Azam’s baseless claim

Former Jamaat-e-Islami chief Ghulam Azam started claiming he was a veteran of the 1952 Language Movement veteran after a campaign demanding his trial for 1971 war crimes gained momentum in the early 1990s.

The movement for Azam’s trial was initiated under the leadership of ‘Shaheed Janani’ (martyr’s mother) Jahanara Imam.

Language Movement researcher and Jatiya Mukti Council chief Badruddin Umar told bdnews24.com: “When he (Azam) found that he could not exploit Islam after coming back home in 1978, he claimed himself a Language movement veteran before he was given back his nationality.”

He described the claim of Azam’s involvement with the democratic and secular movement as a ‘political strategy’ of the Jamaat, which had been against Bangladesh’s independence and had collaborated with the Pakistan Army.

Umar, also a veteran leftist leader, said Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan addressed a rally at the Dhaka University on Nov 27, 1948, where DUCSU (Dhaka University Central Students Union) demanded Bangla as a state language in an address of honour.

“The address of honour was supposed to be given by DUCSU Vice-President Arabindo Bose. Apprehensions of an adverse Muslim League campaign if it is read out by a Hindu student led to DUCSU Secretary General Ghulam Azam reading it out as a Muslim student,” he said.

“That is Ghulam Azam’s claim to being a Language Movement veteran,” Umar said.

“He (Azam) did it under pressure. It (reading out under pressure) is proved by his speech given at a reception accorded to him by Anjuman-e-Yaran at Sukkur (in Sindh) in 1970 in the then West Pakistan.”

He described the Language Movement a ‘political blunder’.

Dainik Azad, a Bangla daily published from erstwhile East Pakistan ran a report on June 20, 1970, on its fifth page on Azam’s speech under the caption “Movement for Bangla language was a mistake”.

The paper quoted Azam as saying: “Most of the culture and the treasure of religious knowledge of the Muslims are preserved in Urdu.”

Admitting that he was among those who demanded Bangla as a state language, he regretted his role and said: “It was not fair at all from the perspective of establishment of Pakistan, because Urdu is widely used by Muslims of all provinces of Pakistan and India.”

Umar in an article titled ‘Jamaat-e-Islami on the Language Movement and Liberation War’ said the radical party’s efforts to prove its involvement in the language movement was a ‘part of a political strategy’.

The article said: “They (Jamaat) started making the same claim again. They recently released a video cassette titled ‘History of the Language Movement’. ‘Mother tongue Bangla is the best gift of Allah’ is written on the cover of the cassette. They are now trying to present mother tongue as the best gift of Allah, leaving everything.”

In the cassette “he (Azam) tried to present himself as an activist of the Language Movement”, he wrote.

Azam’s claim of participation in the Language Movement, later his regret for the involvement, and now repeating the same claim and describing Bangla as the best gift of Allah and says “this is the magic of the Jamaat’.

“There is no Islamic morality in all these,” he said.