In 1880 Abdu Hamid Khan Bhashani was born in Dhangara village in Sirajganj,
presently a district, formerly a subdivision under Pabna in present-day
Bangladesh. He was the son of Sharafat Ali Khan. Between 1907 and 1909 he
received religious education at the Deoband Madrasah.[citation needed] The
association of Mahmudul Hasan (known as Shaikhul Hind) and other progressive
Islamic thinkers inspired Bhasani against British imperialism.[citation needed]
In 1909 he started teaching in a primary school at Kagmaree, Tangail. From 1909
to 1913 he worked with political extremists.[vague] In 1914 he revolted against
the Christian missionaries in the Netrakona and Sherpur areas of East Bengal.
Because of his educational background he received the title Maulana.. He was popularly known
as Maulana Bhasani, Abdul Hamid Khan was self-educated, village-based, a
fire-brand, and skeptical about colonial institutions. Though immensely
influential throughout his political career and instrumental in winning many
general and local government elections since 1946, he consistently stayed away
from holding actual power. His leadership was rooted in his relentless and
incessant struggle for safeguarding the rights and interests of the peasantry
and the labouring classes.
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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.
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Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan
Bhasani
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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 workers'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 signaling 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
zihad or holy war against the awami league government and
Indo-Soviet overlordship. 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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