(Published in ‘Daily Sun’, Page 7, Post-logue, 17/12/2011)
http://www.daily-sun.com/details_ds-of-green-and-red_424_2_17_1_1.html
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I love the season of winter in Bangladesh; not only because of the pleasantly cool weather and all thepithas and other seasonal vegetables, but also because of the historic significance of the month of December for all Bangladeshis all around the world, irrespective of caste, creed or religion. It is in this very month that, after a nine month long struggle, with the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, that we received independence from foreign powers after they had ruled this land for thousands of years. Forty years on, however, on the eve of 16th December, our Victory Day, I feel though that some questions still remain to be answered in this land of a hundred and fifty million people.
While on my way to work the last few days, I was delighted to see the countless number of street hawkers selling different sizes of our national flag, our pride – the very special green and red that all of us Bangladeshis are willing to die for. I spoke to one of the flag-sellers while getting myself a flag for my car, and he told me that business was going strong in the month of victory. This was of course not an imaginary claim, as could be seen from most of the vehicles plying the Dhaka streets. Cars, buses and even some of the rickshaws had flags flying with great pride and vigour. An interesting thing worth observing is that most of these people who bought those flags were from low-income groups who usually do not have much extra money after a hard day of work. Surely enough, this was more than just a combination of a patch of green and red cloth – it showed the Bangali-ism of our people, the vast majority of whom are patriotic people in spite of our many problems that we are probably not unaware of.
The unity of our people is not necessarily seen in 16th December alone though. The celebrations on our Independence Day (26th March), the Language Martyrs’ Day (22nd February) or Pahela Baishakh, the first day of the Bengali new year, bring us together as well, and we celebrate as a nation. The patriotism amongst the hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis can also be seen when we anxiously wait for the results of the Bangladesh cricket team – the eleven men representing the country cannot often give us the results we want or crave for but we patiently and loyally wait for that moment of glory and then rejoice it for months.
But was the war of independence supposed to mean only rejoicing on specific dates of the calendar? Was the liberation war of 1971 meant to be a one-off thing by our valiant freedom-fighters? Or was it meant to be a continuous struggle against all evil of the society? Would our freedom fighters approve of the continuously deteriorating law and order situation? Would they have approved of the ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor? Or of the rampant corruption and nepotism that seems to be the norm in most parts of society? On an ending note, these are some of the questions that I would want to leave the readers pondering about.
