The Spirit of 1971: A Memoir of Dr. Mohammed Fazle Rabbee and Dr. Jahan Ara Rabbee

By Nusrat Rabbee

In the 1960s, East Pakistan was a thriving, growing culture, aspiring to greatness, with Nusrat Rabbee's parents, Dr. Mohammed Fazle Rabbee and Dr. Jahan Ara Rabbee, leading the way. Each at the top of their medical careers, the Rabbees were pillars of the society and trusted advisors to neighbors, family, and friends. Then, in December of 1970, an election turned sour brought continued Martial Law to the land and a situation that crippled the progressive East Pakistani people from thriving in every way, especially economically. Over the course of nine terrifying months, East Pakistan fell under attack from the Pakistani army, who attempted to take away their cultural, moral, and professional leadership all at once. It would take unimaginable destruction and countless deaths, including that of Dr. Nusrat Rabbee's beloved father, for the East Pakistani people to once regain their footing. After the fallout, and for the next several decades, Bangladesh has grown to become a mecca of growth and progress, though Dr. Rabbee reminds readers to not forget the sacrifices and strides made by the relentless champions of the first few decades, the martyrs for the cause of a free Bangladesh, and those few dedicated and educated leaders in every sector, who built the infrastructure and backbone from scratch.

In this captivating account of 1971 and beyond, Dr. Rabbee provides readers with a firsthand account of the events that shaped her childhood and which sparked the birth of a nation. Through the lens of a poignant family story, she provides a deeply personal inside look at the violence, unrest, and aftermath of the war. Part memoir, part love story, and part historical text, The Spirit of 1971 gives deep insight and understanding into the history, ancestry, and heritage of country of Bangladesh, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of the region during this tumultuous time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781732099302

Book preview

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Tanjina Islam for cover design; Francine LaSala for editing, Nishat Jamil for line editing; Zakia Afrin and Reeta Rahman for carefully reviewing and providing valuable feedback on the manuscript. I thank friends and family for their support and encouragement. In particular, I want to mention the undying friendship of my childhood friends: Atiya, Jasmin, Khadija, Ruhi, Sabrina and Tania. Together we continue to bloom in our lives with the fragrance of love and sisterhood. I want to thank my cousins, Rudmeela and Mahboob, for loving me when I am unlovable. I recognize Mrs. Ameenah Ahmed, a student of my father, for encouraging me to finish this memoir - and Zakia Afrin for relentlessly advocating for 1971 war remembrance. I take solace in the knowledge of the bright future of Bangladesh each time I think of the angelic face of my great nephew, Shaheer. I could not do this without the encouragement of countless young activists, journalists and scholars of Bangladeshi descent whom I encounter frequently in my journey. I wish to thank the Dhaka Tribune – literature section - for publishing monthly excerpts from this manuscript this year. I apologize for not mentioning by name the numerous personal friends and relatives who have stood by me over many decades - and who enabled me to arrive at this point to write this book. Finally, I acknowledge Deena - my four-legged companion - who rescued me from bleakness.

I am eternally grateful for and incredibly proud of the Bangladeshi men and women who died in the infamous intellectual killing by the Pakistan Army and Rajakars in 1971. They dared to dream a better world and their spirit can never be extinguished.

Picture 8

Dr. Mohammed Fazle Rabbee. 1963. London, the United Kingdom.

Whose voice do I hear at dawn?

Fear not, O fear not!

He who sacrifices his life completely

Never dies, O never dies

-Rabindranath Tagore

(As translated by the author)

Preface

The assault on the East Bengal elite was premeditated, cold-blooded and finds few parallels in recent history. It has dealt a blow to emergent Bangladesh from which it take at least a generation to recover. And in its suppression of a nation’s cultural heritage and thought it has created an example that will impose a permanent stain on the history of Pakistan.

—Jenefer Coates in Bangladesh:

The Struggle for Cultural Independence (1972)

In 1971, Bangladesh fell under attack from the Pakistan Army. It was a horrific genocide with the systematic persecution and killing of Bengali intellectuals where they attempted to take away our cultural, moral, and professional leadership - all at once. This situation that took root in 1947, but exploded decades later. The war crippled our progressive nation from thriving in every way, especially economically. Even after winning our independence, we continued having to rely on foreign aid for years to bring us to our current state.

In 1971, during a nine-month period (March – December), Pakistan committed unimaginable atrocities in a premeditated, systematic genocide of Bengalis in East Pakistan. They tortured and killed leading intellectuals, destroyed infrastructure and assets, and carried out genocidal rape of women. These crimes against humanity were planned and executed by Yahya Khan and his generals. It is reported that as many as 3,00,000 Bengalis were killed, more than 1,000 elite intellectuals were executed and more than half a million women were raped over nine months. Yahya Khan, the Hitler of Pakistan, made the anti-democratic move to deny Sheikh Mujibur Rahman his legitimate claim to be the prime minister of Pakistan in 1970 – and unleashed a total annihilation campaign on innocent Bengalis in the dark midnight hour of March 25, 1971. The blood bath, they called Operation Searchlight, was covered up by a thin veneer of false propaganda claiming the Bengal uprising and repression involved only a small number of pro-Indian subversives and extremists. With support from Nixon and Kissinger, Yahya carried out the savage mass slaughter and rape – until word got out and an international outcry formed over the genocide. A humanitarian crisis ensued with more than 10 million Bengali refugees crossing over to India in despair. The genocide destabilized the whole Indian sub-continent. With the brave Bengali freedom fighters (Mukti Bahini) gaining ground on the Pakistan Army and the Indian Army getting ready for war that would surely destroy Pakistan, Yahya was forced to surrender on December 16th. Bangladesh achieved its independence but at an extremely high cost. The Pakistan Army made a hasty retreat with almost 90,000 soldiers, guilty of heinous war crimes, going back home without paying a price.

Today, Bangladesh has the fastest-growing economy in Asia, achieved the status of a middle-income country in 2021, and is slated to become a developed nation by 2041. We have been led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for almost two decades in total. Under this stable leadership, and through the sheer energy, resilience and resourcefulness of ordinary Bengali women and men, we have propelled ourselves forward. We are far from the days of complete dependence on foreign aid. We must not forget to be grateful to the relentless champions of the first few decades, those few dedicated and educated leaders in every sector, who built the infrastructure and backbone from scratch starting in 1972.

But, along with economic progress, a nation needs a social, cultural, moral, and ethical backbone. This is where the loss of the intellectuals matters still today. Our intellectuals firmly believed in religious tolerance, pride in Bengali language and heritage, gender equality, economic upliftment of the poor, and nationwide access to medical care and education. But after 1975, with the assassination of the father of our nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, these values were all but lost.

During the 1980s and 1990s, diverse foreign influences infiltrated the culture of Bangladesh, from the Saudi Arabian influence of Wahhabism to the Bollywood influence on arts and entertainment. In addition, many bright, young people, frustrated at the lack of opportunities in the new Bangladesh, left the country for overseas education and employment. Those who remained did not have the 1,000+ intellectuals and visionaries who had perished in 1971, including Shahidullah Kaiser, Professor Munier Choudhury, or my father, Dr. Fazle Rabbee, to provide the continuity of leadership they needed.

The poet Maya Angelou stated, You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been. What makes a Bangladeshi person distinct from other nationalities is the founding values and spirit of 1971. The intellectuals embodied that spirit of excellence, justice, equality, compassion and service, pure liberal, progressive, and modern values; that is why they were exterminated by the heinous Pakistan Army in 1971. These intellectuals envisioned a nation entirely superior than one tolerating colonial, classist, racist rule of the British, and the religious fundamentalist, sexist, intolerant rule of Pakistan. Had we embodied these values firmly in the beginning, we would be much farther than where we are today as a nation.

The cost of the 1971 war has been tremendous. The horrible massacre cost three million innocent lives. More than 500,000 women and girls were raped,¹ and the entire infrastructure of the country was bombed and destroyed at the hands of our fellow countrymen in West Pakistan. Still, we won, and we overcame that dark chapter with our pride, leadership, and strength intact.

In 2013, the Shahbagh protests, with more than 100,000 in attendance each day, captured the true spirit of 1971 again and successfully enabled us to bring some of the Rajakar leaders to justice through the courts. In 2018, school children in Dacca shut down traffic in a city of 18 million people to protest the reckless driving and horrible traffic conditions. That is the spirit of excellence in their blood!

It would be a shame if we lost the spirit of 1971 while pretending to be some other nation at this point. We don’t need to imitate any other culture, but we need only to embrace our rich heritage, identity, and our founding principles to be the greatest nation on earth. We have everything to be proud of. We deserve to bring the perpetrators of the genocide, including the Pakistani war criminals who are still living, to justice. Only when we embrace the founding vision of our intellectual ancestors can we soar to become the best nation in South Asia.

On this fiftieth year of independence of Bangladesh, we are three generations beyond the genocide of intellectuals. This generation is the new face of our nation and they are prepared to disrupt the status quo. Daring to dream big is in our genetic makeup as Bengalis. We dream big and put the power of excellence behind it. Thus, we can bring transformational solutions to the problems facing us as a nation. This book is a history of those formative years of Bangladeshi, with my family’s experience serving as a lens with which to view these extraordinary events. I hope this story will inspire readers to be proud to be part the great nation of Bangladesh and her history, ancestry, and heritage.

September 14, 2021 Nusrat Rabbee

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1 "War heroines Speak – a translation of Amy Birangona Bolchi", by Rabbee, 2021.

Glossary of Terms

Chapter

1

The Wedding

You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, my mother once said to me.

I was the product of Dr. Mohammed Fazle Rabbee and Dr. Jahan Ara Rabbee, their second offspring together and their first child of theirs to be delivered in the hospital. The obstetrician was Dr. Zohra Kazi,² the first female Bengali physician and the head of the OB/GYN department of the Dacca Medical College (DMC).

Both my parents had graduated with medical degrees from DMC. My father earned post-graduate degrees in internal medicine and cardiology in London while my mother worked as a medical officer at the DMC. By the time I came along, their careers were flourishing and they had rented two adjoining apartments in Sobhanbagh for their growing family.

This story is about my parents, their lives, and their love story, and also about the decades and events that led to the 1971 genocide of our people, and the decade that followed. My parents were nation builders with their pursuit of excellence, defiance of the limits put on them, and their bravery in standing up to the tyranny of the government at that time. They infused the unique values of excellence, integrity, public service, and cultural pride into a new nation of South Asia and the world.

The purpose of their lives has to be understood in the broader scheme of the history of Bangladesh. Their love story was a unique product of that time and place. We, who came after them, stand on the shoulders of these brave pioneers, whose ambition and courage led them to scale remarkable heights.

Some people on earth have more than their fair share of hardship. My mother was one of them. Women and men of her generation in former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were destined to shoulder a heavy burden so our generation could have easier lives. My mother was born of Mr. Abdur Razzaque and Mrs. Shamsun Nahar, who resided at 44 Abdul Hadi Lane in Old Dacca. My grandmother’s family lived in Sonargaon³ and were relatively well off. It is told that my grandmother was seven years old when the wedding was officiated. The bride and groom did not cohabitate until much later, but her father agreed to the marriage because the groom, although not a person of means, was well educated.

My grandfather, Mr. Abdur Razzaque, obtained his bachelor’s degree in Calcutta. Then he travelled to the United Kingdom by ship to obtain a diploma in Education in Edinburgh. Upon his return, he became well known in the teaching profession, writing many textbooks on functional English and English grammar in the late 1940s for students in British India. In fact, books by my Nana, Mr. Razzaque, were recommended as standard English textbooks in the Bengal region of India. He worked up until the late 1950s and retired as the principal of the Teacher’s Training College in East Pakistan.

My maternal grandparents in Dacca,

East Pakistan [1950s]

My parents’ generation lived through three countries without moving their address once: British India, East Pakistan, and finally Bangladesh. I often wondered how they managed to travel with new passports, new citizenhoods, and new national identities three times in a single lifetime.

The bloody partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, during my mother’s childhood, drew the borders on both sides of India. On the East, the area known as Muslim-dominated province of East Bengal became East Pakistan; to the west, the Muslim-dominated provinces of the Northwest frontier, western Punjab and Sindh, became West Pakistan. ⁴ The two wings of Pakistan were 1200 miles apart and had little in common in geography, culture, or language. The partition was incomplete and irrational—the end of which would play out in another war in 1971.

I am told that the riots in 1947 were so horrid that it was not uncommon to see Muslims killing Hindus and vice versa in my mother’s own neighborhood. People were finally happy to see the unrest end and a new country, Pakistan, born. ⁵ It took more than one additional year for people to migrate between Pakistan and India, but finally everyone settled down in their respective new countries and free of British rule. But this feeling would not last long in our part of Pakistan in the East.

My grandfather was diligent, patient, mild-mannered, and scholarly. My grandmother was passionate, with a huge heart and indomitable courage. My mother was the third of four daughters. She also had two brothers, Khalil and Mahmud. Each of the children, my aunts and uncles, were educated - a direct result of my grandparents’ efforts and priorities.

My mother was undoubtedly the brightest of the lot and showed great academic promise from childhood, but she was only in high school when she entered into a marriage arranged by her brother-in-law, Mr. Azizul Haq. Mr. Huq was married to my eldest khala,⁶ Bedoura Begum, and was a conservative career bureaucrat. He was only too happy to encourage my Nani⁷ to marry her remaining daughters off as they were free-spirited women, like their mother.

The groom chosen for my mother was an established businessman, several years her senior, and the marriage failed soon after it began. A daughter was born, my elder sister Nasreen, but the atmosphere at home was unhappy. My mother, who hated living with the extended family of her husband, could not adjust to the socially conservative values of that household. She was a good student who excelled in the sciences and loved classical dance, none of which was favorably looked upon by that family. (In those times, there were not very many families that encouraged girls to study up to graduation from high school, and certainly not beyond.)

My mother wanted a divorce but there was no way out without displeasing everyone. She confided in her mother knowing full well that divorce back then, in a Muslim society, was a huge stigma. In fact, her brother-in-law reminded Nani that it was not even legal. What he did not know or could not predict was that my Nana, a mild-mannered academic man, would step in to help my mother. His friend was the judge presiding over the High Court. The Judge wrote up the petition for the divorce. My mother’s successful divorce would later be used as a precedent for divorces initiated by Muslim women in East Pakistan.

Another courageous thing my mother did was to bring my sister to live with her family. This was rare since children of marriages that failed almost always resided with the father’s family. Upon returning home, my grandmother insisted that my mother pursue higher education. Nani took over the job of raising my sister, as she did with other grandchildren, and asked her husband once again to make sure that my mother took all the necessary science courses to pursue her dreams.

The regular math and science classes taught in high school for girls were not advanced enough for university admissions. My grandfather was working at the Teacher’s Training College at the time and he arranged for a bus service to take my mother and a couple of other girls to Dacca⁸ College very early in the morning where they were taught the special classes required for college admittance.

In 1949, my mother stood first among all females in the tenth grade SSc (secondary school certificate) exams in East Pakistan and obtained the Director of Public Instruction’s scholarship as a result. Two years later, in 1951, she appeared in the twelfth grade HSc