Victory Day

The young Bangladeshi nation emerged after more than two decades of a struggle for self-determination followed by nine months of a liberation war in the face of genocide by West Pakistani soldiers and their collaborators. Ultimately, just 13 days of a battle aided by the participation of Indian soldiers brought the desired victory. Pakistan occupation forces Chief General AAK Niazi surrendered along with his 93,000 troops in Dhaka to the Bangladeshi Liberation Army and the allied Indian army on that historic day.

Sense of guilt and promises unfulfilled

Forty years later, despite the jubilation and the sense of triumph, there is also a certain amount of soul-searching. The English-language newspaper "New Age" speaks in its editorial of the "sense of guilt" since Bangladesh has not been able to bring those guilty of genocide and the war crimes to trial.

Further, "we must ask ourselves whether or not the objectives of our independence... have been realised over the past forty years," the paper writes.

Economically, it mentions the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. On the political front, it points to the "kind of oligarchy of a few families and interest groups, under the banner of two inherently undemocratic camps led by the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

"Culturally, the state has drifted far away from its secular-democratic promise. Gender discrimination remains a crude reality at all levels of life. The ethnic minority communities are yet to be freed from racial discrimination. Bangladesh needs to defeat all these anomalies to become really victorious," New Age writes.

Winning the peace

Bangladesh was founded as a secular republic but has since undergone a process of creeping Islamization, critics claim. The country's founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had been an avowed secularist, but after his assassination in 1975 and the military coup that followed, the constitution was amended to replace secularism with "absolute faith in Allah," to legalize religious-based political parties and make Islam the state religion. The current secular government of Sheikh Hasina is said to have rolled back some of the religious inroads initiated by previous military regimes.

But there are signs that some of the older, historic tensions might be in the process of unwinding. December 16, for example, is celebrated as Vijay Diwas, or Victory Day, by both the armies of Bangladesh and India. This year, delegations of retired army officers from both countries who experienced the 1971 war are visiting each other's capital for four days starting from - December 16.

Author: Arun Chowdhury (PTI, AFP)
Editor: Sarah Berning