Published on The Daily Star
Today is February 16, the tenth death anniversary of one of my closest friends, Zeaul Huq — Tulu to his friends. His passing left a major void in not just my life but in the lives of many people of diverse backgrounds and political beliefs. His decency, integrity and warmth as a human being reached out to everyone he met. There was no second face when you met him. The rare quality of a human being who is transparent in his dealings with people invested Tulu with the equally rare capacity to enjoy the confidence of a quite large and diverse collection of people. In an increasingly divided society this also remained an exceptional quality.
Tulu could reach out to all sides of the political spectrum at all levels. I have enjoyed innumerable breakfast meetings at his house, with Sheikh Hasina and Kamal Hossain prior to 1991, and a few even when she was the leader of the opposition. Khaleda Zia also shared political confidences with Tulu. When I was a member of the first caretaker government in 1991 and wanted to informally discuss the idea of constituting the 29 Task Forces with Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia it was Tulu who facilitated my meeting with them, which needed to be done outside the public eye.
If I recollect, I met Sheikh Hasina at Tulu’s home in Banani and received her blessings for the idea. Similarly, Tulu took me to the home of the late Col. Mustafizur Rahman in Gulshan where I met Khaleda Zia in the company of Saifur Rahman. It may be added for the historic record that at that meeting both Khaleda Zia and Saifur Rahman enthusiastically endorsed the idea of the Task Forces. It was this rare consensus of the two leaders which encouraged me to go ahead with the Task Forces and, as in many other such events, Tulu was the facilitator for these encounters.
In setting up meetings outside the public eye between people who were not willing to be seen together in public Tulu was again a unique resource in Bangladesh’s fractured political life. I can recollect any number of crucial negotiations in his successive homes in Green Road and Banani which impacted on the fate of some of our political parties and on national politics. For example, a number of crucial meetings were held in Tulu’s house when the alliance between the Awami League and the BNP was being forged to confront Ershad.
Further meetings all the way upto the fall of Ershad, including Tulu’s own meetings with key members of the diplomatic community, are part of Bangladesh’s history of the restoration of democracy. In the days after the fall of Ershad and the constitution of the caretaker government of President Shahabuddin, Tulu’s house in Banani was a virtual antechamber for consultations on who would become members of the caretaker government.
How did one person who had never directly participated in politics or held any important public office command the confidence of so many who had mattered, in an environment of mutual distrust and antagonism? I can think of no second person in the contemporary life of Bangladesh who was privy to such a range of confidences and commanded such influence as to be able to bring people of such diverse positions together.
Few history books will record Tulu’s catalytic role in the making of Bangladesh’s political history. But Tulu’s contribution needs to be placed on record, particularly in our current phase, when the major leaders and parties rarely talk to each other or even have access to the necessary meeting ground once provided by Tulu at his home.
In setting up these meetings it was Tulu who was always the go-between. It was Tulu who ensured the privacy and security needed to hold such meetings and then assured the necessary confidentiality which gave him his unique credibility. The quality of the meetings at his home was of course immeasurably enhanced by the superb cuisine offered by Jolly, Tulu’s wife, who thereby came to be known to all those who were in the process of contributing to Bangladesh’s history.
Tulu inherited his decency, values and transparency from his father Janab Fazlul Huq, Mowla Mian to his friends, who in his time, from the 1930’s, was the repository of many political confidences and was known to all the major political figures of East Bengal before and after the partition of India. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who shared Mowla Mian’s origins from Faridpur, had the highest respect for him and let this respect carry over to his affection for Tulu. He was also well known to Ziaur Rahman who reportedly invited him to join his first cabinet, an offer which Tulu declined. Even though there were aspects of the Awami League regime with which Tulu disagreed, he was deeply distressed by the assassination of Bangabandhu and angered at the subsequent attempts to devalue his historic role in the emergence of Bangladesh.
In later years Tulu became more frustrated with the direction of the major political parties. But right upto the end of his life, the personal respect and trust he enjoyed with their senior members, including their two leaders, was never extinguished. Tulu had accumulated enough political capital to still exercise his magical charm over diverse political constituencies. But in his last year I found that Tulu had lost his zest for political inter-meditation. Tulu’s withdrawal from the role of political mediator was itself symbolic of the vanishing middle ground in Bangladesh’s increasingly confrontational political life.
Our close personal relations impacted on our attempts to contribute to the political life of the country. Whilst Tulu became a successful, if not overly affluent businessman, he retained his close links with the Left. He certainly shared the dominant concerns of our generation for attaining self rule and democracy for the Bengalis. He, therefore, readily joined hands with me, Prof. Razzaq, Kamal Hossain, Mosharaff Hossain, Salahuddin Ahmed and Badruddin Umar when, around 1960/61, we set up the National Association for Social and Economic Progress (NASEP), a political study group designed to inject constructive policy inputs into the political discourse of the day.
Tulu encouraged us to widen NASEP into Jonomoytri Parishad, where he brought in a broader spectrum of political intellectuals to contribute to the effort to influence the political debates of the time. Given Tulu’s wide network of connections with the media, world of culture and politics his presence was crucial in connecting this narrow group of academics with the wider world of politics.
After the fall of Ayub in 1969, Tulu joined Hameeda, Kamal Hossain and myself to found the English language weekly Forum. Hameeda and I were the editors but we drew upon a broad range of professionals not just in East Pakistan, but also in the West Wing and abroad to shape Forum into an exciting venture designed to influence the policy agendas of the nationalist movement. It was again Tulu who linked Forum with the journalist community, with prospective advertisers from the business community and political figures who were our readers.
As Kamal and myself found ourselves being more actively involved in the political process it was Tulu who helped us to liaise with the political players of the day. It was in Kamal’s and Tulu’s homes where Bangabandhu and Tajuddin met occasionally with those of us who were becoming actively involved in the liberation struggle. As the democratic struggle escalated into the Liberation War, it was Tulu again who chose to stay back in Dhaka, so that he could support the war effort from within. He remained totally committed to the liberation of Bangladesh throughout 1971 and served as a valuable source of intelligence to the Mujibnagar government whilst providing funding for the war effort and refuge for those in danger. All this at considerable risk to himself and his family.
The most remarkable quality of Tulu was his refusal to extract political or material benefit from the uniquely advantageous position he commanded in Bangladesh’s public life. Over the last 30 years there was no major political figure across the political spectrum, no secretary to the Government of Bangladesh, no major businessperson and indeed no ambassador resident in Dhaka, who was not intimately known to Tulu. This remarkable accumulation of social capital in Tulu’s hands could have been parleyed into political office and financial fortune. That Tulu refused to capitalise on the unique opportunities open to him is a measure of his integrity and also the source of his credibility.
In his passing Tulu has left a vaccum not just in Bangladesh’s politics but also in many personal lives. He could be totally trusted with confidences and could offer sustenance without any sense of making the beneficiary feel obligated. This applied not just to me and my family but to many of his close and even not so close friends. An exceptionally large number of people will thus share my sense of personal bereavement that a guide and friend is no more.
Tulu always planned to write his memoirs. If he wrote it with complete candour it would not only have been a unique cameo of Bangladesh’s political history but also a contribution to the social and intellectual history of our generation. This opportunity was denied him so it is left to his friends to imperfectly recognise his contribution to Bangladesh’s public life as much as to our personal lives.
It is unlikely that a person of his unique qualities will emerge in the life of Bangladesh. We may continue to pay a heavy price now that the contemporary culture of intolerance, confrontation and distrust have made it virtually impossible for another Zeaul Huq to build bridges across the political divide and in the process to enrich so many lives touched by his friendship.