On 16 December 2011 19:12, J. Colaco < jc> <cola...@gmail.com> wrote: > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16207201 > Anthony Mascarenhas July 1928: Born in Goa, 1930s: Educated > in Karachi
A post from May 2006: *** BRIEfnCOUNTERS: A Legacy of Blood ... in Dhaka Frederick Noronha (FN) fred at bytesforall.org Sun May 28 07:53:52 PDT 2006 ________________________________ "Mas-ca-ren-has?" queried a curious Chat Ramilo, obviously struggling with the many syllabyles of the name, as I showed her the book cover. Given the Philippines' Spanish colonial heritage, she might have found the name faintly familiar. But, seeing it at Dhaka, Bangladesh obviously caused the astonishment. Actually, one wasn't personally surprised. Like Radharao Gracias, the maverick legislator from South Goa, my hobby too has been (or should I say had been?) to keep track of POGs (people of Goan descent) across the globe, doing all kinds of odd and unusual things. When I saw Anthony Mascarenhas' book "Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood" at the Dhaka airport, I didn't think twice before picking it up. That I wanted to get done with the few Taka left in my pocket, before leaving back for home, further convinced me to take along a copy of the book. It was priced at Taka 490, and the Taka-Rupee exchange rate is roughly ten-to-seven favouring the rupee. Quite unexpectedly, it didn't end up in my collection of unread books. Maybe one has long underestimated how fascinating contemporary history (particularly that pertaining to living memory) can be to me myself. Maybe one was just bored and had a lot of time to catch in between journeys (thanks to the navy control of Dabolim and the few slots they allow for incoming flights, in reality). Maybe it was just that Anthony Mascarenhas writes so well, in a gripping almost-cinematographic format. As I waited through a four-hour delay for the Bangladesh Biman to Kolkata, while rushing to catch the last evening flight to Mumbai, and also while killing time till the 4:30 am check-in procedures start at the unearthly hour for the flight to Dabolim, one kept reading. This exciting story was another excuse to take a slow bus home, and avoid adding to the (already heavy) load of fossil fuel emissions. On reaching home, one was within 20 pages of finish! Mascarenhas is a journalist of Goan origin, who was based in Pakistan, went on a tour with the military, and was shocked by what was going on in Bangladesh. He subsequently shifted to the UK, wrote for some major papers there, and told the story of what was going on in then East Pakistan. By some accounts (using this term because I'm not sure), he was *the* journalist who broke the story about the genocide in East Pakistan. There are differing perspectives of how many people were killed in the civil war that led (with some nudging by India, for its own geo-political interests) to the break up of Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh. My colleague Partha Sarkar, who co-founded the crazy experiment called BytesForAll almost seven years ago with me, drew attention to the slaughter of Bangladeshi intellectuals just before the Pakistani army moved out of that country. But whether it was three million killed in East Pakistan/Bangladesh (seen by some as an exaggerated figure) or one million, the figure is huge enough to warrant serious concern. If you keep in mind the "five million Jews" figure of World War II, things fall into context. This book is about how, after the break-up from Pakistan, the Bangladeshis themselves ruined things for themselves. It promises to reveal issues like who killed Mujib (many who grew up in India in the 'seventies would find this a familiar name), who was responsible for the jail killings, and how General Zia was assassinated. It is a shocking story of how Bangladesh went in for so many coups in such a short period, the elected rulers ruined things and betrayed aspirations, and how military men went in for coup after coup. Mascarenhas writes in a fascinating style. This book (Hodder and Stoughton, UKP 4.95 net in the UK, ISBN 0-340-39420-X, pp 186, first published in 1986) is a follow-up to his 'The Rape of Bangladesh', which I'm still waiting to read. Says the cover: "Anthony Mascarenhas, a veteran journalist, has been closely associated with Bangladesh from the start of its freedom struggle. In 1971, he left Pakistan to expose in The Sunday Times the atrocities committed by the Pakistani army in the province which is now Bangladesh. That article, and his subsequent book, The Rape of Bangladesh, created a world-wide sensation. In 1972 he won Granada's Geraldl Barry Award ('What the Papers Say'), and the International Publishing company's Special Award for reporting the genocide in Bangladesh. After serving 14 years on The Sunday Times, he is now a freelance writer." Anthony Mascarenhas' work about Bangladesh is linked to quite a few pages in cyberspace. In my favourite collaboratively-crafted Wikipedia itself, there are links to: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh:_A_Legacy_of_Blood and other pages also offer references to his work, such as * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_coups_in_Bangladesh * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Mujibur_Rahman Mascarenhas writes in his preface to his book: "This is a true story; in many ways a text book of Third World disenchantment. On the 16th of December, 1971, the state of Bangladesh (population 70,000,000) was born at the end of a nine-month liberation struggle in which more than a million Bengalis of the erstwhile East Pakistan died at the hands of the Pakistan army. But one of the 20th century's great man-made disasters is also among the greatest of its human triumphs in terms of a people's will for self-determination." This is how the book starts, in the first chapter titled 'Mujib and the Majors': "Not one of the hundred or so guests at the Dhaka Golf Club on the evening of 12 August, 1975, is ever likely to forget the third wedding anniversary party given by the Acting Commandant of the Bengal Lancers, Major Farook Rahman, and his lovely young wife Farida." Mascarenhas goes to tell the story with amazing detail, and an almost I-was-there tone. Everyone who lived through those times (even if only as a schoolkid) would know of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the founding father of Bangladesh. Or so, the media told us. To understand the intrigue and plotting or the hurt egos and the hidden story that saw him in that role, one needs to take a closer look at Mascarenhas' work. And Mascarenhas knew him personally: "We first met in 1956 in the Karachi residence of his political mentor, Husseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who later became prime minister of Pakistan. The friendship developed in the summer of 1958 when for almost a month we shared hotel rooms in Washington, Flagstaff (Arizona), San Francisco and Los Angeles during a tour at the invitation of the American government. I still have a photograph of us taken in Paramount Studios, Hollywood, with our host the great movie moghul Cecil B De Mille, Mickey Rooney and Ava Gardner." One story in particular is about how they gambled together with three Indonesian journalists. Mujib changed their luck from continually losing, after asking for a new pack of cards, on the same trip referred to above. Mascarenhas writes: "Try as they might, all through the long night, the Indonesians were never able to make it again. When we pulled into Los Angeles next morning, Mujib and I were richer by $386, a wrist watch, a Parker 51 with a gold cap, and a thin gold ring in the shape of a snake." Mascarenhas tells the story that only tangentially deals with a people who "had been betrayed by the corrupt, small-minded and power-hungry men who had been swept into office by the tidal wave of the freedom movement. As disillusionment and discontent developed, so did violence. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Founding Father of Bangladesh, was murdered by a group of angry young Majors. Khandaker Moshtaque, who succeeded Mujib as President, initiated the 'Jail Killings' and became a by-word for treachery. General Zia, the next leader, became the target of twenty mutinies and coup attempts. The twentyfirst killed him. This book is the unvarnished, sad history of the first ten years of Bangladesh, and a textbook of Third World disenchantment." And, we're told: "It is based on my close personal knowledge of the main protagonists; on more than 120 separate interviews with the men and women involved in the dramatic events; and on official archives and documents which I had the privilege to inspect personally. The dialogue, whenever used, is a faithful reproduction of the words which my informants said they actually used during the events in which they were involved." There's fascinating detail here. One learns a great deal about the plotters, the people, the killers and the killed. But, as I finished the last pages of this book, a thought struck me: we know so much about *what* happened. We know very little about why* it happened. What were the geo-political interests behind the *pulling of the trigger? Who encouraged so many coups over such a small *period of time? What were the social forces in Bangladesh that allowed *all this to happen? What were the vested interests that *allowed such cliques to get developed and entrenched? This is not intended to question Mascarenhas' impressive work. He has indeed done a fascinating job in narrating history of one remote (for the rest of the world, that is) part of the planet. So, with a tinge of pride, I passed on a hurried history-in-a-capsule account to Chat Ramilo, telling her about the Portuguese colonial link, Goan migration, Karachi and the like in a few hurried sentences. -- FN, May 28, 2006. PS: If you know more about Mascarenhas, please share it with Goanet goanet at goanet.org -- a place to discuss all thinks (even remotely) Goan. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Protect Goa's natural beauty Support Goa's first Tiger Reserve Sign the petition at: http://www.goanet.org/petition/petition.php ---------------------------------------------------------------------------