Editorial
The spirit of March 7, 1971
There are lessons to be drawn from it
We recall today a moment of seminal significance in the history of our nation. On this day in 1971, as the Bengali nation was being made acutely aware of the sinister attempts to deprive it of the mammoth victory it had collectively achieved through the general elections of December 1970, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman prepared to show us a path out of the woods. And that came through the sheer eloquence of the speech he delivered before a million-strong crowd at the Race Course (today's Suhrawardy Udyan). What has come to be known as the March 7 address remains critically important for us because it was a protest against the reluctance of the Pakistan military junta to honour the results of the elections through letting a democratic government take over. And it was much more.
Bangabandhu's March 7 speech surely will rank as one of those epical moments when oratory can transform the thoughts of a nation. It is the quality of the oration that has mattered and all these years after Bangabandhu spoke it is the sense of direction the speech spelt out which remains one of its finest attributes. There are the reasons why that is so. There is the subtlety that underlined the speech, the many things that were said and those that were to be read between the lines. But that it was a clarion call for freedom Bangabandhu was making has never been in doubt. He did not go for a unilateral declaration of independence. That would be a precipitate and suicidal move. But he did tell the nation that the struggle was for emancipation and independence. There was thus no room for ambiguity about the course he was setting for the country. It was a course, again, that Bangabandhu justified through outlining the turbulent history of Pakistan between its establishment in 1947 and the gathering crisis in 1971. On March 7, therefore, it was a nation which stood galvanised through the strong leadership provided by Bangabandhu and his colleagues. The non-violent non-cooperation movement that had earlier been announced by the leadership was to be reinforced by the March 7 events.
Looking back at that defining moment on March 7, 1971, it is for us only fitting that we capture the spirit that went into it, the courage and fortitude and wisdom with which Bangabandhu prepared us for the tortuous struggle ahead. He had no illusion about the coming struggle. It would be long and it would be bloody. And so it eventually was. Today, the most important lesson we can draw from the March 7 address is that it was a bold call for freedom based on democracy. We are a free nation. It is the foundations of democracy, all too often under assault, that we now need to strengthen in order to proceed to a happy and prosperous future.
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