Leadership: Reflections on Three Illustrious Bengalis

‘I want my liberty. I want my freedom.  I want my right to establish our own system of government.’
--- Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das    (5 Nov 1870-16 June 1925)

‘My task today is to lead the final stage for India’s emancipation. But when that task is fulfilled and India is liberated, it will then be my duty to report to my countrymen and leave it to them to decide what form of government they would like to have.’
--- Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose (23 Jan 1897-18 August 1945(?)

‘Since we have given blood, we will give more of it but we will free this country, God willing. Our struggle today is for our emancipation. Our struggle today is for independence.’
--- Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (17 March 1920-15 August 1975)

Chittaranjan Das, Subhash Chandra Bose and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman continue to occupy pre-eminent places in the pantheon of Bengali heroic figures, across the geographical and political divide. They exercise a hold on the imagination that is hardly to be spotted anywhere else in the Bengali historical discourse.
The rather unexpected death of Chittaranjan Das in 1925 is generally looked upon as a period when India began its descent into communalistic decline, with all the ramifications that it would manifest in subsequent years. Having been the most influential force behind the Bengal Pact, Das appeared to be on his way towards taking on himself a bigger role in the struggle for Indian independence. Bengalis have held fast to the notion, however wishful or perhaps misplaced, that had Das been around longer, history would be different and India might have been spared the trauma of partition. Das’ belief in constitutional politics was unambiguous and without ambivalence, as his role in the battle between the No-changers and Pro-changers in the Congress in the 1920s was so forcefully to demonstrate.
With Subhash Chandra Bose is associated the image of the rebellious, indeed the militant Bengali. He has, thanks to his radical espousal of the cause of Indian independence, attained something of a mythical status in the subcontinent, especially among Bengalis of diverse religious denominations. Long after partition in 1947 and to this day, Bengalis in pre-1971 Pakistan as well as the Indian state of West Bengal remain reverential toward Bose, to a point where he has been transformed into a near cult figure, or has become part of folklore. Bose’s journey from constitutional politics to political radicalism against colonial rule was eventually to define his approach to the cause of Indian independence, though misgivings and questions have endlessly persisted about his association with Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.
In his time, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman came to be regarded by Bengalis in Pakistan as belonging to the tradition set by Subhash Chandra Bose. The reason was simple: through his long years of struggle for Bengali rights, beginning in the late 1940s and going up all the way to the early 1970s, in the feudal-militaristic state of Pakistan, Mujib had become emblematic of Bengali aspirations.  His graduation from communal Muslim politics to Bengali nationalistic-cum-constitutional politics would, by early 1971, find itself pushed into radicalism brought on by Pakistan’s failure to accept his primacy of national leadership after the general elections of December 1970. Through his travails in prison, where altogether he spent no fewer than thirteen years and the final spell of which was solitary confinement in West Pakistan in 1971, Mujib graduated to being the father of an independent Bengali nation and thereby carved a niche for himself in local folklore. 
A common thread linking these three Bengali political leaders is the principle of nationalism they applied, though in various shades and in line with their individual interpretations, in the pursuit of their political objectives.
For Deshbandhu, nationalism was fundamentally an exploration of the constitutional means through which self-rule for India could be arrived at. His activist role in the formation of the Swaraj Party in the early 1920s, more as a way of enabling Indians to enter the councils decreed by the British and wage battle against the colonial power from within, was a statement in favour of Indian nationalism solidifying itself through engagement with democratic principles.
Nationalism for Netaji was essentially a determined drive for freedom, first through the principle of constitutional politics and then, when he felt Gandhi’s methods of non-violent non-cooperation were not working or were inadequate, through the radical move of initiating armed struggle against the British colonial power. His leadership of the Indian National Army, indeed his transformation into a military leader driven by the ambition of liberating Delhi, has certainly been faulted for the flaws it was riddled with. Even so, his nationalistic instincts were to give him the wherewithal for the historical perch he enjoys in history today.
Bangabandhu’s concept of nationalism came about in ways different from those of Deshbandhu and Netaji. Throughout their careers, Das and Bose never strayed from secular politics. In contrast, Mujib’s career had its beginnings in the communal politics of the All-India Muslim League in the 1940s. A life-long disciple of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, he was a participant in the formation of the Awami Muslim League in 1949. The party was to jettison the term ‘Muslim’ from its name in the 1950s as a way of giving itself a secular political character. Mujib’s politics effectively broke free of its communal constraints and moved towards a clear state of secularism through his espousal, in 1966, of a Six-Point plan of regional autonomy for Pakistan’s federating units. He would be the driving force behind the rise of Bengali nationalism in Pakistan, a phenomenon that would challenge the whole raison d’etre of the state created by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and eventually lead to its collapse in East Bengal. 
Partition in 1947 left Bengal traumatised. The genocide initiated by Pakistan’s army in 1971 left East Bengal splattered with blood and gore. It is estimated that three million Bengalis perished in undivided Bengal in the famine of 1943. Estimates point to the mass murder of three million Bengalis in occupied Bangladesh by Pakistan’s military junta. Three million Bengali Hindus, among whom were teachers, writers, traders and civil servants, made their way to West Bengal in the wake of Partition. Close to a million Bengali Muslims made the trek from West Bengal to East Bengal in search of a new future.
That has been a long Bengali tragedy. And yet Bengal, on both sides of the frontier, has thrived, despite the many bumps down the road, in culture, in aesthetics, in secular belief, in adhering to a sense of history. In Deshbandhu, in Netaji and in Bangabandhu, the idea of being Bengali, the conviction that heritage matters, that politics must be purposeful have consistently and endlessly thrived. 
_____________________________________
Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, diplomacy and history