in the Karachi residence of his political
mentor, Husseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who later became prime
minister of Pakistan. The friendship developed in the summer of
1958 when for almost a month we shared hotel rooms in Washington,
Flagstaff (Arizona), San Francisco and Los Angeles during a tour
at the invitation of the American government. I still have a
photograph of us taken in Paramount Studios, Hollywood, with our
host the great movie moghul Cecil B De Mille, Mickey Rooney and
Ava Gardner."
One story in particular is about how they gambled together with three
Indonesian journalists. Mujib changed their luck from continually
losing, after asking for a new pack of cards, on the same trip referred
to above. Mascarenhas writes: "Try as they might, all through the long
night, the Indonesians were never able to make it again. When we pulled
into Los Angeles next morning, Mujib and I were richer by $386, a wrist
watch, a Parker 51 with a gold cap, and a thin gold ring in the shape of
a snake."
Mascarenhas tells the story that only tangentially deals with a people
who "had been betrayed by the corrupt, small-minded and power-hungry men
who had been swept into office by the tidal wave of the freedom
movement. As disillusionment and discontent developed, so did violence.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Founding Father of Bangladesh, was murdered
by a group of angry young Majors. Khandaker Moshtaque, who succeeded
Mujib as President, initiated the 'Jail Killings' and became a by-word
for treachery. General Zia, the next leader, became the target of twenty
mutinies and coup attempts. The twentyfirst killed him. This book is the
unvarnished, sad history of the first ten years of Bangladesh, and a
textbook of Third World disenchantment."
And, we're told: "It is based on my close personal knowledge of the main
protagonists; on more than 120 separate interviews with the men and
women involved in the dramatic events; and on official archives and
documents which I had the privilege to inspect personally. The dialogue,
whenever used, is a faithful reproduction of the words which my
informants said they actually used during the events in which they were
involved."
There's fascinating detail here. One learns a great deal about
the plotters, the people, the killers and the killed.
But, as I finished the last pages of this book, a thought struck me: we
know so much about *what* happened. We know very little about *why* it
happened. What were the geo-political interests behind the pulling of
the trigger? Who encouraged so many coups over such a small period of
time? What were the social forces in Bangladesh that allowed all this to
happen? What were the vested interests that allowed such cliques to get
developed and entrenched?
This is not intended to question Mascarenhas' impressive work. He has
indeed done a fascinating job in narrating history of one remote (for
the rest of the world, that is) part of the planet. So, with a tinge of
pride, I passed on a hurried history-in-a-capsule account to Chat
Ramilo, telling her about the Portuguese colonial link, Goan migration,
Karachi and the like in a few hurried sentences. -- FN, May 28, 2006.
PS: If you know more about Mascarenhas, please share it with Goanet
goanet@goanet.org -- a place to discuss all thinks (even remotely) Goan.
--
----------------------------------------------------------
Frederick 'FN' Noronha | Yahoomessenger: fredericknoronha
http://fn.goa-india.org | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Independent Journalist | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436
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