MINTU - A TRIBUTE:A dreamer with his feet firmly planted on the ground
manik
MINTU - A TRIBUTE
A dreamer with his feet firmly
planted on the ground
The first was his genial affability. He was good company, with a
sterling collection of anecdotes and news from his extensive contacts
that leavened our meetings with humour and invariably left one more
knowledgeable, if not necessarily wiser, about people and developments
in Bangladesh,
writes Mumtaz Iqbal
It was through an entrepreneur, the late Masihur Rahman, that I met
Mintu (the formidably named Abu Zahir Mohammad Enayetullah Khan) in
mid-1964. He immediately had an impact on me, being, unlike most of us
Bangladeshis, tall and well-built, and endowed by nature with boyish
good looks, ready smile and infectiously hearty laugh.
Common ties hastened our bonding. Our fathers knew each other. Mintu
had inter-acted with my brother Mahboob Jamal Zahedi of the Pakistan
Observer, a paper on which he, like many others, cut his journalistic
milk-teeth.
Mintu was then staying in a flat at Purana Paltan at the back of the
present HBFC Building. I lived close by.
This proximity facilitated our inter-action. It helped that Mintu
had a black-and-white Philips TV set - a novelty at that time as
television had just been introduced in Dhaka - which I unabashedly
exploited for news and entertainment.
Even then he and his wife Lina were ever the gracious hosts, a happy
tradition they maintained with energy and sophistication when they
moved to Lalmatia. Their parties seamlessly meshed eclectic company,
stimulating conversation, and a good table.
In those days, China (PRC) was looked upon by the developing world
as a role-model for development through robust boot-straps
self-reliance. But we had different perspectives on that no longer
sleeping giant.
Mintu's sensitive political antenna was fascinated by the
transformational power, doctrinal framework and organisational
trappings of Maoism and peasant communism. My interest in military
history made me focus on the PLA's (Peoples' Liberation Army) formative
years.
I paid a price for this interest. When Mintu launched Holiday, he
suggested I write something about the PLA's early days. After some
gentle prodding by him - I was petrified, never before having written
anything for publication - I put together a long, somewhat pedestrian
article on The Long March which Holiday serialised for some weeks in
around 1966.
Interestingly enough, this effort paid dividends years later in 1987
when work took me to Beijing where Mintu was ambassador. We spent a
pleasant few hours one afternoon at The Museum of Military Revolution,
examining exhibits of The Long March including Mao's cap, vest and
tunic.
Mintu was thus responsible for my foray into newspaper writing in my
own name (some articles for Rehman Sobhan's defunct Forum in the late
1960s/early 1970s were written under pseudonyms), and for its
regeneration 30 years later in 1996 after I retired. He enquired: could
I write for Holiday?
I accepted his invitation diffidently and churned out some stuff
that passed Mintu's muster. This boosted my confidence and eventually
led to contributing to Holiday every week for the past several years,
mostly under my name but some on domestic topics under pseudonyms.
That Mintu took the trouble to initiate a novitiate like me into
writing for Holiday underscores a constraint that plagued him
throughout his editorship.
This constraint was content. How to get a stable and critical mass
of contributors and news that would fill Holiday week after week with
the type of cheeky and defiant enfant terrible radicalism that had
become the weekly's trademark was his perennial worry.
I don't think Mintu ever solved this problem quite to his
satisfaction. He discussed this point with me more than once in Dhaka
during the past three years and while receiving treatment in Toronto.
He wondered whether Holiday should reformat to take into account the
changed times and readership. He ruminated about converting Holiday
into a magazine. Mintu's heirs and successors inherit this challenge.
Because I worked mostly outside East Pakistan/Bangladesh over the
forty years we knew each other, our inter-action was extensive rather
than intensive, periodic rather than frequent.
But this intermittent contact didn't inhibit our growing regard for
each other which, irrigated by shared social democratic values and a
tacit compact not to take life too seriously, sprouted into an easy
camaraderie anchored in mutual respect and pleasure in each other's
company.
Two impressions of Mintu stand out.
The first was his genial affability. He was good company, with a
sterling collection of anecdotes and news from his extensive contacts
that leavened our meetings with humour and invariably left one more
knowledgeable, if not necessarily wiser, about people and developments
in Bangladesh.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, he wasn't pompous or didn't have
delusions of grandeur. For a dreamer, he had his feet firmly planted on
the ground. Any disdain for a person didn't degenerate into rancour or
revanchism.
Second, he was courageous. Courage takes various forms. It can be
inherent in the profession: a soldier courting death while charging or
repelling the enemy. Or it can be spontaneous: a stranger trying to
save a drowning person.
But what undoubtedly is valour of a very high order is when you
consciously decide to assault the formidable bastion of the powerful
with the weapon of righteousness, particularly when this entails
physical danger and material loss. This recalls the adage of the pen
being mightier than the sword.
This Mintu did with his now classic article titled 'Sixty-Five
Million Collaborators?' (Holiday, 6 February, 1972.)
This rightly created a sensation because of its timing, relevance
and bluntness in saying what needed to be said. Even now, as I re-read
the article that's in front of me, I am as impressed and moved by its
stirring message and defiant challenge as I was in 1972.
Mintu articulated with devastating rationale and controlled fury
what most of us felt but dared not express, about the unseemly
behaviour of a large cross-section of the cross-border returnees
suddenly catapulted to unbridled power and unexpected fame and fortune,
surpassing their wildest dreams.
His analysis of the complex context and content of our liberation
struggle was laced with unassailable logic.
Equally pertinent was his withering attack on the then
administration's party hacks and hangers-on working overtime to exploit
ruthlessly and shamelessly the fruit of independence for narrow
partisan and personal ends.
I believe the article's combination of transparent candour and
trenchant criticism was his finest hour and arguably his most seminal
contribution. If for nothing else, it has assured Mintu a privileged
place in the pantheon of Bangladeshi journalism.
Mintu also courageously fought his cancer in Toronto. Fate decreed
that I would witness this foreboding clash between two tenacious and
determined combatants. Our long association and common heritage as
Holiday contributors made our meetings precious and poignant.
Despite the frightening prospect facing Mintu - he suspected, if he
did not already know, that he faced a foe far more formidable than any
encountered previously - he remained unfailingly courteous and
civilised. His body slowly wasted away, but his mind remained sharp and
nimble.
The editorials Mintu wrote from Toronto while undergoing
chemotherapy reflected his mental clarity. It also revealed his
agonising distress at the country's mounting violence, rising
fundamentalism, Jamaat's surreptitious gains from its BNP alliance
bordering on de facto rehabilitation in spite of its notorious role in
1971, and the callous misgovernance of the sitting administration.
This unease is tellingly portrayed in the last editorial he wrote:
Bangladesh: victim of propaganda without, machinations within.
(Holiday, 30 October, 2005.)
In Toronto, Mintu's abiding passion for Holiday - his constant and
enduring love - burned ever more brightly. Distance from Dhaka didn't
lend enchantment to the view, but absence from Holiday made his heart
grow fonder.
His current wife Najma relates how she got an anonymous phone call
before their marriage in which the male caller solemnly enquired
whether she was aware that Mintu already had a 'wife'. He was of course
referring to Holiday!
In my last coherent meeting with him on 7 November, almost his first
question was whether I had been in touch with Kamal (Sayed Kamaluddin,
acting editor of Holiday). He nodded approvingly and relaxed visibly
when I said I had, and would continue to be.
Mintu's other major concern was the way he felt the country was
adrift and rudderless. He worried that the ship of state was listing
and, what is worse, taking on water.
For all these reasons, Mintu desperately wanted to get back home
because, as he lamented more than once, there was so much still left to
do. This was not to be.
Thanks to the excellent staff and facilities of the Toronto General
Hospital, Holiday and New Age readers will be consoled to know that
Mintu's final hours were comfortable, and he left us peacefully.
Simultaneously published in New Age & Holiday
(NEW AGE, Nov. 18, 2005)