Victory Day and the Echo of Promises We Never Kept

H. M. Nazmul Alam :

Every year, as the calendar edges toward December 16, Bangladesh pauses as if listening to a distant echo. It is the echo of footsteps marching across muddy fields in 1971, of whispered warnings in the dark, of mothers pressing their children into safer arms, of poems recited in secrecy, of songs that sustained hope when rations ran out.

Victory Day returns not merely as a national holiday but as a test of our memory, a reminder that freedom is not secured by a single moment of triumph but by a lifetime of fidelity to its meaning.

Yet when we look at ourselves today, the question arises with unsettling clarity. What do we want in Bangladesh now? Not in slogans, not in ceremonial speeches, not in political declarations polished to perfection, but in the quiet recesses of our collective conscience. What do we truly desire for the country that so many died to free?

The story of our liberation is often told through the language of strategy and geopolitics, but this is not the whole truth. The real Bangladesh of 1971 lived in the trembling hands that passed secret notes, in the exhausted farmer who hid rifles beneath stacks of hay, in the teenager who crossed the border with nothing but conviction.

These people were not famous, and most never sought recognition. Yet they possessed clarity of purpose that would shame many of our modern leaders. Their sacrifices were not made for power, for wealth, or for ideological branding. They simply wanted a country where dignity was not a luxury.

If one listens carefully to their stories, scattered across villages and family memories, one realises that Bangladesh was not born out of political design but out of moral insistence. This is why the Liberation War still carries a spiritual gravity that no later event has been able to replicate.

It was a moment in which millions of ordinary individuals decided that oppression had crossed an invisible threshold. Their resistance rose from the same wellspring that inspired Antigone to defy the state in Sophocles’ tragedy or spurred Camus’ rebel to declare that there must be limits to injustice. A nation is never stronger than when its people choose conscience over fear.

What made 1971 even more extraordinary was the role of culture. While guns roared across the battlefields, Bangladesh fought another war through its music, poetry, theatre, and stories. Cultural resistance became the emotional backbone of the movement.

It reminded people of who they were when the world tried to unmake them. Every cassette smuggled, every poster pasted in the dead of night, every forbidden Tagore song hummed beneath the breath was an act of defiance. It is no accident that so many of our freedom fighters carried poetry in their pockets. Words, after all, can be stronger than bullets.

But history has a strange habit of hardening into ceremony. Over time, as governments rose and fell, the liberation struggle began to lose its intimate glow. It was no longer a shared memory; it became a contested treasure. Each political faction tried to carve out its own version of 1971, claiming sole ownership of its spirit.

The result was a kind of historical fragmentation. Where there should have been unity, there emerged competing narratives. Where there should have been shared pride, there appeared suspicion.

The very story that could have bound the nation together was instead used to fortify political walls. This is not a uniquely Bangladeshi tragedy. Nations across history have repeatedly lost their way when memory becomes a weapon rather than a mirror. But in our case, the damage feels especially painful because it dishonours the sincerity of those who died with no thought of reward.

During this political erosion, something else quietly unfolded. Bangladesh grew economically. It grew through sweatshops and migrant labour, through the sacrifices of garment workers, through remittances sent from faraway deserts, through the restless energy of its young population. It grew through small businesses, through women pushing boundaries, through countless unacknowledged acts of perseverance. This progress was not given by the state. It was earned by the people.

Yet alongside these achievements, the cracks deepened. Corruption, like an old disease, returned with new strains. Banks collapsed under the weight of unpaid loans. Money slipped out of the country through invisible channels. Public institutions, meant to uphold fairness, slowly bent toward the powerful. Elections, once the crowning ritual of democracy, gradually became spectacles of distrust. Citizens who once marched fearlessly in the streets now waited anxiously to see whether their votes would matter at all.

The moral compass of governance tilted. People adjusted their instincts to survive in a system where integrity was mocked and opportunism rewarded. A generation grew up learning not what was right, but what was useful. When a society reaches that point, Aristotle’s old warning resurfaces: when virtue is abandoned by leaders, citizens lose the incentive to be virtuous themselves.

A nation may survive poverty, disaster, or even war. But it cannot survive the corrosion of its character. Foreign policy, too, became a delicate terrain. The relationship with India, shaped by both gratitude and geographic inevitability, required careful wisdom. The relationship with the United States demanded strategic balance.

Bangladesh could not afford to become a pawn in the shifting chessboard of global powers. Yet political opportunists often pretended not to understand this, mistaking personal gain for national strategy. The Non-Aligned Movement, once criticised as idealistic, now appears almost prophetic. A small nation must learn to speak to the world without whispering dependence to any single giant.

The present moment is therefore one of contradiction. On the one hand, Bangladesh stands proudly as a nation with economic promise. On the other, it grapples with political fatigue so severe that the very idea of reform seems distant. The emergence of an advisory government composed of non-party individuals reflects both a crisis and an opportunity. It reflects a crisis because the public has grown weary of traditional politics. It reflects an opportunity because people, perhaps for the first time in years, dare to hope for institutional repair.

But the work ahead is immense. Without a credible election, without transparent governance, without a restructuring of the political culture, Bangladesh risks drifting into a future that bears little resemblance to the dream of 1971. And yet hope remains stubborn. It remains especially alive in the young.

The youth have always been the engine of Bengali history. From the language movement to student uprisings, they have repeatedly forced the nation to confront truths it preferred to avoid. Today’s youth, too, are refusing to inherit a broken system. They want accountability, not theatrics. They want a curriculum that sparks thought, not memorisation. They want leadership that does not treat them as tools or numbers. And they are willing to question even the most deeply entrenched assumptions.

This brings us back to the women whose stories of 1971 still hide in the margins. Their courage shaped the war, yet their recognition remains painfully incomplete. They fought in training camps, ferried supplies, and risked their lives to protect communities. Many of them bore the most brutal wounds of war. To honour them is not merely to acknowledge their suffering; it is to reclaim the fuller truth of the Liberation War itself. A nation that overlooks its women cannot claim to honour its own history.

As Bangladesh stands today between the memory of what it once achieved and the uncertainty of what comes next, it must confront a question sharper than any political debate. What does it mean to be free? Is it enough to have borders, a flag, a national anthem? Or does freedom demand something more profound: a society where justice does not bow to power, where institutions do not fear truth, where citizens can speak without trembling, where leaders understand that authority is a trust, not a prize? Victory Day should not be a comfort. It should be an awakening. It should challenge us to ask what we have done with the blood that soaked the soil of 1971.

When we honour the martyrs with flowers, do we also honour them in our actions? When we raise flags, do we also raise our own standards?

Bangladesh does not lack potential. It lacks the courage to confront its own contradictions. It lacks the honesty to admit where it has faltered. It lacks the collective will to rebuild the political, moral and institutional foundations of the nation.

What do we want in Bangladesh today? We want a country where elections are not theatre. We want public institutions that operate without fear or favour. We want schools that teach children how to think, not what to obey. We want banks that protect the savings of ordinary citizens. We want journalists who can report without glancing over their shoulders. We want citizens who do not have to calculate their honesty as a risk. We want leadership that treats power as responsibility. We want a foreign policy that reflects strength without arrogance. And we want a society where truth is not an act of bravery.

The martyrs of 1971 do not speak, yet they ask the most demanding questions. Their silence asks whether we have honoured their sacrifice or squandered it. Their graves pose a challenge that still hangs unanswered: will Bangladesh rise to the standard they set, or will it settle for something less?

Victory Day is a reminder that freedom is never complete. It is a task passed from one generation to the next. The question is no longer whether we have inherited that freedom. The question is whether we will keep it alive.

Only when Bangladesh chooses truth over convenience, unity over partisanship, and integrity over expedience will the spirit of 1971 finally find its rightful home in the heart of the nation.
Only then will victory feel complete.

(The Writer is an Academic, Journalist, and Political Analyst. Currently he teaches at IUBAT.)