Victory Day: The songs of change

Renowned Rabindra Sangeet exponent and organiser Sanjida Khatun writes about the role and contribution of artistes and cultural activists during the war of liberation. This piece was published in the Victory Day special issue back in 2013 and has been retrieved from the archives and published again today.

Once a group of poets and writers from Kolkata turned up at Masud saheb’s house. Deepen Bandopadhaya, who we had met in the 1954 literature conference on Dhaka back in 1954, was in that group. They proposed that a house be rented in Kolkata where all the artistes would stay so they could rehearse together, stage a programme, collect funds and arrange to bear their own expenses.

I didn’t find the proposal pragmatic at all. Why will the artistes be willing to leave their families and stay with this group? Everyone would have certain problems or constraints. And one house wouldn’t be enough to accommodate everyone’s families too. Dipen Bandopadhaya asked, so what do you want to do? I said, fix a venue for rehearsals instead. That would save on regular rent. I had the name and addresses of many artistes. I said, if you send letters to them all, we can get together one day and chalk out a plan for a programme and regular rehearsals. Dipen said, great! I have the names and addresses of some artistes too. We’ll call everyone on your behalf!

The get-together was arranged at a dilapidated two-storey house at 144 Lenin Sarani. So many of us get together that day – Rajshahi’s Sarwar Jahan, Rafiqul Alam, Mukti Majumdar, Chattogram’s Sheela Dar, Sharmila Das, Kalyani Ghosh, Probal Ghosh, Uma Ghosh, Khulna’s Deepa Bandopadhaya, Kalipada Roy, Mymensingh’s Alokmoy Naha, Sylhet’s Rakhee Chakraborty, Dhaka’s Dalia Noushin, Naila Zaman, Sukumar Biswas and so on. It was decided we would rehearse selected songs from the revolutionary songs we were taught by Sheikh Lutfur Rahman of Chayanaut in Dhaka, songs written by Khulna’s Abu Bakr Siddiqui and composed by Sadhan Sarkar, as well as songs of Rabindranath, Nazrul, Guru Saday Dutta and Salil Chowdhury. We would practice together for a few hours starting from 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning.

Dipen Bandopadhaya, Siddheswar Sen, Nirendranath Chakraborty, Amitabh Dasgupta, Tarun Sannyal, Debesh Roy, Prasun Basu, Shankha Ghosh, Santosh Kumar Ghosh, Kanika Bandopadhaya and may other eminent and talented persons would come to our rehearsals at 144 Lenin Sarani and encourage us.

After the rehearsals continued for some time, Mahmudur Rahman Benu, Shaheen Mahmud, Flora Ahmad and a few others came from Dhaka and joined us. Dipen Bandopadhaya, Prasun Basu and others, on behalf of the intellectuals of Bangladesh Sahayak Samity (Bangladesh Support  Association), would assist us.

Tarasankar Bandyapashaya was the president of the association. After a few days they felt that it was essential for us to directly join the Bangladesh organisation. So with permission from Bangladesh Liberation Council’s representatives Zahir Raihan, Wahidul Haque and others, we created a group. We called it ‘Mukti Sangrami Shilpi Sangstha’. I was the president and Benu the general secretary. Under joint initiative with Bangladesh Sahayak Samity, we held a two-day progamme at Rabindra Sadan. Kanika Bandapadhaya, Hemanta Mukherjee, Debabrata Biswas, Suchitra Mitra and many others happily came and sang. This was a fund raising initiative as well as an effort to highlight the predicament of Bangladesh.

An appropriate commentary was prepared for the latter effort. This was I the form of a musical called Rupantorer Gaan -Song of Change. Zahir Raihan was supposed to have written the song, but at the time he was too busy making the documentary, Stop Genocide. So he bestowed the duty on a cousin of his Shahriar Kabir. This gradually changed and evolved, as people added the suggestion and criticism. If one would say, why has this person’s name been left out, the other would say why has that person’s name been left out! What a strange situation and mental place we were in!

Hasan Imam was the presenter on the first day. The men wore white panjabis while the women wore white saris with black borders. Everyone had a folded card in the shape of a red sun in their hands, in which the lyrics of the song were written. It was Mustafa Monwar who had first thought of this. The stage set planning was his as well as the lighting. After the opening and introductions, when the songs were to begin, Dipen Bandopadhaya was taking to singer Debesh Roy, when Dipen grabbed hold of his hand. The stage was dark and a red sun was gradually rising in the backdrop. There was the scene of people tearing their shackles apart. The conscious intellectuals of Kolkata had flocked to the event.

The activities of the Mukti Sangrami Shilpi Sangstha were not just restricted to this one event. The artistes had pledged that even if they were invited individually to perform at any programme, the payment would go to a common fund.

Many deposited the money in those hard times. There was trouble with the funds too – inevitable. Some of the artistes moved away from the group in indignation that good singers were not paid more. A few left because they felt that being a part of the group meant being a part of some sort of politics. I won’t name them here because they will easily be identified.

The main task of the artistes’ group was to go to the camps of the freedom fighters and boost their morale with songs of the country, to go to the refugees and give them songs of hope. Wherever we would be called, we would to let the people know of Bangladesh’s predicament and circumstances. We also had to generate funds for the artistes.

We were to inspire the common people, singing about the liberation war in folk tunes. Rajshahi’s Morshed Alo sang composed songs. The group was joined now by Bipul Bhattacharya, Lata Chowdhury, Tapan Baidya, Swapan Chowdhury, Milia Ghani, Tariq Ali, Azad Hafiz, and the table player Debabrata Bhattacharya.

People support for the liberation war grew all over, not just in West Bengal. There had been important participation in Delhi, at an international conference. Over there, songs were sung before the delegates about the sufferings of the motherland, the brutal torture by the cruel forces and the commitment to victory. Some of the songs were, ‘Janatar sangram cholbe’, ‘Phul khelbar din noi odya’, ‘Barricade, bayonet, berajal’, ‘Amar pratibader bhasha’, ‘Eki oporoop rupe ma tomar herinu’, ‘Ei shikal pora chhol’, ‘karar oi louha kobat’, ‘Amar bhaiyer rokte rangano…’ and much more.

There were naturally a few tiffs and differences here, but by singing these songs a sacred sense of patriotism grew strong within our souls. I heard that much later, Dipen Bandopadhaya, writing about those days, had written: “Those faces, illuminated like the flames of lamps, would glow bright in emotion.”

* Sanjida Khatun is a Rabindra Sangeet exponent, researcher and the president of Chhayanaut