The road to independence

At the time when the republic has completed 40 years of its existence,Hossain in Kolkata talked about the country’s war of independence and how men with bamboo sticks attained independence against such a mighty army.

Delivering his Sarat Chandra Bose memorial lecture 2011,on the Bangladesh : The Road to Independence the settings of Netaji Reserach Bureau,in the heart of Kolkata the pictures of Netaji and Indian Freedom Strugle kindled in memories of the feedom struggle of Bangladesh.

“It is like going back in a time machine and brings the echoes of our own independence,” Hossain said while delivering the lecture. However it was not the first time that Dr Hossain was present at Netaji Reserach Bureau the ancestral House of Netaji which is the biographical museum of Netaji with vast amount of amount of materials about Netaji collected about Netraji from all parts of world. His wife Dr Hamida Hossain delivered Sarat Chandra Bose memorial lecture about a decade back.

In his about hour long lecture,he touched on various issues of the country’s feedom from the first signs of dissent that started with a demand for status of Bengali Language in 1952 to the first election in 1954. Dr Hossain brought alive the history of our neighbouring country which from 1947 to 1971 had twice attained independence. From the first seeds of the Freedom Struggle which started from the demanding official status for Bengali,to the formation of Students Action Committee and the numerous demands of regional autonomy. According to Dr Hossain the people of Bangladesh has realised the paradox of ” Feeding the Cow and Milking the Cow,” where the resource rich East Pakistan used to earn for the country while West Pakistan saw all the development. He said that the message reached to the people in the villages and people were increasingly aware of the flight of resources. Dr Hossain also talked about the false cases aginst the leaders like Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in cases like Agartala Conspiracy Case and the huge support of the people that the rallies of the sixties saw in Bangladesh.

He was awarded a Bachelor of Jurisprudence degree with honours fromUniversity of Oxford in 1957 and Bachelor of Civil Law from same institution in 1958. It was only in 1959 when he returned from London,he joined the “Mujib Bhai” and thecountry’s freedom struggle.