Victory Day: Rising to the call of duty

FE Team | Published: December 15, 2025 21:47:04

Victory is at its sweetest when won against overwhelming odds. The victory earned by the people of this land on this day 55 years ago against the brutal Pakistani forces and their local collaborators is one such le triomphe final (the final triumph). For nine months, the Bangalees suffered the worst and yet kindled in their bosoms the hope of heaving a sigh of relief on the day of victory. Ever since the declaration of independence on March 26 following the massacre unleashed by the marauding Pakistani army, the people, except the collaborators, here mostly spent sleepless nights and waited for this day. This is the day when resistance to the imposed war and barbarity against an innocent civilian population would culminate in a liberated land. The people would no longer live in fear but enjoy freedom like any other nation in a free country.
No other day matches the euphoria and exuberance of this historic day when deliverance of the nation comes to a full circle of the struggles initiated by the language movement in 1952 and taken ahead by the subsequent movements in 1962, 1966 and 1969. When the Pakistani military command with 93,000 military personnel and civilians surrendered to the joint forces of India and Mukti Bahini at the then Race Course, not only was history made but also proved the evil force's ultimate defeat to the virtuous and righteous oppositions. December 16 marks the culmination of the subjugation of a people that deserved better than what the Pakistani dictatorial rulers disdainfully offered to it. Merits of the Bangalees were undermined consistently by contemptuous bias from a make-believe sense of superiority.
A new nation was deprived of the service of its highly talented intellectuals and other professionals. As soon as the Pakistani occupation forces sensed defeat, they launched a macabre plan in collaboration of their local agents -- Razakar, Al-Badar, Al-Shams and Islami Chhatra Sangha to exterminate the nation's best sons and daughters. This was done with the vicious objective of depriving the new nation of the services of the intelligentsia. Sure enough, the nation sorely missed contribution of those talented people who were picked up and killed when the country needed them most. This is on top of the genocide. So, victory was earned at a very high price.
That Bangladesh time and again loses its way in the woods is mostly a legacy of that large-scale decapitation of Bangalee intelligentsia in 1971. Yet Bangladesh has to its credit some remarkable achievements in the social and economic sectors. In several areas of life and livelihoods, the country gave far better accounts than those by Pakistan. If those people of genius were alive, the reversals Bangladesh has suffered several times might be avoided. Politics here is murky but Pakistan's is murkier with the undesirable influence of the army there. Against overwhelming odds, the economy in Bangladesh strode defiantly but for the misrule of a party that led the liberation war only to degenerate over the past decades. Had the oligarchic rule responsible for plundering enormous amounts of money from banks and laundering it abroad not been there, the country's development indices would be enviable. The country's politics has remained fragile and this is responsible for the reversal on the economic front. Both fall far short of the people's soaring expectation matching the spirit of the liberation war that delivered a new nation based on equitable distribution of wealth on this day 55 years ago. Reform of the entire gamut of governance, including political and economic, is the call of duty on this day.