General Studies- I (The Freedom Struggle – its various stages)
Editorials In Depth
22 March 2021
Prime Minister Modi will be on a two-day visit to Bangladesh in March 2021, where he will take part in commemorations of three epochal events in the history of the country.
It will the occasion of:
- Mujib Borsho or the birth centenary of Bangladesh’s father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,
- 50 years of diplomatic ties and
- 50 years of Bangladesh’s war of liberation.
Indian PM is scheduled to Visit following places:
- Rahman’s memorial in Tungipara, also called the Bangabandhu memorial.
- Harichand Thakur at his shrine in Orakandi. Thakur was the founder of the Matua sect, a community which holds significance in the upcoming polls in West Bengal.
- “Sugandha Shaktipith” (Satipith) temple in Shikarpur in Barishal district.
- Rabindra kuthi bari in Kushtia and the ancestral home of Bagha Jatin.
Each of the spots on PM Modi’s itinerary is of political, historical or religious significance to both India and Bangladesh.
Bangabandhu shrine in Tungipara:
Located about 420 kilometres from Dhaka, Tungipara was the place of birth of Rahman, the architect of the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence.
- This is also the place where he lies buried inside a grand tomb called the ‘Bangabandhu mausoleum’.
- Millions of people gather here every year on August 15, to observe the day when Rahman was assassinated by a group of disgruntled army officers.
Harichand Thakur’s shrine in Orakandi:
Thakur was the founder of the Matua Mahasangha, which was a religious reformation movement that originated in Orakandi in about 1860 CE.
- At a very early age, Thakur experienced spiritual revelation, following which he founded a sect of Vaishnava Hinduism called Matua.
- Members of the sect were the namasudras who were considered to be untouchables.
- The objective of Thakur’s religious reform was to uplift the community through educational and other social initiatives.
- Members of the community consider Thakur as God and an avatar of Vishnu or Krishna.
- After the 1947 Partition, many of the Matuas migrated to West Bengal.
‘Sugandha Shaktipith’ (Satipith) temple in Shikarpur in Barishal district:
The Sugandha Shaktipeeth is located in Shikarpur, close to Barisal.
- The temple, dedicated to Goddess Sunanda is of immense religious significance to Hinduism.
- It is one of the 51 Shakti Pith temples. The Shakti Pith shrines are pilgrimage destinations associated with the Shakti (Goddess worship) sect of Hinduism.
Rabindra Kuthi Bari in Kushtia:
The Kuthi Bari is a country house built by Dwarkanath Tagore, the grandfather of Nobel laureate and Bengali poetic giant Rabindranath Tagore.
- Rabindranath Tagore stayed in the house for over a decade in irregular intervals between 1891 and 1901.
- In this house Tagore composed some of his masterpieces like Sonar Tari, Katha o Kahini, Chaitali etc. He also wrote a large number of songs and poems for Gitanjali
- Presently, the house has been conserved by the Department of Archaeology and turned into a museum named the ‘Tagore Memorial Museum’.
Ancestral home of Bagha Jatin in Kushtia:
Jatindranath Mukherjee, better known as ‘Bagha Jatin’ (tiger Jatin) was a revolutionary freedom fighter.
- He was born in Kayagram, a village in Kushtia district, where his ancestral home is located. J
- atin acquired the epithet ‘Bagha’ after he fought a Royal Bengal Tiger all by himself and killed it with a dagger.
- Jatin was the first commander-in-chief of the ‘Jugantar Party’ which was formed in 1906 as a central association dedicated to train revolutionary freedom fighters in Bengal.
- Jatin is most remembered for an armed encounter he engaged in with the British police at Balasore in Orissa.
National Martyrs Memorial in Savar:
National Martyrs Memorial for martyrs of Bangladesh’s War of Liberation, located in Savar.
- The memorial, which is also the national monument of Bangladesh, was built in memory of those soldiers who lost their lives in the 1971 war.
- The architecture of the memorial consists of seven pairs of triangular walls.
Each of the pairs represents a significant period of Bangladesh’s history:
- The Language movement in 1952,
- The provincial election victory of the United Front in 1954,
- The Constitution Movement in 1956,
- The movement against Education Commission in 1962,
- 6-point Movement in 1966,
- The Mass Uprising in 1969 and
- The war of 1971 through which Bangladesh got separated from Pakistan and became a nation by itself.
Source: Indian Express
