25 March '71 when all hell was let loose!

That's how Pakistan's best known poet after Iqbal described the carnage of 25 March. The poet, it is told, was found under the blankets in darkened room at Rawalpindi's Flashman's Hotel refusing to get out of the bed or turn on the light. The behaviour was not without a precedent. Poet Ezra Pound went berserk at the horror of Second World War and Pablo Neruda couldn't withstand the shock of Allende's violent overthrow in Chile in 1973 and the two died the same year. Poets do have a prophetic vision that penetrates through the fog of time to see the impending disaster.

March 25 was a disaster of its kind and had few parallel. Faiz called it a festival of slaughter. How could it otherwise be pursued at all? The bestiality inherent in it must have been mixed with a machoism of sorts. And the infamous 'operation searchlight' was executed with a surgical precision on unarmed or sleeping people selectively targeted earlier in Dhaka University campus, Rajarbagh Police Line and Peelkhana -- the places from where the resistances were likely to come.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

The crackdown began at 1 am on the night between 25th and 26th March 1971 unleashing an unprecedented barbarism of the history apparently to intimidate the rebellious Bengalis impassioned for independence. The armour rolled on the deserted street and artillery boomed from a distance. The noise of the automatic fires filled the air. It was ruthless but cowardly! In their jitters they were out to ensure an overkill.

Thirty-five years on, the 25 March keeps coming back with ghastly accounts of the atrocities, melancholy and bitterness on the part of too many to be recounted. And the saga is nourished with the tears of millions. In that process the day still refuges to be obliterated from our collective consciousness. Ironically the perpetrators of the crime which was rated as genocide -- the worst after the Holocaust during the Second World War -- advise us to forget the past meaning wisdom in the acceptance of the reality of the past as a matter only of the past. But the history is only what endures while all else can indeed be buried.

The lust for continuing power and an uninterrupted exploitation on the part of a power hungry junta headed by a moral wreck could have induced it to tread the treacherous course undertaken on the fateful night of 25 March -- killing three million Bengalis, displacing ten million others and dishonouring many of our woman folk. Just to deny freedom they clamoured for, the occupation forces earned an ignominy that can never be publicly washed off. Neither can they get rid of the ever continuing prick of the conscience.

Only weeks before the black night the Bangabandhu gave his people a clarion call for independence. In historic Race Course ground it roared like an ocean in the baritone voice of the 'greatest Bengali of all times' who in a powerful speech on 7 March called upon his people to rise against the alien forces with whatever they had in their possession and turn their homestead into fortress. The people responded spontaneously to every inflexion in his tone. The impact of his call on a volatile audience was electrifying. Only the fools could face those people with force.

Even if Bangabandhu gave enough indication of a likely armed conflict with the occupation forces he was fundamentally a political animal and had to walk a razor's edge to vindicate his commitment of political dynamics at work during the crisis. Yet he skilfully combined a people's war with the constitutional obligation.

At the wee hour of the crackdown he decided to court arrest lest the occupation forces chose to tear apart the city in searching out the fugitive rebel. Bangabandhu with the thorough grasp of his people's psyche as well as their potentials reposed his full confidence in them and went into captivity. As expected, on arrival back in Karachi General Yahya Khan immediately outlawed Awami League and branded Mujib a traitor, but to no avail. Yahya could do precious little against Mujib although he was later tried for treason and sentenced to death in August 1971.

Pakistan authority never gathered courage to authenticate the verdict. So towering was Mujib's personality and formidable was his international image! His detractors may note that it was not for nothing that he could volunteer to court arrest. In the meantime the war of independence suffered no loss of momentum in his absence and went on simply in his name. It was exclusively a Mujib magic!

An indulgence for a bit of nostalgia may be in order while recalling what an exalted height were we catapulted to and the heady days of war, victory, brinkmanship and a measure of international prestige that were we steered through! The nostalgia is however at its gripping best when today both Bangabandhu and his legacies are all but consigned to oblivion.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.