For Dhaka’s new elites—including many who seized prime Bihari properties in the city’s most desirable neighborhoods—the 1974 famine was little more than a distraction. People were dying on the streets, in open fields, and at train terminals, but it rarely stirred their humanity. Poor relatives knocked on their doors, pleading for a small tin of baby food or a cheap pair of trousers from state-run, subsidized Cosco stores. Millions were forced to queue in front of gruel kitchens and ration shops. Yet these indignities barely touched the lives of the privileged.
Bangladesh had never witnessed a humanitarian disaster on the scale of 1974. It was, without doubt, the darkest year in our history—our true annus horribilis. Still, for the elites, life went on as usual. When the nation marked the fiftieth anniversary of the famine, there were almost no books, essays, or articles in the major newspapers to commemorate the tragedy. The silence was deliberate. Media houses feared revisiting the greatest failure of Mujib during Hasina’s authoritarian rule. Instead, they worshipped Mujib with the same fervor the Red Guards once worshipped Mao during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.
In 2023, one of Mujib’s most ardent devotees published an essay on “Mujibonomics” in Whiteboard, a magazine run by Mujib’s grandson. But Mujib never had a coherent economic strategy. Writing about “Mujibonomics” was nothing more than shameless bootlicking of an inept leadership. The few scholars who addressed the famine with honesty were those whose humanity was scarred by that man-made catastrophe—figures like Mohiuddin Alamgir (not to be confused with the notorious Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir). Much of what we know about the disaster exists thanks to his scholarship.
The rest of Dhaka’s elites quietly erased the episode from memory—and, years later, just as quietly embraced and legitimized Hasina’s dictatorship.
- Shafiqul Alam
Press Secretary, CA
