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Jahanara Imam

Brilliance shining through the dark

Published : Saturday, 18 February, 2017 at 8:13 PM  Count : 407
Syed Badrul Ahsan
Jahanara Imam is today part of our history. And she is not merely because she is the mother of a martyr but also because in her was the epitome of all the mothers of all our martyrs during the War of Liberation. Again, her place in history was assured to a very great extent when she turned into the symbol of the nation's struggle for a reassertion of the principles upon which we went to war in 1971.
Let us not forget that when Jahanara Imam provided leadership --- and she did it most brilliantly --- to the campaign for the trial of a notorious collaborator in the 1990s, the country was in the grip of a regime that was unwilling to demonstrate fealty to the principles we upheld during the war. It was a reactionary government in power, a cabal which over the years had encouraged the rehabilitation and rise of all those elements which had helped the Pakistan occupation army perpetuate genocide, a pogrom which led to the death of three million Bengalis.
Imam did not flinch from leading the new struggle, did not come forth with excuses about any inability on her part to integrate herself with the struggle. She threw herself into the campaign. In the end, she did not succeed, but again, it was success in the sense that it galvanized the nation into renewed awareness about the national struggle for freedom. It was particularly the younger generation of Bengalis who needed to be acquainted with the history of the war. Through Jahanara Imam, the nation and by extension the world was enlightened anew about the heritage we are heir to.
That is part of the story of Jahanara Imam. There is then the larger story of her life.
She was a brilliant student with academic roots in Rangpur and Calcutta. With her origins in Murshidabad, it was natural that a driving force behind her work was a determination to succeed. And success was what she demonstrated in her years of teaching in what was then East Pakistan. What added to the appeal in her was her marriage and the children born to her and her husband. Jahanara Imam was a personification of not only Bengali womanhood but also a mark of the sophistication of the Bengali woman. There was beauty and grace in her. There was that drive for knowledge, that ability to hold her own in conversation which enhanced her personality.
But then there was too the gigantic tragedy which engulfed her family in 1971. Hopes were dashed, dreams were burnt, the future was ruined when the Pakistan army picked up her husband and her sons for interrogation. Rumi, her elder son, is today a powerful symbol of Bengali guerrilla resistance against the occupation forces. He never came back from the cantonment.
There are individuals who survived interrogation and came back to report on Rumi's sufferings and murder. His father and brother returned, the former broken in spirit. Jahanara Imam's husband did not survive. Three days before freedom came to this land, he lost his freedom of life.
Out of tragedy Jahanara Imam rose to new life. Her account of the war, Ekatturer Dinguli, remains a poignant retelling of the story of the war. She was the Phoenix rising from the ashes of despair.
She is history, in all its brilliance.




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