The Pledge of December 16

Badruddin Umar

The ruling party and the Government of Bangladesh are going to observe December 16 as a “Day of Victory”. On this day in 1971 the Indian Army entered Dacca and accepted the surrender of the Pakistani Forces and formally took charge of the law and order situation and the administration of this country. This charge was soon handed over to the Awami League government which was installed by the Indians themselves. This could not be possible without India’s realising the fact that their interests would remain quite secure in the hands of those to whom they handed over charge of the government and the administration of this country.

Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, after assuming office as Prime Minister of Bangladesh, told the people of this country to wait for three years after the end of which period the disturbance which was created in their life as a consequence of the Pakistani attack upon them will be settled, and people will most certainly taste milk and honey for which they had been thirsting for a long long time.

The three years which the Prime Minister requested from the people in order to set the economy and the administration of the country in proper order elapses on the 16th December, 1974. At the end of this period the Awami League and its leader Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman have provided milk and honey for themselves and for their cronies and boot-lickers but they have taken away the morsel of rice from the mouth of the common people and have very largely destroyed their normal and productive life. Thus at the end of the requested three-year period the ruling party owes tributes not from the common working people of this country, but from the plundering phorias, from the hijackers, from the permit hunters, from all sorts of new rich anti-social elements. It is the above-mentioned type of people who are flowing with milk and honey at the third anniversary of their victory and it is, therefore, on this “victory” day that the people must renew their pledge for overthrowing the government of the Awami League, the government of phorias and the government of the most reckless plunderers in our history. It must be observed not as a day of celebration, but as a day of protest, as a day of exposure of the true character of the class of people who deceived the workers and peasants in the name of liberation, in the name of national honour and self-respect, in the name of democratic rights and in the name of a comfortable economic life for the broad masses of the people. It is the Day on which the people must take the pledge for converting the victory of the plundering phorias into their defeat and into the victory of the workers and peasants and all the working people of this country.

Holiday, December 16, 1974

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