Ghulam Azam

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Ghulam Azam (Bengali: গোলাম আযম) (born 1922), is a Bangladeshi political leader. He has also been tagged as a war criminal who collaborated with the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, particularly with regards to creating and managing the vigilante Razakar, Al-Shams and Al-Badr forces. He refused to accept the independence of Bangladesh upon its liberation on December 16th 1971, and was a permanent resident of Pakistan until 1978, and maintained Pakistani citizenship until 1994 due to the decision by the then Bangladeshi government to refuse him Bangladeshi citizenship. In 1994, the Supreme Court upheld the decision to grant him citizenship.

Contents 1 Early political career 2 Years in exile 3 Footnotes: 4 See also

[edit] Early political career

Azam entered politics as a student leader at Dhaka University, and in 1947 became the Secretary General of the Dhaka University Central Students' Union. Among his earliest campaigns was participation in the Bangla Language Movement during 1950s. He submitted a memorandum on behalf of the students of Dhaka University to the Pakistan government demanding Bengali as one of the state languages, following the original demand made by Dhirendranath Datta in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in February 1948 and the resulting nationalist uprising in East Bengal. Azam however distanced himself from the Language Movement when it became clear that it was becoming a rallying call for a secular Bengali nationalist movement rather than one focused on Bengali Muslim activism alone. Since his return to Bangladesh in the 1970s, neither Ghulam Azam nor the Jamaat have ever participated in the official commemorations of the Language Movement.

Azam became the secretary of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh in 1957. Later, he became the Ameer (president) of the Jamaat in East Pakistan in 1969. He was also a participant in the formation of the Pakistan Democratic Alliance in 1967.

[edit] Years in exile

After the war, the Bangladesh government sought to remove the influence of religious fundamentalists and collaborators from national life, and Azam's automatic right to Bangladesh citizenship was revoked. He refused an offer from the then Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to return to Bangladesh and renounce Jamaat politics, choosing to live in exile in Pakistan and England until 1978, when President Ziaur Rahman legalized all of the previously banned parties and relaxed a prohibition on religion-based politics, and allowed him to return to Bangladesh on a temporary visa. According to his followers, the actual goal of Zia was to establish multiparty democracy and allowing the people to decide what kind of politics should be allowed or not.^{[citation needed]}

It has been alleged that during Azam's time in exile, he travelled to a number of Middle Eastern nations, seeking funds to help topple the Bangladeshi government. Azam himself has never denied these allegations, and has even alluded to these activities in his autobiography, Jibane Ja Dekhlam (What I saw in my Life). While in Pakistan, he was a leader of what was left of the Pakistani branch of the Jamaat, which actively campaigned against international recognition of Bangladesh under the slogan "Bangladesh na Manzoor" (Bangladesh is Unacceptable).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Footnotes:

1. ↑  Prothom Alo
2. ↑  Universal Declaration of Human Rights
3. ↑  Islamic Voice
4. ↑  Prothom Alo

[edit] See also

• Razakar
• Bangladesh Liberation War
• Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh
• Islamism
• Jamaat-e-Islami