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There used to be a time —- and that was in my youth —- when I thought I would be a politician. On a monsoon evening before the gates of the old Ganabhaban, where I stood nearly every evening to have a glimpse of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as he left the place for home, he had his car stop and called me over to him.
He wanted to know why I stood there every day. I told him. He smiled and advised me to spend my time studying at home rather than see him every evening. I took his advice, but before his car moved off, I blurted out: ‘Sir, when I finish my education, I would like to be part of your government.’
The Father of the Nation, whom I had met for the first time in July 1970 in Quetta, smiled benignly at me. ‘Ekhon barhi jao (now go home)’, he said. His vehicle then moved off and I walked back home to Malibagh. But that ambition of being in politics, of going into politics through a career in Bangabandhu’s light, did not come to pass.
My dream, as well as the dreams of an entire nation, lay battered when this superman in our lives was shot down through a vast conspiracy only three and a half years into the achievement of national liberation.
Politics, as I have had cause over the years to realise, is a noble undertaking, one that is enriched through a democratic process of elections. We have just had an election, which has been reason for me to go down memory lane and recall all the elections which since my schooldays have been a matter of excitement for me.
I recall that the first election I saw first-hand was in 1964 when the two wings of pre-1971 Pakistan remained busy with the election of Basic Democrats. I was not yet in my teens, but those elections under the Ayub Khan dispensation took my fancy since my father was taking keen interest in the matter of who would be the BD member in our locality.
In that election, my father cast his vote for the candidate who did not win. Even so, the Pathan politician who won went through the lanes and streets of the locality in the company of his followers thanking people for their votes. At the gate to our house, he spotted my father, embraced him effusively and thanked him for his vote.
Father smiled while the man’s followers shouted ‘Haq sahib zindabad.’ Haq sahib was of course my father. I was quite intrigued. My father had not voted for that Pathan politician and yet he was the recipient of the latter’s thanks!
In 1968, as the anti-Ayub movement gathered pace in both East and West Pakistan, Time magazine carried an item on Z.A. Bhutto, noting that Ayub’s once loyal foreign minister had decided to challenge his former mentor at the next presidential election that would be held in 1970.
I recall I was a trifle surprised, and wondered if Bhutto could really defeat Ayub. After all, the President had been around for a decade and had in 1965 defeated Fatima Jinnah when he sought re-election.
Ayub Khan of course was not around in 1970 when Pakistan’s very first general election took place. In the course of the campaign, I made it a point to scour the newspapers and read all the political reports which appeared in Dawn and the Pakistan Times.
At one point, I collected a number of Awami League badges, emblazoned with the boat symbol, from the Balochistan office of the party and distributed many of them to my friends in our neighbourhood and in my school. In June of the year, some of my friends and I went to see Bhutto when he came to Quetta and collected his autograph.
But the bigger highlight of the election campaign for me was meeting Bangabandhu, having dinner with him and collecting his autograph in Quetta. On election day, 7 December, as the results were being broadcast on Radio Pakistan, my father and I listened intently, especially since our interest was in finding out how many seats the Awami League was winning in the east. It was hard keeping count of the seats the party was taking in the voting. All the seats appeared to be coming to it, and they did, except for two.
The next day, I collected a large poster, all of which was actually Bangabandhu’s portrait, from the local Awami League office, got on my bicycle, held the poster open in one hand and navigated the streets with the other. It was not an easy ride as I had to alight from the bicycle ever so often because elderly and middle-aged people on the streets wanted to take a good look at Bangabandhu.
They observed his features with deep respect, with some of them loudly saying in Urdu, ‘Sheikh sahib hamare wazir-e-azam banenge’ —- Sheikh sahib will become our Prime Minister. The heart in me swelled with pride.
My interest in other elections was also intense. America was not and is not my country, but in 1968 I thought Eugene McCarthy would end up being President at the election that year. I was naïve, to be sure, and I thought Robert Kennedy was a carpetbagger when he entered the race after McCarthy had demonstrated that he could be a giant killer, the giant being President Lyndon Johnson.
Soon the whole picture changed. Kennedy was murdered, McCarthy did not get the Democratic Party nomination, which went to Vice President Hubert Humphrey. My interest shifted to Richard Nixon and I hoped intensely that, having lost two elections, in 1960 and 1962, he would succeed in his third attempt. He won against Humphrey narrowly, but I was happy. One other time I was happy with a US election was when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in 1976.
In 1991, it was my privilege to be part of the Awami League media team during the campaign for the February election. On the team were illustrious people like the deeply respected Gaziul Haq. It was good experience dealing with foreign media organisations interested in interviewing Sheikh Hasina. When the Awami League lost the election, an election we thought the party would win, we were all heartbroken.
Five years later, though, things were beautifully different. I remember the evening when, having been sworn in as Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina came to 32 Dhanmondi with Dr Wazed Mia. I stood beside the veteran freedom fighter Kader Siddiqui to greet the country’s new leader.
It was a day when history reasserted itself. It felt wonderful being alive, being a Bengali, being a citizen who had voted for a revival of freedom in the land.
As for that political ambition in youth, one’s late sixties is hardly a time to have it fulfilled.