They Cannot Rewrite the Road to Bangladesh

History is being contested again in Bangladesh—not in a seminar room, but on the walls and floors of Dhaka University.

The recent controversy over the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) historical archive is more than a quarrel over photographs. After the renovated archive reopened on 13 September, photographs and newspaper material concerning Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Abdul Malek, a prominent leader of Islami Chhatra Sangha, the student organisation associated with Jamaat-e-Islami in East Pakistan, were displayed. The display prompted protests. On 14 September, a former DU student tore down two photographs of Jinnah; the following day, another group placed photographs of Jinnah and Jamaat-e-Islami leader Ghulam Azam on the floor and trampled them in protest. Dhaka University subsequently formed investigation committees and said that displaying photographs of individuals whose roles conflicted with the history of the 1952 Language Movement and the 1971 Liberation War was unacceptable.

History should not be protected by vandalism. It should be protected by facts.

And the facts about Jinnah and Pakistan’s relationship with Bengali aspirations are uncomfortable enough without embellishment.

Jinnah did not, obviously, oppose Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. He died in 1948. But that chronological fact should not prevent a serious examination of what kind of Pakistan he sought to build and how compatible that conception was with the linguistic, cultural and political aspirations of the Bengali majority.

The answer became apparent almost immediately after Pakistan was created.

On 23 February 1948, Dhirendranath Datta, a Bengali member of Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly, moved an amendment seeking recognition of Bangla among the languages that could be used in the Assembly. His argument rested on a basic democratic reality: Bengali was spoken by more than half of Pakistan’s population. The proposal was rejected.

Jinnah then came to Dhaka. On 21 March 1948, at the Race Course, he declared that Urdu would be Pakistan’s state language. Three days later, at Dhaka University’s Curzon Hall, he reiterated that the state language could only be Urdu. Students immediately protested. The confrontation was not a later political invention; it occurred publicly in Jinnah’s presence.

The significance of the episode lies partly in what the Bengali protesters were not demanding. In 1948, the demand was not for the dissolution of Pakistan. Datta was seeking recognition of Bangla within Pakistan’s constitutional framework. The students were demanding linguistic equality, not announcing an independent Bangladesh.

The transformation from that demand to the demand for sovereignty came over the next two decades, as disputes over language, provincial autonomy, economic inequality, political representation and democratic rights accumulated. Pakistan had been founded on the political argument that Muslims constituted a distinct nation, but the creation of Pakistan did not erase the powerful identities of language, region and culture. Bengali Muslims were Muslims—and Bengalis.

The Language Movement began well before 1952. Tamaddun Majlish and student organisations played important roles in the initial mobilisation of 1947–48, followed by strikes, protests, arrests and political agitation. By 1952, the language question had become a mass movement. On 21 February, police opened fire on demonstrators in Dhaka, killing several protesters, including students and activists.

Ekushey was therefore not simply a cultural commemoration. It was the culmination of a political struggle over recognition, equality and identity. It became one of the foundations of Bengali political consciousness and, ultimately, part of the longer road to Bangladesh.

That history also provides the necessary context for understanding Jamaat-e-Islami’s role in 1971.

Jamaat opposed Bangladesh’s independence and supported the preservation of Pakistan. Its student organisation, Islami Chhatra Sangha, was closely associated with the formation and operation of Al-Badr, while Jamaat leaders and publications campaigned in support of Pakistan during the war. These activities subsequently became subjects of proceedings before Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal.

The roles of organisations and individuals should nevertheless be distinguished. Motiur Rahman Nizami, then a leading figure of Islami Chhatra Sangha, was subsequently convicted by the International Crimes Tribunal in connection with crimes committed during the Liberation War. The tribunal proceedings also examined the role of Jamaat and its leadership in opposing Bangladesh’s independence.

Ghulam Azam’s postwar activities form another part of the record. Reporting on the tribunal proceedings states that after Bangladesh’s independence he became associated with efforts to restore Pakistan’s former eastern wing, including the formation of the Purbo Pakistan Punoruddhar Committee.

These facts should neither be exaggerated nor obscured.

Indeed, one of the most revealing recent developments in the debate has come from within Jamaat itself. According to The Daily Star, former Jamaat assistant secretary general Abdur Razzaq recorded in his posthumously published memoir, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami: Its History and Politics, repeated internal efforts to confront the party’s 1971 record and formulate a formal apology. According to his account, such efforts began in 1994 and continued at various points for more than two decades.

The most striking proposal came in 2016. The draft explicitly acknowledged that Jamaat-e-Islami had opposed Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, expressed regret and apologised to the people of Bangladesh. It also expressed regret that the party had failed to oppose the Pakistani military action. The proposed statement, however, was never formally adopted.

For a political organisation seeking legitimacy in Bangladesh, how it confronts that history therefore remains an unavoidable question.

The question has acquired renewed relevance following the September 2025 DUCSU election, when candidates backed by Islami Chhatra Shibir won 23 of the 28 central positions, including vice-president and general secretary. The result demonstrated Shibir’s substantial presence in contemporary student politics, but it did not settle the historical debate over 1971.

The answer should not be to tell young Bangladeshis whom they should support or what conclusions they should reach. It should be to place the documentary record before them. They should be able to read Jinnah’s 1948 speeches, examine Dhirendranath Datta’s proposal, study the records of the Language Movement, and review Jamaat’s newspapers and statements from 1971. They should also be able to examine the International Crimes Tribunal judgments and Abdur Razzaq’s account of the internal attempts to confront Jamaat’s wartime record. A confident nation does not fear historical evidence; it trusts its citizens, especially its young people, to engage with it critically.

The same principle must apply to Bangladesh’s relationship with Pakistan.

There is nothing inherently wrong with maintaining normal diplomatic relations, strengthening economic ties or allowing Pakistani diplomats to engage with Bangladesh’s political leaders. Nor should younger Bangladeshis be discouraged from developing an interest in Pakistan or seeking greater cultural and economic contact. But improved relations between two sovereign states do not require either country to suppress, sanitise or rewrite the painful history that separated them. Genuine reconciliation requires mutual respect and honesty about the past.

Pakistan’s renewed diplomatic engagement with Bangladesh has included high-level contacts with Bangladeshi political organisations, including Jamaat-e-Islami. Such engagement is a normal part of international diplomacy. But it should not become an occasion for obscuring the history of 1971 or avoiding the unresolved historical questions between the two countries.

The DUCSU controversy should therefore provoke something more constructive than another round of partisan confrontation.

Jinnah’s photograph can certainly have a place in a museum—but only if the museum tells the whole story. His photograph should be accompanied by the words he actually spoke about Urdu and by the contemporary debate over Bangla. The historical narrative should include Dhirendranath Datta’s demand, the Language Movement, the arrests and the bloodshed of 21 February 1952; the Six-Point Movement; the 1970 general election and the denial of its mandate; the military crackdown of March 1971; and the wartime positions and activities of Jamaat-e-Islami and other organisations that opposed Bangladesh’s independence, alongside the documented roles of the Al-Badr, Razakar and Al-Shams formations. And the story must ultimately lead to the emergence of Bangladesh and its victory in 1971.

That is what a museum should do: preserve history with context, evidence and uncomfortable truths intact. Anything less risks turning an institution of historical memory into an exercise in political editing.

Bangladesh should not fear history—not Jinnah’s history, not Pakistan’s history, not Jamaat’s history and not the uncomfortable chapters of its own history. But historical complexity must not become a pretext for treating every competing narrative as equally supported by evidence.

The Language Movement happened. The struggle for Bengali political and democratic rights happened. The 1970 election and the subsequent refusal to honour its mandate happened. The Pakistani military crackdown happened. The Liberation War happened. Jamaat-e-Islami and other political organisations opposed Bangladesh’s independence and supported the preservation of Pakistan. And the immense suffering and sacrifice of the people of this land happened. Out of that history emerged an independent Bangladesh.

These are not merely competing interpretations. They are events supported by a substantial documentary record. They can be debated, studied and interpreted, but they cannot responsibly be erased or rearranged to serve the politics of the present.

No photograph can change that history. No diplomatic initiative can erase it. No political slogan can undo it.

And no generation of Bangladeshis should be asked to forget the road by which their country came into being.