Shehryar Fazli in The Ideas Letter:
“This was a destruction not of a house but of our history, of my history,” said a veteran of Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation war. He was speaking to me of the destruction on Feb. 5 of the Dhaka home of Sheikh Mujib ur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first leader.
The address, 32 Dhanmondi, is as well known in Bangladesh as 1600 Pennsylvania in the U.S. It is where, in March 1971, Mujib was apprehended by Pakistani troops as they began their violent crackdown in East Pakistan that culminated in a genocide, the third Pakistan-India war, and the birth of a new nation. And it is where, on Aug. 15, 1975, Bangladeshi soldiers slaughtered Prime Minister Mujib and several members of his family in the country’s first military coup. That it now stands in ruins is an indication of how much public anger had accumulated during the 15 years of the increasingly repressive rule under Mujib’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, which ended dramatically on Aug. 5, 2024 after weeks of student-led protests.
Hasina had turned 32 Dhanmondi into a memorial for her father. Now exiled in India, where she fled after her fall from power, Hasina is plotting a political comeback. On Feb. 5, marking a gathering of her Awami League party, she planned to give a speech that would condemn Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus’s interim government and announce her intentions to avenge her ouster. The youth leaders warned that if she spoke they would destroy her father’s house.
More here.
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