Interlude in Pakistan
Feverish attempt to rescue victims of communal riots in Kolkata and of the partition of India led him to be elected as an M.P. in Pakistan, before serving as an M.L.A. Among several reports of his action, it was learnt that on 7 March 1949 when Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, while claiming support from Quaid-i-Azam declared before the Constituent Assembly that Pakistan was founded with the Muslims’ wish to live the teachings and the tradition of Islam, one of the members, Birat Chandra Mondal reminded that Jinnah had "unequivocally said that Pakistan will be a secular State." Bhupendra Kumar Datta went a step further by commenting the PM’s statement : "...were this resolution to come before this house within the life-time of (...) the Quaid-i-Azam, it would not have come in its present shape.". According to Dr M. Waheeduzzaman Manik, after Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah’s protest against imposing of Urdu as the lingua franca of Pakistan (published in daily Azad on 29 July 1947), on 25 February 1948, member Dhirendranath Datta demanded Bengali instead (spoken by 55% of the citizens), Members Bhupendra Kumar Datta, Prem Hari Barma and Srish Chandra Chattopadhyay "wholeheartedly supported Dhiren Datta’s historic amendment and vehemently defended the rightful place of Bengali." On 28 March 1971, at the onset of Bangladesh Liberation War, Pakistani military junta tortured Dhirendranath Datta to death in Comilla. Even in the opposition, Bhupen enjoyed the admiration of the ruling party. Khawaja Nazimuddin, Prime Minister (1951–53), speaking of Bhupen, once exclaimed : "He knows how to plan, organise and execute.". His articles in the Ittefaq drew the attention of the intelligentsia in the then East Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was particularly proud to have known Bhupenda.
Read more about this topic: Bhupendra Kumar Datta
Famous quotes containing the word interlude:
“Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher and Robert Ley did pass under my inspection and interrogation in 1945 but they only proved that National Socialism was a gangster interlude at a rather low order of mental capacity and with a surprisingly high incidence of alcoholism.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)