“ . . . THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED . . . .

”:

REMINISCING MARCH 1971

Imtiaz A. Hussain

It was a collision of the most brutal kind. President General Agha Muhammad Yahya

Khan’s “Operation Searchlight” clashing against Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s “search for light”

after Pakistan’s historically most fairly contested election. The former’s tally: hundreds of

thousands killed, hundreds of thousands women raped, ten millions evicted as refugees, entry

into the genocide hall-of-shame list, and a country severed after only 23 years of a bloody birth.

The latter’s legacy: founding a brand new country from battlefield victory, then climbing many

global ranks faster than leftover Pakistan: closing the gender gap (Bangladesh as 47th in the 2017

Global Gender Gap Report against 143rd for Pakistan); pushing democracy (Bangladesh’s 41st

score on a 2018 Freedom in the World, out of 100, as opposed to Pakistan’s 39); or opening

productivity arteries, like economic growth-rates (in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook

Database for 2017, 7.3% for Bangladesh versus 5.3%, for Pakistan).

Much can be said 48 years down the road to portray Bangladeshi resilience and

ascendance whether in political terms (the relative civilian-military share in governance), or

economic. Though much has been said, and will continue to be said, social or cultural ties get

underplayed, especially memories transcending events, landscapes triumphing monuments.

Many bonds cultivated between Bangalee and non-Bangalee residents/citizens were family-

based (of clan members opting to go in different directions without disrupting, at least not for

long, family relations because of 1971), from business transactions, or (mostly) accidental links

that refused to melt away, as between classmates or next-door neighbors, and so forth.

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 Highlighting this last component, Dhaka Stadium’s abandoned cricket test match helps

expose how other curtains were drawn down. By March 7th, Bangalee sentiments were all

encapsulated in Bangabandhu’s speech, as if a point-of-no-return was imminent. Yahya Khan

postponing the National Assembly on March 1 not only prevented the newly elected

parliamentarians from congregating, but also caused the cricket pitch to be invaded by a

rightfully agitated public, as the latest news rolled out of adjacent Hotel Purbani (where one

Awami League committee, perhaps on parliamentary affairs, convened).

Cricket was then an elite game then, when football was far more popular on the streets.

We did not have any sustainable supply of cricketers, and frankly, not of the pedigree from West

Pakistan. Inclusions from East Pakistan were mostly West Pakistanis working here, such as test

player Nasim-ul-Ghani, Mahmudul Hasan, and Niaz Ahmed, who joined the Pakistan team to

visit England in 1967. The only Bangalee to make the team was Roquibul Hasan. He proudly

remembered how his test cap, as 12th man, was donned by the legendary Hanif Muhammad

against New Zealand in 1969. In February-March 1971, he joined the team in that fatal game

against the visiting MCC team.

The witty Roquibul with pretty strokes might be seen as one of the founding fathers of

the game in the country: Tamim, Saquib, and Mahmudullah might be automatically associated

with the game’s popularity and accomplishments today, but watching Roquib enter the field with

a Pakistan cap was the first emotional high in the country’s cricket annals.

Trekking to Dhaka Stadium today, from anywhere in Dhaka, might also be an emotional

high for at least one wrong reason: traffic. Making it then from Dhanmandi was either

environmentally uplifting or physically congenial: the city’s air was so clean, we did not think

twice about it, meaning, any rickshaw-ride with an open hood when it was not raining, was quite

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a laughter-filled conversational joy; while crossing Hatirpool (or New Elephant Road), then

either Segun Bagicha (which really lived up to its name then: a garden with pools across the

city’s more imposing building, the Secretariat), or the High Court’s south side (across the even

more green Race Course, where horses still raced, across the city’s most magnificent building,

Curzon Hall), one would hardly count the steps taken. Stopping for chotpotti or puchka at Ramna

Park entryway delighted Dacca-ites since they were reputedly the best in town. Very few people

ever explain why the far slimmer Bangalee in those days, compared to now, was not just a

function of the income-food equation: food was more natural and of better quality, with far less

display of extravagance as a calling-card, in the consumption process.

Walking down Topkhana one could not avoid the small town’s only jukebox, right inside

the Igloo parlor. Baby Ice Cream’s Gulistan parlour was also attractive and popular, but saving

coins for that juke-box (even skipping a rickshaw-ride for it) added a thrill. Not to diminish

Dhaka’s Carnaby corner: Gulistan had a select sumptuous Chu Chin Chow bite. A follow-up

Baby Ice Cream lick was so delicious that two-wheel ice-cream stalls had to ply the city’s streets

to satiate citizen taste.

Though juke-box culture never returned, music did. One futile attempt to revive pop

music in 1972 was in, yes, the same Hotel Purbani: a fire-cracker burst (not, thank heavens, a

bomb), blew up on the amplifier of the Times Ago Motion band, a leftover of the halcyon 1960s.

Yet, popular music is having its renaissance. With a larger fan-base, more musicians, and even

greater Bangla-English crossovers that is likely to blossom with more bountiful flowers now than

ever before.

So too is the paucity of players and poverty of the cricket game. As if to compensate the

loss of juke-box culture, cricket has not only returned, but also built a culture by now, becoming,

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in fact, the country’s top-contending game. With “test” recognition in all the various dimensions

of the game, Bangladesh’s successful scorecards at the lower-end of the global rankings have

been attracting fans. Though more needs to be done to climb upwards, who would have believed

we even had a chance in March 1971 to do so?

Even behind an ‘inevitability’ air during March 1971, the Bangladesh mindset was

anything but militant. Surviving Dhanmandi residents, whether living in Bangladesh or Pakistan

today, will recall how throughout most of the month, we, still virgin teenagers that we were,

formed and deployed peace-troopers (shanti bahinis) to protect the lives and property of non-

Bangalees. Supported by many well-to-do Dhanmandi non-Bangalees, these boys secured the

neighborhood from opportunists and anarchists, working out of living-rooms, often invited by

fleeing non-Bangalees. They lived literal 24-hour days: keeping tab on political negotiations or

news out of Bangabandhu’s Road 32 Dhanmandi home by day, while patrolling by night. Some

suffered on the 25th night on duty, others felt betrayed, but that harmony did not vanish.

The politics of the day just could not permeate, let alone poison, personal friendships or

new-found bonds between Bangalees and non-Bangalees. Pakistan’s Hamoodur Rahman report

on the 1971 disasters exposed the gap between popular sentiment and the death-driven army

dictators. Communications can be re-established, reminisces nourished, and the bitterness

softened, yet recreating what was, and the opportunities that could have been, may be a bridge

left too far behind to return to if crossing is the goal.

Time heals as it spins it wheels, but tides always come with new deals.