Page 8 - MUJIB100- Magazine on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

escape through a riverine exit. Did you have that that fateful occasion in mind?
I supported your sensible decision. Nawab Sirajuddaula got caught in Bhagban Golai while trying to
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and soul. Why then would I be the one to flee?
I was the leader of the majority party in Pakistan; the people of East Bengal loved me with all their heart
strategy succeed.
would have duped the world totally. My own people would be fooled too. I didn't let the Pakistani
been murdered in a feud between Awami League fac ons by extremist elements of his own party. That
murder me somewhere around my Road 32 house, informing the world a erwards that Sheikh Mujib had
they intended to do is murder me. They thought I would try to flee, and while I was escaping they would
I knew they had me in the sight of their weapons all the me. They really didn't want to arrest me; what
Soon a erwards, Pakistani soldiers surrounded my house and arrested me.
soldier occupying our land is driven away from Bengal's soil; do so ll we a ain victory decisively.”
independent country.” To my people I said as well, “Con nue to wage war ll the very last Pakistani
they had waited for the green signal from me. In the declara on I said, “From this day Bangladesh is an
broadcast my declara on of independence, I had kept a few E.P.R. soldiers ready. Transmi ers in hand,
what they were up to. I declared Bangladesh's independence soon a er the army crackdown began. To
unarmed people like fierce hyenas. What I wanted was for the people of the world to view and know
elec ons, Pakistan's thick-headed army junta and its allies Zulfiqar Ali Bhu o would pounce on my
Demand”, and instead of handing over power to the Awami League, the party that had won the na onal
I knew that instead of being able to persuade me to move away even a hair's length from the “Six Point
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Hall.
that me. Pitching a tent in front of TSC, Pakistan soldiers also entered nearby Rokeya and Shamsunnahar
Sergant Zahirul Huq Hall, terrifying, bone-chilling words dri ed towards us, words unheard by us before
“Opera on Searchlight!” They launched an assault on Pilkhana and Rajarbagh. From Jagannath Hall and
thundershower of bullets. The indiscriminate massacre of people by the Pakistani army had begun.
me, observing youths felling trees to set up barricades. Just then, the skies of Dhaka were lit up by a
launched with heavy weaponry began. I was standing in front of Eden Girls College in Azimpur at that
Exactly! A li le a er I had le your house and around 11 that night, “Opera on Searchlight”, an assault
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to talk against the Six Point Movement!
with their weapons. That was the language Yahya Khan's predecessor Field Marshal Ayub Khan also used
either in Urdu, Punjabi or in English, and of course not in Bangla –they would now be talking to us only
signal of imminent danger. I thought now that Mr. Yahya and Mr. Bhu o would no longer be talking to us,
to an end, and without telling me anything. To have le in the middle of the talks abruptly was for us all a
Yes, Mr. Yahya had le Dhaka secretly without declaring publicly that the ongoing talks with me had come
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why on that ill-fated evening I wasn't able to meet you.
League leaders about extremely important issues in some other room inside the house. And that was
home and abroad, as well as to your own party workers. You were busy too talking in secret to Awami
March 25. But you didn't come out that day since you were inside a room, busy talking to journalists from
Bangabandhu—Hoping to meet you, like many other people, I went to your house on the evening of

Nirmalendu Goon

Bangabandhu—An Unpublished Interview