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Bhasani
was born in 1880 at village Dhanpara of Sirajganj
district. His father was Haji Sharafat Ali Khan.
Apart from a few years of education at the local
school and madrasa, he did not receive much formal
education. He began his career as a primary school
teacher at Kagmari in Tangail and then worked
in a madrasa at village Kala (Haluaghat) in Mymensingh
district.
In
1919, Bhasani joined the non-cooperation movement
and khilafat movement to mark the launching of
his long and colourful political career. He went
to Santosh in Tangail to take up the leadership
of the oppressed peasants during the Great depression
period. From Tangail he moved to Ghagmara in Assam
in the late 1930s to defend the interests of Bangali
settlers there. He made his debut as a leader
at Bhasan Char on the Brahmaputra where he constructed
an embankment with the co-operation of the Bangali
settlers, thereby saving the peasants from the
scourge of annual inundation. Relieved of the
recurring floods the local people fondly started
to call him Bhasani Saheb, an epithet by which
the Maulana has been known from then on.
The
Assam government made a law restricting Bangali
settlement beyond a certain geographical line,
an arbitrary settlement which severely affected
the interests of the Bangali colonisers. Protected
by this restrictive law the locals had launched
a movement to oust the Bangali settlers across
the so-called line. In 1937 Bhasani joined the
Muslim league and became president of Assam unit
of the party. On the 'line' issue, hostile relations
developed between the Maulana and the Assam Chief
Minister, Sir Muhammad Sa'dullah. At partition,
Maulana Bhasani was in Goalpara district (Assam)
organising the farmers against the line system.
He was arrested by the government of Assam, and
released towards the end of 1947 on condition
that he would leave Assam for good.
Early
in 1948 Maulana Bhasani came to East Bengal only
to find himself brushed aside from the provincial
leadership set-up. Disheartened, Bhasani contested
and won a seat in the provincial assembly from
south Tangail in a by-election defeating Khurram
Khan Panni, the Muslim League candidate and zamindar
of Karatia. But the provincial governor nullified
the results on grounds of foul play in the elections,
and disqualified all the candidates from taking
part in any election until 1950. Strangely enough,
the ban on Panni was lifted in 1949 even though
it remained in force on Bhasani.
In
1949 he went to Assam again, and was arrested
and sent to Dhubri prison. On his release he came
back to Dhaka. At about this time, the East Pakistan
Muslim League was passing through a leadership
crisis. The discontented elements of the Muslim
League called a workers' convention in Dhaka on
June 23 and 24 of 1949. Nearly 300 delegates from
different parts of the province attended the convention.
On June 24 a new political party, the East Pakistan
Awami Muslim League, was launched with Maulana
Bhasani as president and Shamsul Huq of Tangail
as general secretary.
On
the day of its birth, the party held its first
public meeting at Armanitola in Dhaka under the
chairmanship of Bhasani. After its second meeting
in the same venue on October 11, he and many other
leaders of the new party were arrested while heading
a procession of hunger strikers moving towards
the government secretariat to protest against
the famine conditions prevailing in the province.
When his life was at risk due to his protracted
hunger-strike, Bhasani was released from jail
in 1950.
On
21 February 1952 several students taking part
in the language movement were killed in a police
firing in Dhaka. Bhasani strongly condemned the
brutality of the government. He was arrested on
February 23 from his village home and sent behind
the bar. In the politics of East Bengal in the
early 1950s Bhasani emerged as the most vocal
and respected politician of the time. As president
of the Awami Muslim League, Bhasani played the
crucial role in forging a unity among five opposition
political parties by forming an alliance called
the united front. Other leaders of the front were
AK Fazlul Huq, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman, Haji Mohammad Danesh. In the elections
held in March 1954 the United Front won 223 seats
as against the Muslim League's 7 seats.
There
is reason to believe that frequent contact during
prison life with the communists made the Maulana
more conscious about socialist ideology with which
his personal political outlook and lifestyle were
quite in accord. He became president of the Adamjee
Jute Mills Mazdoor Union and the East Pakistan
Railway Employees League. The Maulana was made
to preside over two massive worker's rallies organised
by the communists on May Day in 1954 in Dhaka
and Narayanganj. The same year he was made president
of the East Pakistan Peasants' Association. Soon
after, he was made president of the East Pakistan
chapter of the communist-dominated International
Peace Committee. In that capacity, he went to
Stockholm to attend the World Peace Conference
in 1954. He visited several countries of Europe,
gaining firsthand knowledge of the socialist movements
of the world.
At
home, the United Front came close to collapsing
mainly because of conflicts between the Awami
Muslim League and the Krishak Sramik party over
the question of power sharing. The Maulana tried
his best to overcome the problems of practical
politics. But he was particularly disappointed
at the turn of events under which H S Suhrawardy
formed the Awami coalition government at the centre
with himself as prime minister and with Ataur
Rahman Khan as chief minister in East Bengal.
Meanwhile, serious differences of opinion arose
between the Maulana and Suhrawardy on issues concerning
the basic principles of the Pakistan constitution
then being finalized for promulgation. The Maulana
opposed the constitution's provision for separate
electorate for the minorities which Suhrawardy
supported. He also opposed Suhrawardy's pro-American
foreign policy and favoured closer relations with
China.
In
1957 the Maulana called a conference of the party
at Kagmari, and used the occasion to launch a
bitter attack on Suhrawardy's foreign policy,
thereby signalling an imminent split in the organisation.
Things came to a point of no return when Maulana
Bhasani called a conference in Dhaka of leftists
from all over Pakistan and formed a new party,
called the National Awami Party (NAP), with himself
as president and Mahmudul Huq Osmani from West
Pakistan as secretary general. From then onwards
the Maulana followed left-oriented politics openly.
Bhasani
was interned once again when Pakistan's army chief
General mohammad ayub khan seized power in 1958.
After his release from confinement in 1963, the
Maulana went on a visit to China and also to Havana
in 1964 to attend the World Peace Conference.
Bhasani bitterly opposed Ayub Khan's proposal
for creating a selective electorate of 'basic
democrats' and fought for holding all elections
on the basis of universal adult franchise. In
1967 the socialist world split into pro-Soviet
and pro-China blocs. The East Pakistan NAP also
split with the Maulana leading the pro-China fraction.
He
branded the Ayub government as a lackey of imperialist
forces and launched a movement to dislodge him
from power. In the face of mounting opposition
movement, Ayub Khan resigned as President of Pakistan,
allowing army chief General Aga Mohammad Yahya
Khan to step in. To tide over the deepening political
crisis, Yahya Khan arranged for holding parliamentary
elections on 7 December 1970. The Maulana boycotted
the elections and concentrated on providing relief
to the victims of the devastating cyclone that
struck the coastal zone of Bangladesh in November.
The apathy of the central government towards the
cyclone victims made the Maulana call openly for
the separation of East Pakistan.
With
the beginning of war of liberation in 1971 Maulana
Bhasani took refuge in India, but he had to spend
the entire period of the liberation war in confinement
in Delhi. One of his first demands after return
to Dhaka (22 January 1972) was to withdraw Indian
troops from the soil of Bangladesh. On February
25 he started publishing a weekly Haq Katha and
it soon gained wide circulation. The paper was
soon banned. After the parliamentary elections
in 1973, the Maulana started a hunger strike to
protest against the food crisis, rise of price
of essential commodities, and deteriorating law
and order situation.
In 1974 Bhasani
founded Hukumat-e-Rabbania order and declared
a jihad or holy war against the Awami League government
and Indo-Soviet over lordship. In April 1974 a
6-party united front was formed under the Maulana's
leadership. It served an ultimatum on the government
to annul the Indo-Bangladesh border agreement,
and stop all repressive actions against the opposition.
On June 30 the Maulana was arrested and interned
at Santosh in Tangail. He considered the Farakka
agreement detrimental to the interest of Bangladesh.
On 16 May 1976 he led a long march from Rajshahi
towards India's Farakka barrage to protest against
plans to deprive Bangladesh of its rightful share
of the Ganges waters. On 2 October 1976 he formed
a new organisation, Khodai Khidmatgar, and continued
to work for his Islamic University at Santosh.
He also set up a technical education college,
a school for girls and a children's centre at
Santosh, Nazrul Islam College at Panchbibi and
Maulana Mohammad Ali College at Kagmari. He had
earlier set up 30 educational institutions in
Assam. He died on 17 November 1976 and was buried
at Santosh.
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