e_Paper, Wednesday, April 21, 2017

Opinion 13
A tribute to Kamal Hossain on his
80th birthday
DT
FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2017
• Rehman Sobhan
Kamal Hossain will be 80 today,
20 April. This is hard to imagine
given his continuing capacity to
work professionally at the highest
level both domestically and
internationally and to travel across
Bangladesh as well as all over the
world. I would like to believe I am
in better physical condition than
he is but I bow my head before
his courage, industry, energy and
capacity to stay engaged. The only
person I know in our generation
and even those younger than us,
who is more active than Kamal is
our mutual friend, Amartya Sen.
I have known Kamal for the last
75 years. We grew up together. In
these early years Kamal, though
younger than me was always
the more studious, serious and
purposeful. At school in St Xavier’s
in Calcutta he was always near the
top of his class, standing second
over these years, to a diminutive
Anglo-Indian boy by the name
of Desouza. In three months
of my winter vacations from
St Paul’s I always provided the
more frivolous intrusions into his
academic life, playing games at
his home, dragging him out to the
Eden Garden’s to watch cricket,
watching unsuitable movies about
Frankenstein and Dracula.
In later years, we attended
university at the same time, Kamal
at Oxford, me at Cambridge, where
he was President of the Oxford
University Majlis, when I was
President of the Cambridge Majlis.
I was by then more serious about
the world but never entirely free of
its frivolous side so Kamal always
needed to get me to be more
focused on the important things
in life. In those formative years
we both experienced our political
flowering. From those university
days we have also dreamt the same
dreams together for our vision of
Bangladesh and the society and
world in which it may prosper.
As part of our shared journey
through the history and political
landscape of Bangladesh there are
few occasions where we have not
travelled together. From the time
that Kamal returned to Dhaka from
Oxford in 1960 no moment has
gone by when he has not thought
about the problems and concerns
of the people of Bangladesh
and aspired to work for their
betterment. From those early days
in 1960 when we set up, what
passed for a political think tank,
the National Association for Social
and Economic Progress (NACEP),
He believes that a new generation will take
up the torch to refuel the embers of the
muktijudder chetona
which used to meet in his living
room at Kamal Court in New Bailey
Road, we were exploring the
road to a democratic, egalitarian,
just and as it transpired, an
independent Bangladesh.
In our shared endeavours
Kamal always remained more
engaged than I ever was. Even
before he went abroad on a
full scholarship to Notre Dame
University in Indiana, USA,
after he stood first in all of East
Pakistan, in the Intermediate
examination of 1953, he was
politically engaged. As a student
at Notre Dame he had occasion
to be inspired by and work as an
assistant to Bhasha Matin, for the
language movement. The moment
he returned from Oxford in 1960
he was driving me to become more
politically engaged than I was
and taking me to meetings with
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and
through him with Bangabandhu,
to learn our first lessons in politics.
From the earliest stage of
his legal career Kamal began
appearing, pro bono, in political
and human rights cases, appearing
as a junior to such legal luminaries
as SR Pal and AK Brohi. In 1964
he appeared for my student, Zakir
Ahmed, in the famous case where
Zakir and Fazlul Haq Moni had
their degrees cancelled by Dhaka
University for their involvement
in challenging Governor Monem
Khan’s appearance at the
University Convocation. Both Matia
Chowdhury and Rashed Khan
Menon would remember that event
from up close. Kamal did all the
initial leg work for that case which
went upto the Supreme Court
where their judgement restored
the degrees for Zaker and Moni.
Later in 1966 Kamal appeared as
a junior to SR Pal in the famous
contempt of court case against
the vice-chancellor of Dhaka
University, Osman Ghani, filed
by my colleague in the Economic
Department, Abu Mahmood where
Chief Justice Murshid ruled in
favour of Mahmood. Eventually in
1968, Kamal who had just turned
31, appeared for Bangabandhu in
the infamous Agartala Conspiracy
case where he was one of his
principal legal defenders, working
besides Barrister Tom Williams
who came from London to lend
weight to the defence.
Kamal’s intimate involvement
with Bangabandhu and Tajuddin in
the 1969-71 period, his association
with Nurul Islam, Anisur Rahamn
and myself, in’ drafting the historic
Awami League manifesto for the
1970 election, his involvement in
the final negotiations which served
as a prelude to Yahya’s genocide
on the people of Bangladesh and
the nine months he spent under
interrogation but unbroken, in
Haripur jail in 1971, where he was
indicted with Bangabandhu in
their trial for treason against the
state of Pakistan, are all part of our
history.
It was not unexpected that
Bangabandhu would entrust
Kamal, then only 35 years old, to
serve as the first Law Minister for
an independent Bangladesh and
take the lead role in framing our
constitution, which to this day
remains a testament to the true
spirit of the Liberation War and
a role model for constitutions
across the Third World. Once
the constitution was drafted
and adopted by the Parliament
in March 1973 Bangabandhu
invested Kamal with the even
more challenging task of building
up relations and projecting
Bangladesh’s image across the
world as his Foreign Minister.
In a later period Bangabandhu
added a further challenge to
Kamal to serve concurrently as his
Minister for Petroleum from where
Kamal concluded the historic
agreement with Burnal Shell to
surrender their concessions to the
Bangladesh Oil Gas and Minerals
Corporation at a negligible price.
After the assassination of
Bangabandhu and his family on
15th August, Kamal refused to
serve in the regime of Khondaker
Mostaq where he was asked to
resume his portfolio of Foreign
Minister and spent the next 5
years in exile at Oxford. Kamal
did not return to Bangladesh till
1980 where he engaged himself in
rebuilding the Awami League. In
this endeavour he was one of the
key players, in the historic mission
of persuading Sheikh Hasina to
return to Bangladesh to assume
the Presidency of the Awami
League in May 1981. Through the
1980’s Kamal played a crucial
role alongside Sheikh Hasina and
Khaleda Zia in the struggle to
confront and unseat the Ershad
autocracy.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I do not intend to retail Kamal’s
story over the next three decades
of our turbulent political history.
In Bangladesh history, like truth
and beauty, largely lies in the
eyes of the beholder. Such a
history continues to be written
and rewritten but will one day
find its own, more objective
historians. What I will then say
about Kamal, as he joins me in the
demographics of the 80’s is that
he, in my mind, remains one of
the few people left in this country
in public life whose honesty and
integrity remain above question,
who continues to believe, with
all his heart and every fibre of
his being, in the true spirit of
muktijudder chetona which he
was privileged to inscribe into the
Bangladesh constitution of 1973.
In an age of increasing cynicism
and materialism, within a winner
take all political culture, it takes
a unique act of faith to sustain
a belief that the values of the
liberation struggle can be realised
and not just as ritualised through
slogans which bear little relevance
to our contemporary realities.
The difference between Kamal
and me today is that I have
embraced the teachings of the seer
who prayed:
‘God give me the strength to
bring about what change I can,
the serenity to accept what I
cannot change,
and the wisdom to know the
difference’.
What makes Kamal a better if
not a wiser man than me is that
he challenges such nostrums for
inaction. He continues to live out
his years without serenity because
he is unwilling to accept or tolerate
the world as it is. The apparent
serenity of those close to him to
share his frustrations saddens and
occasionally angers him. His own
fires are fuelled by this continuing
belief in our history of engaging
in what were once deemed as
unwise actions which have driven
the people of Bangladesh forward
even when the odds were totally
against them. The experience of
a people without a tradition of
armed struggle to withstand the
terrorism and genocide inflicted
on them by the Pakistan army and
emerge victorious in their struggle
for national liberation, continues
to inspire Kamal. He believes that
a new generation will take up the
torch to refuel the embers of the
muktijudder chetona, to carry
forward our unfinished liberation
struggle. It is this undiminished
hope which continues to drive
Kamal forward.
We can but hope that divine
providence and the people of
Bangladesh will one day give
Kamal serenity not by accepting
what he cannot change but by
living long enough to witness
the winds of change blowing
across our land. Let us all greet
him with love, respect, and hope
on this memorable occasion and
share, even for a few minutes
if not though our own lifetime,
his vision for a democratic,
tolerant, self-reliant and truly just
Bangladesh. •
Rehman Sobhan is an economist. He is
Founder Chairman of Centre for Policy
Dialogue.