Jinnah on the Wall, 1971 Under Erasure

There is something profoundly revealing about the latest controversy at Dhaka University.

The renovated DUCSU museum/archive reopened with photographs and historical material relating to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, including an image of his 21 March 1948 declaration on Pakistan’s state language, a photograph from the 1940 Muslim League session in Lahore and a Dawn clipping relating to the 1970 election. Students protested. One student tore down Jinnah’s photographs, while other protesters subsequently displayed a photograph of former Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Ghulam Azam being beaten with shoes outside Baitul Mukarram in 1981. The university administration has announced an investigation.

It would be wrong to argue that Jinnah has no place in a historical archive. He was the founder of Pakistan and one of the most consequential political figures in South Asian history. But if Jinnah is placed on the wall of Dhaka University, the historical context of his politics must be placed beside him.

And nowhere is that context more important than the language question.

In March 1948, Jinnah insisted that Urdu should be Pakistan’s state language. His position did not amount to a prohibition on Bengali as a provincial language. But his insistence on Urdu as the sole state language of Pakistan collided directly with the emerging Bengali linguistic and political consciousness.

The Language Movement that followed was not an isolated linguistic dispute. It became one of the foundational experiences from which Bengali nationalism developed.

That history cannot be separated from the story of Bangladesh.

Pakistan was created in 1947 on the basis of Muslim political identity. Yet the majority population of that new state was Bengali-speaking and lived in its eastern wing. The tensions that followed were not simply linguistic. They involved political representation, economic inequality, provincial autonomy and, ultimately, the right of the Bengali majority to determine its own political future.

The 1952 Language Movement, the United Front victory, the Six-Point movement, the mass uprising of 1969 and the Awami League’s sweeping victory in the 1970 election were stages in that political evolution.

When the Pakistani establishment refused to transfer power after the 1970 election, the crisis became existential.

Then came Operation Searchlight and the Liberation War.

That is why Jinnah cannot honestly be presented simply as an uncomplicated founding father whose political legacy somehow leads naturally to Bangladesh.

Bangladesh emerged from the cumulative failure of the Pakistani state to accommodate the political, linguistic, economic and democratic aspirations of the Bengali majority.

Yet since the fall of Sheikh Hasina, a new contest over historical memory has become increasingly visible.

The Awami League’s attempt for years to monopolise the history of 1971 deserved to be challenged. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s enormous historical role does not require the suppression of the contributions of Tajuddin Ahmad, Syed Nazrul Islam, the other political leaders, student organisations, cultural activists, freedom fighters, ordinary citizens and millions of refugees who shaped the struggle for independence.

But dismantling an Awami League monopoly cannot mean handing historical legitimacy to those who opposed Bangladesh’s independence.

That is where the recent revival of Jinnah commemorations becomes significant.

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DU student tears up images of Jinnah at DUCSU gallery

Since the August 2024 uprising, at least three specifically Jinnah-focused public commemorations have been documented in Dhaka.

On 11 September 2024, the Nawab Salimullah Academy organised a programme at the National Press Club to mark Jinnah’s 76th death anniversary. Contemporary reports described it as the first public commemoration of Jinnah’s death anniversary in Bangladesh since independence.

On 25 December 2024, the same organisation held a programme at the National Press Club marking Jinnah’s 148th birth anniversary. The event was more than a simple remembrance of a historical personality. Some speakers made claims that directly challenged the established understanding of 1971. The reported remarks included the assertion by Mohammad Shamsuddin, convener of Nagorik Parishad, that Bangladesh exists because of Jinnah, alongside claims that India was responsible for separating Bangladesh from Pakistan.

And on 25 December 2025, the Nawab Salimullah Academy again organised a programme to mark Jinnah’s 149th birth anniversary. Reporting from the event again quoted Shamsuddin saying that Bangladesh exists because of the Quaid-e-Azam. The presence of Pakistani diplomats at these events was noticed.

However, there is insufficient evidence to claim that the Pakistan High Commission organised or sponsored these commemorations.

That distinction matters.

The issue is not whether Pakistan’s diplomats or Bangladeshi citizens are entitled to remember Jinnah. Of course they are.

The issue is what happens when the commemoration of Jinnah becomes accompanied by a reinterpretation of 1971.

That reinterpretation is visible in some of the statements made at these events.

If Bangladesh’s independence is presented as merely an unfortunate division of a Muslim country engineered by India, then the central political meaning of 1971 disappears.

If the Liberation War becomes simply a “war between two brothers”, then the question of why the Pakistani state used military force against the Bengali majority is pushed aside.

If 1947 is presented as Bangladesh’s “first independence”, the historical meaning of 1971 is fundamentally altered.

This is why the emergence in 2025 of “First Independence” rhetoric deserves attention.

A programme held in Dhaka on 14 August 2025 promoted the idea of 1947 as a “first independence”.

There is nothing wrong with studying 1947. Indeed, Bangladesh cannot understand 1971 without understanding Partition.

But Bangladesh did not become independent from Britain in 1947.

East Bengal became part of Pakistan.

The sovereign state of Bangladesh emerged in 1971.

That distinction is not semantic. It is the difference between two entirely different historical narratives.

In one narrative, 1947 is the beginning and 1971 is essentially a regrettable rupture between two Muslim communities.

In the other, 1947 is the beginning of a political experiment that ultimately failed in East Bengal, while 1971 is the culmination of a long struggle for democratic, linguistic, political and national self-determination.

That is the historical battle now taking place.

And Jamaat-e-Islami’s political rehabilitation makes the battle particularly sensitive.

Jamaat’s wartime opposition to Bangladesh’s independence is not a minor footnote. The party’s leadership opposed the creation of Bangladesh, and several senior Jamaat figures were subsequently convicted by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal for crimes committed during the 1971 conflict.

The party is entitled to participate in contemporary democratic politics. Its supporters are entitled to argue for its political programme.

But political rehabilitation cannot require historical rehabilitation.

The question that must remain on the table is simple: what did Jamaat’s leadership believe about Bangladesh’s independence in 1971?

The answer should not be rewritten because the political circumstances have changed.

Nor should criticism of the Awami League’s abuse of the Liberation War narrative be used as an excuse to rehabilitate Pakistan’s political project.

Bangladesh needs neither a Mujib-only history nor a Pakistan-friendly version of its past. It needs the whole history—the difficult, complex and sometimes uncomfortable story of how this country came into being.

That means Jinnah belongs in the archive, but so does the Language Movement that challenged the language policy of the Pakistani state. The 1970 election belongs there, as does the refusal to honour its democratic mandate. So do Operation Searchlight, the genocide, the resistance and the millions who were driven into exile as refugees.

The stories of the freedom fighters and ordinary citizens who endured and resisted the violence must remain central to our national memory.

And equally, Bangladesh must not shy away from the uncomfortable history of those political forces within the country that opposed independence and supported the Pakistani state in 1971.

Only by confronting all these dimensions of our past can we preserve a history that belongs not to any single political party or ideology, but to the people of Bangladesh.

The proper response to the DUCSU controversy is therefore not to ban Jinnah’s photograph.

It is to demand better history.

If Jinnah is displayed, display his March 1948 language declaration beside it. Explain what it meant. Explain why Bengali students rejected the state’s language policy. Explain how the language question became part of a much larger struggle.

If the 1940 Lahore Resolution is displayed, explain its political evolution and what happened to the promise of provincial autonomy.

If the 1970 election is displayed, explain why the electoral verdict of the Bengali majority was not honoured.

An archive should make students ask uncomfortable questions.

It should not tell them which heroes to worship.

The danger today is not that Jinnah’s photograph has returned to Dhaka University.

The danger is that the photograph might return without the history that explains why Bangladesh ultimately rejected the Pakistan he founded.

The July uprising created an opportunity to free Bangladesh’s history from partisan ownership.

That opportunity must not become an invitation to erase 1971.

The Awami League does not own the Liberation War.

Jamaat does not own its revision.

Pakistan does not get to reinterpret it.

And neither should any government.

The Liberation War belongs to the people of Bangladesh.

That is precisely why the history of how—and why—Bangladesh came into existence must remain non-negotiable.